Last week I was chatting with my Bethel colleague Amy Poppinga. As we compared notes on how classes are going now that we’ve moved online, we both realized the wide variety of ways we’re using history to help students think about COVID-19. In fact, this pandemic has left both of us feeling even more confident … More Introducing Our Newest Podcast: “Pandemics and the Liberal Arts”
How we read the Bible is always shaped by our context, but I can’t wait until the day when my mind stops seeing Scripture in terms of a pandemic. Just before I came to this morning’s lectionary selection from Psalm 31, for example, I saw a news report about the possibility that we’ll all start … More The With-God Life: Deliverance from Enemies
I wrote about Ethiopian Pentecostals like the new Nobel Peace Prize winner and debates in this country over religious liberty for Christian colleges. Elsewhere: • For a more serious case of a religious group being persecuted by the state, read this firsthand account of life for Uyghur Muslims imprisoned in Chinese “reeducation” camps. • According … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I blogged about the religious history of the Internet and the similarities between preaching and teaching. Our podcast focused on the experience of women coaching college sports. Elsewhere… • It’s the time of year that colleges and universities invite commencement speakers. One of the most controversial choices came from Taylor University, a non-denominational … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I started a small business and compared my Charles Lindbergh biography to a sitcom. Meanwhile, here’s what some other people were writing: • I was happy to take a week off from Anxious Bench in order to let Elesha Coffman wonder if historians make too much of empathy and too little of disgust and lament. … More That Was The Week That Was
I haven’t done a lot of work on my Lindbergh biography this fall after a great summer of research. In part, that’s not by choice: I’d much rather learn about aviation than wrestle with a financial crisis at work. But I have tried to let the project lay fallow for a short season, in order … More What Am I Trying to Do as a Biographer?
I’ve got a new post up today at The Anxious Bench, on the presence of three virtues in Abraham Lincoln’s original 1863 proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving. But that’s all the blogging I plan to do this week. Enjoy your Thanksgiving, and we’ll hope to see you back here next week, when I plan posts on teaching, academic … More Happy Thanksgiving!
Here… • My favorite Anxious Bench post so far: a historical and personal reflection on Warner Sallman’s painting Head of Christ. (Though, not surprisingly, writing a post questioning a depiction of Jesus as white brought out the worst in Patheos commenters…) • Another fellow Covenanter, my co-author Mark Pattie, shared a sneak peek at his chapter on the Bible … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • I couldn’t completely buy that my employer is suddenly one of the top 100 universities in the country — but I couldn’t disregard that ranking either. • A new digital project helped me revisit an old question: just when did Micah 6:8 become so popular among American Christians? • I finished my Anxious Bench series on historical … More That Was The Week That Was
Every time I write a post about Donald Trump, I tell myself it’s going to be the last one. This is not, and has never been, a blog about politics. But it is a blog about Christianity, history, education, and how they intersect, so as the Republican National Convention begins, I’m going to write one … More Why I Signed the Historians Against Trump Letter
