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
One of my favorite things about the church we attend is its music ministry. Even for a church of our size, it’s remarkable that we have enough musically gifted members (some of them professional musicians, most talented amateurs) to support multiple adult, youth, and children’s choirs, a contemporary worship band, bell choirs, a wind ensemble, … More My Four Favorite Sounds
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”
Yesterday I posted a response to the debate over Dominion theology, which holds that Scripture mandates that Christians control secular institutions, including political ones. There have been several sources for the revival of a debate whose roots go back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, but probably the most important was Ryan Lizza’s profile … More Evangelicals and “Dominion” (part 2)
One of the most unlikely hot topics of the past month has been a kind of political theology that, to the extent it achieved any real popularity, peaked in the early 1980s: Dominion theology, or as New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza calls it in his now famous profile of Michelle Bachmann, Dominionism. It contends that … More Evangelicals and “Dominion” (part 1)
Our series on models of Christian higher education inspired by a “usable past” is treading water a bit this week while I gear up for classes. In the most recent post, I surveyed American denominations with roots in Pietism, plus the colleges and universities that they founded. Next week I hope to have a more … More Pietist Colleges: Quick Facts
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
Today we wrap up our series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity with a piece from Emilie Griffin that we’re calling our “benediction,” since it’s less a work of formal research than a blessing on those who have stuck with the book to its end and wonder where this impulse might be taking the Church. … More The Pietist Impulse: Benediction
We’re less than a week away from Bethel’s faculty retreat, which means that the summer is rapidly coming to a close, along with all of my plans for how I’d spend it. One of the many things I’ll miss most about this summer, as every summer, is that it’s the time I reconnect with former … More In Celebration of Alumni
The Pietist Schoolman 