Category Vietnam War
Silence in History: Bethel’s War Historiography?
I’ve spent much of the day writing the first of a three part series on the Baptist General Conference’s response to the Vietnam War. Before the first part of that series debuts on the blog sometime this weekend, I wanted to pause and reflect on something Chris and I noticed at the outset of this […]
The Evangelical Left and Vietnam
I’ve spent much of the past week catching up on my Vietnam War history. While the military history of that conflict is interesting, most of my reading has been focused on the domestic crises that Vietnam incited. Surprisingly, I’ve had a fair amount of trouble finding sources that deal squarely with the impact of the war […]
Military Training in the Schools, 1914-1918
For my post on August Sundvall, the first former Bethel student to die in the First World War, I drew on an obituary published in a 1920 book about Fort Sheridan, where Sundvall had trained to become an officer. In the book’s introduction, the camp’s former commandant, Brig. Gen. J.A. Ryan, bemoaned the failure of American education […]
Introductions: Vietnam and the War on Terror
When Chris and I started divvying up research tasks, my inclination was to focus on Vietnam and the War on Terror. This much is surprising – despite my being reasonably cognizant for 9/11 and the subsequent military actions those events sparked, I know less about the War on Terror than any of the conflicts we’re […]
Welcome to “Bethel at War”
The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, one of the most devastating events in human history. Much less famously, 1914 was also the year that the Swedish Baptist Theological Seminary moved from Chicago, Illinois to St. Paul, Minnesota, where it merged with — and took the name of — a Christian […]
Bethel at War 1914 - 2014 