Earlier today I continued my series revisiting parts of my CD collection I haven’t listened to in a while by blogging about a terrific 1988 album by the Minneapolis alternative rock band Soul Asylum. Throughout the whole series, not once had it occurred to me that — were this a different time — no professor … More Evangelicals and Popular Music: Philip Jenkins on The Byrds
If you ask a couple of my friends, they’ll snicker that I’m clueless about Eighties pop culture. And it’s true, to a point: I haven’t watched most of the John Hughes oeuvre, and while I have probably two dozen albums in my CD collection that were released during the decade, only two were hugely popular … More Albums A to Z: Hang Time
At the end of June, Jared Burkholder had an interesting post over at The Hermeneutic Circle, in which he reflected on the challenge of doing institutional histories. Specifically, the challenge of editing a new history of Grace College and Seminary with fellow Grace history professor Mark Norris. Especially as they reached the chapter dealing with … More Between Commemoration and Criticism: The Challenge of Institutional History
This morning I spent some time booking London hotel rooms for next January, when I’ll take a group of Bethel students to Europe for a three-week course on the history of World War I. Having that kind of planning in mind, I was glad for the recent reminder, from literary scholar Ilan Stevens and editor … More Reclaiming Travel
It’s not quite MacArthur hitting the beach at Leyte, or M.J. winning three post-baseball NBA Finals, but after a 37-week hiatus, behold the triumphant return of “This Week in History”! July 9, 1850 – Millard Fillmore succeeds Zachary Taylor as U.S. president This after the former war hero died of acute gastroenteritis, likely caused by … More This Week in History
Here • As more and more universities seek to develop online programs, will education become interchangeable with “infotainment”? And am I just making things worse with one of my summer projects? • Entries F and G in my Albums A to Z series took me into the genres of country and gospel. • Wrestling with … More That Was The Week That Was
In yesterday’s post on online education, I mentioned that I’m spending part of my summer working with my friend Sam on a series of short documentary films for the online version of our Western Civ/church history course, and that we’re sensitive to the challenge of producing something polished enough to appeal to our media-savvy students. … More Albums A to Z: The Glory of Black Gospel
This fall a joint venture from Harvard and MIT, called edX, will make available free online courses from two of the world’s elite research universities. As the New York Times reported, the Harvard-MIT collaboration follows in the wake of a similar partnership involving Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan (“Coursera“). … More Education as “Infotainment”: or, The One Where I Become Part of the Problem
I wrote this last year for the United States’ Independence Day. Still seems right… Though, for a slightly different take — one more amenable to a celebration of American independence by Christians — see the new Christianity Today interview with Os Guinness and Catholic philosopher Gary Gutting’s most recent post at The Stone. Both contend that … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Pledging Allegiance
In part because he wrapped up the Republican race so quickly, it’s almost been treated as a footnote that Mitt Romney will soon become the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to receive the presidential nomination of a major American political party. As the Washington Post noted in a late … More The Mormon Moment
The Pietist Schoolman 