Usually, historian D.G. Hart spends his weekends subtweeting Pope Francis, so I guess I’m honored to have been the subject of this tweet on Saturday: Isn't the point of pietism avoiding formal liturgical practices – question mark https://t.co/qLrvldApeL — Old Life (@oldlife) March 4, 2017 I know he’s not actually seeking an answer, but it’s not an unfair question. After … More Can Pietism Be Liturgical?
“Dust you are and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the Gospel” I said those familiar words over and over this morning, as I rubbed ashen crosses on the foreheads and hands of dozens of Bethel students and employees. It’s Ash Wednesday, and I was one of the professors asked to participate in the morning’s chapel … More Repent, Relent: A Brief Meditation for Ash Wednesday
Every day that I walk into work at Bethel University, I pass by these words from the school’s founder, John Alexis Edgren: Measure our performance by what God accomplishes through our graduates after they have been prepared at Bethel to go out into the world to serve. In general, I think that’s a wise maxim for … More Don’t (Always) Judge Christian Colleges By Their Alumni
It was almost exactly a year ago that the family and friends of G.W. Carlson gathered in Bethel University’s Great Hall to celebrate his life. So it’s appropriate that we mark the anniversary by announcing the publication of a special issue of The Baptist Pietist Clarion, the publication that he edited for nearly fifteen years. For their work bringing … More A Special Tribute to G.W. Carlson
If you couldn’t attend my lecture last week in Chicago, it’s now streaming online via North Park University. Entitled “The Pietist Option for (Current and Former) Evangelicals,” the talk suggested how Pietism might renew evangelicalism — by way of “a Pietist gloss” on the familiar evangelical themes of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. Click here to watch the … More Now Streaming: My Talk on “The Pietist Option for Evangelicals”
All month my family is joining others in our congregation and denomination in reading through a version of the New Testament that has no chapter or verse markings and has been resequenced in roughly chronological order. In part, that’s to get you to notice things you’d otherwise miss. For example, I’d never noticed that Luke occasionally switches to the first … More A Ministry of Encouragement
If you’ve been reading this blog at all closely for the past year or so, you know that I’m no great fan of our current president. But even I was taken aback at this description of a recent Trump rally near Orlando, by a local Nazarene pastor named Joel Tooley: Call it what you will, but … More Is “Demonic Activity is Palpable” in American Politics?
“Historians aren’t supposed to write hagiography,” I wrote one Father’s Day, “but what can I say: [my] Dad is the most brilliant, hard-working man that I know, utterly committed to serving others with his gifts, time, energy, and ample vision.” Midway through a career in which he had started a pediatric intensive care unit, won teaching awards … More Yet Another Reason My Dad Is a Great Guy
Tomorrow night I’ll be in Chicago making the case that Pietism might help renew evangelicalism. That assumes, of course, that evangelicalism can be renewed. Or that we have any idea who “evangelicals” are. I’m going to proceed as planned with the talk, but a new report from the Pew Research Center has me a bit more skeptical … More The Strength of White Evangelical Support for Trump
I’m afraid I’m the kind of Christian who thinks about the Bible more often than I actually read it. So I’m excited to be taking part in a new initiative from my denomination called the Community Bible Experience. Starting this week and continuing up to Palm Sunday, dozens of people in our congregation are re-reading the entire New Testament … More The Bible as “An Altar Where We Meet the Living God”
The Pietist Schoolman 