Yesterday our department met with some of our web services and marketing folks to talk about planned updates to our website and the materials we give to prospective students. I was glad to hear that a key theme of the update will be sharing stories of what our alumni have done with their history degrees. While … More Majoring in History, Thriving in Business
From January… Another metaphor for education, this one occurring to me in the midst of teaching my course on the international history of World War II. In its final episode, “A World Without War,” Ken Burns’ The War arrives at the Allied liberation of concentration camps in the Third Reich. This chapter is introduced by an … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: The Purpose of the Liberal Arts is Purpose
Here… • From France (soft power of, as developed through funding of language immersion schools)… • …to Germany (stereotypes in, as rooted in Pietist frugality)… • …to the Ukraine (starvation of, by Stalin and Hitler), The Pietist Schoolman is your source for all things European! • Then, for variety’s sake, some advice for Christian parents looking to … More That Was The Week That Was
One more attempt to explain the inexplicable value of the liberal arts, and especially of the humanities, through metaphor. This one came to me last Tuesday and Wednesday, as I taught my World War II students about the end of the war in Europe. Like all such metaphors, it’s meant for musing. I almost hope … More The Purpose of the Liberal Arts is Purpose
1/22/14 – The newest channel over at Patheos is Mission:Work, “a place where conversation happens about work and faith.” Guided by senior editor Chris Armstrong, it encompasses multiple blogs offering Christian reflections on work and workplaces, calling, economics, and other topics that evangelicals — in my experience — have tended to neglect. Check it out!
You generally see the birthdate for the great Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus given as October 27, 1466, but both the day and year are a bit uncertain. So since I don’t blog on Sundays, I’ll take advantage of the confusion and celebrate the second date suggested, October 28th. To be honest, I’d need a lot … More Erasmus: The Christian Scholar’s Scholar
Well, my vow not to parse any more college rankings lasted about five weeks. Right up until… wait for it… Now. Last week the New York Times highlighted a website called PayScale.com, which released its annual ranking of just over a thousand American colleges and universities. Here’s the hook: PayScale doesn’t look at reputation (U.S. News) … More Well-Paid (or Meaningful) Work as a Measure of Higher Education
My colleague Sam Mulberry and I are about halfway through the first online version of one of Bethel’s signature courses: GES130 Christianity and Western Culture. (Look for some reflections on that experience in August.) We’ve reconfigured what had been a lecture-discussion course, building it instead around documentary films, virtual museums, and daily writing assignments. We’re … More Happy Birthday, John Calvin
Among my favorite posts from this past February was this second entry in my — not yet complete — series on “The Vocation of a Christian Historian,” asking whether historians ought to think of what they do as a profession, vocation, or both. As I mentioned last week, as part of Bethel’s faculty promotion process … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Profession vs. Calling
Perhaps no book has done more to make me think anew about my vocation as a Christian historian than Confessing History (Univ. of Notre Dame Press). So as I sought points of entry for discussing that topic in my promotion essay, I took some inspiration from a piece in the January/February 2012 issue of Books … More The Vocation of a Christian Historian: Seeking and Telling Truth
The Pietist Schoolman 