Tag: U.S. History

Hall, Arthur Ashe

Who Are the Most Significant Americans in History? (part 2)

December 9, 2014

In part one of their response to Smithsonian Magazine’s attempt to list “The 100 Most Significant American of All Time,” historians Miles Mullin, John Fea, Devin Manzullo-Thomas, and Jonathan Den Hartog evaluated the methodology of the project. Today, they pick apart the actual list itself… Which name were you most pleasantly surprised to see? (i.e., someone who might not … More Who Are the Most Significant Americans in History? (part 2)

Who Are the Most Significant Americans in History? (part 1)

December 8, 2014

I’ve parlayed my graduate training in diplomatic/international and European history into a license to teach on everything from human rights to church history and to write on… well, pretty much anything I want. (Thanks, WordPress!) But I retain enough self-awareness to know that I am no U.S. historian. So when I saw that Smithsonian Magazine had put out a … More Who Are the Most Significant Americans in History? (part 1)

MLK's April 1963 mugshot

Birmingham Revolution: Not Everyone’s a Prophet

August 15, 2014

Among the many people to whom I recommended Ed Gilbreath’s new book this summer were colleagues and students in Bethel University’s Christianity and Western Culture (CWC) course. While that course effectively ends its narrative around 1800 (I go as far as the British parliament abolishing the slave trade in 1807) and we barely touch on U.S. history, the … More Birmingham Revolution: Not Everyone’s a Prophet

Covenant pastors in 1889

Best of The Pietist Schoolman: What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?

August 13, 2014

From this past June: my three-part attempt to explain my little-known, fast-growing denomination, and why it’s so distinctive. This past June I flew from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Chicago, where I represented my congregation at Gather ’14, the annual meeting of our denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. “What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?” at least one person just asked. … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?

Google Ngram of a search for "World War I" and similar phrases in English, from 1920 to 2008

Tracking the Popularity of WWI in Books and Dissertations

August 11, 2014

Coming into this centenary year for World War I, there’s been a predictable resurgence of books written about that conflict. Which got me wondering how the war has ebbed and flowed over time as a subject for historians and other writers. I came up with two highly imperfect ways to satisfy this curiosity: I was challenged earlier this summer … More Tracking the Popularity of WWI in Books and Dissertations

That Was The Week That Was

July 19, 2014

Here… • Is it a “farce” that Christian colleges are accredited by the federal government? Does faith make academic freedom impossible? Have at it, all sorts of terrific Christian scholars who don’t write for this blog! • Ed Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution got me thinking about the time that Martin Luther King, Jr. came closest to speaking at what’s now Bethel … More That Was The Week That Was

Representatives of new ECC churches at the denomination's 2014 annual meeting

What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? “An Immigrant Church”

July 8, 2014

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”

Chris and Richard Gehrz, May 2014

Happy Fathers’ Day

June 15, 2014

For many, it seemed like a bit of trickery, a joke, a send-up for Will Rogers or Groucho Marx. So says religious studies scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt of Father’s Day, adding that while such an event “seemed all but inevitable” when Mother’s Day quickly became a sensation, “many people found it laughable.” A 1914 letter to the New York … More Happy Fathers’ Day