I hope I don’t sound too much like our president when I insist that we had a great turnout Sunday morning for the start of my new class at Salem Covenant Church, on “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century.” To set the table, I proposed some big questions that will run through our narrative, none … More Unexpected Sites of Christian Pacifism
I’d love to disagree with the thesis of historian Neil Young’s piece in Religion Dispatches, but he’s probably right that …the bulk of white evangelicals’ political efforts have always veered to the right, often to the extreme. From Civil Rights to Vietnam to abortion to gay rights, from national defense to tax policy to climate change … More White Evangelicalism Has Been Politically Conservative… But Must It Remain So?
I was honored this past spring to be elected to the executive board of the Conference on Faith and History, the leading professional society for Christian historians. As luck would have it, my first meeting with that group will take place at the CFH biennial meeting this October 20-22 in Virginia Beach, Virginia — on the other … More What’s Coming Up This Fall at the Conference on Faith and History
I’m happy to announce that, starting next week, I’ll be a regular contributor at The Anxious Bench, a group blog on the Patheos Evangelical channel. I’ll be filling the Tuesday slot occupied by Bench co-founder Thomas Kidd, who will be blogging for The Gospel Coalition when he’s not churning out award-winning books about 18th century American religious history. Even … More Announcing My New Blogging Gig: The Anxious Bench
Any new issue of Fides et Historia is a cause for celebration, but the Winter/Spring 2015 iteration of the journal of the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) is truly an embarrassment of riches. Reflections on the Incarnation and on mystery, a special review of my former Bethel colleague Steve Keillor’s approach to providential history, anniversary responses … More Updating My Contribution to the New Issue of Fides et Historia
The first month of summer break is coming to an end, so it seems like a good time to check in on the progress of the digital history project that I’m working on with my student Fletcher Warren: We’re researching how the people of Bethel University have experienced a century of warfare going back to 1914, the year … More “Preargument Scholarship”: Blogging Our Digital History Project
The second half of my paper delivered last week at the Evangelical Theological Society, arguing for a more international and transnational approach to the history of evangelicalism. A Global Reflex in Evangelical Historiography Earlier this year the newsletter of the American Historical Association (AHA) published a study by Luke Clossey and Nicholas Guyatt finding that, … More The Global Reflex: An International Historian Appraises David Swartz’s Moral Minority (part 2)
Yesterday I had the privilege of joining historians Dick Pierard, Owen Strachan, and Miles Mullin (who organized the session) on an Evangelical Theological Society panel dedicated to David Swartz’s groundbreaking history of the “evangelical left.” Here’s part one of my paper (fleshing out some themes I introduced earlier this month); look for part two early … More The Global Reflex: An International Historian Appraises David Swartz’s Moral Minority (part 1)
Over at The Anxious Bench, Miles Mullin concluded a post on the history of progressive evangelicalism with an announcement that involves yours truly: …fellow Anxious Bench blogger, David Swartz, has penned Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age in Conservatism (2012), the best work on the topic to date. If you find yourself interested … More The Pietist Schoolman Goes to Baltimore
One group of Christianity-related links that I left out of my January links recap stemmed from Marcia Pally’s post at The Immanent Frame, about “Evangelicals who have left the right” and are embracing more progressive political positions. While commentators like Sarah Posner have poked legitimate holes in Pally’s case that “where once there was the … More Evangelicalism: A “Global Renewal Movement,” Not an American Political Faction
The Pietist Schoolman 