Here… • Post #1000 seemed like the right time to announce that I’ll be slowing down my blogging pace: from daily to thrice-weekly (plus these links posts). • While I’m editing a book on The Pietist Vision for Higher Education, I haven’t really sought to articulate a Pietist model for Christian scholarship. I’ll take a shot … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • Is New Year’s Day a “Christian holiday“? Ecclesiastes, Christian Piatt, and others helped me on this one… • I know I’m living in the past, but hey, I’m a historian: the blogging year in review for 2013. • Looking to the rapidly nearing future: a preview of some themes from the new World … More That Was The Week That Was
4/3/2013 – It’s here: the finals of the Best Christian Book of All Time tournament, being held by InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars blog. Though Dietrich Bonhoeffer looked unstoppable in early rounds, his Cost of Discipleship lost out to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. In the other half of the bracket, Augustine’s Confessions edged the representative from the … More And the Best Christian Book of All Time Is…
3/26/13 – It’s Sweet Sixteen time in the Best Christian Books of All Time tournament. Among other compelling match-ups… Two Doctors of the Church (Augustine vs. Aquinas), two famously initialed Britons (C.S. Lewis vs. G.K. Chesterton), and two living gurus of spiritual formation (Dallas Willard vs. Richard Foster). Plus Dietrich Bonhoeffer vs. himself! Cast your … More Update: Best Christian Books Tournament
When Marquette pulled out a last-second win over Davidson and Butler turned back a late Bucknell rally, I lost two of the upsets I’d predicted in my NCAA men’s basketball bracket. (And I clearly should have had more faith in my graduate alma mater’s conference!) Adding more evidence to counter the notion that human beings … More March Madness: The Best Christian Book of All Time?
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
My Saturday links post will take a break, since on Monday I’ll be giving a “best of 2012” version of it. Instead, let me know what you think about a couple of film-related questions on my mind the last few days… My wife and I finally had a chance to watch Lincoln earlier in the … More Biopics: The Best, and the Can’t Misses No One’s Made
How important is St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo? Let’s put it this way… I don’t write and perform parody rap videos for just any theologian-philosopher: Six years later, that lyric and video don’t seem quite as awesome as they did in the moment. But I stand by this couplet as containing some of my finest … More Happy Birthday, Augustine of Hippo!
I wrote this last year for the United States’ Independence Day. Still seems right… Though, for a slightly different take — one more amenable to a celebration of American independence by Christians — see the new Christianity Today interview with Os Guinness and Catholic philosopher Gary Gutting’s most recent post at The Stone. Both contend that … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Pledging Allegiance
I don’t even know how to begin to explain this: Okay – first, I’m co-coordinator of GES130 Christianity and Western Culture (CWC), a course on Western Civilization, church history, philosophy, and theology that about two-thirds of Bethel students take in their first year. In addition to a team of 8-10 professors, the course is taught … More My MTV Unplugged Moment
The Pietist Schoolman 