Tag: U.S. History

Soda fountain in the Greatest Generation exhibit at the MN History Center

5 Things I’ve Learned about Teaching History to 5-Year Olds

August 4, 2015

While my job is to teach people about history, my vocation as a parent has made me realize that I know next to nothing about how to teach young children about history. But with our five-year old twins entering kindergarten this fall, I decided to spend this summer trying to understand how children might best learn about the past. Please take the … More 5 Things I’ve Learned about Teaching History to 5-Year Olds

Children marching in a 4th of July parade

Patriotism, Love, and Grace: An Independence Day Meditation

July 3, 2015

This 4th of July weekend I’m feeling more patriotic than I have in years, thanks to two speeches by Pres. Obama. First, his speech this past March at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Obama remembered the civil right activists who fifty years earlier had been brutally attacked during their peaceful march to Montgomery: As … More Patriotism, Love, and Grace: An Independence Day Meditation

U.S. Supreme Court building

A Day of Listening: Andrew Sullivan on Marriage

June 26, 2015

Yesterday morning I had the chance to talk to a group of pastors pursuing their D.Min. degrees. Invited to share a parting comment, I encouraged them to cultivate what Krista Tippett has called a “ministry of listening.” I suggested that that was particularly true for us white, straight, middle-class men in America who are accustomed to having our … More A Day of Listening: Andrew Sullivan on Marriage

Swedish Baptists in 1902

The Forgotten Baptists

June 18, 2015

Even for historians as gifted as Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins, three hundred pages is not nearly enough to do justice to the full diversity of Baptists in America, the title of their new book from Oxford University Press. So I’m not surprised that they pay little attention to the rather pietistic Baptists I know best. Founded as the … More The Forgotten Baptists

“The Dark World Is Not Far From Us”: A WWII Atrocity

June 11, 2015

If there are better histories of World War II being written than the books in Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, I haven’t read them. A former reporter and editor for the Washington Post, Atkinson conceived the massive project of writing the history of how the British and Americans fought their way back to Europe. Having read the Pulitzer-winning first book … More “The Dark World Is Not Far From Us”: A WWII Atrocity