Our last post in this series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity took us across the Atlantic Ocean, as we accompanied Scandinavian Pietists to their new homes in the New World and watched them set up new churches and colleges. Today, in part six of the series, we stay in North America, where (as Roger … More The Pietist Impulse: Americans (and a Canadian)
8/11/11 – I didn’t have time to post anything substantive today while I spent the morning with my family in beautiful Stillwater, Minnesota and caught up on some pre-semester work at Bethel in the afternoon, but we’ll be back tomorrow morning with the next Pietist Impulse preview and then again on Saturday for a special … More Crickets Chirping…
8/11/11 – From January-February 2010, check out this interesting critique from Reformed blogger Andrew Hong: a seven-part series dissecting what he describes as “Chinese Pietism” (see the first seven items listed in this “best of” post), particularly as he finds it influencing the thought of the 20th century evangelist Watchman Nee.
Earlier this summer, Michael Lind suggested that Barack Obama ought to run for the presidency in 2012 — as a Republican. His (satirical) argument was that Obama’s domestic (if not foreign) policies hearken back to the golden years of liberal-moderate Republicanism (think Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller), a time when being fiscally conservative (but not … More “Saint Mark”: An Appreciation of Mark Hatfield
Today I’m starting a new series that builds on a talk I gave at Bethel last spring. It takes up the thesis that Pietism has a “usable past” capable of distinctively and beneficially shaping Christian higher education. Pages and pages have been written on Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist, and other Christian traditions and how their … More The Usable Past of Christian Colleges
8/9/11 – My friend Sara Shady is quoted in a new Christianity Today article on the White House’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, in which Bethel and several other evangelical colleges are participating. Sara explains how our students will work with Muslims in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul and addresses concerns that interreligious … More Christian Colleges and an Interfaith Initiative
We’ve rounded the bend and are more than halfway home in our preview of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Today: part five examines four manifestations of the Pietist impulse among Swedish and Norwegian Christians (both in the Old World and New). For many, this would seem an obscure chapter in the history of Pietism. But … More The Pietist Impulse: Scandinavians
In case you missed any or all of it the first time… Last week I completed a six-part series considering some significant critiques of Pietism by leading Mennonite scholars like Harold Bender and Robert Friedmann. We’ll pick up on some of the themes in a new series starting this week, asking whether Pietism provides a … More Anabaptist Critiques of Pietism: An Overview
Brainstorming possible August holidays last week made me think that some of my readers might appreciate the occasional excuse to declare their own personal celebration and take a day off. So let us commence a new, recurring feature here at The Pietist Schoolman, with the rarely-before-used title, “This Week in History”! August 8, 1988 – … More This Week in History
I confess: I brought my laptop along on our recent family vacation. But for the most part, I did a decent job of ignoring the blogosphere and focusing on more crucial tasks — e.g., how to get western Michigan sand off/out of every object and article of clothing we brought to the beach. So I’m … More That Was the Week That Was
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