This weekend I’ll be joining the other members of the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) for its biennial conference, held this year at Gordon College outside Boston. CFH is my favorite professional society, and I’m honored to be part of a Saturday morning panel on Pietism and Christian colleges and universities in the 20th … More A Preview of My CFH Talk on Pietism at Bethel
Few books have been as significant in my professional life as Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, edited (and about half-written) by the husband and wife team of Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, of Messiah College. I first encountered it in 2006, during a summer workshop at Bethel University led by the Jacobsens. … More Religion’s “Return” to Higher Education
While you hear much about Pietism here at Bethel University, most of what’s said comes from faculty and administrators. So it’s been interesting to encounter students exploring that tradition as well. Last spring I had the pleasure of talking about Pietism with Jesse Phenow (’14), a Communications Studies major, while he was taking a course … More A College Student Reflects on Pietism (Jesse Phenow)
Here • I love questions that assume the possibility of time travel existing… Which baseball game do you wish you could go back in time to watch? • One of the games I suggested featured a shellshocked World War I veteran… In related sports/WWI news, I continued my series on Minnesotan commemoration of that war … More That Was The Week That Was
Is “Pietist” (or “pietistic”) a useful term in the 21st century? Why or why not? What synonym works best as an alternative? All these questions came to mind late last week. A colleague rushing off to class stopped short at my office, stuck his head inside the door, and asked, “What’s another word for Pietist?” … More “What’s another word for Pietist?”
I’m very pleased to welcome this guest post from my colleague Christian Collins Winn: the text of his address yesterday morning in Bethel University‘s year-opening chapel service, in which he appealed to Bethel’s roots in Pietism to help us start a year-long conversation about what church historian Martin Marty has called “convicted civility.” Christian is … More Pietism and Civil Discourse (Christian Collins Winn)
In the current issue of my denomination’s magazine, The Covenant Companion, Jay Phelan reviews the newest book from historian Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. (Alas, the review isn’t available for download at the Companion site.) As summarized by Phelan, Bass stresses that … More Is “Christianity after Religion” a Kind of “Neo-Pietism”?
Today I’m pleased to present the first guest post in the thirteen-month history of this blog, by Jim Rohrer (PhD, U. Michigan), a professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. A longtime reader and commenter here at The Pietist Schoolman, Jim holds a master’s in sacred theology and leads senior worship services six times … More Pietism: Interdenominational, Nondenominational, or Anti-denominational? (Jim Rohrer)
In part because he wrapped up the Republican race so quickly, it’s almost been treated as a footnote that Mitt Romney will soon become the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to receive the presidential nomination of a major American political party. As the Washington Post noted in a late … More The Mormon Moment
For once, it was easy this week to know where to start my post-vacation ritual of sifting through stacks of new publications requiring some reading attention: with Roger Olson’s article in the Summer 2012 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, “Pietism and Postmodernism: Points of Congeniality.” A refined version of the second of two lectures he … More Roger Olson on Pietism and Postmodernism
The Pietist Schoolman 