I’m taking a day or two off from my series on how the First World War has been commemorated in western Europe. But I’ll tread water a bit by encouraging those interested in the topic to read this essay by writer William Boyd, published in yesterday’s New York Times. He begins in a place similar … More “Why World War I Resonates”
A series of posts inspired by my recent trip to Europe, scouting a January 2013 travel course on the history of World War I. Today continues a series-within-the-series on how WWI was commemorated. Yesterday I showed the image of an Australian soldier’s gravestone, its epitaph asking “Have I died in vain?” Immediately above those words … More Commemorating World War I: Post-Christian Memory?
In a field outside the Belgian town of Ieper (or Ypres), one comes across a curious but moving sight: a wooden cross, with soccer balls piled at its base. The cross is carved to read: 1914 The Khaki Chums Christmas Truce 1999 85 Years Lest we forget It stands in what used to be No … More Commemorating World War I: “Lest We Forget”
A year from now my colleague Sam Mulberry and I will lead a group of twenty Bethel University students on a three-week journey that will take us from London to Paris to Munich, plus a few days on the ground of what was, from August 1914 to November 1918, the Western Front of World War … More In the Footsteps of WWI
We’ve been floating this news for a little while now, but for those who haven’t yet heard… Please mark your calendars: Bethel University will be hosting a colloquium on Pietism on Friday, April 20, 2012. Coordinated by Christian Collins Winn and myself, it will be a kind of sequel to the 2009 research conference that … More Save the Date: Pietism Colloquium at Bethel
Ah, Christmas memories from childhood… Playing elf to my pediatrician father’s Santa at the Children’s Hospital party. Honoring my Swedish heritage by choking down one bite of lutefisk every Christmas Eve. Getting a pile of Reader’s Digest books about topics like natural disasters and true crime from Grandpa Gehrz the next morning… Good times. And … More A Very Nazi Christmas!
Okay, my last word clouds for 2011 — I promise! It’s probably obvious that the first has to do with Kim Jong-il and the second with Vaclav Havel. While the North Korean dictator was reported to have died on Saturday and the Czech playwright-president passed away on Sunday, their obituaries happened to appear side by … More Kim and Havel
More fun with word clouds to get us started this morning: At least when I first came to Bethel, I was most surprised how few students agreed that Christians should seek to CONTROL culture, given the prevalence of “America is” or “America ought to be a Christian nation” rhetoric among some of our students. That … More Christians and Culture
This summer I devoted a blog post to celebrating the alumni of Bethel’s History and Social Studies programs. Today let me turn the spotlight on a group of our current students: members of the fall section of our capstone course, Senior Seminar, who presented their research papers Monday night. (Apologies to those who subscribe to … More In Celebration of Students
For a blog called The Pietist Schoolman, there’s been surprisingly little posted here about Pietism in recent weeks. So today I’m starting a new series on the role of Pietism in the history of Bethel University and its parent denomination, the Baptist General Conference (now going by its “missional name”: Converge Worldwide). Rather than give … More Pietism, the BGC, and Bethel University: Virgil Olson
The Pietist Schoolman 