It’s late November, which means that newspapers and periodicals are starting to put out their “Best of 2012” lists. Here are the works of scholarly and popular history (and some historical fiction) that have shown up on “Best Books” lists produced by Publishers Weekly (PW), The Washington Post (WP), and Britain’s The Guardian. For each, … More The Best History (and Religion) Books of 2012?
Does socioeconomic class, with vastly less fanfare than gender or race, present equally significant problems for learning communities centered on a Savior in whom there is no difference of class, gender, or race? As I wrote at the end of yesterday’s post, I was spurred to reflect on this by a Chronicle of Higher Education … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 2)
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Since I arrived at Bethel in 2003, the phrases “anti-racism” and “racial reconciliation” have been prominent in campus discourse. Bethel leaders had identified a “ministry of reconciliation” (in the … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 1)
Here • 2012 has been busy, and 2013 is shaping up to be even more hectic, but I was happy to add this speaking engagement on the Pietist impulse in the 21st century. • And I’ll always make time for a mock trial that, year in and year out, is probably the best, most challenging … More That Was The Week That Was
11/23/12 – I’m happy to announce that I’ll be the featured speaker at the annual Winter Seminar offered by Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis, MN. I’ll be speaking February 8-10, 2013 on the theme of “Pious Wishes and Better Times: The Pietist Impulse in the 21st Century.” We’ll start Friday night with a historical overview … More Winter Seminar on Pietism
For Thanksgiving I’ll simply repost a brief piece I wrote for our department blog earlier this week. Probably most useful for those of you who like to put off your shopping (and menu planning) until the day of the event, though there’s also some fun trivia in there even if you’ve got everything set to … More Have a Historic Thanksgiving!
As a teacher, I grow restless easily, tinkering for the sake of tinkering. But even in those classes that I teach yearly or semesterly, there are certain fine-tuned exercises that I expect to repeat for years to come. One of those happened last week in my upper-division survey of modern European history, when after one … More Ordinary Men: Empathy and Judgment in the History of the Holocaust
The ten most popular posts in the last month here at The Pietist Schoolman: Tolkien, Lewis, and the Memory of War Paul Wellstone: The Conscience of a Liberal (G.W. Carlson) Veep-Stakes “The Capital of the Movement” Covenant Kids Congo For the Last Time, It’s Not a Good Idea to Make Nazi Analogies What If? Rejecting … More The Big Ten
Seven score and nine years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln ascended the dais at the dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the sleepy town that had hosted the bloodiest battle in American history just over four months before. Word for word, I can’t imagine a discourse more powerful than the two-minute speech Lincoln … More This Day in History: The Gettysburg Address
Here • I’m not sure Pope Leo XIII thought all that much of evangelical Protestants in his day, but some of them in the present won’t let that get in the way of their admiring his most famous encyclical. (Meanwhile, Alan Jacobs was a bit less sanguine about finding “the common good.”) • Why Augustine … More That Was The Week That Was
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