Category: History

Worship service at WWI aerodrome

My New Adult Sunday School Class: “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century”

January 25, 2017

All next month I’ll be teaching an adult Sunday School class at Salem Covenant Church (New Brighton, MN) on a favorite topic of mine: “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century.” It’ll be offered twice each Sunday, at 9:45am and 11:00am in Salem’s Fellowship Hall. Here’s the summary blurb: This spring will mark … More My New Adult Sunday School Class: “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century”

Munich's White Rose Memorial

Thinking about the American Present via the European Past

January 24, 2017

It’s been about three weeks since last I blogged here at The Pietist Schoolman. Anything been happening? If you didn’t know, I spent most of January in Britain, Belgium, France, and Germany, where my friend Sam Mulberry and I were leading a travel course on the history of World War I. I’m sure I’ll have more to share … More Thinking about the American Present via the European Past

The Brooding Soldier

How to Follow Our 2017 WWI Trip in Europe

January 3, 2017

LONDON – Greetings from my favorite city in the world, where I’ll be spending the first eight days of a three-week travel course on the history of World War I. Joined by my friend and colleague Sam Mulberry and his wife, Anne-Britt, we’re taking twenty students from Bethel University on this, our third iteration of the WWI … More How to Follow Our 2017 WWI Trip in Europe

Tim Johnson

Reflections on a Pietist Identity (Tim Johnson)

December 22, 2016

Today’s guest post comes from Tim Johnson, who attended last week’s Bethel Colloquium on Pietism. (To watch video of all sessions, click here, select the On Demand tab, and look under December 13, 2016.) Tim is Curator of Special Collections & Rare Books and the E. W. McDiarmid Curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections for the University … More Reflections on a Pietist Identity (Tim Johnson)

"The Jerk Center" sign

History: Jerks Studying Jerks

December 19, 2016

One of the most venerable historians in the blogosphere is Ann Little, whose Historiann blog has been around since the George W. Bush administration. As you might have noticed from her quotations in my Anxious Bench series on biography, Little is not only a gifted historian but an insightful, provocative observer of our discipline. See, for example, her post this past … More History: Jerks Studying Jerks

Cropped version of the cover to The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education

The Promise (and Problems) of “Usable Pasts”

December 13, 2016

I’ve been busy this morning packing up for our gradual trip back home, so I’ll have to catch up later and watch video of the 2016 Bethel Colloquium on Pietism. But I did manage to catch the opening remarks by Bethel provost Deb Harless and theology professor Christian Collins Winn, my friend and co-coordinator. Both spoke … More The Promise (and Problems) of “Usable Pasts”

HTML 5 code

When There’s Too Much Historical Evidence

December 13, 2016

Over the weekend I continued my Anxious Bench series on the challenges of writing biographies by reflecting on the problem of historical evidence. While the biographer whose book I’m currently reading seems to have enough evidence to narrate his subject’s entire life on a weekly (sometimes daily or even hourly) basis, I know that he actually is deploying … More When There’s Too Much Historical Evidence

Cropped cover of Collins Winn et al. (eds.), The Pietist Impulse in Christianity

How to Watch the 2016 Bethel Colloquium on Pietism Online

December 12, 2016

While we expect a great turn-out tomorrow at the 2016 Bethel Colloquium on Pietism, we also know that those of you not living in or near the Twin Cities area probably weren’t able to attend. (I’m in that boat myself, since we’re in the last week of my sabbatical in Virginia.) So I’m happy to announce that … More How to Watch the 2016 Bethel Colloquium on Pietism Online