Here… • “Groaning” for the kingdom of God as a spiritual practice: Christian Collins Winn on Blumhardt Pietism and social justice. • Examining the waxing and waning popularity of America’s favorite patriotic hymns. • Almost a hundred years later, World War I is still adding to its death toll. • John Calvin doesn’t look a … More That Was The Week That Was
I took the picture above during my first tour of the former Ypres battlefield, a key point along the Western Front of World War I. Our tour guide Carl pulled up to a local farmer’s house, opened the garage, and here was a table full of shells, grenades, bullets, and fragments of such ordnance. When … More Iron Harvests: The Death Toll from World War I Continues to Grow
On the single day of July 1, 1916, over 19,000 British soldiers died along France’s Somme river, slaughtered in largely futile assaults on German defenses that had survived the week-long artillery bombardment preceding the attack. The battle raged on until mid-November, with over 75,000 more British soldiers dying and 300,000+ being wounded. British photographers on … More This Day in History: The First Day of the Somme
Here… • I enjoyed learning more about one Baptist hero (Will D. Campbell) from one of my Baptist heroes (G.W. Carlson). • Are the humanities actually in crisis? Some historical perspective on how many students major in history, philosophy, literature, and languages — and how many students take basic courses in those fields. • Just … More That Was The Week That Was
Some of what’s been happening around the blogosphere while I’ve been taking a break: • With his new book, Jamie Smith continues to develop his argument (from Desiring the Kingdom) that “Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound … More That Was The Week That Was
Back when I taught my history of World War I course on campus instead of gallivanting around the Western Front itself, I made extensive use of clips from The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, a documentary miniseries from PBS and the BBC. (It came out in 1996, but the website is … More Why the Middle Ages Could Have Saved Lives in WWI
With two exams to grade at work, it seems like a good moment to rerun some favorite posts from the first three months of 2013. We’ll start by stretching the “Best of The Pietist Schoolman” definition a bit and collate four posts I wrote for our department blog, at different points along the way in … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Teaching WWI in Europe
This past Monday I was privileged to give a talk to the chaplains corps of the Minnesota Army National Guard. Not only did it give me a chance to reach an audience well beyond the university (increasingly a goal of mine), but the suggested topic — military chaplains in World War I — let me … More Military Chaplains in World War I
In 1713 the newly-crowned king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm (Frederick William) I, visited the city of Halle and toured its pioneering educational and charitable institutions. The king’s tour guide was the institutions’ founder, the Pietist pastor August Hermann Francke. Their conversation soon turned to Friedrich Wilhelm’s central concern: the Prussian army. FW: What do you … More Francke and Friedrich Wilhelm: Can Pietists Serve “Two Kingdoms”?
Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is … More The Cross: A Good Friday Meditation on World War and Holocaust
The Pietist Schoolman 