So look what showed up on my doorstep this morning! We’re still about four weeks away from The Pietist Option hitting bookstore shelves, but getting author’s copies from InterVarsity Press made it feel so much closer. Even more so than when I wrote this kind of post two years ago, it’s hugely gratifying to see and hold actual … More Acknowledgments from The Pietist Option
If you couldn’t attend my lecture last week in Chicago, it’s now streaming online via North Park University. Entitled “The Pietist Option for (Current and Former) Evangelicals,” the talk suggested how Pietism might renew evangelicalism — by way of “a Pietist gloss” on the familiar evangelical themes of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. Click here to watch the … More Now Streaming: My Talk on “The Pietist Option for Evangelicals”
Among several speaking engagements coming up this winter and spring, I’m particularly excited to announce that I’ll be giving a lecture on Pietism on Tuesday night, February 21st at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Scheduled for 7:00pm in Nyvall Hall’s Olsson Lounge, I’m calling the lecture “The Pietist Option for (Current and Former) Evangelicals.” I’ll be … More The Pietist Option for (Current and Former) Evangelicals: My February 21 Lecture at North Park
As I begin work on a book with one of its pastors about its theological heritage, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Evangelical Covenant Church. So with delegates from its congregations gathering in Phoenix, Arizona for our denomination’s annual meeting, I thought I’d share a few quotations from a few of my favorite Covenanters, clustered around our denomination’s … More Glad Hearts: Some of My Favorite Voices from the Covenant Church
We’ll have some new guest posts at the end of the week, but little from me while I spend Bethel’s spring break in Virginia with my parents. But it’s been a while since I’ve reposted any “best of” material, so I’ll share one from each year this blog has been published — in part to … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Emmaus Education
I concluded the second part of this preview of the conclusion to our forthcoming book on Pietism and Christian higher education (IVP, late 2014) with the sentence that provides the essay its title: “…Pietist educators ought to bear one principle in mind: Their mission does not depend on innovations; their mission is innovation.” Explaining what … More The Pietist University in the 21st Century (part 3)
This morning I’ll continue my preview of the conclusion to our forthcoming book, The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons, with a section considering how Pietists might respond to one popular “disruptive innovation” within higher ed. It resolves to the claim that gives the conclusion its title… Decision makers will need … More The Pietist University in the 21st Century (part 2)
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
I’m not quite as excited about this announcement as the one I blogged about earlier today, but that’s just me being selfish, since it’s great news for lots of people, including the central figure… Rev. Efrem Smith will be leaving his position as superintendent of the Pacific Southwest Conference of my denomination, the Evangelical Covenant … More Efrem Smith to Head World Impact
The late Karl A. Olsson (whose 100th birthday we celebrated yesterday) had a lithograph in his home office with the following caption: “A Pietist disturbs the joy in a tavern.” Given the importance Olsson attached to joy, it’s not surprising that he wrestled with the legacy of Pietism: disturbed by the ways in which its … More “An Honorable Word as a Dishonorable Handle”: Karl Olsson on Pietism
The Pietist Schoolman 