In the first post in this series, I introduced the notion of a “usable past” and how it has strongly influenced the expanding conversation about Christian higher education in the last 30-40 years. Seeking models for this kind of higher learning that might guide Christian colleges in a secular (or post-secular) age, many writing on … More Pietist Denominations and Their Colleges
August 15, 1057 – Macbeth, King of the Scots, dies Seventeen years to the day after King Duncan I died while leading the fight against the forces of Macbeth, the successor himself was mortally wounded in battle. For an update, let’s go to The Pietist Schoolman’s special correspondent, Wm. Shakespeare: DUNSINANE CASTLE – A shocking … More This Week in History
The past week found me writing and reading an even more motley crew of posts than usual. Behold: a small but eclectic sampling of the week that was. Here The first installment of what I plan as a recurring Monday feature: a semi-serious look-ahead at “This Week in History.” Embedded will be a recurring sub-feature: … More That Was the Week That Was
8/13/11 – Coming up next week here at The Pietist Schoolman… Ingrid Bergman, the deaths of a king and a shortstop, Pietism in Africa, Pietist denominations and their colleges (more than you’d think), a belated appreciation of alumni, and I fulfill my obligations as an evangelical blogger and say something about Rob Bell.
Fifty years ago today, the government of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR, or simply East Germany) cut off its own citizens’ ability to move to the west. Before August 13, 1961, such a journey simply required crossing into West Berlin, then an enclave of the western Federal Republic, surrounded by the Communist GDR and Warsaw … More The Berlin Wall, Fifty Years Later
Our last post in this series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity took us across the Atlantic Ocean, as we accompanied Scandinavian Pietists to their new homes in the New World and watched them set up new churches and colleges. Today, in part six of the series, we stay in North America, where (as Roger … More The Pietist Impulse: Americans (and a Canadian)
8/11/11 – I didn’t have time to post anything substantive today while I spent the morning with my family in beautiful Stillwater, Minnesota and caught up on some pre-semester work at Bethel in the afternoon, but we’ll be back tomorrow morning with the next Pietist Impulse preview and then again on Saturday for a special … More Crickets Chirping…
8/11/11 – From January-February 2010, check out this interesting critique from Reformed blogger Andrew Hong: a seven-part series dissecting what he describes as “Chinese Pietism” (see the first seven items listed in this “best of” post), particularly as he finds it influencing the thought of the 20th century evangelist Watchman Nee.
Earlier this summer, Michael Lind suggested that Barack Obama ought to run for the presidency in 2012 — as a Republican. His (satirical) argument was that Obama’s domestic (if not foreign) policies hearken back to the golden years of liberal-moderate Republicanism (think Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller), a time when being fiscally conservative (but not … More “Saint Mark”: An Appreciation of Mark Hatfield
Today I’m starting a new series that builds on a talk I gave at Bethel last spring. It takes up the thesis that Pietism has a “usable past” capable of distinctively and beneficially shaping Christian higher education. Pages and pages have been written on Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist, and other Christian traditions and how their … More The Usable Past of Christian Colleges
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