‘Twas a quiet week here at the home office, primarily because I ended up writing obituaries at our department blog for two retired colleagues who died within a few days of each other: political scientist Bill Johnson and historian Kevin Cragg. I added a longer, more personal tribute to Kevin at The Anxious Bench, where … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I shared the acknowledgments from my biography of Charles Lindbergh, answered five questions from my publisher, and reflected on the cooperative nature of Olympic competition. Elsewhere: • “We are being punished for our sins against the environment, against one another, and against God,” wrote Mark Schwehn, thinking of COVID in light of older ways of interpreting … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I shared video of my first Lindbergh book talk and considered whether we’re seeing a realignment of American Christianity along lines other than the mainline-evangelical divide. Elsewhere: • If you liked my post last weekend on the history of religious colleges in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, you’ll want to read pieces by Benjamin … More That Was The Week That Was
I’ll never forget February 1, 2016. I had just got back from the first meeting of a spring course and barely sat down in my office when the phone rang: G.W. Carlson had had a stroke. I was stunned. Not just because GW was my friend and mentor, or because he had seemed so hale … More Five Years Later… The Legacy of GW Carlson
I’ve been blogging long enough to hesitate before responding too quickly to current events. But today is going to be an exception. To be honest, I’d paid no attention to events in Washington, DC for most of the day. I knew that the process of Congress formally certifying Joe Biden’s election as president would be … More “This Is Who We’ve Become”
This week I learned about a pagan, white supremacist movement that is rededicating a church in Minnesota and looked at how Bethel and its peers scored on a financial stress test. Elsewhere: • Bethel caught flak on social media for establishing a scholarship named after George Floyd, but to his great credit, our new president … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I started turning my attention to a fall semester unlike any other, researching reopening plans for schools like Bethel and thinking through how I’ll teach two of my courses in a “modified face-to-face” format. Then over at The Anxious Bench, the story of Bethel’s first student of color provided bookends for a review … More That Was The Week That Was
Another busy week as the semester starts to wind down… I talked with the director of the Minnesota Historical Society about public history, and with two of my students about hockey. I shared a talk I gave on sacramental similes for the liberal arts, and the Minnesota Prayer Breakfast got me thinking about death and … More That Was The Week That Was
A wonderful new World War I documentary from Peter Jackson got me thinking about the magical qualities of history, and a Twitter spat over the history of evangelicalism made me realize that I’m not much of an expert in anything. Elsewhere… • Not everyone liked Jackson’s documentary. (H/T Karl Nelson and Tim Johnson) To that … More That Was The Week That Was
This week at The Pietist Schoolman I looked at recent trends in the history major at religious colleges and universities, and Sam Mulberry and I concluded our podcast travelogue with a visit to Munich. Elsewhere… • It’s been a while since I’ve shared something from Kate Bowler… it seems timely to reconnect via her reflection on the … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 