As it happened, I read the third part of Carolyn Weber’s Surprised by Oxford (“Christmastide,” which finds her returning home to Canada during a break in Oxford’s schedule) the same week that my friend Sam taught our Christianity and Western Culture class about Augustine of Hippo, the North African theologian and bishop whose Confessions is … More Surprised by Oxford: Christmastide
In my first and second posts about Africa in this series blogging through Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom’s Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (InterVarsity Press), we’ve seen African Christians relating to colonial authorities and Western culture in a variety of ways: Bernard Mizeki, so closely aligned with British Anglican leaders that … More Clouds of Witnesses: Politics and Protest in Postcolonial Africa
I’m in the middle of reading Carolyn Weber’s excellent new spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir (Thomas Nelson). The book is rich enough that I’ve found myself setting it down for a few days at a time while I ponder some issue it raises. So rather than waiting to finish the entire story (which … More Surprised by Oxford: Michaelmas
As we continue in this series blogging through Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom’s Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (InterVarsity Press), we’ll start to consider just how Christianity grew so dramatically in 20th century Africa. Today the stories of three Africans who led different sorts of revivals: William Wadé Harris, Simeon Nsibambi, … More Clouds of Witnesses: Revivals in Africa
I just started reading Carolyn Weber‘s Surprised by Oxford. Subtitled simply “A Memoir,” it’s more specifically a spiritual autobiography, one more in that long line descended from Augustine’s Confessions that has included C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy (its title clearly evoked by Weber’s) and Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God. Like those two, Surprised by Oxford … More Surprised by Oxford
In my introduction to this new series blogging through Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom’s Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (InterVarsity Press), I noted that the authors had made a point of selecting men and women not yet widely known by Christians in the West, and that they faced the challenge of … More Clouds of Witnesses: Africans and Empire
A couple of years ago I was asked to give three talks as part of our church’s mid-spring “family camp,” at Covenant Pines in northern Minnesota. There weren’t many stipulations, not even a suggested topic, but I was encouraged to be “inspiring.” Now, as a trained scholar who studies some pretty awful episodes in human … More Clouds of Witnesses: Introduction
Probably the best comment I ever got back from a peer reviewing one of my manuscripts was the one suggesting that I should put the educational philosophies of Karl Olsson and Carl Lundquist in conversation with the one articulated by philosopher James K. A. Smith in Desiring the Kingdom. I was familiar with DtK before … More “You say pietism, I say Pietism”
Last week I concluded an eight-part series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, the new book I co-edited with Christian Collins Winn, G. William Carlson, and Eric Holst. If you kept up with the series and/or have started to read the book yourself, I’d be curious to hear your reactions in the Comments section: How … More The Pietist Impulse: An Overview
Six previews of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity down, two to go… Today we have Dick Pierard, Christoffer Grundmann, and Victor Ezigbo examining the “Pietist impulse” in the history of Christian missions — together providing yet another response to the commonly-held stereotype that Pietists are “too heavenly-minded to be earthly good.” As their narratives overlap … More The Pietist Impulse: Missions
The Pietist Schoolman 