It’s not how I wanted to head into 2023, but I need to cancel our planned June tour of Germany. In the end, there just wasn’t enough customer interest to support even a scaled-down version of what I had in mind, so I’ve refunded deposits and will return any late-arriving checks. It may be that … More Cancelling Our Germany 2023 Tour… But Planning Our Return to Europe
It’s been a while since I’ve (a) posted here as opposed to Substack or (b) recorded a new podcast. So today I’m happy to announce the premiere of a three-episode run of The 252, the podcast about the history and politics of sports that I co-host with my Bethel colleagues Chris Moore and Sam Mulberry. … More Tuesday’s Podcast: The Political History of the World Cup
UPDATE (January 3, 2023): I’m afraid I’ve had to cancel this tour. I’ll be leading a private tour in 2024, but if you’re interested in what we’re considering for 2025 and 2026, click here. For most of the 2010s, my Bethel colleague Sam Mulberry and I had the joy of leading a biennial travel course … More Announcing Our June 2023 Tour of Germany
Yesterday I dedicated my new Substack newsletter to reflecting on my first visit to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There’s nothing unexpected about seeing such a site in the capital city of Germany — though it is still striking (maybe not surprising) that it wasn’t until 2005 that the memorial was finally … More Unexpected Sites of Holocaust Remembrance: Berlin
Buchenwald was one of the most infamous concentration camps in the Nazi system, the final resting place of over fifty thousand victims. But until my colleague Sam Mulberry and I went there last month on our week-long tour of Germany, I didn’t know all that much about Buchenwald — including the fact that it has two … More When One Dictatorship Commemorated Resistance to Another
I’m glad for any review of Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Aviator, but I’m especially tickled to see the one published recently in Church History, the journal of the American Society for Church History. “Ambiguity best characterizes both the life of Charles Lindbergh and the contemporary and historical interpretations of him,” … More “Understandable but not sympathetic”: The Latest Review of My Lindbergh Biography
No, it’s not unexpected that the capital of Germany would have commemorative sites related to World War I. But the ways that the memory of that war show up in Berlin can catch you off guard, as I discovered on my recent tour. Amazingly, I’d never been to Berlin, so we started by orienting ourselves … More Unexpected Sites of WWI Remembrance: Berlin
This month marks a kind of reset for The Pietist Schoolman, in two respects. First, I’m going to revive this blog, writing more regularly and less haphazardly than I have in recent months. Second, I just returned from my first trip to Europe since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With my friend and frequent … More Unexpected Sites of WWI Remembrance: Wittenberg
Between final exams and commencement last week and leading a faculty workshop and grading this week, I’ve been a little late to check in on this month’s Following Jesus conversation. But don’t let that delay (or this too-brief introduction) deter you from checking out a highly important installment in the project, featuring an opening essay … More Following Jesus: The Black Church Tradition
Early in the history of American education, it wasn’t unusual for there to be close links between secondary and postsecondary institutions of learning. The oldest secondary school in what’s now the U.S., after all, was a Latin grammar school in Boston meant to prepare young boys to enter Harvard. But over the course of the … More What’s “Early College”?
The Pietist Schoolman 