Public historian Devin Manzullo-Thomas (director of the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies) joins me for episode #10 of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast. (You can find it on iTunes or via The Christian Humanist). Drawing on his experiences with Messiah College and the Brethren in Christ Church, Devin reflects on history and higher education at the … More Thursday’s Podcast: An Anabaptist Perspective
Last Tuesday night I had the privilege of moderating my congregation‘s annual meeting for the sixth time — and the last for the foreseeable future. In 2009 I was elected chairperson of our church; after having been reelected three years later, I’ve now reached my constitutional limit of two terms and so happily gave way to a new chair. … More College Professors as Church Leaders
If you have any interest in the future of Christian higher education — and especially if you’re an employee, alumnus, student, or friend of Bethel University — let me point you to my article in the Summer 2015 issue of Bethel Magazine. (You can click here, or turn to p. 24 in the embed below.) Entitled “Faith-Filled Tradition, … More A Pietist Vision for a Christian University
My speaking schedule for the second half of 2015 is starting to fill up rapidly! Starting on Sunday, August 9th, when I preach/teach at Zion Covenant Church in Ellsworth, Wisconsin (9:00 and 10:45). Thanks to Pastor Dave Hugare for inviting me back to a church that I used to visit every summer during stays on my grandparents’ farm!
The Pietist Schoolman Podcast returns this morning with sociologist John Hawthorne sharing a Wesleyan perspective on Christian higher education and faith-learning integration. (In an interview done a few days before the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, John also offered a thoughtful, non-alarmist take on how Christian colleges might respond to such a decision.) You can find my conversation with … More Thursday’s Podcast: A Wesleyan Perspective
At the end of June I had the chance to spend a few days at Rathbun Lake in southern Iowa, joining my wife’s extended family for a reunion. Of course, even on vacation I couldn’t escape my research. In a part of Iowa most famous in religious history for being part of the Mormon Trail, I turned … More Pietism as Instincts, or It’s More Than Old Churches in Rural Iowa
Our podcast is in the middle of its early summer vacation, but it will return a week from today with a set of three or four episodes to wrap up Season 1. In the meantime, this is a great time to catch up on what you might have missed so far on The Pietist Schoolman Podcast. You … More Catch Up on The Pietist Schoolman Podcast
The conflict of the Present and the Past, The ideal and the actual in our life, As on a field of battle held me fast, Where this world and the next world were at strife. For, as the valley from its sleep awoke, I saw the iron horses of the steam Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke, And woke, as one awaketh from a dream. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Monte Cassino“ Almost fifteen hundred years ago a hermit in flight from Rome — “disgusted,” wrote Longfellow, with that city’s “vice and woe” — settled on a mountain in the Abruzzis, forming a community and writing a rule that would make him the father of Western monasticism. … More The Benedict Option
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling late last month in the Obergefell case, there was much speculation that religiously-affiliated schools and universities could feel pressure to change their policies vis-à-vis LGBT individuals. For a calm, well-informed consideration of potential issues facing Christian colleges and universities after Obergefell, I recommend John Hawthorne’s response to an earlier post from Philip Bethancourt of the … More Two Christian Colleges Change Policy after the Obergefell Ruling
This 4th of July weekend I’m feeling more patriotic than I have in years, thanks to two speeches by Pres. Obama. First, his speech this past March at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Obama remembered the civil right activists who fifty years earlier had been brutally attacked during their peaceful march to Montgomery: As … More Patriotism, Love, and Grace: An Independence Day Meditation
The Pietist Schoolman 