Category: History

Emile Henry Mugshot

Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Terror, Secularization, and “Imaginative Understanding”

October 15, 2012

While I work on another post for Tuesday, enjoy this post from last fall prompted by the collision of a couple of discussions in one of my signature courses at Bethel. In the last two weeks of my Modern Europe course, we’ve twice run headlong into the hardest question historians ask: Why? First, I had … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Terror, Secularization, and “Imaginative Understanding”

Swartz, Moral Minority

The Moral Minority

October 12, 2012

10/12/12 – Thanks to my recent CFH co-panelist Jared Burkholder for publishing a three-part interview with David Swartz, on his important new history of the “evangelical left,” Moral Minority. Here’s a taste from part one: Swartz explained that, for evangelical readers like myself, he wrote the book “to offer a sense of context. Just about … More The Moral Minority

Bust of Bob Jones, Jr.

You Can’t Spell Fundamentalism without Fun

October 10, 2012

I’m afraid that fundamentalism didn’t come off so well at our “Pietism and Christian Colleges” session this past Saturday at the Conference on Faith and History. Both in Jared Burkholder’s paper on Pietism and scholarly virtues and Kurt Peterson’s on the Evangelical Covenant Church in the 1950s, fundamentalism showed its least attractive face: suspicious, uncharitable, … More You Can’t Spell Fundamentalism without Fun

Screenshot of the AC 2nd Blog, 10/8/12

Checking In with the Bethel History Department Blog

October 9, 2012

Over at AC 2nd, the blog of the Bethel University History Department, we’re in the middle of what my fellow blogger-department chair John Fea might call a “membership drive.” The blog’s been in business for about eight months now, and on the heels of Bethel’s Homecoming we just sent out an e-mail inviting all of … More Checking In with the Bethel History Department Blog

CFH 2012 Biennial Conference

Thoughts from CFH 2012: Tracy McKenzie’s Presidential Address

October 5, 2012

Once I deliver my paper on Pietism at Bethel University tomorrow morning, my attention will shift to a different kind of writing project: an essay on the integration of learning and Christian faith in support of an application for promotion in faculty rank. I long ago decided that I was going to write my promotion … More Thoughts from CFH 2012: Tracy McKenzie’s Presidential Address

The Cenotaph

Commemorating WWI in Europe and Minnesota: An Overview

October 3, 2012

This year I’ve written several posts on how the First World War has been commemorated: first a set of four on memorials, monuments, and cemeteries in Western Europe; then a recent series of five on commemoration here in Minnesota. If you missed some or all of the series, you can find the entries indexed here, … More Commemorating WWI in Europe and Minnesota: An Overview