Yesterday I made a big deal out of a small grant that I received for a workshop at Bethel University. Today let me make a much bigger deal out of a much bigger grant that my colleague Chris Armstrong received for an initiative at Bethel Seminary called “Work with Purpose.” You can read more details … More Work with Purpose
I’m very happy (and humbled) to announce that the Lilly Fellows Program has awarded Bethel a small grant in support of a workshop I’ll be directing next summer — The Pietist Idea of a Christian College: Bethel University. In many ways, this is the culmination of a strange journey that started during a similar kind … More The Pietist Idea of a Christian College
Does socioeconomic class, with vastly less fanfare than gender or race, present equally significant problems for learning communities centered on a Savior in whom there is no difference of class, gender, or race? As I wrote at the end of yesterday’s post, I was spurred to reflect on this by a Chronicle of Higher Education … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 2)
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) Since I arrived at Bethel in 2003, the phrases “anti-racism” and “racial reconciliation” have been prominent in campus discourse. Bethel leaders had identified a “ministry of reconciliation” (in the … More Social Class at Christian Colleges (part 1)
Yesterday Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic extended his critique of what he sees as “epistemic closure” among many conservatives, chastising them for having abandoned genuine engagement in order to shelter inside of their own institutions: For decades, conservatives have complained about liberal control of academia and the media, often with good reason. Diversity of thought … More Close-Minded Christian Colleges?
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
Before I get on a plane back to the Twin Cities, let me share some thoughts on the Saturday sessions from the 2012 meeting of the Conference on Faith and History, plus some more general observations: The early session featured three papers on “Christology in History: Three Perspectives from the Trenches.” All took off from … More Thoughts from CFH 2012: Saturday
This weekend I’ll be joining the other members of the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) for its biennial conference, held this year at Gordon College outside Boston. CFH is my favorite professional society, and I’m honored to be part of a Saturday morning panel on Pietism and Christian colleges and universities in the 20th … More A Preview of My CFH Talk on Pietism at Bethel
Spending too much time thinking or worrying about college rankings seems like a clear path to insanity, so I’ll make this my last of three posts (plus one re-post) on the subject for this season… In previous posts I’ve joined, well, almost everyone who looks at these things and criticized U.S. News for basing as … More Ranking Christian Colleges (part 2)
Yesterday U.S. News released its annual college rankings, and I summarized an alternative model utilized by the magazine Washington Monthly. While U.S. News continues to rely on factors like reputation, entrance exam scores, and alumni giving (and, as its growing chorus of critics complains, on data supplied by the colleges themselves — data already manipulated … More Ranking Christian Colleges (part 1)
The Pietist Schoolman 