On this week’s episode of College for Christians, I took Sam on a tour of the four thousand-some accredited colleges, universities, and other postsecondary institutions that make up the crowded higher ed landscape in the United States. As Sam observed, this means that American students have vastly more college options than citizens of similar countries, … More The Variety of American Colleges
My new podcast with Sam Mulberry, College for Christians, launched last week, with the two of us sharing our stories of college admissions. But if you missed the debut, today’s new episode is a great place to start — in fact, I think we’ll come back to it in virtually every other episode we record … More Why Go to College?
Tonight I’m happy to announce the debut of our newest podcast: The latest in many collaborations between Sam Mulberry and me, College for Christians is a weekly series of half-hour conversations meant to help Christian high school students and their parents navigate the incredibly complex world of higher education: not just picking a college, but … More The Debut of Our Newest Podcast: College for Christians
With the COVID pandemic lingering longer than anyone had hoped, I haven’t had many chances to give talks about my newest book. So it was wonderful to speak about Charles Lindbergh in Bethel’s library last month. We had a good turnout, but in case you couldn’t be there — or able to Zoom in live … More The Education of Charles Lindbergh
One benefit of participating in the Following Jesus conversation this year is that I’ve been prompted to dig back into a variety of sources from what we’re calling “The Pietist Tradition.” One that recently arrived in my mailbox is From Head to Heart: A Compendium of the Theology of Philipp Jakob Spener. Edited by K. … More “Antipathy to authoritarian forms”: An Interpretation of Pietism from Mid-1950s Bethel
Yesterday I was given the honor of delivering the keynote address at the college faculty retreat for Bethel University. The retreat committee asked me to speak on the theme of unity. Here’s a lightly edited version of my comments. I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the … More “Let the Tension Remain” (Eph. 4)
As I mentioned earlier this summer, historians at Bethel are now part of a larger Department of History, Philosophy, and Political Science, with each of those core majors — plus three of our interdisciplinary programs — culminating in a common capstone course that I’ll be teaching this fall: Applied Humanities Seminar. For the most part, I’m … More What Are “Applied Humanities”?
Last week I shared the acknowledgments section from my biography of Charles Lindbergh. Today, a few words about the dedication: In honor of another descendant of Swedish immigrants:Dick Peterson—for whom physics is an act of worship,whose career confirms Anne Lindbergh’s instinct that“the true scientist [is] akin to the artist and the saint,”whose life demonstrates that … More Why I Dedicated a Charles Lindbergh Biography to Dick Peterson
I’m not sure exactly what it will look like given Minnesota’s current COVID numbers, but three weeks from today begins the 2021-22 academic year at Bethel University. This fall I’m teaching two courses I’ve taught many times before — our first-year GES130 Christianity and Western Culture survey and my third-year course HIS354 Modern Europe — and … More Introducing… Applied Humanities Seminar
Next spring I’ll be teaching History and Politics of Sports for the second time. It’s hard to know how much change to make, given that the inaugural class was forced online halfway through semester by a global pandemic. But one difference is already evident: I’ll be leading the course by myself, since my friend and … More Thursday’s Podcast: The Politics of the Olympics
The Pietist Schoolman 