One evening in April 2013, I left a dispiriting meeting of beleaguered humanities department chairs at Bethel University, walked back to my office, and wrote up a tentative proposal for a new major in the digital humanities: the emerging field that seeks to use computing and other digital techniques and tools within the context of … More Meet Our First Digital Humanities Graduate
It happened again this summer. I was faced with further evidence of declining enrollment in history, English, philosophy, theology, and other humanities disciplines at our institution. So after making a few other arguments, I arrived at my typical last line of defense: “Anyway, these things are cyclical. The humanities will come back. Just look at … More A Counterintuitive Economic Argument for Majoring in the Humanities
After spending about 6,000 miles on the road, visiting a dozen states (and the District of Columbia), preaching three sermons, and reading through thousands of documents in dozens of boxes of Charles Lindbergh papers, I’m finally back in Minnesota. We’re only about a month away from the start of fall classes at Bethel, so I’ll … More A Deeper Dive into “Why We Teach”
Here… • Why I think that women, African Americans, and other Christians can help to “evangelize evangelicalism.” • It’s not much to look at, but my faculty office is actually important to me. …There (Anxious Bench)… • Like millions of others around the world, I watched the royal wedding live. Unlike all of them, I … More That Was The Week That Was
I know, there are a lot of ways you could fill in that sentence to make it a joke. But in seriousness, it’s struck me in the last few years that the rarest thing in higher education is a truly distinctive academic program. At least among four-year, residential, non-profit universities that lay any claim to … More The Rarest Thing in Higher Education Is…
Here… • Before I get to more recent links… Today my colleague Stacey Hunter Hecht would have turned 48. In case you missed it, I wrote not long ago about how mourning her death (and that of our mutual colleague G.W. Carlson) has reshaped some of my thinking about what it means to be a historian. … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • This is normally not a blog about politics. But there was nothing normal about Donald Trump becoming the presumptive nominee of a major political party. • Trump famously promises to “Make America Great Again.” Which got me wondering if “Make the Church Great Again” is a valid aspiration for Christians — and if so, when was the Church … More That Was The Week That Was
As things have turned out, this spring both Bethel University and its fellow evangelical university two miles down the road, the University of Northwestern-St. Paul, have been in the process of hiring ancient history professors. So since my friend and fellow department chair, Jonathan Den Hartog, used his blog to announce Northwestern’s hire of Prof. Jonathan … More Introducing My New Colleague in Ancient History and Digital Humanities
The Larycia Hawkins story at Wheaton continued to develop over the weekend, as Time published an article by reporter Elizabeth Dias (herself a Wheaton alum) that raised further concerns about how the school’s administration had handled the situation. (See, for example, political scientist Tobin Grant’s analysis, which raised six big questions about the process.) Dias’ report also quoted several Wheaton faculty … More Why Wheaton Matters – and Why I Need to Move On
Here… • I had to remind myself that there’s more to “Christian higher ed” than one organization wrestling with its membership criteria. • Former Eastern Mennonite and CCCU president Myron Augsburger spoke up. • Another distinguished Christian college figure reviewed our Pietism/higher ed book. • And I shared the surprising story of three Japanese-Americans who came … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 