By all rights, I should be thrilled that Unbroken, the biopic about Olympic athlete-turned-WWII POW Louie Zamperini, is coming to theatres this week. I always celebrate turning in my grades by going to the movies, and this one has been on my radar ever since I read Laura Hillenbrand’s remarkable book about Zamperini during my trip to California earlier … More Unbroken: The Challenge of Biography
12/19/14 – Word on the street is that preordered copies of The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons are starting to arrive in mailboxes! If you’ve got a copy and want to share a photo or a favorite quotation, tweet it to #wholeandholypersons, post it at our Facebook page, or … More Have You Received Your Copy of The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Ed Yet?
If it’s not bad enough that I’m posting a second consecutive list (classic clickbait for bloggers), today I’m shamelessly ripping off an idea from Peter Enns, who two weeks ago shared ten passages from the Old Testament and ten from the New that shape how he thinks about God. Of course, Peter Enns knows the Bible … More Five Bible Passages that Shape How I Think about God
So look what the U.S. Postal Service left on my doorstep yesterday! It’s still a couple weeks till our book on Pietism and Christian higher education is more widely available, but it was hugely gratifying to see and hold actual copies of something that I’ve envisioned for several years. But getting my author’s copies also made me … More Acknowledgments from Our Pietism Book
If you’ve been wondering why our resident guest-blogger Jared Burkholder (Grace College, IN) hasn’t been blogging here in a while… Jared has spent the fall term as a Snowden Fellow with the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. First things first: what’s the Young Center? (And what’s the specific purpose of the Snowden Fellowship?) The Young … More Live, from Lancaster County… It’s Jared Burkholder!
12/8/14 – According to the countdown widget I’ve added to the blog, we’re now twenty-eight days away from the publication of The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons. But according to Amazon, our book is already the #1 new release in the higher education administration category! So don’t wait too long to preorder: copies … More Early Success for Our Pietism Book
I’ve always been particularly fond of the virtue of hope. Here in the Christian academy it tends to be overshadowed by faith (that’s what we integrate with learning, after all), and while hope too abides, the “greatest” of the three is love. But it was hope that was at the center of two of the most influential books in … More A Week of Listening: Allan Boesak on Hope and Her Daughters
Today let me invite readers to listen to a different kind of voice. While the artist Makoto Fujimura was speaking the night before the grand jury decision and subsequent protests in Ferguson, his reflection on faith, beauty, truth, and — above all — hope couldn’t have been more timely in light of what was happening in Missouri. Invited to … More A Week of Listening: Makoto Fujimura on Hope, Beauty, and Justice
First up in a set of three posts focused on listening to people of color speaking in the wake of last week’s grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri… A reflection on Advent by one of my newest colleagues at Bethel University. In our family Advent devotional last night, we read a familiar verse from the Book of … More A Week of Listening: Christena Cleveland on Advent and Darkness
So, what’s been happening in the week and a half since my last post? Watching tweet after tweet after the Ferguson grand jury decision last Monday night, I felt again what I’ve come to recognize as the greatest temptation facing bloggers: “…thinking that there are thoughts that will never be thought unless you think them, and words that will never … More A Week of Listening: Advice from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Pietist Schoolman 