On Monday Christians around the world heard again Luke’s story of the Nativity. But after lingering in some detail on the first day of Jesus’ life, that evangelist moves rapidly through the next couple decades. In the same chapter that begins with Jesus’ birth, Luke skips ahead to age 12, then summarizes Jesus’ adolescence and … More Why Every Biography Is Incomplete
A wonderful new World War I documentary from Peter Jackson got me thinking about the magical qualities of history, and a Twitter spat over the history of evangelicalism made me realize that I’m not much of an expert in anything. Elsewhere… • Not everyone liked Jackson’s documentary. (H/T Karl Nelson and Tim Johnson) To that … More That Was The Week That Was
Christmas is my favorite holiday, but as I get older, I find myself increasingly aware of the complicated emotions that it inspires in so many. So on this shortest day of the year, I thought I’d reprise a piece I wrote at the same time two years ago. Grace and peace to you all, however … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Blue Christmas
I’ve only half-followed the recent Twitter dust-up between historians Thomas Kidd and John Fea and journalist Jonathan Merritt. You can get caught up to speed with this morning’s Anxious Bench post from John Turner. Throw in editor John Wilson (who rose to the historians’ defense), and you’ve got several of my favorite Johns/Jonathans sparring over what it meant … More I’m a Historian, Not an Expert
I love magic. That’s what Harry Potter murmurs at one point in The Goblet of Fire, the fourth story in J. K. Rowling’s series. The wizard-in-training walks into what had looked like a tiny, nondescript tent and finds that it is impossibly large and opulent. I love magic. I’m not sure how I can explain this, … More The Magic of History
In spare moments between grading, I passed along the story of Bethel’s soon-to-be first Digital Humanities graduate and took note of a proposed culture war compromise involving evangelical colleges. Then over at The Anxious Bench, I suggested that no historian writes about the past “as it actually happened” without imagining the past as they think … More That Was The Week That Was
As usual, I’m struggling to keep up with both blogging and end-of-semester grading, so I’m two days late to J.C. Derrick’s typically well-informed report for World Magazine that the boards of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) have endorsed what’s been called the “Fairness for All” compromise: seeking to advance … More Fairness for All: Is There a Compromise Between Religious Freedom and LGBT Rights?
One evening in April 2013, I left a dispiriting meeting of beleaguered humanities department chairs at Bethel University, walked back to my office, and wrote up a tentative proposal for a new major in the digital humanities: the emerging field that seeks to use computing and other digital techniques and tools within the context of … More Meet Our First Digital Humanities Graduate
This week at The Pietist Schoolman I looked at recent trends in the history major at religious colleges and universities, and Sam Mulberry and I concluded our podcast travelogue with a visit to Munich. Elsewhere… • It’s been a while since I’ve shared something from Kate Bowler… it seems timely to reconnect via her reflection on the … More That Was The Week That Was
The fourth season of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast wraps up today with Sam Mulberry and me talking about our favorite memorials, museums, meals, and masterpieces in the southern German city of Munich. In addition, we closed with some broader reflections on the spiritual purposes of travel. (If nothing else, skip ahead to 33:50 for our discussion of … More Thursday’s Podcast: Munich (and Why We Travel)
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