“How do you spend time with God?” That’s the question my brother-in-law asked me tonight. He didn’t mean to ask me — at least, not me in particular. Dan is a Lutheran pastor in rural Iowa. Like clergy of all denominations and all religions, he’s trying to figure out how to serve a congregation that … More “How do you spend time with God?”
If you didn’t notice it over the weekend, do yourself a favor and read John Fea’s heartfelt “Confessions of a Lonely Christian Historian.” It begins: I think all of us who pursue a life of the mind are, to some degree, lonely people. We live in the world of ideas. We spend a lot of … More The Loneliness (and Solitude) of a Christian Historian
So if Pietism is an ethos or spirit, where can you see it today in Christianity? Who or what exemplifies the instincts we talked about last time? On today’s episode, Mark, Sam, and I share some of our experiences with Pietism in the Evangelical Covenant Church and at Bethel University (two Christian institutions that explicitly claim … More Thursday’s Podcast: Pietists Today
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
Just two days after announcing via his Twitter feed that he had stage 4 cancer, Dallas Willard died yesterday. At the end of this post, I’ll offer my own small contribution to the collection of tributes that is already proliferating, but first a few words from people who knew him well: • Richard Foster wrote … More RIP Dallas Willard (1935-2013)
3/26/13 – It’s Sweet Sixteen time in the Best Christian Books of All Time tournament. Among other compelling match-ups… Two Doctors of the Church (Augustine vs. Aquinas), two famously initialed Britons (C.S. Lewis vs. G.K. Chesterton), and two living gurus of spiritual formation (Dallas Willard vs. Richard Foster). Plus Dietrich Bonhoeffer vs. himself! Cast your … More Update: Best Christian Books Tournament
Today we come to the end of a series that has looked at 20th century (neo)Anabaptist critiques of Pietism, starting with Harold Bender‘s influential “Anabaptist Vision” speech and Robert Friedmann‘s famously anti-Pietist “thesis.” After a pause to sum up that critique and look at its continuing influence, we examined how revisionist and post-revisionist Anabaptist historians … More What Pietists Can Learn from the Anabaptist Vision
The Pietist Schoolman 