This has not been one of those blogs that serves as an online confessional. But for once, I’d like to bare my soul a bit and share something about myself that caught my attention over the weekend. Writing about it might prove to be utterly narcissistic, in which case I hope that you didn’t find … More Hell and Heaven
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)
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
Part four of our romp through The Pietist Impulse in Christianity raises another deceptively simple question, “Was John Wesley a Pietist?” Even if one accepts a definition of “Pietist” that encompasses people other than early modern German Lutherans, Wesley is a controversial figure. He is included in Carter Lindberg’s popular collection, The Pietist Theologians, and … More The Pietist Impulse: Wesley
As we’ve already heard from Roger Olson, Pietism is often caricatured as being anti-intellectual, and Pietists as being so concerned to avoid head-centered “dead orthodoxy” that they substitute heart-centered emotional subjectivism. In part three of our series previewing chapters in our new book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, we find that tension, but more importantly, … More The Pietist Impulse: Modernity
In the first preview of chapters from our new book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, I made much of our volume’s affinity for expansive definitions of the “Pietist impulse,” by implication rejecting the “strict constructionist” take that Pietism properly construed was a certain segment of German Lutheranism in the early modern period. So it’s only … More The Pietist Impulse: Germans
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Friday, January 25, 2013 – to Minneapolis-St. Paul This is it: the last day of term; the day we fly home from Munich. I’ve … More Loving War, Seeking Peace
This week I’m launching a new series previewing the chapters in our newly released book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Where better to start than with the deceptively simple question, “What is Pietism?” As we point out rather obviously in our editors’ introduction, that question “is not easily answered” (xxi). Some scholars prefer a “strict … More The Pietist Impulse: Definitions
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Monday, January 21, 2013 – to Munich In a mere six hours, a TGV high-speed train traveling upwards of 200 miles per hour will … More A War of Words
I never would have guessed that posting something on my two favorite historical novelists would have generated the kind of response that it did, but let me push my luck by adding representatives of a different kind of historical fiction to my summer reading list. Still jazzed about Tuesday morning’s discussion of World War I … More More Beach Reads
The Pietist Schoolman 