If you had told me twenty, ten, or even five years ago that a Pietist like me would find much common ground with a Reformed Christian, I’d have been skeptical. Yet when I read Wes Granberg-Michaelson’s January essay for the Following Jesus conversation, I found myself nodding along “with a version of following Jesus that … More Following Jesus: The Reformed Tradition
This week I shared a preview of the “virtual travel course” on World War I that I’m teaching this summer and explained why I considered starting my Lindbergh biography with an event that never happened. Elsewhere: • If you want to know why I’m spending the weekend devouring Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood, … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I celebrated my birthday by looking at pandemic-inspired gospel-blues songs, and my October devotional series ranged from a song of Moses to a psalm of David to the Apocalypse of John. Elsewhere: • I don’t share all of the theological presuppositions that undergird John Piper’s barely veiled critique of Donald Trump, but you have … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • Why I think that women, African Americans, and other Christians can help to “evangelize evangelicalism.” • It’s not much to look at, but my faculty office is actually important to me. …There (Anxious Bench)… • Like millions of others around the world, I watched the royal wedding live. Unlike all of them, I … More That Was The Week That Was
I have little doubt that this is a list of twelve highly effective preachers: Alistair Begg, Tony Evans, Joel Gregory, Tim Keller, Thomas Long, Otis Moss III, John Piper, Haddon Robinson, Andy Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Ralph Douglas West. I have even less doubt that they are not the “twelve most effective preachers … More These Are Not the “Twelve Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World”
I’ve never had a blog post as widely read as my response to the Nashville Statement. Which just makes me wish that I’d said a couple things more clearly than I did. So as a last word on a document that already seems to be fading from the headlines, let me offer two postscripts: I dislike … More Final Thoughts on the Nashville Statement
Aside from sharing a new, hopeful episode of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast, this week I left blogging to others: • One reason this blog was on hiatus was that I was trying to write a eulogy for G.W. Carlson. I’ll be delivering it this Sunday afternoon, at a kind of service that Carl Truman really wishes we wouldn’t call a … More That Was The Week That Was
When Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. exhorted the audience at the school’s convocation to (legally) carry concealed weapons, it was his careless allusion to the religion of the shooters at San Bernardino that seemed to generate the most controversy: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those … More John Piper’s Argument Against Concealed Weapons
Even for historians as gifted as Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins, three hundred pages is not nearly enough to do justice to the full diversity of Baptists in America, the title of their new book from Oxford University Press. So I’m not surprised that they pay little attention to the rather pietistic Baptists I know best. Founded as the … More The Forgotten Baptists
Like many American colleges and universities founded in the nineteenth century, the place I work came into being thanks largely to the efforts of a pioneering figure who is as venerated within the school as he is unknown outside of it. For Bethel, that figure is John Alexis Edgren, whose 176th birthday our campus celebrates today. Born in Sweden … More Happy Birthday, John Alexis Edgren!
The Pietist Schoolman 