Among the many people to whom I recommended Ed Gilbreath’s new book this summer were colleagues and students in Bethel University’s Christianity and Western Culture (CWC) course. While that course effectively ends its narrative around 1800 (I go as far as the British parliament abolishing the slave trade in 1807) and we barely touch on U.S. history, the … More Birmingham Revolution: Not Everyone’s a Prophet
Today’s “best of” post comes from late April. It came to mind because I’ll be spending today and tomorrow doing exactly the kind of work that puts me at risk of what Parker Palmer called “functional atheism… the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: When I’m a “Functional Atheist”
I’m as convinced a theist as you’re going to find. I’m a Christian who teaches at a Christian college and serves as chairperson of his church. I have a book coming out later this year on Christian higher education. This is the 434th post at this blog in the category “Christianity.” And yet I increasingly … More When I’m a “Functional Atheist”
Back after a break and feeling refreshed, it’s our week(end)ly sampler of interesting posts from around the blogosphere: Here… • I offered a sneak peek at the conclusion to our forthcoming book from InterVarsity Press: The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons. Look for a preview of the rest of the … More That Was The Week That Was
When I write about books on this blog, they’re usually academic or semi-academic works of history or theology. But for the end of the week, I thought I’d share a rather different kind of book that my wife and I are reading — both as parents and as teachers of a 4th grade Sunday School … More Spiritual Disciplines for Children
Here… • “Happy Reformation Day!” definitely is the wrong wish for anyone, but hopefully watching a music video of me singing about the life of Martin Luther made someone, somewhere giggle just a bit. • Two more videos to watch, only one of which featured me: the first two talks in our series previewing Whole … More That Was The Week That Was
You generally see the birthdate for the great Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus given as October 27, 1466, but both the day and year are a bit uncertain. So since I don’t blog on Sundays, I’ll take advantage of the confusion and celebrate the second date suggested, October 28th. To be honest, I’d need a lot … More Erasmus: The Christian Scholar’s Scholar
My colleague Christian Collins Winn has an article in the Spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care that should be of interest to many readers of this blog. In it he asks: What has “spirituality” to do with “social justice”? What has “prayer” to do with “action”? What has the … More Christian Collins Winn on Spirituality and Social Justice
Asking that God’s kingdom come and His will be done is a supremely political act, a revolutionary declaration of independence from the powers of this world. But for that reason (among others), the Lord’s Prayer is not a weapon to be wielded in the culture wars. To wit, the case of high school student Roy … More The Lord’s Prayer and the Culture Wars
Perhaps the only benefit of having spent this past weekend laid up sick in bed was that I had plenty of time in which to finally finish David Swartz’s outstanding Moral Minority, the definitive history of the vast array of individual, communities, organizations, and publications that constituted the “evangelical left” in the late 1960s and … More Prayer and Social Concern: Paul Rees and the Chicago Declaration
The Pietist Schoolman 