For those of us who are children of the 1980s, mention of the Prosperity Gospel conjures up images of fallen televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker or Protestant outlanders such as Benny Hinn. But in recent years, more marketable versions of health and wealth Christianity have been mainstreamed by preachers from Joyce Meyer to … More The Prosperity Gospel and Historical Legitimacy
The newest issue of The Baptist Pietist Clarion, an annual newsletter edited by my friend and occasional co-blogger G.W. Carlson, is now available in print and online. (For the former, I can put you in touch with GW. For the latter, click here.) Some highlights in a typically strong, wide-ranging issue: • Joel Lawrence reflects on … More In the New Baptist Pietist Clarion: Pietism, Baptists, and Walter Rauschenbusch
You can tell I’ve resolved several big projects and am mentally entering Spring Break because I actually took half an hour Monday to answer a question that’s been nagging since the Academy Awards last weekend: Do the Oscars tend to favor movies set in the past? Of course, the antebellum historical drama 12 Years a Slave won … More Best Picture Oscar Winners as Histories
Probably no one has done more to encourage me to think about my vocation to serve those beyond the academy than John Fea of Messiah College. Not just on his blog, but in his frequent speaking engagements and a continuing series of “Virtual Office Hours” posted on YouTube, John models how historians can balance public … More John Fea on Historians as Public Scholars
From January… Another metaphor for education, this one occurring to me in the midst of teaching my course on the international history of World War II. In its final episode, “A World Without War,” Ken Burns’ The War arrives at the Allied liberation of concentration camps in the Third Reich. This chapter is introduced by an … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: The Purpose of the Liberal Arts is Purpose
In this turbulent year, when the most pessimistic corners of my mind conjure scenarios in which schools like my employer go under, I’ve occasionally imagined what it would look like to start a new Christian liberal arts college from scratch. For some reason, my imagination keeps turning to the end of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a … More Home-Colleging?
I was sorry to learn this morning that Nancy Lundquist died yesterday at the age of 94, having outlived her husband, long-serving (1954-1982) Bethel president Carl Lundquist, by twenty-three years. The two were partners in many respects, particularly in their shared commitment to spiritual disciplines, formation, and retreats. In the coming days, look for some lengthier comments … More RIP Nancy Lundquist (1919-2014)
I said it this morning on my Pietist Schoolman Facebook page, but it bears repeating for the larger audience that reads the blog itself: Within the evangelical world it’s hard to overstate the importance of this critique of David Barton, coming as it does from the president of the Conference on Faith and History and chair of the History … More Tracy McKenzie on David Barton: “What’s Really at Stake”
Generally speaking, academic historians and public historians approach the past from two different vantage points. For historians, a productive career has traditionally revolved around producing monographs and engaging with other professional historians on the fine points of interpretation, theory, and effective arguments. Public historians, on the other hand, do their work with a different audience … More Historical Schizophrenia: Academic and Public History
Ever since I wrote it in the summer of 2012, one of the “greatest hits” of this blog has been a post asking which countries dominate which Olympic sports. (Clearly the current Olympiad has revived interest: that post made the “Big Ten” for the last month and, as I write this, sits atop the “Top … More Which Country Dominates Which Olympic Sport? (Winter Edition)
The Pietist Schoolman 