Pietism Book Receives Recognition

The Pietist Vision for Higher Education, edited by Professor of History Chris Gehrz, was nominated for the Lilly Fellows Program book award. It was awarded one of the finalists. The recognition was announced at this year’s national conference in Nashville, Tennessee at Belmont University.

The book includes chapters by current and former Bethel faculty, administrators, and Bethel graduate Janel Curry ’77, provost of Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. The book chronicles Bethel’s pietistic roots, and examines its continuing relevance in Christian higher education today.

The Lilly Fellows Network, comprised of nearly 100 church-related colleges and universities, holds the book award biennially. The program “honors an original and imaginative work from any academic discipline that best exemplifies the central ideas and principles animating the Lilly Fellows Program. These include faith and learning in the Christian intellectual tradition, the vocation of teaching and scholarship, and the history, theory, or practice of the university as the site of religious inquiry and culture."

Barrett Fisher, dean of arts and humanities for the College of Arts & Sciences, nominated the book for the award. Fisher noted the text “provides a holistic view of education as engaging the mind while nurturing the heart, and thus helps to heal the false separation of spirit and intellect. It offers not only theoretical reflections on the relationship between faith and academic disciplines, but useful models and successful strategies for actually doing faith-learning integration.”

For more information, visit Gehrz’s blog post.