Recently I concluded a series elaborating on a talk I gave last spring at Bethel University: “In Search of a ‘Usable Past’: Pietism in the Historiography of Christian Colleges and Universities.” If you missed some or all of the series, you can find the entries indexed here, with sample quotations: 1. The Usable Past of … More The Usable Past: An Overview
Today I’m going to wrap up a series of posts on the notion of Christian colleges looking to a “usable past” for guidance as they consider their missions and identities. Thus far, we’ve mostly found that schools founded by denominations originating (at least in part) in Pietism have not found such utility in that tradition. … More The Usable Past: Pietism and Bethel University
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
9/21/11 – This Friday I’ll have a post about Pietism in the history and identity of Bethel University. On October 1st, I’ll join two of my co-editors from The Pietist Impulse in Christianity in leading a discussion about the same topic as part of Bethel’s Homecoming festivities. You can get details on our Facebook event … More The Pietist Impulse in Bethel History
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
Today we continue to consider why, for most historians and leaders of colleges and universities founded by Pietist denominations, Pietism seems not to provide a “usable past,” a living history capable of sustaining a distinctive mission and identity. In the first part of this post, I suggested, first, that this might be a byproduct of … More The Unusable Past: Pietism and Christian Colleges (part 2)
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
If I could do it all over again, I might be a sports historian. Growing up, I was an indifferent athlete but an inveterate fan: able to play just about every sport, but none of them well (though I did manage to letter twice in baseball, which tells you a lot about my alma mater‘s … More Beyond Muscular Christianity
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 the second (full) post in this briefly interrupted series, I went through the rather lengthy list of American denominations founded by Pietists, and the colleges and universities those churches went on to establish. Having said nothing in two weeks to develop that history (except to provide a few quick facts about those schools in … More The Unusable Past: Pietism and Christian Colleges (part 1)
The Pietist Schoolman 