After several months of work, I’m proud to announce the debut of our department’s new webisode series: Past & Presence! My friend Sam Mulberry and I have been filming material for Past & Presence since last summer — and will continue to do so even this afternoon. (Episodes will keep coming all the way through the end of our semester.) In … More The Debut of Our Department’s New Webisode Series!
The blog is going to be quiet for much of the rest of the month, as I’ll be in Europe for three weeks teaching a Bethel University travel course on the history of World War I. It’s my second time teaching this course abroad, and if it’s anything like the first trip, it’ll be memorable. (And this … More How to Follow Our Trip in Europe
Precisely because of the tradition’s emphasis on the personal experience of conversion, the subject of our previous post, Pietism is sometimes critiqued for promoting religious individualism (cf. Karl Barth). However, there’s scarcely any chapter in our book that doesn’t emphasize the importance of community for the Pietist vision of Christian higher education. For example, while philosopher David Williams … More Pietist Vision Previews: The Importance of Community
It’s time for our annual holiday tradition: picking through some prominent lists of the best books of the past year to suggest potential gifts for the history buff in your life. This year we’ll cull suggestions from the New York Times (NYT), the Guardian (G), the Washington Post (WP), and Christianity Today (CT). Jessie Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England “…conjures … More The Best History Books of 2014?
Here… • Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the still-remarkable fall of the Berlin Wall. • Further thoughts on Christian colleges and racial-ethnic diversity: do CCCU schools mirror the populations of the metro areas they inhabit? • A funeral inspired me to rethink how history provides a kind of Christian testimony to those who study it. • … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • I started the week by reflecting on the idea that education might serve primarily to teach us how to pray. So it seemed appropriate that I ended the week by leading my European history students in praying for our enemies, having just read a book about late 19th century terrorism. • A World War I memorial was … More That Was The Week That Was
Last Friday I was honored to take part in a panel discussion on Christian historians and social media at the biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History. Session organizer Jonathan Den Hartog (University of Northwestern – St. Paul) has already published his opening remarks at Historical Conversations, and my co-panelist John Fea (Messiah C0llege) … More Christian Historians and Social Media: My CFH Remarks on Blogging
With a packed program, timely topic, and spectactular setting, the 2014 biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History — on “Christian Historians & Their Publics” — was bound to be a good one, even better than CFH 2012. If anything, it exceeded expectations. Wenham, MA was nice, but I think this is where God meant … More CFH 2014: Teaching and Public Memory
Later today I’ll be flying to southern California to join fellow members of the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) at its biennial meeting, held this year on the lovely campus of Pepperdine University. Now, I’d be excited simply to exchange the weather of St. Paul, MN for that of Malibu, CA for a couple days, … More Headed to the Conference on Faith and History!
Here… • Did I mention that you can preorder our forthcoming book on Pietism and Christian higher education? Never too early for Christmas shopping, right? What? It comes out January 5th?… Yeah, I meant Christmas 2015 shopping. • I really do work during the summer, all evidence of goofing off to the contrary. • And while … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 