That Was The Week That Was
November 17-23, 2024
This week I considered the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, confessed some of my favorite distractions, and paid tribute to pastors like my friend Andy. I took a break from College for Christians, but I’ll introduce Part Two of that book next week.
At my sabbatical blog, I pondered the role of men in women’s history and shared some glimpses inside the Bethel archives.
Elsewhere:
• Rest in peace, Tony Campolo. If you’re not familiar with the sociologist whom Jim Wallis called “an evangelist to evangelicals,” read the obituary by Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman.
• Speaking of CT… I forgot to mention last week that I’m in the current issue, reviewing Australian historian Sarah Irving-Stonebraker’s call for Christians to “tend and keep the past.”
• Another reviewer in another publication found Jordan Peterson to be out of his depth in writing a book about the Old Testament. (Though to be fair, I’m not sure how well most of us would hold up to the scrutiny of someone as erudite as Rowan Williams.)
• The eve of Advent is a good time to check in on an evergreen question: why should we go to church?
• What does softness have to do with the Christian quest for social justice?
• What can other Christians learn about silence from Quakers?
.jpg)
• Meet Egeria, the 4th century Church Mother who wrote the book (literally) on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
• Another kind of historical tourism takes people on the trail of the mythical King Arthur.
• New research found that the Civil War mortality rate was more than twice as high in the Confederate states as those of the Union.
• Decades after white Southern families sent their kids to “segregation academies,” those private schools are mostly still segregated — and doing well under school voucher programs.
• Slate isn’t normally my go-to source for food history, but it compiled a list of the 25 most important American recipes from the last hundred years.
• Apparently politics is a big part of Substack’s financial model, so a few politics posts…
• If Donald Trump’s team does follow through on his promised mass deportation of immigrants, it won’t be the first time that’s happened in U.S. history.
• Another common feature of American political history that’s revived of late: demon-mongering.
• I’d agree with the former editor of Scientific American if we talked about the shortcomings of the president-elect, but making that journal speak into political debates probably wasn’t great for science itself.
• Inside Higher Ed asked why enrollment is climbing fast at some conservative religious colleges.
• A new study found that highly selective colleges enroll roughly the same share of low-income students as they did a century ago.
• So it’s good news that MIT has decided to offer free tuition for students from families making less than $200,000 per year — and cover other costs for those from households making half that much.
• Finally, digital well-being is more complicated than just measuring screen time.