Hard to believe, but today marks exactly six months since The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity, my book with Mark Pattie, officially came out. In that half-year, The Pietist Option has sold far more copies than the other books I’ve been part of, been reviewed by Christianity Today (very positively) and The Gospel Coalition (less so), been given … More What’s Next for The Pietist Option?
Yesterday I shared a review of The Pietist Option from someone who doesn’t share our religious instincts. (John Fea thinks my response was itself a model of Pietism.) Today, a review from someone who does: Covenant pastor David Swanson wrote a lengthy piece on our book for the Englewood Review of Books, a wide-ranging weekly review published by … More The Englewood Review of Books on The Pietist Option
Back in March, when Donald Trump was nothing more than the surprise leader in the Republican primaries, the fact that he was getting even 40% of the self-identified “evangelical” vote had already led Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore to declare that religious term “almost meaningless this year.” Even worse, “in many ways the word itself … More Done with “Evangelical”? Maybe You Should Try…
This week I got to be a bit more of a Pietist schoolman again on our podcast, as we considered how a Pietist ethos would shape education at several levels. Things started with Sam and me talking about Bethel and revisiting some of the key themes of last year’s book on The Pietist Vision for Christian Higher Education: … More Thursday’s Podcast: Education as Whole-Life Formation
So I was all ready to take up the questions that closed my last post — Who’s an evangelical? and What shapes their response to issues like the refugee crisis? — when the National Association of Evangelicals and LifeWay Research announced their own answer to the first question. As reported by Bob Smietana of Christianity Today: “Evangelicals are people … More Who’s an Evangelical?
The conflict of the Present and the Past, The ideal and the actual in our life, As on a field of battle held me fast, Where this world and the next world were at strife. For, as the valley from its sleep awoke, I saw the iron horses of the steam Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke, And woke, as one awaketh from a dream. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Monte Cassino“ Almost fifteen hundred years ago a hermit in flight from Rome — “disgusted,” wrote Longfellow, with that city’s “vice and woe” — settled on a mountain in the Abruzzis, forming a community and writing a rule that would make him the father of Western monasticism. … More The Benedict Option
Despite my being out of the country for three weeks, I’m happy to report that there’s been plenty of activity around The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons. • IVP Academic published a Q&A with me that serves as a brief introduction to key themes of the book. Here’s a sample: What do … More Announcements: What’s New with Our Pietism Book
Just two days after announcing via his Twitter feed that he had stage 4 cancer, Dallas Willard died yesterday. At the end of this post, I’ll offer my own small contribution to the collection of tributes that is already proliferating, but first a few words from people who knew him well: • Richard Foster wrote … More RIP Dallas Willard (1935-2013)
At some point in my life, it was bound to happen: I would be asked to teach Sunday School. And not the adult kind, which I’ve done several times and isn’t all that different from teaching college students — except that the audience is much more likely to have been awake more than ten minutes … More 4 Things I’ve Learned Teaching 4th Grade Sunday School
The Pietist Schoolman 