Uncategorized… Becoming the Pastor’s Wife 20 Jun 2025 This summer I don't expect to blog here very much, as I start to write the final set of essays that will conclude this digital project. But it occurred to…
Faculty and Staff… Before They Were Famous 26 Feb 2025 At some point last fall, it struck me that the Bethel College of the late Seventies and early Eighties was home to a remarkable list of women who studied and/or…
Background… The Rise of – and Split within – Evangelical Feminism 6 Feb 2025 In 1987 former Bethel College professors Wayne Grudem and John Piper co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. According to its website, CBMW was established primarily to help the…
Rough Drafts… Anti-Feminism at Bethel in the 1970s 4 Nov 20249 Dec 2024 While the Seventies are often remembered as an era when even theologically conservative Christians began to rethink assumptions about women's roles in family, church, and society, it was also an…
Sources… Student Newspapers as Historical Evidence 25 Oct 20249 Dec 2024 Perhaps the hardest thing to do as a Bethel historian is to recover the experience of the university's largest constituency: its students. That's partly because of the sheer size and…
Women in Ministry How Bethel and Its Denomination Debated Women’s Roles 21 Oct 20249 Dec 2024 If you want to understand how evangelical Christians debated the roles of women and men as the Seventies turned into the Eighties, you could do worse than to use Bethel…
Background… How Do I Write History to Which I’m an Eyewitness? 17 Oct 20249 Dec 2024 I'm back from some sabbatical travels in Illinois and Alabama and ready to start writing again. I'll have new material here next week, but first something I had meant to…
Historiography… Women in Earlier Bethel Histories: “Contribution” and “Oppression” 18 Sep 20249 Dec 2024 There had been a chapter on education in the Baptist General Conference in the Centenary History of that denomination (1952) by Adolf Olson, who had previously collaborated with his son…
The Women of Bethel 