Here • As more and more universities seek to develop online programs, will education become interchangeable with “infotainment”? And am I just making things worse with one of my summer projects? • Entries F and G in my Albums A to Z series took me into the genres of country and gospel. • Wrestling with … More That Was The Week That Was
In yesterday’s post on online education, I mentioned that I’m spending part of my summer working with my friend Sam on a series of short documentary films for the online version of our Western Civ/church history course, and that we’re sensitive to the challenge of producing something polished enough to appeal to our media-savvy students. … More Albums A to Z: The Glory of Black Gospel
This fall a joint venture from Harvard and MIT, called edX, will make available free online courses from two of the world’s elite research universities. As the New York Times reported, the Harvard-MIT collaboration follows in the wake of a similar partnership involving Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan (“Coursera“). … More Education as “Infotainment”: or, The One Where I Become Part of the Problem
I wrote this last year for the United States’ Independence Day. Still seems right… Though, for a slightly different take — one more amenable to a celebration of American independence by Christians — see the new Christianity Today interview with Os Guinness and Catholic philosopher Gary Gutting’s most recent post at The Stone. Both contend that … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Pledging Allegiance
In part because he wrapped up the Republican race so quickly, it’s almost been treated as a footnote that Mitt Romney will soon become the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to receive the presidential nomination of a major American political party. As the Washington Post noted in a late … More The Mormon Moment
That’s the question asked by political scientist Tony Gill on his podcast, Research on Religion, of three Christian scholars familiar with religion and politics in 18th century America: Gregg Frazer (The Master’s College), Jonathan Den Hartog (Northwestern College, MN), and Mark David Hall (George Fox University). More specifically, he asked each: “As a Christian in … More Should Christians Have Fought in the U.S. War of Independence?
When I shared my guilty pleasures in pop culture a couple of months ago, I included country-pop superstar Taylor Swift. But I failed to mention the Texas trio who in many ways paved the way for Ms. Swift’s genre-crossing, media-savvy success as a young woman working within and transcending Nashville’s patriarchy… Dixie Chicks, Fly If … More Albums A to Z: Fly
Yesterday in Kiev, Spain routed Italy 4-0 to win the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, a tournament that (for many Europeans and no small number of non-Europeans) is only slightly less significant than the other international sporting competition with which it shares a quadrennium. As I wrote about early in Euro 2012, one match between … More Soccer and Nationalism
Actually, “Those Were The Weeks That Were,” as I’m backtracking over ground left uncovered during my days off… Here I’m weary of things “being meta,” but this is my version of it: watching on YouTube as someone sings along to my own voice singing in another YouTube video visible in the background. Of course, me … More That Was The Week That Was
For once, it was easy this week to know where to start my post-vacation ritual of sifting through stacks of new publications requiring some reading attention: with Roger Olson’s article in the Summer 2012 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, “Pietism and Postmodernism: Points of Congeniality.” A refined version of the second of two lectures he … More Roger Olson on Pietism and Postmodernism
The Pietist Schoolman 