As the week nears an end, we come to the final two spots in my (and my Modern Europe class’s) ranking of the world’s best national anthems. If you’re new to the series, you might go back to the beginning and read on to learn the methodology employed and the anthems that have already been … More The Best National Anthems: The US of A
Some highlights from the past week at this and other blogs and publications. Here We paid tribute to one of my favorite hometown bands as they returned to putting out albums after a prolonged absence. Not a huge fan of the new CD, though the documentary mini-features (including an early, early video of a sound … More That Was the Week That Was
September 12, 1977 – My brother is born While this indirectly leads (through a combination of rough-housing and my lack of coordination) to my visiting the emergency room at least half a dozen times in our shared childhood, it’s still worth celebrating. Happy Birthday, Jon! September 13, 1916 – Mary the elephant is executed See, … More This Week in History
9/6/11 – Fascinating story in the Detroit Free Press about Covert Township, MI, which has had racially integrated schools since African-American settlers first arrived, the year after the end of the Civil War. (H/T to my friend Mark Totten.) Not nearly as remarkable, but kind of fun: we stopped in Covert during our vacation in … More Ahead of Its Time
Labor Day Edition September 5, 1882 – New York City hosts America’s first Labor Day parade Here’s how the New York Times began its report on the proceedings: The parade of the working men yesterday, although not so large as its organizers had predicted, was conducted in an orderly and pleasant manner. Those who rode … More This Week in History
In the first post in this series, I introduced the notion of a “usable past” and how it has strongly influenced the expanding conversation about Christian higher education in the last 30-40 years. Seeking models for this kind of higher learning that might guide Christian colleges in a secular (or post-secular) age, many writing on … More Pietist Denominations and Their Colleges
Our last post in this series previewing The Pietist Impulse in Christianity took us across the Atlantic Ocean, as we accompanied Scandinavian Pietists to their new homes in the New World and watched them set up new churches and colleges. Today, in part six of the series, we stay in North America, where (as Roger … More The Pietist Impulse: Americans (and a Canadian)
Earlier this summer, Michael Lind suggested that Barack Obama ought to run for the presidency in 2012 — as a Republican. His (satirical) argument was that Obama’s domestic (if not foreign) policies hearken back to the golden years of liberal-moderate Republicanism (think Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller), a time when being fiscally conservative (but not … More “Saint Mark”: An Appreciation of Mark Hatfield
My family just got back from traveling to Michigan, where we attended a family wedding and had the chance to catch up with some good friends of mine from grad school. As a gadabout academic who can spend an hour of his summer holiday researching and writing about the following topic, this kind of diversion … More Why Are There No Holidays in August?
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Thursday, January 17, 2013 – Versailles HOLLYWOOD FOR $1200: Which American president was the subject of the 1944 film, nominated for ten Oscars, that … More “The Right Kind of Peace”
The Pietist Schoolman 