No, it’s not unexpected that the capital of Germany would have commemorative sites related to World War I. But the ways that the memory of that war show up in Berlin can catch you off guard, as I discovered on my recent tour. Amazingly, I’d never been to Berlin, so we started by orienting ourselves … More Unexpected Sites of WWI Remembrance: Berlin
This week I reconsidered the foreign policy of America’s first born-again president and suggested how Christians can realize just how big the Christian world is. Elsewhere: • Filed under the nothing-new-under-the-sun category… ongoing conservative attempts to ban critical race theory sounded to one historian of education a lot like the conservative agenda of the 1920s. (Or … More That Was The Week That Was
It’s been a few months since the last time we shared an episode of our sports podcast, The 252. So I was glad when Chris Moore stuck his head in my office earlier this week and asked if we could record a “micropod” about the latest iterations in the debate over sports, protest, and the … More Wednesday’s Podcast: The National Anthem
This week I remembered the educational — and political — legacy of GW Carlson, who died five years ago this month, and reviewed the first presidential memoir from Barack Obama. Elsewhere: • As always, the Super Bowl prompts some interesting religion reporting: Bob Smietana’s profile of Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid explained how the … More That Was The Week That Was
I’m about as likely to read the Book of Ezekiel as the Book of Revelation, and for some of the same reasons. Both are strange, apocalyptic texts full of baffling, sometimes terrifying imagery. Both require much greater understanding of their original context than I possess. Both have hard words to speak to listeners who are … More The With-God Life: “I am for you”
This week I broke my blogging silence here to blog about silence. And over at The Anxious Bench, I explained what the history of “home missions” has to do with my current book project. Elsewhere… • To understand the stark difference in character between the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and the one from 2016, read … More That Was The Week That Was
Is evangelical opposition to Donald Trump simply evidence of elitism? That was the argument of Matthew Schmitz, who didn’t so much counter Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s critique of Trump as dismiss Galli and his CT colleagues as elite evangelicals — and therefore, by Schmitz’s definition, not really evangelical at all: …evangelical leaders who have come … More The Problems and Possibilities of Evangelical Populism
“What are we history professors for?” That’s the existential question asked by Rachel Wheeler in the current issue of Perspectives, the monthly magazine of the American Historical Association. Wheeler urged fellow Americanists, at least, to respond to white nationalism by offering students a different kind of national story. But she acknowledged that this was not … More Is Teaching Like Preaching?
Having recommended Jared Burkholder’s recently revived The Hermeneutic Circle last week, let me puff one more new-old blog: Jay Phelan’s Additional Markings. Formerly president and dean of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Jay retired from a faculty position there and settled here in Minnesota, where he is currently serving as a scholar in residence at First Covenant … More Welcome Back to the Blogosphere, Jay Phelan
Thanks to Rev. Johnny Agurkis for inviting me to preach yesterday at Cape Cod Covenant Church. Given some recent conversations in our denomination and the fact that it was the Sunday before Independence Day, the topic was an easy choice. I’m checking off a lot of firsts during my month-long visit to the East Coast. … More Freedom in Christ (Galatians 5)
The Pietist Schoolman 