That Was The Week That Was
June 15-21, 2025
This week I re-read a rather violent scripture in the wake of political violence in my home state. As College for Christians nears its conclusion, I considered the value of residential higher education. At my research project blog, I connected Beth Allison Barr’s new book to the experience of some Bethel women who were neither students nor employees. Elsewhere:
• My state has a well-deserved reputation for civic-mindedness and bipartisanship. Is that all over, or can Saturday’s assassination wake up Minnesotans?
• To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump took that tragedy as an excuse to insult a political opponent.
• The suspect in those shootings seems to be connected to the New Apostolic Reformation, an increasingly powerful wing of charismatic evangelicalism. “Without knowing exactly what motivated the shooter,” one analyst told The Atlantic, “we can say that being oriented into this kind of NAR thinking, to my mind, it’s just a matter of time before an individual or group of individuals take some kind of action against the enemies of God and the demons in their midst.”
• If you’re worried about the relationship between evangelical Christianity and MAGA politics, you should check out the work of the J29 Coalition.
• Families at Pentagon-run schools overseas are suing to stop the Secretary of Defense from purging supposed “DEI” books from the schools’ libraries.
• That “universities are so vulnerable to the Trump administration and state legislatures seeking to compel ideological compliance” may be because “when academic leaders, professors and students disregard the academy’s liberal foundations, we no longer have ground to stand upon when illiberal forces come to tear it all down.”
• One sector of higher ed that stands to suffer under the “Big, Beautiful” budget bill making its way through the GOP-dominated Congress: religious colleges and universities, including mine.
• Why did the Southern Baptist Convention stop passing resolutions against alcohol, formerly one of its top targets for social action?
• “Doubt of a certain sort,” argued one philosophy professor, “is a powerful gift in the life of the Christian.”
• Does generative artificial intelligence have the capacity to change how historians study the past?
• Meanwhile, AI is not good news for the practice of reading. Or critical thinking, for that matter.
• John Le Carré has been dead for five years, but my favorite spy novelist remains as timely as ever.
• Finally, whatever you think about the leaders of Israel or Iran (or the United States), please pray for peace to prevail.
I was not familiar with the J29 coalition. I did The After Party course and found it helpful. A friend who leans differently from me on several political issues also found it helpful. A primary take-away for me is that Jesus gathered his disciples from different political persuasions and they worked together to change the world.