Before the final bell rings on National Teacher Appreciation Week, let me rerun the part of a May 2013 post in which I talked about the one teacher who had the greatest impact on my life: Maureen Conway of Mounds Park Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not surprisingly, I’m far from the only person who feels … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Ms. Conway
Here… • I’m lousy at predicting which blog posts will generate the most interest. But I had an inkling that one titled “When I’m a ‘Functional Atheist’” would grab attention… • How did you spend your “Loyalty Day“? • Over nine million soldiers died in World War I. Why do some historians think that their sacrifice … More That Was The Week That Was
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”
4/12/14 – Please do yourself a favor and visit Autobiography, the new podcast/blog from my good friend and frequent collaborator Sam Mulberry. I was honored to be Sam’s first interview, but he’s now on to episode four and going strong. The idea here is straightforward, and powerful: inspired by something Frederick Buechner once wrote, Sam chats … More New from Sam Mulberry: The Autobiography Podcast!
One of the blessings of taking a two-week break from blogging myself is that it gave me time to catch up on some other blogs. One is Christ & University, a newer group blog that I’d particularly recommend to those who come to The Pietist Schoolman for reflections on the intersection of Christianity and education. Featuring a roster of scholars from … More Check Out the Christ and University Blog
Probably no one has done more to encourage me to think about my vocation to serve those beyond the academy than John Fea of Messiah College. Not just on his blog, but in his frequent speaking engagements and a continuing series of “Virtual Office Hours” posted on YouTube, John models how historians can balance public … More John Fea on Historians as Public Scholars
In this turbulent year, when the most pessimistic corners of my mind conjure scenarios in which schools like my employer go under, I’ve occasionally imagined what it would look like to start a new Christian liberal arts college from scratch. For some reason, my imagination keeps turning to the end of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a … More Home-Colleging?
It was the fall of 1993, and I was a freshman at the College of William and Mary. One night I answered a knock at our dorm room door to find a group of three very attractive women, looking through their facebook (note to readers younger than 30: I mean that they were holding a booklet … More What Do Movies Get Right and Wrong about Teaching?
Generally speaking, academic historians and public historians approach the past from two different vantage points. For historians, a productive career has traditionally revolved around producing monographs and engaging with other professional historians on the fine points of interpretation, theory, and effective arguments. Public historians, on the other hand, do their work with a different audience … More Historical Schizophrenia: Academic and Public History
This morning I’ll continue my preview of the conclusion to our forthcoming book, The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons, with a section considering how Pietists might respond to one popular “disruptive innovation” within higher ed. It resolves to the claim that gives the conclusion its title… Decision makers will need … More The Pietist University in the 21st Century (part 2)
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