First up in a set of three posts focused on listening to people of color speaking in the wake of last week’s grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri… A reflection on Advent by one of my newest colleagues at Bethel University. In our family Advent devotional last night, we read a familiar verse from the Book of … More A Week of Listening: Christena Cleveland on Advent and Darkness
I originally wrote this near the end of my January course on the history of World War II. But it seems a better fit for Good Friday… It was a day into Epiphany — the Christian season of light, when Jesus is revealed in many and various ways as God — when I began my J-term … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Looking Too Quickly for Light
It was a day into Epiphany — the Christian season of light, when Jesus is revealed in many and various ways as God — when I began my J-term class on World War II. So I started out with a meditation on Isaiah 60:1-2, one of the staple texts of the season. But rather than … More “Thick Darkness”: Further Thoughts on Looking Too Quickly for Light
How’s this for a college recruitment slogan? “Bethel University: you might not come back, but you will not be the same” No? What if we had Sir Ian McKellen intone it, as in the first part of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, when Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is being encouraged by McKellen’s wizard Gandalf to go … More The Christian Liberal Arts as Tolkienesque Quest
Here • I liked Lauren Winner’s use of a pie social as a metaphor for the Church, though I Midwestern-ized it into a potluck supper. • Trying hard not to pile on Penn State after the NCAA sanctions that were announced Monday, I tried to make the case for sports playing an integral role in … More That Was The Week That Was
