The word veteran derives from a Latin term for “old,” but on this particular Veterans Day, I can only think of youth. Of holiday meals and summer picnics in childhood, when the Gehrzes would gather and I’d get to see my cousins from Wisconsin for a few hours. And of one of them in particular, six years younger than me, … More Veterans Day (For Mike)
This past April the Baptist ethicist and theologian Glen Stassen died at age 78. Today I’m happy to share a tribute to Stassen written by my friend G.W. Carlson, professor emeritus of history and political science at Bethel University (where he still teaches a course on Christian Non-Violence). To know God as Son is to … More Glen Stassen: Living the Sermon on the Mount (G.W. Carlson)
Here… • As my series on Ed Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution wrapped up, I concluded that “For the vast majority of us… the call is not to speak as a prophet, but to listen for such voices, to bend our ears to hear what [Ken] Wytsma calls ‘the God-given devices for bending society back when it veers from where it should be.’” • … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? Answer #2: “an immigrant church,” both rooted in Swedish-American history and being reshaped into a truly multiethnic body. • I started a new series on the newest book from ECC communications director Edward Gilbreath, about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” …There and Everywhere • We’re starting … More That Was The Week That Was
The first month of summer break is coming to an end, so it seems like a good time to check in on the progress of the digital history project that I’m working on with my student Fletcher Warren: We’re researching how the people of Bethel University have experienced a century of warfare going back to 1914, the year … More “Preargument Scholarship”: Blogging Our Digital History Project
To this point in my career as a history professor, at least a couple of goals have eluded me: first, to engage in collaborative research and writing with a gifted undergraduate; second, to get some firsthand experience learning how digital tools (beyond WordPress, that is) can enrich the practice of history. I’m happy to announce that, thanks … More My Summer Plans? A Digital History of a Christian College in Wartime
Unsurprisingly, the blogosphere yesterday was replete with reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr. One particular genre of King tributes stood out: those that sought to recover what the authors claimed was a lost, neglected, or “whitewashed” facet of one of the few Americans to whom virtually all partisans appeal. One sub-genre: Christian attempts to remind … More Recovering MLK, the Christian Prophet
While taking notes earlier this month at the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial in Rochester, MN, I couldn’t help but overhear the following from another (rather loud) visitor: Kids should come here and read all this stuff because they don’t teach [it] in school. Yes, and no. (Well, more like: yes, and NO!) Yes: there is … More Commemorating WWII: The Memorial as a Work of Public History
My recent tour of about twenty memorials in southern Minnesota (plus one in western Wisconsin) was meant to help immerse me in the era of World War II, which I’ll be teaching next January at Bethel University. But more often than not, what I saw were relics of the 1990s or 2000s, not the 1940s … More Commemorating WWII: Back to the Future
Aside from posts on John Le Carré and the history of college closures, it was a mostly quiet week here at The Pietist Schoolman. But other writers more than picked up my slack: • Two more essays on Le Carré: Emma Hogan analyzed the spy novelist’s writing style; Dwight Garner profiled him for the New … More That Was The Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 