It is now generally conceded that mere shafts of granite and statues of bronze, be they ever so artistic, are inadequate to express the tribute we would pay to our soldiers of democracy. Writing in American Architect in 1919, Martha Candler was about a generation too early to speak for most readers of that journal. … More Commemorating WWII: Living Memorials
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
Reading this morning that American colleges and universities have accumulated over $200 billion in outstanding debt thanks to a “decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students” reminded me of this post from last November… I’ve mentioned once or twice before that my … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: College Architecture and Christian Simplicity
I’m afraid that fundamentalism didn’t come off so well at our “Pietism and Christian Colleges” session this past Saturday at the Conference on Faith and History. Both in Jared Burkholder’s paper on Pietism and scholarly virtues and Kurt Peterson’s on the Evangelical Covenant Church in the 1950s, fundamentalism showed its least attractive face: suspicious, uncharitable, … More You Can’t Spell Fundamentalism without Fun
This year I’ve written several posts on how the First World War has been commemorated: first a set of four on memorials, monuments, and cemeteries in Western Europe; then a recent series of five on commemoration here in Minnesota. If you missed some or all of the series, you can find the entries indexed here, … More Commemorating WWI in Europe and Minnesota: An Overview
The largest memorial to those Minnesotans who died in World War I no longer exists, except for a preserved fragment and an impressive website that thoroughly documents its nearly ninety-year history. Opened in 1924, the University of Minnesota’s Memorial Stadium hosted six national championship-winning football teams before the Gophers moved off-campus to the Metrodome in … More Commemorating WWI in Minnesota: The Brickhouse
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
I’m still half a year away from taking a group of Bethel University students to Europe for a three-week course on the history of World War I, but while I’ve still got some time before our fall semester starts up, I thought I’d revive an earlier series on how the war was commemorated. My earlier … More Commemorating WWI in Minnesota: Duluth’s Soldiers and Sailors Monument
Grades are due this Friday, so I’ll be posting some “best of” pieces while I take time away from active blogging. Given that today is Memorial Day in the United States, I thought I’d start by combining my four-part series on World War I memorials into one long post (broken up into pages). In a … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Commemorating World War I
Not many Americans share my last name — a few dozen, if that — and yet it sometimes feels like I can’t go anywhere without bumping into someone for whom the name Gehrz rings a bell. That’s partly because it’s a distinctive name: people can’t spell Gehrz (no, it’s not Gerhz, Gehrtz, or Gertz) or … More Uncle Jim
The Pietist Schoolman 