7/25/13 – You’ll find two new blogs listed on my Recommended Links page, both by friends of mine who are gifted writers with an apparent aversion to capital letters. Mark Bruce teaches medieval literature here at Bethel, but he promises that he’ll explore other topics at surfingedges, starting off with Jesus’ parable of the Good … More Two New Blogs by Friends
I grieve to report that America’s latest bout of Anglophilia has infected this corner of the blogosphere. Perhaps one post on Monty Python (one-sixth American, and that fraction hailing from the niftiest of the fifty states) can be dismissed, but even as we Colonials rejoice at the birth of a new heir, I find myself … More Pride and Prejudice at 200
It’s been almost a year — let’s resume my series blogging alphabetically through a selection of some of my favorite albums. There was a time when the album was as much the dominion of comedians as musicians. Jokesmiths won two of the first five Album of the Year awards at the Grammys: Bob Newhart in … More Albums A to Z: Monty Python Sings
The ten most popular posts in the last month here at The Pietist Schoolman: Gregory Thornbury Named President of The King’s College Christians, Patriotism, and Nationalism How Financially Sustainable Are Christian Colleges? Why Are There No Holidays in August? Will D. Campbell: A Radical Baptist Peacemaker (G.W. Carlson) – part 1 The Spread of Technology … More The Big Ten
Today The Chronicle of Higher Education published the results of its sixth annual Great Colleges to Work For survey. I don’t want to make too much of any college ranking system (this year, I mean — did plenty of it in 2012…), let alone one in which only 300 colleges and universities took part. But … More Great (Christian) Colleges to Work For 2013
When I blogged earlier this year about the election of Jorge Bergoglio as a “pope of firsts,” the first such groundbreaking I explored was Pope Francis as the “First Latin American Pope.” I noted that some observers speculated that the election was meant, in part, to address the decline of Catholicism in regions like Francis’ … More Shifting Religion in South America
Here… • I concluded my series on patriotic songs in American hymnals: part two introduced a few songs that never made it into more than one or two hymnals; part three asked why even very popular patriotic songs fail to appear in many hymnals. • No, Pope Francis did not promise “get out of purgatory … More That Was The Week That Was
When I teach my class on Human Rights and International History (as I will again next spring), few issues are as vexing as that of female circumcision, a practice that has affected something like 130 million women around the world — including 2-3 million girls each year in Africa alone. If you’re unfamiliar with it, … More Rights-Talk as Conversation, not Condemnation
While I read it regularly on Feedly, The Atlantic is not exactly my go-to source for reporting on Christianity in America or elsewhere. And yet this morning it featured a hugely interesting, informative post with the surprising headline, “Is Immigration Reform Dead? Not If Evangelicals Can Do Anything About It.” FYI – I don’t normally … More Evangelical Leadership on Immigration Reform
By far the most popular American patriotic hymn is Samuel Francis Smith’s “America,” appearing in over 1600 of the hymnals indexed at Hymnary.org — nearly four times as many as Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” and Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” five times more than Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” And … More “Of thee I sing”: A Brief History of Patriotism in American Hymnals (part 3)
The Pietist Schoolman 