As I wrote in my second post inspired by the election of a new pope, there’s been much parsing of the choice of the name Francis. In a meeting with global media Saturday at which he called for a “poor church for the poor,” the pontiff himself confirmed the widespread assumption that he took the … More Francis and Augustine
It scarcely seems possible to keep up with all the reporting and analysis on the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as the newest pope — the “pope of firsts,” say many commentators. And in this second post passing along a couple more themes I’ve noticed in what I have managed to … More First Impressions of a “Pope of Firsts” (part 2)
Even for a Protestant like myself who belongs to a church that has gone so far as to do away with an episcopate altogether, the election of a new bishop of Rome is innately interesting and even a bit exciting. Like almost everyone out there, I knew next to nothing about Jorge Bergoglio except that … More First Impressions of a “Pope of Firsts” (part 1)
The revival of Pietism studies continues! As of last week, the newest book published by Johns Hopkins University Press is An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe, by Douglas Shantz. Holder of the chair of Christian thought at the University of Calgary, Shantz contributed a chapter to our Pietist … More Douglas Shantz’s An Introduction to German Pietism
I linked to it on Saturday, but the Spring 2013 issue of In Part, the denominational magazine of the Brethren in Christ Church (BIC), deserves its own spotlight here, since it focuses on Pietism. It’s the second in a series of four special issues, each focused on the four theological traditions that have shaped the … More “Jesus within us”: Pietism in the Brethren in Christ Church
In my two-part series asking which wars had inspired the best movies, I noted that the views of the fans who register their opinions with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) sometimes diverge significantly from those of the film critics whose reviews are aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes (RT). The example I gave in Monday’s analysis of … More The Most Over- and Underrated War Movies
Perhaps no book has done more to make me think anew about my vocation as a Christian historian than Confessing History (Univ. of Notre Dame Press). So as I sought points of entry for discussing that topic in my promotion essay, I took some inspiration from a piece in the January/February 2012 issue of Books … More The Vocation of a Christian Historian: Seeking and Telling Truth
What place, if any, do Pietists give to doctrine? Do they place any boundaries on what constitutes right belief (orthodoxy)? Those questions come to my mind at least two or three times a year, generally whenever I’m getting too excited about the prospects for a “Pietist impulse” to again revive Christianity (as it’s done at … More Pietism, Doctrine, and the Boundaries of Belief
Yesterday I explained that, inspired by the realization that there simply aren’t many movies about the American Revolutionary War — let alone good movies, I spent some time over the weekend going through the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and the Rotten Tomatoes (RT) index of critics to see which modern wars have produced the best … More Which Modern War Has Yielded the Best Movies? (part 2)
Quick: name a really good movie about the American Revolution. Not so easy, is it? In the recent “Real to Reel” episode of the podcast BackStory (H/T John Fea), historian Mark Peterson pointed out how little attention this significant episode in American history has drawn from filmmakers and how lousy most of the rare attempts … More Which Modern War Has Yielded the Best Movies? (part 1)
The Pietist Schoolman 