This week I celebrated the value of scholarly citation (really) and told the story of a rather enterprising Catholic priest who lamented the rise of what we now call “religious nones” at the end of World War II. Elsewhere: • Bob Smietana broke the story of popular speaker-writer Beth Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. • If … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I reflected on history as a kind of spiritual discipline appropriate to the Christian season when we contemplate sin and mortality (“like any Lenten discipline, such study is also a way of encountering the Christ who redeemed those sins, and seeing the world more as he saw it”). Elsewhere: • Speaking of contemplating mortality… … More That Was The Week That Was
Apart from announcing my first Lindbergh book talk (Zoom-ing your way on March 18th), things were quiet here as I worked on the index for that book. I’ll look to blog more in March. Meanwhile, here’s some of what I was reading: • I’ll probably come back to it in some way in more depth later, … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I invited readers to help me launch a new book project, opened a Lenten devotional series from the Conference on Faith and History and recorded a podcast about the National Anthem and athlete protests. Elsewhere: • For Democratic voters in New York, complained one Slate columnist, “celebrating the idea of the competent blue-state governor … More That Was The Week That Was
I was busy this week organizing a kind of sequel to our Faith and History devotional (look for an announcement on that front in a few days), but I did have time to look into the history of the expression “Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat.” Elsewhere: • The investigation of Ravi Zacharias International … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I remembered the educational — and political — legacy of GW Carlson, who died five years ago this month, and reviewed the first presidential memoir from Barack Obama. Elsewhere: • As always, the Super Bowl prompts some interesting religion reporting: Bob Smietana’s profile of Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid explained how the … More That Was The Week That Was
Another quiet week at The Pietist Schoolman, but I wrote about a mostly-forgotten American Bible and (tangentially) the 35th anniversary of the Challenger explosion for The Anxious Bench and offered some college-to-careers advice to Zippia users. Elsewhere: • It’s probably not a good sign that a leading historian on violence in American politics is feeling … More That Was The Week That Was
After a busy start to the New Year, I gave The Pietist Schoolman a week off and worked on syllabi for the spring semester. But elsewhere, I reviewed a new Winston Churchill biography for Christianity Today and convened a group of Anxious Bench contributors to suggest books that serve as important artifacts and analyses of … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I interviewed a political scientist colleague about the Jan. 6 insurrection, endorsed a statement on that event by a group of Christian historians, considered the historical context for political appeals to Ecclesiastes 3, and mentioned a few of the other Minnesotans who play roles in my Charles Lindbergh biography. Elsewhere: • I’m not sure … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I responded to the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, asked if that event would bring about a kind of epiphany for Trump-backing evangelicals, considered the history of pastor-politicians like new Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, shared some of the autobiographical subtext for my biography of Charles Lindbergh, and wrapped up my Christmas devotional … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 