A few weeks ago, when Chris crafted some questions for me to answer, he asked me to talk a bit about the Moravians – a Pietist movement that that I happen to study quite a lot. “What might a churchly Pietist like myself learn from the Moravians?” he asked. I thought this was especially interesting … More On Moravians and Other Radical Voices
Consider the birds of the sky, that they do not sow or reap or gather produce into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth more than they are? (Matt 6:26, Lexham English Bible) When I was in grad school, my advisor occasionally invited us to go birdwatching with him. While I … More What Christians Can Learn from Birdwatching
12/13/13 – Not long after I posted yesterday’s sampling of histories and biographies that made the cut on leading “Best of 2013” lists, Christianity Today named God’s Forever Family, Larry Eskridge’s history of the Jesus People movement, its inaugural “Book of the Year.” (Eskridge also won the History/Biography category in CT’s Book Awards.) So that’s … More One More “Best of 2013” Book
Is two years too soon to call something an “annual holiday tradition”? For our readers who like to give such gifts for Christmas, here’s a list of some of the history books to have appeared on the “Best of 2013” lists that I first examined in a recent post on academic historians achieving success with … More The Best History Books of 2013?
Sixty-five years ago yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly gathered in Paris’ Palais de Chaillot to approve the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Australia’s Herbert Evatt, presiding over the General Assembly, called the moment “an epoch-making event in the development of international law” and enthused that the UN was … More This Day in History: The Birth of Human Rights Law
If we haven’t learned how to be a healing station for the people who are racially similar, then we’re never going to learn how to be a healing station for the people who are racially dissimilar. (Christena Cleveland) Even if it means that I don’t catch up on the reading in European and diplomatic history that I should … More “Beyond Multiethnic” Church – and Christian Colleges?
‘Tis the season for media old and new to trot out their “best of” lists for the soon-to-conclude year. As I did in 2012, I’ve been working on collating some such lists into a Christmas gift-giving guide for history buffs. In the process, I’ve been heartened to find a few academic historians garnering praise for … More Academic Historians On (and Off) Year-End “Best of” Lists
11/27/13 – We’ll be taking today, tomorrow, and perhaps Friday off from blogging. Meanwhile, consider joining me in reading Robert Tracy McKenzie’s The First Thanksgiving over the holiday break. (See reviews by Thomas Kidd and David Swartz to understand why.) Or at least check out this and other Pilgrims-related posts at Tracy’s admirable blog, Faith … More Happy Thanksgiving!
The second half of my paper delivered last week at the Evangelical Theological Society, arguing for a more international and transnational approach to the history of evangelicalism. A Global Reflex in Evangelical Historiography Earlier this year the newsletter of the American Historical Association (AHA) published a study by Luke Clossey and Nicholas Guyatt finding that, … More The Global Reflex: An International Historian Appraises David Swartz’s Moral Minority (part 2)
Welcome again Jared Burkholder of Grace College and Seminary, who will be blogging in this space every other Friday. Jared’s first post jumps off from a new book on the martyrdom of eight Jesuit missionaries martyred in mid-17th century Canada. The Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame held its fall Seminar in American Religion … More Historian Emma Anderson and the “Afterlife” of Martyrdom
The Pietist Schoolman 