Earlier this summer I argued on Substack that you can’t really call yourself a liberal arts college if you’re not offering liberal arts majors. As my Bethel colleague Jim Beilby correctly intuited in his response, I didn’t mean that it’s necessary to offer an entire array of every field in the arts, humanities, and sciences. … More How Common Is the History Major among Christian Colleges?
This week I revisited a familiar challenge facing Christian colleges, reflected on a visit to one of the “most cynical examples of Holocaust commemoration I’ve ever seen,” and shared one of the most satisfying reviews of my Lindbergh biography I’ve read yet. Elsewhere: • Fewer than 40% of Americans told Gallup they were “extremely” proud to … More That Was The Week That Was
Earlier this month the Christian Reformed Church concluded a six-year debate on human sexuality by voting not only to uphold its traditional view that sex is reserved to man-woman marriage, but to confirm that belief’s “confessional status” — as pertaining to the Heidelberg Catechism’s statement against “unchastity.” I’m no expert on Reformed polity or theology, but … More Why, More Than Ever, Christian Colleges Need to Inhabit the “Messy Middle”
This week: I learned how Latter-day Saints follow Jesus and checked in on the most popular posts so far this year at The Anxious Bench. (I also flew home after a week in Germany — more on that next week…) Elsewhere: • For my money, the most important moment from this week’s hearings on the January … More That Was The Week That Was
We’re planning to record one more special episode this summer to conclude our first season of the College for Christians podcast, but this week we paused to answer a couple of questions from listeners — plus one that we had ourselves but had never fully addressed. Stream or download that episode from Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, … More College for Christians: Some Listener Q&A
Earlier this week I was invited to talk about Bethel’s history at a dinner celebrating the university’s 150th anniversary. For once I spoke without notes, but here’s the best I can do to reconstruct what I said: my attempt to make our history more personal for more people, rather than focusing on the stories of … More What Is Bethel? The Moments That Make Up Our History
Last week on College for Christians, we focused on the first word in our title and surveyed the wide array of thousands of American postsecondary institutions enrolling millions of students. This week, we put the pieces of our title together and look at the variety of ways that American Christians have approached higher education. That … More The Variety of Christian Colleges
Tonight I’m happy to announce the debut of our newest podcast: The latest in many collaborations between Sam Mulberry and me, College for Christians is a weekly series of half-hour conversations meant to help Christian high school students and their parents navigate the incredibly complex world of higher education: not just picking a college, but … More The Debut of Our Newest Podcast: College for Christians
This week I checked in on responses to my essay about how Pietists follow Jesus and considered some history of how Americans have used the imprecatory psalms. Elsewhere: • The latest story of workplace sexual harassment is set in the offices of evangelicalism’s flagship publication: Christianity Today (as reported in CT itself). • Religion journalist Jack Jenkins … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I reported on my adult Sunday School class about evangelicalism and checked in on how Lutherans follow Jesus, while a couple of student journalists at Bethel wrote about me and my new book… which was reviewed in Front Porch Republic and the Portland (ME) Press Herald. Elsewhere: • If you’re not already reading … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 