One of my favorite things about spring semester is that I get to teach a section of our department’s capstone course, HIS499 Senior Seminar. It’s fun in part because it’s so unlike anything else I teach — as close to a graduate seminar as I’m going to (or would like to) get as a professor … More What Historians Do
As I’ve blogged about previously, making the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar necessitated some odd choices throughout Europe, but none odder than what my ancestral people — generally noted for their commitment to reason and common sense — tried to pull off early in the 18th century. I’ll let a physicist explain: … More February 30, 1712
2/28/12 – Check out the new video preview for HIS230L World War I, reconfigured as a travel course that Sam Mulberry and I will lead for the first time in January 2013.
Earlier this month Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) presented an evening program focused entirely on classical music written by French and English composers during and right after World War I. Here’s the playlist if you’d like to order any of the pieces (for February 7th; the WWI music ran from 8-9pm). For the occasion Classical MPR … More WWI in Classical Music
I’m still a bit punchy after enduring the entire Oscar ceremony, but as best I can tell, two of my non-predictive Oscar predictions actually came true: Bret McKenzie picked up Best Song for “Man or Muppet” (The Muppet Movie), and Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim “Hey, it’s the dean on Community” Rash won Best … More Oscar Shout-Outs
I was struck at the end of last week by a pair of quite different articles that shared two themes: church growth and decline, and conclusions relating those trends to how political or apolitical a church is. First, historian Thomas Kidd’s Patheos column on “The Rise and Fall of American Methodism.” Kidd begins by recapping … More Apolitical Churches
Here • “Presidents’” Day links, including one to a post by religious historian Thomas S. Kidd on the faith of Washington and Lincoln and whether a president’s personal religious beliefs are significant. (For another perspective on that question, in light of recent comments about Barack Obama by Rick Santorum, see Roger Olson’s piece on the … More That Was The Week That Was
2/24/12 – From Roger Olson, back from giving a talk at Regent University’s Center for Renewal Studies, a reflection on “Renewalism.” Of particular interest for readers of this blog: What Renewalism means for Pietism. Roger proposes that Pietism is a cousin of Pentecostalism, that at least some Pietists fit the “Renewalist” category (even if they … More Is Pietism “Renewalism”?
Today marks the official premiere of the second season of The Policast, a political affairs podcast I help co-host. Episodes are available from iTunes U, where you can download individual episodes or subscribe to get new installments as they’re produced. (If you don’t have the iTunes software, you can download it for free.) We first … More The Return of The Policast!
It’s amazing sometimes that anyone can learn English. Look up the word “imposition” in Webster’s, for example, and you’ll find four listings: something imposed: as (a) a levy, tax, or (b) an excessive or uncalled-for requirement or burden the act of imposing deception the order or arrangement of imposed pages What then to make of … More An Imposition
The Pietist Schoolman 