This Sunday I’ll be speaking at First Covenant Church in St. Paul on “Reconciled Diversity: Seeking Church Unity in the Midst of Conflict.” I’m still working out the kinks in the talk, but at this point, I think I’ll probably start with a much-discussed op-ed piece published late last week by Baptist ethicist David Gushee: American … More Is It Time for an Evangelical “Divorce”?
If I could have our book on Pietism and higher education reviewed in just one journal, it would be Christian Scholar’s Review, meant as it is to encourage reflection on “the integration of Christian faith and learning” and discussion of “the theoretical issues of Christian higher education.” So I can’t thank John Hawthorne enough for sharing his thoughts on The Pietist … More The Pietist Vision in Christian Scholar’s Review
I’ve been reading Andy Crouch’s Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power for about four months now and I’m barely a third of the way through it. Not because it’s bad! Quite the contrary: it’s one of those books that I have to set down every page or two because I need to think about the point being … More What We Mean When We Say We Want Christian Unity
Yesterday Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, presented a position paper to his faculty and staff, elaborating on why he feels justified in threatening to pull OKWU out of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities if the CCCU does not expel Goshen and Eastern Mennonite by August 31st. Why would he not want that consortium even to … More What We Mean When We Say We’re Holding to Our Convictions
As one Baptist member abruptly withdraws from Christian higher ed’s leading organization and a Wesleyan school threatens to do so if Goshen and Eastern Mennonite are not expelled from the CCCU by August 31st, I hope many in the Christian college world will join Spring Arbor professor John Hawthorne in supporting the people of those two Anabaptist institutions: I don’t think … More Why I Hope Goshen and Eastern Mennonite Stay in the CCCU
Precisely because of the tradition’s emphasis on the personal experience of conversion, the subject of our previous post, Pietism is sometimes critiqued for promoting religious individualism (cf. Karl Barth). However, there’s scarcely any chapter in our book that doesn’t emphasize the importance of community for the Pietist vision of Christian higher education. For example, while philosopher David Williams … More Pietist Vision Previews: The Importance of Community
I’m still a bit staggered that scholars as gifted as John Fea, Rhonda and Douglas Jacobsen, John Schmalzbauer, and Amos Yong would think highly enough of our book on Pietism and Christian higher education to endorse it. But my heart was specially warmed that Houghton College president Shirley Mullen focused so much of her endorsement on how the book was written: … More Pietist Vision Previews: “Pietist not just in content but tone”
During the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) meeting late last month, I had the honor of chairing a session on the role that historians can play in helping institutions during seasons of change. Despite the early start time (8:00 on a Saturday morning), we had a nice crowd show up to hear a terrific set of … More Six C’s of Writing Institutional History
Last Friday I was honored to take part in a panel discussion on Christian historians and social media at the biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History. Session organizer Jonathan Den Hartog (University of Northwestern – St. Paul) has already published his opening remarks at Historical Conversations, and my co-panelist John Fea (Messiah C0llege) … More Christian Historians and Social Media: My CFH Remarks on Blogging
The enormous, blogging-unfriendly workload notwithstanding, there’s at least one clear benefit of teaching a course in Bethel’s three-week intensive known as “J-term”: when you spend nearly three hours per afternoon with students, class really does start to feel like a community. I’m not great at community-building, but I do appreciate the insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s … More Bethel or Luz? The Christian College as the “House of God”
