I was struck at the end of last week by a pair of quite different articles that shared two themes: church growth and decline, and conclusions relating those trends to how political or apolitical a church is. First, historian Thomas Kidd’s Patheos column on “The Rise and Fall of American Methodism.” Kidd begins by recapping … More Apolitical Churches
2/24/12 – From Roger Olson, back from giving a talk at Regent University’s Center for Renewal Studies, a reflection on “Renewalism.” Of particular interest for readers of this blog: What Renewalism means for Pietism. Roger proposes that Pietism is a cousin of Pentecostalism, that at least some Pietists fit the “Renewalist” category (even if they … More Is Pietism “Renewalism”?
It’s amazing sometimes that anyone can learn English. Look up the word “imposition” in Webster’s, for example, and you’ll find four listings: something imposed: as (a) a levy, tax, or (b) an excessive or uncalled-for requirement or burden the act of imposing deception the order or arrangement of imposed pages What then to make of … More An Imposition
I happen to agree almost entirely with John’s column, but that’s irrelevant. Even if I didn’t share some of his disappointment in Obama the president vs. Obama the candidate, or if I didn’t think that Obama was unusually explicit about his faith by contrast with most of his predecessors in the White House, I’d still … More We Take Care of Our Own: Standing with John Fea
I don’t normally post anything in the evening (WordPress wasn’t letting me edit anything until now), but this has already been an abnormal day in other respects. My mother-in-law is up for a visit, so while our kids stayed home with grandma I put in a rare Tuesday at work. As a result, I got … More Scholarship, Contemplation, and Holiness
Or, technically, Happy Washington’s Birthday, since as Thomas S. Kidd points out (more from him in a few lines), “Presidents’ Day” is a marketing invention, not a Federal holiday. I’ll admit to being an infrequent celebrant of this particular holiday, mostly because it’s been nearly twenty years since I was part of an educational institution … More Happy Presidents’ Day!
2/16/12 – One of my favorite colleagues at Bethel that I don’t normally get to work with is Wayne Roosa, who both teaches art history courses and is a prominent studio artist in his own right. Read Matthew Cantirino’s interview with Wayne, in which he discusses his series, In the Slipstream, what drew him to … More Wayne Roosa Interview
Earlier this week I got a nice comment from Jeff Hochstetler, a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, who asked a great question: Do you think that for a Pietistic vision to be successful, it must be rooted in institutional expressions, as the Anabaptist vision was/is? Jeff had been reading my summer 2011 series on … More Where Would a Pietist Vision Come From?
2/12/12 – Last night marked the first time since their playoff run in 2004 that I actually wanted to go to a Minnesota Timberwolves game. The New York Knicks were in town, which meant that Rubio-mania ran headlong into Lin-sanity. (Final score: Lin-sanity 100, Rubio-mania 98, alas.) For more on Knicks’ point guard Jeremy Lin, … More “J Lin”
A rare Saturday afternoon post here at The Pietist Schoolman, occasioned mostly by my forgetting to include something in this morning’s links round-up. But I’m glad my memory failed me because this essay by Fred Sanders deserves some special attention… Up until the fateful day at Covenant Pines Bible Camp when my brother decided to … More The Best-Selling Artist of All Time
The Pietist Schoolman 