Perhaps no book has done more to make me think anew about my vocation as a Christian historian than Confessing History (Univ. of Notre Dame Press). So as I sought points of entry for discussing that topic in my promotion essay, I took some inspiration from a piece in the January/February 2012 issue of Books … More The Vocation of a Christian Historian: Seeking and Telling Truth
What place, if any, do Pietists give to doctrine? Do they place any boundaries on what constitutes right belief (orthodoxy)? Those questions come to my mind at least two or three times a year, generally whenever I’m getting too excited about the prospects for a “Pietist impulse” to again revive Christianity (as it’s done at … More Pietism, Doctrine, and the Boundaries of Belief
3/5/13 – I’ll be giving a talk on “Blogging, Scholarship, and Teaching” this Thursday morning, 10:15-11:00, in the Bethel University Library. If you can’t make it, I’ll be sure to pass along a link to any video that gets uploaded.
Yesterday I explained that, inspired by the realization that there simply aren’t many movies about the American Revolutionary War — let alone good movies, I spent some time over the weekend going through the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and the Rotten Tomatoes (RT) index of critics to see which modern wars have produced the best … More Which Modern War Has Yielded the Best Movies? (part 2)
Quick: name a really good movie about the American Revolution. Not so easy, is it? In the recent “Real to Reel” episode of the podcast BackStory (H/T John Fea), historian Mark Peterson pointed out how little attention this significant episode in American history has drawn from filmmakers and how lousy most of the rare attempts … More Which Modern War Has Yielded the Best Movies? (part 1)
Here… • I’m normally a big proponent of empathy as a historical virtue. But I can’t say that I grieved all that much to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Josef Stalin suffering the stroke that killed him. I did, however, enjoy teaching my students a song about said demise… • What is the poor Downton … More That Was The Week That Was
In my recent post on why I enjoy teaching the history of the Cold War, I mentioned the odd pleasure I take in forcingencouraging my students to sing along as I play country-western songs about the evils of Communism… (You wouldn’t think there’s anywhere else to go from there, but…) As it happens, today — … More This Day In History: Stalin’s Stroke
After taking a day off from social media yesterday as part of the END IT movement’s attempt to draw some attention to the continued enslavement of at least 27 million people around the world, it seems right to return to blogging/Facebooking/Tweeting with something on slavery. But while I think yesterday’s “disappearance” was a well-intended, perhaps … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Abolition as Grace
If you’re like me, you emerged from the Christmas special that served as the final episode of the third series of Downton Abbey with two questions: 1. What kind of a tacked-on, half-baked ending was THAT?!?! I’ll never watch again! (aloud) 2. When does the next series start? (unspoken) Answers: 1. It’s Christmas show tradition, says … More Life after Downton: A Survival Guide
The Pietist Schoolman 