I’ve read Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Pilot several times now. Each pass through the manuscript leaves me with two, deeply Midwestern thoughts: “I think this turned out okay,” and “I wonder if anyone will like it.” So it’s always a relief and a terror to hear back from the first … More Some Early Praise for My Lindbergh Biography…
I’ve been teaching an online summer course since 2013, when my friend Sam Mulberry and I debuted a new version of a multidisciplinary, gen ed pillar at Bethel called Christianity and Western Culture. (It’s still not my favorite mode of instruction, but we’ve figured out how to make it work — and, as importantly, which … More How I’m Teaching a Virtual Travel Course This Summer
This June will mark the tenth anniversary of The Pietist Schoolman, a blog that was inspired and influenced by John Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home. (John also helped found The Anxious Bench, which I joined five years ago this June.) Though we blog very differently, our interests continue to overlap in many areas. … More New from John Fea & Co. – Current
Although I just wrote a biography about a man dedicated to the art of practical joking, I can’t stand April Fool’s Day. Because even if I were clever enough to come up with hilarious practical jokes, I’d feel guilty about making other people to look foolish. But driving to work today, it struck me that … More In Praise of Folly
Thanks again to Christian Winn and the people of Colonial Church for hosting me last Thursday night as part of their Faith and Humanities series. It was my first time giving a talk on my spiritual biography of Charles Lindbergh, and I’m not sure it could have gone any better! The lecture itself took about … More Watch My First Lindbergh Talk on YouTube
The other day, I saw a professor of my acquaintance offer anyone on Facebook a billion dollars to teach a class on citation for him. I couldn’t blame him. Because I teach our department’s gateway course, Intro to History, I have the annual responsibility of ensuring that our new majors and minors understand the intricacies … More In Praise of Citation. Seriously.
I’m happy to announce that on March 18th I’ll be giving something like my first book talk on Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Pilot. Hosted by Colonial Church in Edina, Minnesota, my talk is entitled, “The Case of Charles Lindbergh: History, Biography, and the Image of God.” It’ll be part of … More Next Month: My First Lindbergh Talk
I’ll never forget February 1, 2016. I had just got back from the first meeting of a spring course and barely sat down in my office when the phone rang: G.W. Carlson had had a stroke. I was stunned. Not just because GW was my friend and mentor, or because he had seemed so hale … More Five Years Later… The Legacy of GW Carlson
For about a dozen years now, I’ve been active in the Conference on Faith and History, serving on its executive board since 2016. This week that board voted not only to endorse the American Historical Association’s condemnation of the January 6th insurrection in Washington, DC, but to publish our own statement, which I’ve reprinted below. … More The Conference on Faith and History Condemns the Assault on the U.S. Capitol
Yesterday Vice President Mike Pence declined to invoke the section of the 25th Amendment that would allow him temporarily to assume presidential powers from Donald Trump, setting up a historic impeachment vote today in the House of Representatives, with Democrats and even some Republicans likely to vote to send Donald Trump to a second Senate … More “A Time to Heal”
