The charms of Twitter wear thin quickly, but here’s one good use for that medium: asking your friendly neighborhood historian about one of their favorite topics. @cgehrz did the British use the term "Western Front" for the Western Front during #WW1 or did that develop later? — Joshua House (@wanderingyankee) March 2, 2017 Great question, … More When Did the Western Front Become “The Western Front”?
Next month is a big one for Americans with an interest in World War I, since it marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. belatedly joining that war. Here in St. Paul, for example, I’ll be taking a group of Bethel students to the April 8th opening of WW1 America, a major new exhibit from the … More Commemorating Catastrophe: Jay Winter on Remembering WWI
I’d be thrilled to have any chance to write for Christian History Magazine, a venerable publication that has been teaching ordinary Christians about their history since 1982. But I’m especially honored that I got to contribute an article on Christians and National Socialism to an issue dedicated to one of my favorite topics: the Christian experience of … More Christians, National Socialism, and the World Wars
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”
It’s been about three weeks since last I blogged here at The Pietist Schoolman. Anything been happening? If you didn’t know, I spent most of January in Britain, Belgium, France, and Germany, where my friend Sam Mulberry and I were leading a travel course on the history of World War I. I’m sure I’ll have more to share … More Thinking about the American Present via the European Past
LONDON – Greetings from my favorite city in the world, where I’ll be spending the first eight days of a three-week travel course on the history of World War I. Joined by my friend and colleague Sam Mulberry and his wife, Anne-Britt, we’re taking twenty students from Bethel University on this, our third iteration of the WWI … More How to Follow Our 2017 WWI Trip in Europe
Here… • I surveyed the religious history of the modern Olympic Games for my weekly Anxious Bench post… also reflecting briefly on the Olympics as religion (a theme I developed a bit more when invited to rewrite that post for The Gospel Coalition). • After a year of enormous division, could the games help bring Americans together? • And for no … More That Was The Week That Was
As I write this post, the sun is setting over the River Somme in northern France. One hundred years ago today, in the middle of World War I, nightfall hid the grisly sight of nearly 20,000 dead British and Commonwealth soldiers. One of them was a twenty-year old officer named John Sherwin Engall, who had written to his parents … More The Somme at 100
Come back in a couple days for an exciting announcement about a new blogging gig of mine… but first, here’s some of what was blogged about last week. Here… • How should the Church respond to Donald Trump? By “telling it like it is.” • Are historians and other humanists leaning too heavily on “utilitarian” apologetics? Yes (not that I’m going to stop trying … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • We finished season 2 of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast with a listener feedback session that revisited the theme of Christian unity and asked after the political inclinations of Pietists. • Meanwhile, it was four posts in four days on Christian higher education: quantifying the state of the humanities in evangelical colleges; what that says about evangelicalism; rethinking … More That Was The Week That Was
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