U.S. News’ “Best Colleges” rankings aren’t scheduled to be released until a week from today, but since I’m 99% sure that my opinion of them won’t have changed drastically since this time last year, let me preemptively address them with this “best of” post from last September. (I’ve actually got another post in development that … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: On College Rankings
Is “Pietist” (or “pietistic”) a useful term in the 21st century? Why or why not? What synonym works best as an alternative? All these questions came to mind late last week. A colleague rushing off to class stopped short at my office, stuck his head inside the door, and asked, “What’s another word for Pietist?” … More “What’s another word for Pietist?”
I’m very pleased to welcome this guest post from my colleague Christian Collins Winn: the text of his address yesterday morning in Bethel University‘s year-opening chapel service, in which he appealed to Bethel’s roots in Pietism to help us start a year-long conversation about what church historian Martin Marty has called “convicted civility.” Christian is … More Pietism and Civil Discourse (Christian Collins Winn)
For once, I thought I’d take some common blogging advice to heart and write a headline for a title instead of anything remotely clever. Some context before we get to the lede: Newsweek/Daily Beast have joined the college rankings racket frenzy, though thankfully they’re taking a slightly quirkier tack than U.S. News and issuing a variety of … More Surprise! Evangelical Colleges among the Most Politically Conservative in the Country
At the end of June, Jared Burkholder had an interesting post over at The Hermeneutic Circle, in which he reflected on the challenge of doing institutional histories. Specifically, the challenge of editing a new history of Grace College and Seminary with fellow Grace history professor Mark Norris. Especially as they reached the chapter dealing with … More Between Commemoration and Criticism: The Challenge of Institutional History
This fall a joint venture from Harvard and MIT, called edX, will make available free online courses from two of the world’s elite research universities. As the New York Times reported, the Harvard-MIT collaboration follows in the wake of a similar partnership involving Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan (“Coursera“). … More Education as “Infotainment”: or, The One Where I Become Part of the Problem
John Turner, one of the contributors to the new Patheos blog The Anxious Bench, wrote last week about the 40th anniversary of Explo ’72, which brought over 80,000 youth together in Dallas’ Cotton Bowl for several days of preaching (Billy Graham six times), evangelistic classes, and music. A closing festival drew an even larger crowd … More Evangelicalism and Youth Culture, 1967-1972
I doubt he’d remember, but I first met G.W. Carlson in March 2002. Neither of us could have guessed that ten years later I’d be helping to make this movie about him: Back to March 2002… I had just turned in my dissertation and was in town for my brother’s wedding. We grew up in … More Commencement: A Tribute to G.W. Carlson
Every one of the now nine years I’ve taught at Bethel University, I’ve led a section of our department’s capstone course, HIS499 Senior Seminar. In it, our majors conduct a significant project of original historical research on any topic of their choice, which leaves me to act more as facilitator and editor than lecturer. We … More Bethel’s History Senior Seminar Presents…
The title of this post will be news to many of our readers, so let me give some context right away: As part of an interview with Christianity Today about his reaction to the death of Trayvon Martin, Baptist pastor and neo-Reformed theologian John Piper was asked about his book Bloodlines, on racism and racial … More John Piper: “I think I’m a pietistic Calvinist”
The Pietist Schoolman 