As you might have noticed yesterday, I enjoy fusing my interests in history and travel. Besides writing about Moravian Bethlehem, I’ve used this blog to share images and thoughts from trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the former Western Front, and a few of the many historic sites I’ve taken our kids over the years. (And to … More Looking for Some Historic Sites to Visit This Summer?
Over the weekend I took the long way from Washington, DC to New Haven, CT in order to spend an hour in an 18th century outpost of Pietism in America. In 1741 Moravian emigrants came to the North American colony of Pennsylvania. It had been almost twenty years since Moravian refugees had first settled on the … More Moravian Bethlehem
I’ve written before that “I’ve dreaded the day I’ll finally need to write a chapter or two on [Charles] Lindbergh’s response to the rise of Nazi Germany.” That concern came back to mind yesterday, when I visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and went through the temporary exhibit on “Americans and the Holocaust.” About halfway … More Was Charles Lindbergh Anti-Semitic?
My denomination has its share of problems, but two things about the Evangelical Covenant Church make me hopeful for its future. First, it has generally done better than any other American church body at living out the “Pietist option” that Covenant pastor Mark Pattie and I sketched last year, in a book by that name … More The Pietist Option for a Multiethnic Church
This spring I’ve had the pleasure of teaching a group of adults who are planning a trip to Germany this fall. We started with a 90-minute tour of the Reformation last week and will conclude next Sunday with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but for the middle of our three-Sunday course, they were kind enough to let me … More If I Ever Led a Trip to Germany on the History of Pietism…
Among other things, taking a February-March break from this blog gave me some more time to devote to my new research project: a “spiritual, but not religious biography” of Charles A. Lindbergh. Most importantly, I got to spend hour after spring break hour in the Weyerhaueser Reading Room at the Minnesota Historical Society, going through … More Some Updates on My Charles Lindbergh Project
I know, there are a lot of ways you could fill in that sentence to make it a joke. But in seriousness, it’s struck me in the last few years that the rarest thing in higher education is a truly distinctive academic program. At least among four-year, residential, non-profit universities that lay any claim to … More The Rarest Thing in Higher Education Is…
I’ll leave it to actual American historians like my Anxious Bench colleague Kristin Du Mez to explain the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. on this, the 50th anniversary of his assassination. But one topic about which I can perhaps say something meaningful is MLK’s response to the Reformation initiated by his namesake. (As you may know, … More Martin Luther King, Jr. on Martin Luther
Let me suspend my Lenten hiatus just long enough to share the text of the sermon I delivered yesterday at Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton, Minnesota. It was the fourth in a “Path to Renewal” series inspired by The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity, with my co-author — and Salem’s senior pastor … More The Path to Renewal: Be a Priest! (John 2:13-22)
If you live in the Twin Cities — or want to capitalize on some post-Super Bowl deals and pay us a visit next weekend — please consider attending the Winter Seminar at Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis on February 9-11. I’ll be preaching at both services that Sunday, with the bulk of the seminar itself … More Always Reforming: Next Weekend’s Seminar on The Pietist Option
The Pietist Schoolman 