Tomorrow I’ll be taking an early morning flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Chicago, where I’ll represent my congregation at Gather ’14, the annual meeting of our denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. “What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?” at least one person just asked. (“Why would anyone attend a denominational annual meeting?” asked someone else — or maybe the … More What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?
The first month of summer break is coming to an end, so it seems like a good time to check in on the progress of the digital history project that I’m working on with my student Fletcher Warren: We’re researching how the people of Bethel University have experienced a century of warfare going back to 1914, the year … More “Preargument Scholarship”: Blogging Our Digital History Project
Last Thursday marked the end of my third year of blogging here at The Pietist Schoolman. It was both the best and worst year of the three. Readership jumped another 33% over 2012-2013, but some of the most-read posts stemmed directly from posts related to being in the middle of what I called a “crisis of Christian … More Year Three of The Pietist Schoolman
Here… • While Father’s Day doesn’t seem to have been very popular when it began, I appreciated the prompt to celebrate the many accomplishments of my own father. • I concluded my series on Pietism and Christian scholarship: how scholars love their neighbors. Be sure to read the Reformed perspective offered as a comment on each … More That Was The Week That Was
For longer than I want to admit, Mark Norris, my colleague in the History Department at Grace College, and I have been working to pull together an edited volume on the history of our institution. We know that institutional histories don’t often represent the best in critical scholarship and are often assumed to be merely … More Examining Institutional Memory
Like many Americans, I’ve temporarily turned into a fervent soccerfootball fan this month, suddenly capable of savoring the thrills of a 0-0 draw like the one played yesterday between underdog Mexico and host Brazil. (And yawning at the relative artlessness of the 1-1 draw between Russia and South Korea.) But I can’t entirely suspend my eggheadedness. Even … More What Does the World Cup Reveal about Global Trade?
My series sketching the contours of a Pietist model of Christian scholarship concludes. In part one I critiqued the prevailing model of “faith-learning integration.” Then part two considered how scholarship transforms the scholar. In the conclusion, I’ll suggest how scholarship — particularly when understood not just as the production of knowledge but its transmission — benefits … More A Pietist Model of Christian Scholarship: Loving Neighbors
For many, it seemed like a bit of trickery, a joke, a send-up for Will Rogers or Groucho Marx. So says religious studies scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt of Father’s Day, adding that while such an event “seemed all but inevitable” when Mother’s Day quickly became a sensation, “many people found it laughable.” A 1914 letter to the New York … More Happy Fathers’ Day
Here… • I could think of worse things than spending two days in Malibu, California talking about how historians use social media or help institutions manage change. • A Pietist model of Christian scholarship: scholarship that transforms scholars, and might not center on the production of knowledge. (Part three in that series will look to the … More That Was The Week That Was
Given my occupation, this title may suggest a one-line post: I studied history in college; I teach history at a college. But I rarely draw very much on the historical knowledge I acquired from the fine professors of the William & Mary history department. I did take a lot of modern European history courses there, but I suspect that the content of my … More Why I’m Glad I Majored in History
The Pietist Schoolman 