12/7/11 – Looking for a Christmas present for the hymn-loving Pietist near and dear to you? Order a copy of Glen Wiberg’s new book, Singing the Story: Sightings in Christian Music. If you’re not already familiar with Glen (he helped edit the last two hymnals of the Evangelical Covenant Church and writes a regular column … More Singing the Story
About two years ago I was invited to give a talk to our faculty in recognition of having been awarded Bethel’s 2009 Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching. I chose to reflect on my experiments with academic podcasting as elements of two courses I teach. Today I’ll post the first (slightly updated) section of my talk; … More A Different Significance: Online vs. F2F Education (part 1)
Feels like the blog’s been a little too focused on history of late, so I’m dwelling a bit more on current events and popular culture this week. And, at the risk of my least favorite of the four major professional team sports showing up in this blog’s tag cloud, that attitude seems to beg a … More Tebow
At the turn of the 20th century, the catchphrase of many German nationalists was that their nation deserved its “place in the sun,” its turn in world history to take on a leading role. For example, defending his government’s attempts to expand Germany’s presence in East Asia in 1897, chancellor Bernhard von Bülow vowed that … More Germany’s Place in the Sun
The day after we got back from Thanksgiving travels my wife and kids went to bed early, so I seized the chance to watch something I’d had on our queue for a long time: the first episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, an updating of the Sherlock Holmes character to the 21st century that features the … More Sherlock!
At The Pietist Schoolman I don’t tend to cry in the classroom, but here’s why a lecture on the Holocaust (and the related program of euthanasia that killed hundreds of thousands of children, youth, and adults with physical and mental disabilities) gets me every time. My planned travel course on World War I was approved, … More That Was The Week That Was
December 2, 1859 – John Brown is hanged I tend to sympathize with the many those historians who dislike slavery and John Brown, in that order. [I’m going to backtrack a bit here — I’m quickly realizing that I’m just an amateur when it comes to this aspect of US history; I ought not to … More This Day in History: John Brown’s Body
12/1/11 – On this week’s episode of CWC: The Radio Show… Sara, Amy, Sam, and I discuss prophetic voices, the best hamburgers in the Twin Cities, and the new Muppets movie. Get episodes here, or click on the logo on the right side of the home page.
In just over four months of blogging here, World War I has been the second most popular tag so far at The Pietist Schoolman, behind only — surprise! — Pietism. That’s mostly because I spent much of the summer reconceiving the January term (“J-term”) class I teach on WWI, converting it into a three-week trip … More Over There: An Update
November 30, 1936 – Crystal Palace burns down “This is the end of an age,” remarked Winston Churchill as he joined tens of thousands of other Londoners to watch the blaze. Though it had long since fallen into disrepair, the Crystal Palace was the crowning achievement of the British Industrial Revolution, built out of cast … More This Day in History: “The End of an Age”
The Pietist Schoolman 