That Was The Week That Was
July 13-19, 2025
This week I published the conclusion to my college guide for Christian families, shared a few ways that World War I affected the Upper Midwest, and played with fruit as a biblical metaphor. Elsewhere:
• To celebrate the completion of College for Christians, I’m offering a 50% discount on paid subscriptions through the end of August. For $25 for the first year, you get access to all new posts and my Substack archive — which includes every chapter in the college guide.
• I somehow missed that historian
is on Substack. Her latest post critiques our “relentless search for purpose.”• I’ve only spent a little time in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area, but it was enough to understand why one Wheaton College professor and his students find it “like one massive northern monastery.”
• What do we do with art made by immoral artists? Karen Swallow Prior suggested that “knee-jerk censoriousness rooted in politics is not the same as honest grappling by the thoughtful reader, viewer, or listener.”
• “Just as evangelicalism has become a brand,” observed
, “so has much of the exvangelical world.”• The story of Brazil’s minister for climate change, an adult convert to Pentecostalism, is a good reminder that evangelicalism is no monolith — in that country, or worldwide.
• I’m glad I didn’t have to write the obituary for John MacArthur in Christianity Today.
• The newest outpost in the Christian nationalist network led by Reformed preacher Doug Wilson is a Washington, DC church attended by the Secretary of Defense.
• The United States had an education system long before it had a Department of Education and can do so again, but I still can’t understand how a president can dismantle an agency created by Congress without the legislative branch voting on so drastic a step.
• At least congressional Republicans are putting their names behind some of Donald Trump’s spending cuts… which gives voters a chance to affirm or punish their decision to cut $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting.
• How will Ken Burns interpret the American Revolution, in a polarized age when half of the nation dismisses PBS as propaganda?
• A new study at the University of Pittsburgh confirmed that, among its many other problems, the use of generative AI in higher ed is damaging relationships between students and professors — and sometimes between students and students.
• But while we’re at it, remember that not all college students are using AI. In fact, some of them are more leery of its benefits than their institutions are.
• Likewise, it may not be students so much as trustees and administrators who moving colleges and universities away from the liberal arts.
• Maybe the rise of AI will actually bring about the revival of humanities majors like English, history, and philosophy. (Don’t just believe this history professor — the link goes to an article from a business newsletter.)
• While concerns linger, Americans across the political spectrum are more supportive of higher education — and cognizant of its non-economic benefits — than you may think.
• A philosophy professor who was forced out of another Bethel University (not mine) in 2015 reflected on his decade of exile from Christian higher ed.
• Finally, a post I enjoyed but forgot to link last week: an American Christian who lives in Indonesia rethought travel and tourism.
I was surprised to find your link to my own writing at the end of this! Many thanks.