So how can Christians and churches protect themselves from the spiritual dangers that I wrote about earlier this week? You won’t be surprised to learn that I think it’s got to start with looking to the past. But if it’s too self-serving for me to say that, then take it from a non-historian: The inner lives of many have been … More Why Churches Like Mine Need to Recover an Immigrant Memory
Part two of my attempt to curate some of what I read while traveling this month. Yesterday I focused on Christianity; today, articles and blog posts about history and education. • Now that we’re in the year 2017, the floodgates have opened on pieces about the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Among many others writing … More That Was The Month That Was: History and Education
All next month I’ll be teaching an adult Sunday School class at Salem Covenant Church (New Brighton, MN) on a favorite topic of mine: “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century.” It’ll be offered twice each Sunday, at 9:45am and 11:00am in Salem’s Fellowship Hall. Here’s the summary blurb: This spring will mark … More My New Adult Sunday School Class: “The Church and the Wars of the 20th Century”
The third of the three short meditations I contributed to a Hanging of the Greens service last month. Merry Christmas to you all! It was December 1863, and America’s bloody Civil War had entered its third winter. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was grieving: two years before, his wife had died in a fire; less … More The Ringing of Bells: A Christmas Meditation
Over the weekend I continued my Anxious Bench series on the challenges of writing biographies by reflecting on the problem of historical evidence. While the biographer whose book I’m currently reading seems to have enough evidence to narrate his subject’s entire life on a weekly (sometimes daily or even hourly) basis, I know that he actually is deploying … More When There’s Too Much Historical Evidence
‘Tis the season when we curate some of the histories and biographies showing up on Best Books of 2016 lists, just in case you’re struggling to come up with a gift for that history buff in your life. (Key: A – Amazon; G – Guardian; NYT – New York Times; PW – Publishers Weekly) Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: … More The Top Histories of 2016?
Earlier this week I started a three-part series at The Anxious Bench on the challenges of writing biographies. I’m writing these posts without any real knowledge of what biographers go through, having never written a book of that sort. But like many historians who have reached mid-career, I’m contemplating such a project, reading more examples of it than usual, and starting … More My New Series on Writing Biography
I’m getting off to a slow start today, having stayed up until the wee hours to watch the Chicago Cubs pull out a dramatic, extra innings victory over the Cleveland Indians in a memorable World Series Game 7 that featured a reserve catcher who’s almost as old as me hitting a home run in his … More “The Last Time the Cubs Won…”
Well, most of it. I was at the banquet for the Conference on Faith and History biennial meeting in Virginia Beach, VA and missed the first five minutes of Hamilton’s America tonight on PBS. Then after I burst into our hotel room and saw that Katie was watching, I just sat in rapturous joy for a few … More Why Yes, I Did Live-Tweet the Hamilton Documentary
In honor of the Hamilton documentary premiering tonight on PBS… Once more, with feeling: I’m not one for delaying gratification. But I somehow summoned the willpower to avoid buying the chart-topping cast recording of the acclaimed musical Hamilton until last month, when I knew that we would need listening material for our cross-country trip to Virginia. I was not disappointed. … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: On Hamilton and History
The Pietist Schoolman 