A few weeks ago, when Chris crafted some questions for me to answer, he asked me to talk a bit about the Moravians – a Pietist movement that that I happen to study quite a lot. “What might a churchly Pietist like myself learn from the Moravians?” he asked. I thought this was especially interesting … More On Moravians and Other Radical Voices
In part because it only happens twice a year, but mostly because I appreciate its aims and quality, the arrival of the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of the newsletter Pietisten made for a good start to finals week. As always, there’s a lot of diverse content to savor in this issue, let me just note a … More In the Fall/Winter 2013 Issue of Pietisten…
Last Thursday morning in the Bethel University Library, philosopher David Williams (Azusa Pacific University) returned to his alma mater to give the seventh and final talk in a series previewing chapters from Whole and Holy Persons: A Pietist Approach to Christian Higher Education (forthcoming in late 2014 from InterVarsity Press). In “The Pietist Impulse and … More Watch the Entire Series of Talks Previewing Our Book on Pietism and Higher Education
12/13/13 – Not long after I posted yesterday’s sampling of histories and biographies that made the cut on leading “Best of 2013” lists, Christianity Today named God’s Forever Family, Larry Eskridge’s history of the Jesus People movement, its inaugural “Book of the Year.” (Eskridge also won the History/Biography category in CT’s Book Awards.) So that’s … More One More “Best of 2013” Book
Is two years too soon to call something an “annual holiday tradition”? For our readers who like to give such gifts for Christmas, here’s a list of some of the history books to have appeared on the “Best of 2013” lists that I first examined in a recent post on academic historians achieving success with … More The Best History Books of 2013?
Track this and tell me that God doesn’t work in mysterious ways: 1. When I was hired to come to a Baptist/Pietist/evangelical college as the new European historian, I was expected to teach an upper-level course on the Reformations. The last time I had studied this chapter in history was… oh, the first week of … More Why I’m Almost a Lutheran
Sixty-five years ago yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly gathered in Paris’ Palais de Chaillot to approve the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Australia’s Herbert Evatt, presiding over the General Assembly, called the moment “an epoch-making event in the development of international law” and enthused that the UN was … More This Day in History: The Birth of Human Rights Law
November 22, the day that marked the passing of that strange threesome of JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley, is now itself history. Here at Grace College, we marked the occasion with a symphonic concert of 1960s pop music (strange as that may sound) as well as a more academic event for which well-known C.S. … More Would Eighteenth Century Pietists Have Embraced C.S. Lewis?
As you’ve likely heard by now, the South African statesman Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died earlier today at the age of 95. The reaction has been overwhelming; I’ll just sample a few responses. “Our nation has lost its greatest son,” lamented South African president Jacob Zuma. F.W. de Klerk paid tribute to the man whom was … More RIP Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
‘Tis the season for media old and new to trot out their “best of” lists for the soon-to-conclude year. As I did in 2012, I’ve been working on collating some such lists into a Christmas gift-giving guide for history buffs. In the process, I’ve been heartened to find a few academic historians garnering praise for … More Academic Historians On (and Off) Year-End “Best of” Lists
The Pietist Schoolman 