This month marks a kind of reset for The Pietist Schoolman, in two respects. First, I’m going to revive this blog, writing more regularly and less haphazardly than I have in recent months. Second, I just returned from my first trip to Europe since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With my friend and frequent … More Unexpected Sites of WWI Remembrance: Wittenberg
“If Lutheranism is the parent of Pietism,” I began my response this month in the Following Jesus conversation, “then surely the Wesleyan Tradition is the closest cousin to my own.” Started by English Protestants who had been profoundly shaped by their encounters with Pietism, Methodism and the other Christian movements that originated with John Wesley … More Following Jesus: The Wesleyan Tradition
“Unlike every other participant in this year-long conversation,” I wrote early in my lead essay this month for Following Jesus, “the Pietist Tradition has no ecclesial shape or institutional structure. And the number of Christians worldwide who identify as Pietist is vanishingly small.” But what Roger Olson calls the Pietist ethos shows up in virtually … More Following Jesus: The Pietist Tradition
This week I shared some updates about my Lindbergh biography (including details about a talk I’m giving — live and by Zoom — this coming Tuesday), announced my first in-person adult Sunday school class since before the onset of the COVID pandemic, and started a new Anxious Bench series occasioned by Bethel turning 150 years … More That Was The Week That Was
If Advent is a season of anticipation and Lent one of introspection, then Christmas is one of adoration, as so many of its best loved songs make clear. It’s a quiet time of tender reverence, as we imagine ourselves in the little town of Bethlehem (“how still we see thee lie”) on a silent night … More Twelve Days: “Heaven and Nature Sing”
If Protestants know that today is the feast of St. Stephen, it’s probably because of a rather odd carol, a Christmas song that makes no mention of Christ. As John Mason Neale’s “Good King Wenceslas” begins, it is December 26th, “the Feast of Stephen.” That night the medieval Czech monarch looks out and spots a … More Twelve Days: On the Feast of Stephen
Welcome to the start of another in my occasional attempts to blog through part of the daily lectionary. I’ll start this run of twelve Christmastide meditations on Christmas Eve, then resume on the 26th. My favorite moment in my current favorite TV series involves my favorite words from one of my favorite Christmas carols. In … More Twelve Days: Amid Bleak Winters
I marked the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 by considering how people at the time made religious meaning of the Space Race, then shared my newest piece for Christianity Today and a map previewing the sites we’re considering for future Pietist Schoolman Travel tours. Elsewhere… • L.D. Burnett on the moon landing as an epochal moment: “After thousands of … More That Was The Week That Was
Before spending most of the week enjoying a holiday trip with family, I reflected on the recent annual meeting of my home denomination, explained what’s been called the “honest patriotism” of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and shared some reflections from my parents and two others who joined us last month on our World Wars in Western … More That Was The Week That Was
Greetings from the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan! After a terrific couple days at the Conference on Faith and History, I’m waiting for my flight home and thought I’d share a few of the pieces I’ve been reading the last seven days: • With all that’s been going on at my … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 