Earlier this week I posted meditations that I had contributed to the 2011 and 2012 editions of our church’s Lenten devotional. The first such book came out in 2010: it seems like my contribution to that inaugural edition fits well with Easter Saturday, the painful space between Crucifixion and Resurrection during which many Christians keep … More Stay Awake
Each of the last three years, the members and friends of Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton, Minnesota have produced a Lenten devotional book. On Monday I shared the meditation I contributed to the 2012 devotional. On this Good Friday, it seems appropriate also to post what I wrote for the 2011 edition, which had … More The God Who Grieves
One more post on baseball writing in honor of one more Opening Day: that of my Minnesota Twins, playing their first 2012 game against the Baltimore Orioles later today. Having already spotlighted an 1888 baseball manual by one of the most unique players in MLB history and a 2001 update of a cult classic by … More Play Ball! – My Favorite Baseball Books (part 3)
Yesterday I celebrated the official start to the Major League Baseball season by describing my favorite book written by an active baseball player: pitcher/shortstop/lawyer/labor organizer John Montgomery Ward’s 1888 how-to guide, Base-Ball. But I’m enough of a traditionalist to believe that the honor of starting the season ought to belong (as it did for decades) … More Play Ball! – My Favorite Baseball Books (part 2)
Check out the “tag cloud” on the home page of this blog, and you’ll find — amid all the terms related to Christianity, history, and education — one sport. So even if you hadn’t read my post-Super Bowl post extolling the virtues of baseball over football, you might be able to guess how excited I … More Play Ball! – My Favorite Baseball Books (part 1)
More than the residents of any other part of the country where I’ve lived or visited, Minnesotans pay a lot of attention to weather. Jokes about our ten-month winters notwithstanding, the North Star State actually has quite distinct seasons, sometimes turbulent (especially in the stormy spring) and always changeable. And those of us who don’t … More My Favorite Local Meteorologist Gets National Attention
4/2/12 – The newest issue of The Baptist Pietist Clarion, a newsletter edited by my colleague G.W. Carlson, went out at the end of last week. It features articles by three colleagues on the Bethel Seminary faculty (Chris Armstrong, Jeannette Bakke, Glen Scorgie — one of the contributors to our Pietist Impulse book) on Pietism … More New Issue of the Baptist Pietist Clarion
The last three years, our church has produced its own Lenten devotional book: forty days of reflections on passages of Scripture related to a central theme, each followed by a prayer for the day. And all done by the laity and clergy of Salem Covenant. It’s been a privilege to be part of each devotional, … More Compelled
Here • I walked into church last Sunday and a friend of mine warned me not to read an op-ed piece in the St. Paul paper. Turns out it was David Levy’s half-baked critique of college teaching, which provided an opportunity to vent more than a little spleen to start the week. • In that … More That Was The Week That Was
The title of this post will be news to many of our readers, so let me give some context right away: As part of an interview with Christianity Today about his reaction to the death of Trayvon Martin, Baptist pastor and neo-Reformed theologian John Piper was asked about his book Bloodlines, on racism and racial … More John Piper: “I think I’m a pietistic Calvinist”
The Pietist Schoolman 