On my recent vacation spent driving from small Minnesota town to slightly smaller Minnesota town looking at war and veterans memorials, I listened to The War, Geoffrey Ward’s book based on Ken Burns’ PBS miniseries of the same title. I’d picked it simply because it was one of the few WWII histories available as a … More The Second World War Before Pearl Harbor: China, 1937
8/14/13 – This past spring the achievements of a Bethel English major named Abby Stocker inspired me to write a tribute to our students. This summer Abby has been interning at Christianity Today, and today posted an excellent essay at CT’s Her.meneutics blog reflecting on why “Our worship spaces matter.”
It is now generally conceded that mere shafts of granite and statues of bronze, be they ever so artistic, are inadequate to express the tribute we would pay to our soldiers of democracy. Writing in American Architect in 1919, Martha Candler was about a generation too early to speak for most readers of that journal. … More Commemorating WWII: Living Memorials
At least, that’s how it might feel for the next few weeks… Some explanation: Next January, for Bethel’s three-week “interim” term, I’ll be debuting a new course on the Second World War (HIS231L), designed to alternate J-terms with a long-standing class on the First World War (HIS230L) that I’ve converted into a travel course in … More WWII Takes Over The Pietist Schoolman
Earlier this summer I looked at how the members of the evangelical Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) fared in The Financially Sustainable University, a brief by Bain & Co. and Sterling Partners that has garnered significant attention (not all favorable). 32% of CCCU schools listed in that report were classified as “Financially Unsustainable” … More Eighteen Evangelical Colleges Earn a “D” for Finances
Today my summer school students turn in their last assignments, and once they’re graded, I’m getting out of town for a few days. So I’ll take a week off from blogging as well. While I’m gone… If you’re new to The Pietist Schoolman or perhaps been away yourself for the summer, here are a few … More Taking a Break
Here… • I learned several important blogging lessons last week. First, if you want to drastically increase your traffic, then write about Millennials and/or Rachel Held Evans… then do it again… • …or question whether New York really is all that important to the future of evangelicalism… • …or whether research is actually the “coin … More That Was The Week That Was
Today’s normally the day that I post a bunch of links, but since many of them had to do with the Rachel Held Evans’ piece on Millennials leaving Christianity anyway (critiqued here on Thursday), and since she just followed up on that with a post on why Millennials need the Church, I’ll put off “That … More A Few More Thoughts on Millennials and the Church
One of the most interesting cultural histories I’ve read is The Mansion on the Hill, former Rolling Stone editor Fred Goodman’s sprawling, well-researched examination of the development of the “rock and roll business” from the Sixties through the Eighties — how rock went from being a partner of “a counterculture professing to be so firmly against … More Albums A to Z: Nebraska
Let me preface this post by saying that, most of the time, I’m a big fan of Rachel Held Evans. I appreciate the way she treats her blog readers as conversation partners. I enjoy that she’s the rare Christian writer who tends to come off as more self-deprecating than self-righteous. And I admire that she … More How Not To Speak for a Generation: Rachel Held Evans on Millennials Leaving the Church
The Pietist Schoolman 