Earlier this month I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the 2019 Twin Cities Undergraduate Theology Conference, a joint effort of four evangelical colleges: Bethel University, Crown College, North Central University, and the University of Northwestern St. Paul. I decided to use the occasion to think in public about another kind of … More A Sacramental Vision of the Liberal Arts
I’m happy to report that, last Friday morning, Mark Pattie and I submitted our revised manuscript for The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity. I don’t yet have a publication date to share, but one way or another, it’s a huge step forward. And it means that I can return to blogging this week… I’ll … More There Is No Calling Without Community
When I shared my summer reading list last year, it started with John Turner’s biography of Mormon leader Brigham Young and Philip Jenkins’ religious history of World War I. Little did I know that a year later I would be sharing a blog with both scholars! So I’ll start this year’s list as optimistically as I … More My 2016 Summer Reading List
I didn’t mean to write a fourth Christian higher ed post in four days, but… It’s all too possible that someone newer to the blog could read the first three and come away thinking that I’m thoroughly disillusioned about Christian colleges in general and disgruntled with Bethel in particular. Those feelings are there — as they would be, … More Why I’m Glad I’m at Bethel
Baseball is my favorite sport. Field of Dreams is my favorite movie about my favorite sport. Well, not really — it’s Bull Durham. But I like Kevin Costner’s second-best baseball movie well enough that I was all cued up to enjoy Jeffrey Huston’s recent On Faith post arguing that Field of Dreams — a quarter-century old this year — “is nothing short of … More Does Passion Distract from Calling?
4/12/14 – Please do yourself a favor and visit Autobiography, the new podcast/blog from my good friend and frequent collaborator Sam Mulberry. I was honored to be Sam’s first interview, but he’s now on to episode four and going strong. The idea here is straightforward, and powerful: inspired by something Frederick Buechner once wrote, Sam chats … More New from Sam Mulberry: The Autobiography Podcast!
Among my favorite posts from this past February was this second entry in my — not yet complete — series on “The Vocation of a Christian Historian,” asking whether historians ought to think of what they do as a profession, vocation, or both. As I mentioned last week, as part of Bethel’s faculty promotion process … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Profession vs. Calling
How do historians define what it is that they do? Is it a profession? A vocation? Both? As I mentioned last week, as part of Bethel’s faculty promotion process I recently wrote a lengthy essay on the meaning of vocation for a Christian historian like myself. In my first post stemming from that essay, I … More The Vocation of a Christian Historian: Profession vs. Calling
Once I deliver my paper on Pietism at Bethel University tomorrow morning, my attention will shift to a different kind of writing project: an essay on the integration of learning and Christian faith in support of an application for promotion in faculty rank. I long ago decided that I was going to write my promotion … More Thoughts from CFH 2012: Tracy McKenzie’s Presidential Address
I probably won’t get through all of these before classes start up again, but expect to see posts inspired by these books on my summer reading list: Peter Englund, The Sorrow and the Beauty: An Intimate History of the First World War Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 … More My Summer Reading List
The Pietist Schoolman 