This week: a Bethel colleague and I launched a new podcast meant to help Christians thinking about college, and I recorded an hour-long conversation about Ukraine with two other Bethel colleagues. Elsewhere: • Here’s a historical analogy I didn’t muse about in our Ukraine podcast: is Volodymyr Zelensky the 21st century version of Lajos Kossuth? • I … More That Was The Week That Was
A very Christmasy first week of December for me, as I extended a special Christmas offer for my Lindbergh bio — then received the gift of a great review! — and joined with Anxious Bench colleagues to suggest some other gifts for history buffs. Elsewhere: • If you needed any more reason to order a copy of … More That Was The Week That Was
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
This week I interviewed the host of a new podcast on animal rights, and recorded a new episode of our podcast on sports history. Elsewhere: • Every revelation about church sexual abuse is disturbing. But this morning’s was especially hard to read, as it involved the founder of L’Arche, Jean Vanier. • The executive committee … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • We concluded the #Reformation500-themed third season of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast. • My friend Jason Barnhart burst onto the blogging scene. • And I started the week with an Advent devotional on grief and tenderness. (If you’ve missed this series, I’m posting one every Sunday this season.) …There and Everywhere • Thanks to the … More That Was The Week That Was
I’ve never had a blog post as widely read as my response to the Nashville Statement. Which just makes me wish that I’d said a couple things more clearly than I did. So as a last word on a document that already seems to be fading from the headlines, let me offer two postscripts: I dislike … More Final Thoughts on the Nashville Statement
Back in March, when Donald Trump was nothing more than the surprise leader in the Republican primaries, the fact that he was getting even 40% of the self-identified “evangelical” vote had already led Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore to declare that religious term “almost meaningless this year.” Even worse, “in many ways the word itself … More Done with “Evangelical”? Maybe You Should Try…
In the wake of the recent Southern Baptist debate about religious freedom for Muslims — and given the larger conversation about the meaning of religious freedom in an increasingly post-Christian society — I thought I’d use this week’s Anxious Bench post to revisit something I wrote about last year: how Baptists responded to the 1960s Supreme Court rulings against … More Religious Freedom: The Contested Core of Baptist Identity
There are few terms more debated than “evangelical,” and never more so than during this election cycle, when Donald Trump’s ability to attract a significant share of self-identified evangelicals has caused enormous consternation among evangelical leaders and intellectuals. I doubt that last night’s primary results will do much to change that dynamic. Florida senator Marco … More Done with “Evangelical”? Maybe You Should Try “Pietist”
Here… • Devin Manzullo-Thomas returned with a second CCCU-inspired post on the relationship between Anabaptists and Evangelicals, this one featuring former Eastern Mennonite and CCCU president Myron Augsburger. (Thanks to both Real Clear Religion and Mennonite World Review for reposting this one!) • Thanks in part to some Anabaptist studies of my own, I felt led to wrestle aloud … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 