With two exams to grade at work, it seems like a good moment to rerun some favorite posts from the first three months of 2013. We’ll start by stretching the “Best of The Pietist Schoolman” definition a bit and collate four posts I wrote for our department blog, at different points along the way in … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Teaching WWI in Europe
This past Monday I was privileged to give a talk to the chaplains corps of the Minnesota Army National Guard. Not only did it give me a chance to reach an audience well beyond the university (increasingly a goal of mine), but the suggested topic — military chaplains in World War I — let me … More Military Chaplains in World War I
So, Brad Paisley’s new album includes a duet with LL Cool J entitled “Accidental Racist.” Perhaps you hadn’t heard… For (to paraphrase Sideshow Cecil) you spent yesterday on Mars, in a cave, with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears. (And your iPhone off, to update a 16-year old pop culture reference a … More “Accidental Racist” and the Uses of History
Thanks to Ken Stewart of Covenant College for taking the time to review our 2011 book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, in the new issue of Haddington House Journal! You’ll need to buy the issue to read the full review, since it’s not online. But in short, Stewart applauds the book on four counts: (I’ll … More New Review of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel and elsewhere around the world. I don’t think it’s widely known in the United States — partly because it falls on the 27th day in the Jewish month of Nissan, and so moves year by year within the Gregorian calendar — but even if this is … More Holocaust Remembrance Day
Martin Luther King, Jr. has been much on my mind of late. And not just because yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Because I’ve been working on the inaugural edition of the online version of Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture course, which will start — as the face-to-face version has … More The Letter from a Birmingham Jail
In 1713 the newly-crowned king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm (Frederick William) I, visited the city of Halle and toured its pioneering educational and charitable institutions. The king’s tour guide was the institutions’ founder, the Pietist pastor August Hermann Francke. Their conversation soon turned to Friedrich Wilhelm’s central concern: the Prussian army. FW: What do you … More Francke and Friedrich Wilhelm: Can Pietists Serve “Two Kingdoms”?
Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is … More The Cross: A Good Friday Meditation on World War and Holocaust
Unless you limit its definition to that relatively small group of German Lutherans inspired by Philipp Jakob Spener and then led by August Hermann Francke in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Pietism is a tremendously diverse movement within Christianity — spanning centuries, oceans, languages, and confessions. So what do Pietists have in common? … More Pietism, Resurrection, and the Virtue of Hope
3/20/13 – Lately there’s been much talk here about the medieval monastic Francis of Assisi because of the election of a pope who took that name… If you’d like to learn more about the saint himself and you happen to live in the Twin Cities (or are willing to relocate for a time), Salem Covenant … More Adult Sunday School Class on Francis of Assisi
The Pietist Schoolman 