It’s been a pretty tough summer for us Minnesota Twins fans. We got spoiled just enough to start complaining that the team was only winning divisions, not getting deep into the playoffs. Expectations thus raised, we naturally got hit with a season in which there were so many injuries that half the time it felt … More 600 and 3000
In the first post in this series, I introduced the notion of a “usable past” and how it has strongly influenced the expanding conversation about Christian higher education in the last 30-40 years. Seeking models for this kind of higher learning that might guide Christian colleges in a secular (or post-secular) age, many writing on … More Pietist Denominations and Their Colleges
Today I’m starting a new series that builds on a talk I gave at Bethel last spring. It takes up the thesis that Pietism has a “usable past” capable of distinctively and beneficially shaping Christian higher education. Pages and pages have been written on Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist, and other Christian traditions and how their … More The Usable Past of Christian Colleges
8/9/11 – My friend Sara Shady is quoted in a new Christianity Today article on the White House’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, in which Bethel and several other evangelical colleges are participating. Sara explains how our students will work with Muslims in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul and addresses concerns that interreligious … More Christian Colleges and an Interfaith Initiative
We’ve rounded the bend and are more than halfway home in our preview of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Today: part five examines four manifestations of the Pietist impulse among Swedish and Norwegian Christians (both in the Old World and New). For many, this would seem an obscure chapter in the history of Pietism. But … More The Pietist Impulse: Scandinavians
Part four of our romp through The Pietist Impulse in Christianity raises another deceptively simple question, “Was John Wesley a Pietist?” Even if one accepts a definition of “Pietist” that encompasses people other than early modern German Lutherans, Wesley is a controversial figure. He is included in Carter Lindberg’s popular collection, The Pietist Theologians, and … More The Pietist Impulse: Wesley
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Monday, January 14, 2013 – The Somme Back on the bus for a brief ride across the Belgium-France border, then we’ll tour sites from … More The War Elsewhere
The banner image running across each screen of this blog is cropped from a 1601 painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio, “Supper at Emmaus.” (Congratulations to Rachel Neiwert for winning yesterday’s challenge!) The story of the risen Jesus’ encounter with the two disciples traveling to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) has special meaning for me, in … More Emmaus Education
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Sunday, January 6, 2013 – London Why must all experience be systematized? A museum is not a first-hand contact: it is an illustrated lecture. … More Suffrage, Empire, and Strikes
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Friday, January 4, 2013 – flying from Minneapolis-St. Paul to London On Day 2 (well, that evening and into the morning of day 3, … More Travel and Sojourning
The Pietist Schoolman 