Here • My colleague Christian Collins Winn shared his year-opening chapel talk at Bethel, in which he suggested how Pietism might provide a model for civil discourse. (And be sure to check out Brian Gumm’s response to that post at his blog, Restorative Theology. It was certainly gratifying to read that he thinks Christian and … More That Was The Week That Was
With some deadlines looming between now and September 10, I’m going to take a day off here and there and rerun some of my favorite posts. First, one from about this time last year… Last month I felt like I was living a John Denver song: country roads taking me to a colleague’s farm near … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: “God Made the Country”
Even before I set out to look at how the First World War has been commemorated here in Minnesota, I assumed that the vast majority of Twin Citians would be hard-pressed to identify a single WWI memorial in the metro area. Even those who drive, bike, jog, and walk on or along Victory Memorial Drive … More Commemorating WWI in Minnesota: Overshadowed by WWII
8/29/12 – Even if I weren’t too busy to write the ‘M’ entry in my recently-neglected Albums A to Z series, I’d still let it languish for a day and instead encourage you to read Austin Chapman’s description of having been deaf his whole life and then, thanks to new hearing aids, having the chance … More Hearing Music for the First Time
One of the statistics provided every day by WordPress (the service that hosts this blog) is a list of “referrers,” websites that blog visitors click on to get to your blog. Most of the referrers for this blog are sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and WordPress itself. Most visitors have been here before and … More Fun with Googling
I’m very pleased to welcome this guest post from my colleague Christian Collins Winn: the text of his address yesterday morning in Bethel University‘s year-opening chapel service, in which he appealed to Bethel’s roots in Pietism to help us start a year-long conversation about what church historian Martin Marty has called “convicted civility.” Christian is … More Pietism and Civil Discourse (Christian Collins Winn)
One day last month I ran into our university’s president as he was walking to his office, three books under his arm. One, by a member of our faculty, was on the Pentateuch, the first five books of what Christians regard as the Old Testament — the Torah of Judaism. I must have looked quizzical … More “I could use some help with Leviticus”
Here • My post on the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 became my first to be featured by WordPress on its “Freshly Pressed” page! • Academic historians just need to stop whining about “popular” historians. Now. • The second part of my series on the commemoration of World War I in Minnesota … More That Was The Week That Was
In the first part of this series on how the First World War has been commemorated in my home state, I suggested that a “celebratory, self-righteous, unproblematically patriotic mood” inspired the commission and design of Duluth’s Soldiers and Sailors Monument. But you don’t think that Minnesota’s largest city would let its northern neighbor corner the … More Commemorating WWI in Minnesota: Victory Memorial Drive
I’m a PhD-holding history professor myself who will likely never write any book with sales approaching even quadruple figures, but I cringe when fellow guild-members like Louisiana State University professors Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg write things like the following, in Salon this past Sunday: Frankly, we in the history business wish we could take out … More Who Owns History?
The Pietist Schoolman 