I’m afraid this post started off taking me in directions I hadn’t expected. Part of me would like to polish it further, but in the spirit of blogging as “thinking aloud,” I’ll hope that it hangs together enough to make some sense… Last Friday I enjoyed hearing a convocation talk at Bethel by journalist Krista Tippett, host … More The Two (or Three) Why’s of History
Yesterday Thomas Kidd’s interview of Philip Jenkins, his fellow Anxious Bencher, further whetted my appetite for Jenkins’ new book on religion and World War I, The Great and Holy War. But I was mostly struck by the way Jenkins pushed back against Kidd’s statement that “WWI is often remembered for unprecedented, but often pointless carnage, especially in the notorious experiences … More Was WWI “Pointless Carnage”?
Attention to David Barton’s treatment of Thomas Jefferson has died down since the controversy that led to Thomas Nelson rescinding their endorsement of The Jefferson Lies back in 2012. But Barton remains active and his popularity among the evangelical right’s rank and file has rebounded. Barton’s continued popularity, it seems to me, raises several issues … More Should Christian Scholars be Watchdogs? An Interview with David Barton Critic Warren Throckmorton
It’ll no doubt go through some more editing before coming out later this year, but if you want a kind of sneak peek at The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons (forthcoming from InterVarsity Press)… Check out the word cloud that the current manuscript forms: For more about the book: check out … More Our Pietism and Higher Ed Book as Word Cloud
I originally wrote this near the end of my January course on the history of World War II. But it seems a better fit for Good Friday… It was a day into Epiphany — the Christian season of light, when Jesus is revealed in many and various ways as God — when I began my J-term … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Looking Too Quickly for Light
For Holy Week I’d like to share a unique devotional experience from Central Baptist Church in St. Paul, MN: “An Invitation on the Pathway” by Mike Widen and G. W. Carlson is a Baptist version of the Stations of the Cross, blending fourteen original works of art with fourteen original reflections. You can walk these stations … More Baptist Stations of the Cross (G.W. Carlson)
Yesterday I posted the first part of my interview with historian David King, in which he discussed the origins of World Vision and its child sponsorship program. In today’s conclusion to that interview I asked David to talk about World Vision’s relationship to evangelicalism, and then the international character of World Vision, an aspect of the story … More The Conclusion of My Interview with David King on World Vision
In recent months I’ve been invited to review two books seeking to introduce English-speaking audiences to German Pietism: Douglas Shantz’s An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, paperback $31.50 on Amazon), and Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom’s Angels, Worms, and Bogeys: The Christian Ethic of Pietism (Cascade Books, $15.20). While … More The Challenge of Introducing Pietism
“Lent means Spring,” Lutheran pastor-blogger Diane Roth reminded readers recently. “It means lengthening days, opening the windows, letting in life and death, the things we can’t control. It means going to the cemetery and standing in the mud and snow and grass, where the pain and the hope are all mixed up together.” It’s a … More Where Lent Does Not Mean Spring
For those of us who are children of the 1980s, mention of the Prosperity Gospel conjures up images of fallen televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker or Protestant outlanders such as Benny Hinn. But in recent years, more marketable versions of health and wealth Christianity have been mainstreamed by preachers from Joyce Meyer to … More The Prosperity Gospel and Historical Legitimacy
The Pietist Schoolman 