At some point in my life, it was bound to happen: I would be asked to teach Sunday School. And not the adult kind, which I’ve done several times and isn’t all that different from teaching college students — except that the audience is much more likely to have been awake more than ten minutes … More 4 Things I’ve Learned Teaching 4th Grade Sunday School
Yesterday I lauded a variety of conservative writers whom I encouraged my left-leaning friends to include in their regular reading rotation. One reason I recommended many of them is that they possess the rare ability to engage in critical reflection on their own movement. To wit, David Brooks’ New York Times column this morning and … More Two of My “Conservatives for Progressives” Reflect on the State of Conservatism
Spending too much time thinking or worrying about college rankings seems like a clear path to insanity, so I’ll make this my last of three posts (plus one re-post) on the subject for this season… In previous posts I’ve joined, well, almost everyone who looks at these things and criticized U.S. News for basing as … More Ranking Christian Colleges (part 2)
Few books have been as significant in my professional life as Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, edited (and about half-written) by the husband and wife team of Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, of Messiah College. I first encountered it in 2006, during a summer workshop at Bethel University led by the Jacobsens. … More Religion’s “Return” to Higher Education
Yesterday U.S. News released its annual college rankings, and I summarized an alternative model utilized by the magazine Washington Monthly. While U.S. News continues to rely on factors like reputation, entrance exam scores, and alumni giving (and, as its growing chorus of critics complains, on data supplied by the colleges themselves — data already manipulated … More Ranking Christian Colleges (part 1)
While you hear much about Pietism here at Bethel University, most of what’s said comes from faculty and administrators. So it’s been interesting to encounter students exploring that tradition as well. Last spring I had the pleasure of talking about Pietism with Jesse Phenow (’14), a Communications Studies major, while he was taking a course … More A College Student Reflects on Pietism (Jesse Phenow)
Is “Pietist” (or “pietistic”) a useful term in the 21st century? Why or why not? What synonym works best as an alternative? All these questions came to mind late last week. A colleague rushing off to class stopped short at my office, stuck his head inside the door, and asked, “What’s another word for Pietist?” … More “What’s another word for Pietist?”
I’m very pleased to welcome this guest post from my colleague Christian Collins Winn: the text of his address yesterday morning in Bethel University‘s year-opening chapel service, in which he appealed to Bethel’s roots in Pietism to help us start a year-long conversation about what church historian Martin Marty has called “convicted civility.” Christian is … More Pietism and Civil Discourse (Christian Collins Winn)
One day last month I ran into our university’s president as he was walking to his office, three books under his arm. One, by a member of our faculty, was on the Pentateuch, the first five books of what Christians regard as the Old Testament — the Torah of Judaism. I must have looked quizzical … More “I could use some help with Leviticus”
8/21/12 – Only time for a brief post today, as I’ve been busy with Bethel’s pre-semester faculty retreat… The Conference on Faith and History released the program for its biennial conference, held this October 4-6 at Gordon College in Boston. That Saturday morning I’ll join Jared Burkholder and Kurt Peterson on a panel about Pietism … More CFH Program
The Pietist Schoolman 