I’m getting ready for a weekend in Boston, but a few links before I hit the road: Here… • It’s not every day you get the chance to preach at the most-photographed church in New England. • It was a Congregational church, but the rest of the week we focused on my own denomination, as … More That Was The Week That Was
As I write this, Vice President Mike Pence is addressing the the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some Southern Baptists aren’t too happy about that. As John Fea reported, a Virginia pastor named Garrett Kell found the invitation to Pence so tone-deaf and divisive that he recommended replacing that speech with a time … More On Praying for Donald Trump
Here… • Looking for a free Lenten devotional? You’ve come to the right place. • Last Sunday I preached on the Ten Commandments, death, and other things. Your next chance to hear me preach (and teach) is February 9-11 in Minneapolis. • An interview with a former gymnast raised “important questions about church complicity in … More That Was The Week That Was
Dear President Trump, I write to wish you and your family happy holidays, in the truest, fullest sense of that phrase. While you’ve tried often to convince our fellow Christians that “happy holidays” is part of a secular war on our faith, I hope your aversion to fake news will not keep you from reading historian … More Happy Holidays, Mr. President
Here… • Guess which cluster of undergraduate majors produces the highest MCAT scores and med school acceptance rates. • The Pietist Option is a finalist for a readers’ choice award. Vote before December 3rd! • The penultimate episode of season 3 of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast surveyed Protestant Reformations apart from Luther’s. (We’ll take Thanksgiving week off, then wrap … More That Was The Week That Was
It promises to be a quiet Election Day for me. The two cities on either side of Roseville are having contentious mayoral races, but Roseville residents have nothing on their ballots but an uncontested school board race and what strikes me as the obvious choice to approve a bond that will allow our aging public … More “Honor the Emperor”: One Year Later, A Plea to the 81 Percent
So here’s something I’ve been contemplating for about two months now: Do their studies equip historians to predict the future? Back in early September, labor historian Jefferson Cowie reflected on recent political events for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Mostly, his piece was a critique of how scholars in his field fail to understand the working … More Do Historians Predict the Future… or “Remember” It?
On Friday, President Trump told participants in the Values Voter Summit that “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values.” Now, critics found it hard to take the “Judeo” part seriously, given that Trump immediately followed that line with another version of his pledge to restore “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” And it’s … More The Anti-Fascist Origins of “Judeo-Christian Values”
Other than pondering my potential Lutheran-ness and dropping a #Reformation500 podcast on a world desperately short of both podcasts and #Reformation500 material, I continued to shirk my duties as a blogger committed to giving away multiple posts on multiple topics week in and week out. I’ll try to get back to that next week. Meanwhile, … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • With all due respect to the good work my colleagues do at Bethel… I think America probably has enough business majors. (As I addressed the issue of how students choose their major, I should have linked to this recent survey from Gallup.) • “Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz” made its triumphant return to whatever … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 