Forgive the quiet start to a new blogging year. I’ve been busy launching the J-term version of our Christianity and Western Culture class: over two millennia covered in three weeks! Which is a bit more ambitious than my upcoming speaking schedule, but I’m still happy to have three opportunities over the next five weeks to … More Three Upcoming Lindbergh Events
This week I reported on my adult Sunday School class about evangelicalism and checked in on how Lutherans follow Jesus, while a couple of student journalists at Bethel wrote about me and my new book… which was reviewed in Front Porch Republic and the Portland (ME) Press Herald. Elsewhere: • If you’re not already reading … More That Was The Week That Was
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
Apart from recording the first episode of my favorite podcast since January 2019, I focused my time this week on teaching and (book) writing. Elsewhere: • I’m grateful to Joey Cochran for giving me a week off from The Anxious Bench, with a guest post on the history of how Christians have used the word “heretic.” • … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I encouraged fellow scholars to “think in public,” reflected on why trust is so important to Christian higher education, and recorded a new podcast on the experience of student-athletes. Elsewhere… • I happened to be flying through Charlotte, North Carolina last week, and saw a big ad for the Billy Graham Library in … More That Was The Week That Was
It’s library week on Past & Presence, our department’s new webisode series: Not only do I host episode 3 from locations in the Bethel University Library, but we talk to two of our librarians. One of them is a former student in our department, as is our interview subject of the week: Kevin McGrew, director of … More Past and Presence: Secondary and Tertiary Sources
Here… • Who are the most significant Americans of all time? (Is that even a useful question to ask? If so, how do we answer it?) • So many people to thank who helped shape our new book on Pietism and higher ed… Just over three weeks till it hits book shelves! (And it’s already got … More That Was The Week That Was
When I first started teaching Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture class, we went all the way from ancient Athens through the 20th century. We’ve since decided that that might be two or three too many centuries for one semester, but I do miss the week where we read through three 19th century Christian responses to … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: The Love of Libraries
Here… • Medieval wisdom that could have saved some moderns. • I closed my series on the recent history of college closures. • Then three brief follow-ups on earlier posts about higher education: what professors do with their time, the role of competitive sports in colleges, and questioning the applicability of “return on investment” to … More That Was The Week That Was
When I first started teaching Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture class, we went all the way from ancient Athens through the 20th century. We’ve since decided that that might be two or three too many centuries for one semester, but I do miss the week where we read through three 19th century Christian responses to … More The Love of Libraries
The Pietist Schoolman 