“What are we history professors for?” That’s the existential question asked by Rachel Wheeler in the current issue of Perspectives, the monthly magazine of the American Historical Association. Wheeler urged fellow Americanists, at least, to respond to white nationalism by offering students a different kind of national story. But she acknowledged that this was not … More Is Teaching Like Preaching?
This week The 252 welcomes sports historian Paul Putz of Messiah College. We asked Paul about the history of “Sportianity” — Frank Deford’s term for the fusion of sports with evangelical piety, plus the role of faith in recent protests by African American NFL players, Paul’s experience teaching undergraduate courses like the one our podcast previews, and … More Wednesday’s Podcast: Sportianity
It’s March, and that means it’s time for The 252 to devote most of an episode to college basketball! With the help of guest philosopher/Indiana booster Sara Shady, we nominated eight players and coaches for a college hoops Mount Rushmore. You can vote for your four favorites in the poll below. Before we wrapped up that segment, … More Wednesday’s Podcast: College Basketball
When better to focus on America’s National Pastime than the day that Minnesota shatters its February record for snowfall? Yes, it’s our spring training episode of The 252! • Chris Moore suggested some ways that baseball is both shaped by politics and helps us to think about politics. • Then we discussed who belongs on … More Wednesday’s Podcast: The Mount Rushmore of Baseball History
If you’re interested in church-state relations or war commemoration (or, like me, both), check out today’s Atlantic article on American Humanist Association v. American Legion. Being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next week, the case has to do with a World War I memorial standing in a traffic circle in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. There’s a … More Should American War Memorials Use Explicitly Christian Symbols?
Almost from the moment I got to Bethel University (sixteen years ago!), I started dreaming about developing two new courses. The one on World War II launched five years ago, with its fourth iteration starting next week. But aside from one independent study, I’ve never quite been able to follow through with a History of … More Coming Soon… The History and Politics of Sports
On the last full day of our January travel course on World War I, we take our students to Munich’s modern art museum and ask them to write about whichever work best reflects what’s on their minds at the end of three weeks of studying total war and genocide. If I’d completed that assignment myself, … More Europe in Ruins: A Photo Essay
Last week Sam Mulberry and I recorded a “live” version of our podcast Nothing Rhymes With Gehrz while we were in London, the first stop on our World War I travel course. We then headed to that war’s former Western Front for two days in Ypres and the Somme, and from there to the beaches … More Live from France… It’s The Pietist Schoolman Podcast
On Monday Christians around the world heard again Luke’s story of the Nativity. But after lingering in some detail on the first day of Jesus’ life, that evangelist moves rapidly through the next couple decades. In the same chapter that begins with Jesus’ birth, Luke skips ahead to age 12, then summarizes Jesus’ adolescence and … More Why Every Biography Is Incomplete
I’ve only half-followed the recent Twitter dust-up between historians Thomas Kidd and John Fea and journalist Jonathan Merritt. You can get caught up to speed with this morning’s Anxious Bench post from John Turner. Throw in editor John Wilson (who rose to the historians’ defense), and you’ve got several of my favorite Johns/Jonathans sparring over what it meant … More I’m a Historian, Not an Expert
The Pietist Schoolman 