Next month is a big one for Americans with an interest in World War I, since it marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. belatedly joining that war. Here in St. Paul, for example, I’ll be taking a group of Bethel students to the April 8th opening of WW1 America, a major new exhibit from the … More Commemorating Catastrophe: Jay Winter on Remembering WWI
I’d be thrilled to have any chance to write for Christian History Magazine, a venerable publication that has been teaching ordinary Christians about their history since 1982. But I’m especially honored that I got to contribute an article on Christians and National Socialism to an issue dedicated to one of my favorite topics: the Christian experience of … More Christians, National Socialism, and the World Wars
Usually, historian D.G. Hart spends his weekends subtweeting Pope Francis, so I guess I’m honored to have been the subject of this tweet on Saturday: Isn't the point of pietism avoiding formal liturgical practices – question mark https://t.co/qLrvldApeL — Old Life (@oldlife) March 4, 2017 I know he’s not actually seeking an answer, but it’s not an unfair question. After … More Can Pietism Be Liturgical?
If you couldn’t attend my lecture last week in Chicago, it’s now streaming online via North Park University. Entitled “The Pietist Option for (Current and Former) Evangelicals,” the talk suggested how Pietism might renew evangelicalism — by way of “a Pietist gloss” on the familiar evangelical themes of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. Click here to watch the … More Now Streaming: My Talk on “The Pietist Option for Evangelicals”
If you’ve been reading this blog at all closely for the past year or so, you know that I’m no great fan of our current president. But even I was taken aback at this description of a recent Trump rally near Orlando, by a local Nazarene pastor named Joel Tooley: Call it what you will, but … More Is “Demonic Activity is Palpable” in American Politics?
How should we rank America’s presidents? C-SPAN asked ninety-one “professional observers of the presidency,” including historians Douglas Brinkley, Edward Crapol, Robert Dallek, Annette Gordon-Reed, Allen Guelzo, David Kennedy, and Walter McDougall. Each participant ranked our previous chief executives in ten equally weighted categories. You can find the full results here, but a few highlights: • The top four remained … More Ranking America’s Presidents
I hope I don’t sound too much like our president when I insist that we had a great turnout Sunday morning for the start of my new class at Salem Covenant Church, on “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century.” To set the table, I proposed some big questions that will run through our narrative, none … More Unexpected Sites of Christian Pacifism
So how can Christians and churches protect themselves from the spiritual dangers that I wrote about earlier this week? You won’t be surprised to learn that I think it’s got to start with looking to the past. But if it’s too self-serving for me to say that, then take it from a non-historian: The inner lives of many have been … More Why Churches Like Mine Need to Recover an Immigrant Memory
If its 500th anniversary has got you interested in learning more about the Reformation, check out one of Tommy Kidd’s recent posts at the Evangelical History blog: a Reformation reading list drawn from recommendations by historians Mark Noll, John Fea, my Anxious Bench colleague Beth Allison Barr, and Kidd himself. I’m stronger on later centuries in European history, but I … More The Best Books to Read for Reformation 500
Part two of my attempt to curate some of what I read while traveling this month. Yesterday I focused on Christianity; today, articles and blog posts about history and education. • Now that we’re in the year 2017, the floodgates have opened on pieces about the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Among many others writing … More That Was The Month That Was: History and Education
The Pietist Schoolman 