At first blush, it might seem like Anglicanism and Pietism would have little in common. “But in ways expected and not,” I wrote yesterday, “Randall Balmer’s essay resonated more strongly with me than any other preceding it” in the Following Jesus conversation. It’s not just that we’re both historians and Anglophiles with a fondness for … More Following Jesus: The Anglican Tradition
On this week’s second episode of Pandemics and the Liberal Arts, Amy Poppinga and I talked to our friend and colleague Sara Shady about the significance of philosophy in the midst of COVID-19. It was fantastic! Sara primarily talked about ethics — how doctors, nurses, researchers, and others make decisions about health care during a pandemic; … More Wednesday’s Podcast: Pandemics and Philosophy
Today’s episode marks the end of our second season at The 252, “talk radio as done by academics.” So Chris, Sam, and I started by looking back at what we thought were the most memorable and most significant sports moments of 2019. Remarkably, we talked a lot about horse racing, golf, soccer, and basketball, but … More Wednesday’s Podcast: The Best Sports Moments of 2019
This week I somehow connected country music to the history of violence against women preachers, talked with author Angela Denker about faith, football, and politics in the Age of Trump, and probed my emotional response to my favorite baseball team winning a division title. (By the way, if you’ve been enjoying the new season of our … More That Was The Week That Was
When better to focus on America’s National Pastime than the day that Minnesota shatters its February record for snowfall? Yes, it’s our spring training episode of The 252! • Chris Moore suggested some ways that baseball is both shaped by politics and helps us to think about politics. • Then we discussed who belongs on … More Wednesday’s Podcast: The Mount Rushmore of Baseball History
Over the weekend I continued my Anxious Bench series on the challenges of writing biographies by reflecting on the problem of historical evidence. While the biographer whose book I’m currently reading seems to have enough evidence to narrate his subject’s entire life on a weekly (sometimes daily or even hourly) basis, I know that he actually is deploying … More When There’s Too Much Historical Evidence
Here… • America has changed a lot since the last time the Cubs won the World Series. • As I finished one book project and contemplated others, I found myself asking a big mid-career question: “What comes next?” • Evangelicals — and especially those of us in Christian higher ed — ought to pay attention … More That Was The Week That Was
Ten years ago yesterday, a man named Charles Carl Roberts IV shot ten students in a school near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, then committed suicide. Five children died; five eventually recovered. Sadly, episodes like this have become almost familiar in American society, but this mass murder was unique. Not only did it take place at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural … More Amish Grace and the Anabaptist Way
Over the last three weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking with undergraduates about what it is that Christian historians do — and how, if at all, it’s different from what non-Christian historians do. • To help my Intro to History students prepare to write a preliminary statement of what they think it means to “think … More Back to Basics: What It Is Christian Historians Do
For once, it was easy this week to know where to start my post-vacation ritual of sifting through stacks of new publications requiring some reading attention: with Roger Olson’s article in the Summer 2012 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, “Pietism and Postmodernism: Points of Congeniality.” A refined version of the second of two lectures he … More Roger Olson on Pietism and Postmodernism
The Pietist Schoolman 