Spring/Summer 2015
Volume XXX, Number 1
In This Issue
Pietists without apology by Mark E. Swanson
Dr. Olson recently took some time to answer a few questions about pietism from Rev. Mark Swanson, a member of Pietisten’s Board of Directors.
Our combination tones by Mark Safstrom
To be a teacher of history is perhaps the closest thing to time travel that anyone can experience. Many historians, researchers and archaeologists certainly experience this as well. But I would like to venture that it is the teacher of history who has a unique corner on this market. To be a history teacher involves more than simply engaging with the past, but also moving rapidly back and forth between past and present.
When my eyes engaged, I was staring upstream. A second went by. I could see that the sun was bright, and a thousand rays of light were shimmering across the riffle of the river. The sky was a bright blue with a few clouds. Another second went by. My ears began to hear again. The soft roar of the river rolled towards my ear drum with a pulsing crescendo.
The twists in our tragic stories by James Amadon
Good preaching attempts to hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. The word of God must address our lives as they are lived in the world around us. And yet as I prepare to preach and look at the news, it seems there is one tragedy after another capturing the front page and all the pages in between. There are natural disasters close to home or around the world, and human-made catastrophes bringing pain and suffering to people everywhere. In the natural give and take of the human condition, sometimes we simply can’t help but hurt one another. Tragedy upon tragedy, as regular as the rising and setting of the sun.
Taste and See: Swedish cardamom bread… by Bonnie Sparrman
From the time I was small, I knew that cardamom bread and grandparents visiting were synonymous, rolling two wonderful things into one. Mormor would arrive with her beautifully scented bread; a sponge enabling me to drink coffee by the time I was four. How marvelous for a child to sit at the table catching bits of adult conversation while dipping slices of cardamom bread into a cup of creamy coffee.
Living and dying with song by Glen Wiberg
It would be my natural habit during the days of our friend Alyce Hawkinson’s decline to protest her illness and approaching death. After all, she had so much of life yet before her, so much to give to her family and church. And we mourn her loss. But visiting with her a few days before her passing, at a coffee party in her lovely home with family members, there was not a trace of whining, regret or anger. If there was any protest, her brave spirit removed every trace of it through stories, laughter and the sharing of family news. This leads me to follow the example she was giving at that coffee party, to set my tribute to her to the sound of music.
Poetry Corner by Arthur Mampel
Ed believed that Shakespeare spoke with such universality that most human foibles, conditions and virtues could be found in his writings. He warned me that Shakespeare’s lines were so compressed and tight that they had to be read over and over to uncover the several interpretations and subtlety of his language.
The Covenant pope? by John E. Phelan Jr.
In the wake of the long and increasingly controversial papacy of Pius XII, the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church selected as pope an aging Italian cardinal named Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. They expected the 76-year-old to be a kind of caretaker, easily controlled by the powerful curia. But there they were mistaken.
An asterisk to Hansen’s law by Tom Tredway
You remember Hansen’s Law: “What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.”
Chinese pioneers of the Swedish Free Mission: Eugene Sieux and John Lee by David M. Gustafson
Eugene Sieux (Yu Chi Siu) and John (Yuen) Lee were early pioneers of the Swedish Free Mission to South China. While working in Chicago in the 1880s, they met Hans Jensen von Qualen who, being proficient in English, served as their language tutor. The three men soon became friends. While von Qualen is commonly known as the first foreign missionary of the Swedish Evangelical Free Mission, commissioned to China in 1887, he actually followed Eugene Sieux, who had returned to his homeland three months earlier. John Lee soon followed them both.
Watching the clock by Eric Nelson
Twenty seconds. That’s the count on pitchers in pro baseball’s new pitch clock, this season a minor league experiment to trim game lengths.
Truth Comes Riding a Donkey by Erik G. Nelson
Strange songs and Holy humor by Royce Eckhardt
Following my earlier article in Pietisten that included a selection of hymns and songs ranging from the quaint to the absurd, I offer you more of the same in this sequel.
The theology, both implicit and explicit, of being born again: An anecdotal report by Arvid Adell
In addition I was born again, not once, but three times. Years later, at a campground meeting in Des Moines, Washington, there was almost a fourth when Carl Blomgren and I found ourselves entirely encircled with an assortment of ministers, deacons, laypersons and other true evangelicals holding hands and gradually tightening the noose around the two of us while the choir sang the refrain “Just As I Am” in perpetuity with great pathos. Fortunately Carl remembered the “flying wedge” from his football days at North Park and Augustana, and we lowered our heads and charged our way to freedom.
For the moral health of our children by Phil Johnson
If I could recommend one thing to implement in our elementary schools, it would be a steady diet of Uncle Wiggily stories throughout the school year. Nothing could be better.