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)
Few books have been as significant in my professional life as Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, edited (and about half-written) by the husband and wife team of Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, of Messiah College. I first encountered it in 2006, during a summer workshop at Bethel University led by the Jacobsens. … More Religion’s “Return” to Higher Education
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)
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
Here • My colleague G.W. Carlson shared his appreciation for Clarence Jordan, subject of an upcoming symposium at which GW will speak (along with some other guys). For more on Jordan’s legacy a century after his birth, read this post by Kirk Lyman-Barner of the Fuller Center for Housing, which will host the symposium. (H/T … More That Was The Week That Was
On Wednesday I noted that the new Newsweek/Daily Beast college rankings included a dozen members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities on their list of the Top 25 Most [Politically] Conservative schools (referring to the student bodies and not to faculty, staff, administrators, curriculum, assigned readings, guest speakers, etc., though all that might … More Student Politics at Church-Related Colleges and Universities
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
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
The Pietist Schoolman 