Later tonight twelve Bethel University students, my colleague Sam, and I will be flying off to London to start our three-week adventure studying the history of the First World War on location in England, Belgium, France, and Germany. I don’t expect to do a lot of blogging during the trip (maybe a few tweets — … More How to Follow Along with Our WWI Trip
Reading this morning that American colleges and universities have accumulated over $200 billion in outstanding debt thanks to a “decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students” reminded me of this post from last November… I’ve mentioned once or twice before that my … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: College Architecture and Christian Simplicity
Are evangelical colleges and universities becoming more cautious about identifying themselves with political (not theological) conservatism? This month’s issue of Christianity Today features a brief story following up on the recent resignation of conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza from the presidency of The King’s College (TKC), a conservative Christian school in New York City. Reporter Melissa … More The Depoliticization of Conservative Christian Colleges?
In less than a month now, fourteen of us from Bethel University will leave for London to start a three-week travel course on the history of World War I. After eight days in England, we’ll cross the Channel to tour battlefield and memorial sites in Belgium and northern France, then wrap up with five days … More Text in Context: Readings for Our World War I Travel Course
Yesterday I made a big deal out of a small grant that I received for a workshop at Bethel University. Today let me make a much bigger deal out of a much bigger grant that my colleague Chris Armstrong received for an initiative at Bethel Seminary called “Work with Purpose.” You can read more details … More Work with Purpose
I’m very happy (and humbled) to announce that the Lilly Fellows Program has awarded Bethel a small grant in support of a workshop I’ll be directing next summer — The Pietist Idea of a Christian College: Bethel University. In many ways, this is the culmination of a strange journey that started during a similar kind … More The Pietist Idea of a Christian College
I’ve enjoyed William Cronon‘s tenure as much as that of any prior president of the American Historical Association (AHA), not least because he’s used the platform so effectively to encourage his fellow historians to rethink their role in the digital age and to take advantage of its possibilities (even Wikipedia). So it was good to … More William Cronon on Historians and Teaching
A few stray observations that I couldn’t quite fit in to my earlier posts on social class at Christian colleges: Top 10 Lists Which evangelical colleges and universities in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) do best and worst according to Washington Monthly‘s social mobility index, discussed in yesterday’s post? Here are the … More Final Thoughts on Social Class and Christian Colleges
Does socioeconomic class, with vastly less fanfare than gender or race, present equally significant problems for learning communities centered on a Savior in whom there is no difference of class, gender, or race? As I wrote at the end of yesterday’s post, I was spurred to reflect on this by a Chronicle of Higher Education … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 2)
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Since I arrived at Bethel in 2003, the phrases “anti-racism” and “racial reconciliation” have been prominent in campus discourse. Bethel leaders had identified a “ministry of reconciliation” (in the … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 1)
The Pietist Schoolman 