Last Friday Bethel hosted its inaugural Colloquium on Pietism Studies, a one-day gathering that I hope to see become a biennial or triennial event. (It came three years after we hosted an international research conference on “The Pietist Impulse in Christianity.”) Thanks to our generous and supportive deans (Deb Harless and Barrett Fisher, in particular) … More Pietism Colloquium Recap: Scot McKnight
Regular readers of The Pietist Schoolman might have noticed a new “widget” along the right-hand side of each page: a countdown to April 20, when Bethel University will host a colloquium on Pietism. I’ve already shared some initial details and, last week, a follow-up about our afternoon roundtable discussion on Pietism and contemporary churches and … More Update: Scot McKnight’s Talk at Our Pietism Colloquium
During my Thanksgiving hiatus I’m reprising some older posts: one each from June/July, August, September, and October. This one was originally posted on August 18: as the summer neared its end, I reflected on conversations with former students. If you like what you see, please consider nominating this blog at the Cliopatria Awards, recognizing excellence … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: In Celebration of Alumni
Today I’ll wrap up my series on Carolyn Weber’s lovely memoir, Surprised by Oxford, with a relatively short post (short, at least, in terms of material I’ll cover from the book itself). Now, when I last I blogged about this memoir, I went on at some length about the story of Weber’s conversion to Christianity … More Surprised by Oxford: Eastertide and After
In the last two weeks of my Modern Europe course, we’ve twice run headlong into the hardest question historians ask: Why? First, I had my students read The Dynamite Club, John Merriman’s account of Émile Henry, a young French anarchist who threw a bomb into a crowded Paris café in 1894 — thereby, in John’s … More Terror, Secularization, and “Imaginative Understanding”
Today I’m returning to my series on Carolyn Weber’s spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Oxford, and finding her at a pivotal point in her story of coming to faith. When last we heard from Weber, she was back home in Canada for a difficult Christmas: breaking things off with her would-be fiancé, who wished that he … More Surprised by Oxford: Hilary Term
I’m in the middle of reading Carolyn Weber’s excellent new spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir (Thomas Nelson). The book is rich enough that I’ve found myself setting it down for a few days at a time while I ponder some issue it raises. So rather than waiting to finish the entire story (which … More Surprised by Oxford: Michaelmas
I just started reading Carolyn Weber‘s Surprised by Oxford. Subtitled simply “A Memoir,” it’s more specifically a spiritual autobiography, one more in that long line descended from Augustine’s Confessions that has included C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy (its title clearly evoked by Weber’s) and Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God. Like those two, Surprised by Oxford … More Surprised by Oxford
At The Pietist Schoolman I think I pretty much beat everyone to the punch in posting something on Rob Bell’s Love Wins. A summer spent, in part, shooting the breeze over overpriced coffee drinks with former students produced this celebration of alumni. My series on employing a “usable past” to define the mission and identity … More That Was the Week That Was
Today we wrap up our series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity with a piece from Emilie Griffin that we’re calling our “benediction,” since it’s less a work of formal research than a blessing on those who have stuck with the book to its end and wonder where this impulse might be taking the Church. … More The Pietist Impulse: Benediction
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