I’ll be honest: the primary point of this post is to cover one English major at Bethel with so much praise that she’ll feel compelled to take at least one History course from me before she graduates. But in the process, readers not named Abby Stocker might also find themselves reappraising their assumptions about what … More Students as Scholars
I’m a Christian, a baseball fan, and someone who absolutely loathes practical jokes. Which makes this April 1 about two-thirds of the way to being a sensational day. Setting aside the fooling that I’ll hope to avoid, today’s combination of Easter Monday with major league baseball’s opening day underscores what E.J. Dionne (quoting from a … More Behold, I Make All Things Old: Hope, Simplicity, and Amish Baseball
The week in question being last week… Back on our regular schedule this Saturday… Here… • More posts in the devotional/inspirational vein than usual for me, thanks to Holy Week: Pietists on resurrection and hope for Maundy Thursday; seeing crosses everywhere on our WWI trip for Good Friday; and why a TV cliffhanger might suggest … More That Was The Week That Was
Unlikely as the start of this post will make it seem… Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen the last episode of the second series of Sherlock It’s been observed by many Christian preachers and writers that most of our life is akin to Holy Saturday, that oft-neglected time separating Good Friday and Easter Sunday. For … More “Just One More Miracle…”
Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is … More The Cross: A Good Friday Meditation on World War and Holocaust
Unless you limit its definition to that relatively small group of German Lutherans inspired by Philipp Jakob Spener and then led by August Hermann Francke in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Pietism is a tremendously diverse movement within Christianity — spanning centuries, oceans, languages, and confessions. So what do Pietists have in common? … More Pietism, Resurrection, and the Virtue of Hope
It’s a testament to the power of Jesus’ parables that you can hear one for what seems like the millionth time and still find something new in it to ponder. For example: the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), which was our lectionary text earlier this month. As familiar as it is, I sometimes … More The Prodigal Father
3/26/13 – It’s Sweet Sixteen time in the Best Christian Books of All Time tournament. Among other compelling match-ups… Two Doctors of the Church (Augustine vs. Aquinas), two famously initialed Britons (C.S. Lewis vs. G.K. Chesterton), and two living gurus of spiritual formation (Dallas Willard vs. Richard Foster). Plus Dietrich Bonhoeffer vs. himself! Cast your … More Update: Best Christian Books Tournament
I didn’t quite watch the first season of House of Cards in one binge, but I’m sure the fact that I made it through all thirteen episodes in about a week registered on some computer at the headquarters of NetFlix, the TV and movie-streaming service gambling not only that it could produce its own programming, … More House of Cards
That’s the topic of this morning’s Room for Debate forum at the New York Times website. It asks six contributors, “…in today’s economy, what should ambitious young people pursue? Which majors and careers have a reliable “return on investment?” Click here for the full forum. Just to pull out a few responses… Katie Bardaro, an … More College and Jobs: Are There Safe Bets?
The Pietist Schoolman 