UPDATE (January 3, 2023): I’m afraid I’ve had to cancel this tour. I’ll be leading a private tour in 2024, but if you’re interested in what we’re considering for 2025 and 2026, click here. For most of the 2010s, my Bethel colleague Sam Mulberry and I had the joy of leading a biennial travel course … More Announcing Our June 2023 Tour of Germany
At first blush, it might seem like Anglicanism and Pietism would have little in common. “But in ways expected and not,” I wrote yesterday, “Randall Balmer’s essay resonated more strongly with me than any other preceding it” in the Following Jesus conversation. It’s not just that we’re both historians and Anglophiles with a fondness for … More Following Jesus: The Anglican Tradition
This week I wrote a commencement address for the Class of 2020 and recorded the final episode of our Pandemics and the Liberal Arts podcast. Elsewhere: • There’s been a lot of attention paid to the success Asian countries like Taiwan and South Korea have had in responding to COVID-19. But what about two African countries … More That Was The Week That Was
It took me the better part of a week to start writing an analysis of what happened last Monday in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU): when it was announced that Goshen and Eastern Mennonite had elected to withdraw from that group rather than stay on as affiliate members, a move that may … More Christian Higher Ed is Not the CCCU
Here… • Because a blog just isn’t enough new media for one person, I announced that The Pietist Schoolman Podcast will debut next month. (I recorded two of the initial episodes on Friday — excited to share them!) • Speaking of more media than any one person needs to produce… Our department’s webisode got a behind-the-scenes tour of … More That Was The Week That Was
Just a few of the more interesting history-related posts and articles that appeared during my month off from blogging: • Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook, and nine other explorers to know. • The Charlie Hebdo shootings have rocketed Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance — published in 1763 — to the top of French bestseller lists. (Lots of important … More That Was The Month That Was: History
For fundamentalist-leaning evangelicals, biblical inerrancy carries a ton of freight. It remains something of a shibboleth that 1) Provides a litmus test of orthodoxy, 2) verifies that one actually takes the Bible at face value, and 3) leads one to appropriate positions on issues ranging from origins to eschatology. With so much riding on this one … More Inerrancy and the “Lost World of Scripture”: An Interview with D. Brent Sandy
Thanks to Ken Stewart of Covenant College for taking the time to review our 2011 book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, in the new issue of Haddington House Journal! You’ll need to buy the issue to read the full review, since it’s not online. But in short, Stewart applauds the book on four counts: (I’ll … More New Review of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity
Three posts in one day… Can you tell that it’s Fall Break at Bethel University? After a couple of earlier posts centered on Protestantism, I’ll close my blogging for the day (?) with one focused on a seminal event in the history of Roman Catholicism: today marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the … More Reactions to the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II
On Monday one of my colleagues, joking about the growth of “Leadership Studies” programs, suggested that we should probably offer a “Followership Studies” minor. From his mouth to God’s ear. Or, at least, to David Brooks’… Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership … More David Brooks, Erasmus, and Luther Walk into a Bar…
The Pietist Schoolman 