This week The 252 welcomes sports historian Paul Putz of Messiah College. We asked Paul about the history of “Sportianity” — Frank Deford’s term for the fusion of sports with evangelical piety, plus the role of faith in recent protests by African American NFL players, Paul’s experience teaching undergraduate courses like the one our podcast previews, and … More Wednesday’s Podcast: Sportianity
A couple weeks ago a reporter from our student newspaper interviewed me in my capacity as faculty president. After we chatted about some of the theological and political divisions currently roiling our community, he closed by asking if I had any words for the people of Bethel. Just that I’m grateful, I said. It’s a … More Jay
If you’re interested in church-state relations or war commemoration (or, like me, both), check out today’s Atlantic article on American Humanist Association v. American Legion. Being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next week, the case has to do with a World War I memorial standing in a traffic circle in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. There’s a … More Should American War Memorials Use Explicitly Christian Symbols?
Every once in a while, leading higher ed publications like The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed report on my particular sector, and I add those articles to my Saturday links wraps. But this week has seen an unusually large number of stories about Christian colleges in the mainstream media, so I thought I’d do a midweek collection of … More Christian Colleges in the News
So you’ve been in London teaching the history of World War I for a week and are getting ready to head to the former Western Front and have some down time while you catch up on laundry. What do you do? Record a podcast on a pair of iPhones, of course! Yes, Sam Mulberry and … More Live from London: Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz
Christmas is my favorite holiday, but as I get older, I find myself increasingly aware of the complicated emotions that it inspires in so many. So on this shortest day of the year, I thought I’d reprise a piece I wrote at the same time two years ago. Grace and peace to you all, however … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Blue Christmas
As usual, I’m struggling to keep up with both blogging and end-of-semester grading, so I’m two days late to J.C. Derrick’s typically well-informed report for World Magazine that the boards of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) have endorsed what’s been called the “Fairness for All” compromise: seeking to advance … More Fairness for All: Is There a Compromise Between Religious Freedom and LGBT Rights?
Last week I shared some quick thoughts on Ben Schmidt’s much-read report on the state of the history major. Using graduation numbers from the IPEDS database, he found that history has suffered a greater proportional decline since the Great Recession than any other major: in 2016-17, there were one-third fewer history grads than there were in 2011-12. … More The History Major at Christian Colleges
Today I’m happy to share a guest post from Anthony Minnema, assistant professor of history at Samford University. A specialist in Muslim-Christian relations during the Middle Ages, Tony studied at Calvin College and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and was a Lilly Graduate Fellow at Valparaiso University before coming to Samford. In this post, he responds … More What About a Farm? (Anthony Minnema)
Not this weekend, but the next two Sundays in November, I’ll be teaching an adult Kairos class on The Pietist Option at Incarnation Lutheran Church in Shoreview, Minnesota. Here’s the course description: In the history of Lutheranism few renewal movements have been as successful as Pietism. This led to revivals everywhere from 17th century Germany to 18th … More The Pietist Option for Lutherans
