Here… • I know Americans love to rank things, but maybe not preaching, okay? • Another kind of ranking dispute got me thinking about how we decide what makes a college or university Christian. …There and Everywhere • I’ll have more to say about it on Tuesday at the Bench, but if you haven’t seen it … More That Was The Week That Was
So how can Christians and churches protect themselves from the spiritual dangers that I wrote about earlier this week? You won’t be surprised to learn that I think it’s got to start with looking to the past. But if it’s too self-serving for me to say that, then take it from a non-historian: The inner lives of many have been … More Why Churches Like Mine Need to Recover an Immigrant Memory
For the first half of my fall sabbatical in Virginia, my primary goal is to finish the manuscript for the book I’m writing with Mark Pattie: Hope for Better Times: Pietism and the Future of Christianity, which should come out from InterVarsity Press next year. Mark is primarily responsible for writing the chapter on how Pietists read the … More “We read Scripture to do God’s Word”
If you missed it in my Saturday wrap-up, Leah Libresco’s analysis of the unrelenting cheeriness of contemporary Christian music (CCM) is well-deserving of your attention. Looking through the last five years’ worth songs to wind up Billboard’s year-end Christian Top 50 charts, she found striking lyrical imbalance: There were 2.5 times as many mentions of “grace” as “sin” in … More Three of My Favorite Un-Cheery Christian Songs
Next to the works of Lina Sandell, probably no hymn is more beloved among us pietistic Swedish-Americans than “Thanks to God for My Redeemer.” The original lyrics by A.L. Storm (“Tack, O Gud”) were translated by one Covenant pastor, Carl Backstrom, and set to a tune by another, J.A. Hultman. I can’t imagine a more fitting source for … More Tack O Gud (Thanks to God)
Growing up, my favorite two pages in any book were Hymns 381-382 in The Covenant Hymnal (1973): “Day by Day and with Each Passing Moment” and “Children of the Heavenly Father,” both originally written in Swedish by the great Lina Sandell. If the stale old joke is actually true and Swedish is the language of heaven, then surely the … More Children of the Heavenly Father
I suspect that even before they found this blog or the books I’ve edited, most of my readers were already familiar with the German Pietists who started the movement known as Pietism: Philipp Spener, August Francke, Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, perhaps even Johanna Petersen, Gottfried Arnold, Alexander Mack, and other Radical Pietists. But if we consider why a Pietist ethos is … More The Swedish Pietists: A New Book from Mark Safstrom
Here… • “Here I stand, I can do no other… That’s how Playmobil designed me!” • Remembering a dear friend reminded me why I love the church. • The American freshman of 2014: less religious, more likely to go to grad school, but otherwise a lot like her counterparts of 2004, 1994, 1984, and 1974. • This … More That Was The Week That Was
In my day job as a history professor, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past week investigating the experience of immigrants during World War I. And since most of the faculty and students at Bethel in 1917-18 were either born in Sweden themselves or the children or grandchildren of such immigrants, I’ve also been thinking about my own … More What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? “An Immigrant Church”
As I’ve blogged about previously, making the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar necessitated some odd choices throughout Europe, but none odder than what my ancestral people — generally noted for their commitment to reason and common sense — tried to pull off early in the 18th century. I’ll let a physicist explain: … More February 30, 1712
The Pietist Schoolman 