Here… • My article on Christians and National Socialism can be found in the newest issue of Christian History Magazine. • Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz, my newest podcast collaboration with Sam Mulberry, debuted. • Why interfaith engagement is a civic imperative in a religiously diverse society. • Two posts on World War I: one on the challenges involved in … More That Was The Week That Was
My new World War II course — belatedly kicking off this afternoon — fulfills a general education category at Bethel that focuses on the development of Western life and thought in the “modern” era. So as I set up the course today, one theme I need to introduce is the war as a crucible of … More Are Human Rights in Decline?
Aside from some Tweeting and Facebook microblogging, I took Christmas week off. But others kept the blogosphere humming… • On Christmas Eve I sang carols about angels and wrote a brief reflection on Twitter and Facebook that concluded with St. Augustine’s famous prayer asking God to “give your angels charge over those who sleep.” But … More That Was The Week That Was
The modern distinction between sacred and secular has allowed the studies of religion and politics to go their separate ways in virtual isolation. (Nathan O. Hatch) By training, I’m a historian of international relations. More recently, I’ve become interested in the history of Christianity. That wouldn’t seem like an unlikely pairing, given the global reach … More Mind the Gap: The Histories of Christianity and of International Relations
When I started to put together this week’s edition of my Saturday links post, I realized that I’d flagged so many links related to Syria that I should just go ahead and present them as a separate post… The standard edition of That Was The Week That Was will go up later today or tomorrow. … More That Was The Week That Was: Syria
Here… • A tour of memorial sites got me thinking about how to teach a new course on World War II, and prompted two new series: one on the commemoration of WWII started by asking why “living memorials” were so popular among architects, artists, and others in the 1940s; then a second looked chapters in … More That Was The Week That Was
I wish I could say that I was clever enough to have planned yesterday’s post on the beginning of the Second World War in Asia to be published on the 68th anniversary of the Japanese surrender that ended that conflict, but… Total coincidence. But I was reminded of the significance of August 15 in the … More China and Japan 68 Years after WWII
Today’s report of nineteen more Christians being killed in Nigeria hastened along a post I’ve been meaning to write for a week or so: in which I tweak some advice that Karl Barth may or may not have given and encourage readers to join me in spending some time praying with the Bible in one … More Praying with the International Religious Freedom Report
Here • A three-part exploration of the 1940 census records for my grandparents — Peterson, Nelson, and Gehrz (haven’t found Laubscher yet) — shed some light on ethnicity, social mobility, and education in American society coming out of the Great Depression. • As speculation about Mitt Romney’s running mate begins in earnest, a look back … More That Was The Week That Was
Before the beginning of the semester last fall, I wrote a post on the challenges (or, as I called them in the post title, “blessings”) of teaching the same course (Modern Europe) year in and year out. Today, the start of our spring semester at Bethel, brings a different kind of problem: teaching a course … More Human Rights in International History
The Pietist Schoolman 