Between 1851 and 1910, approximately 1.6 million Swedish people – 86% of whom were under 35 y/o, left the fatherland to establish themselves in the United States. Swedes established the Swedish Lutheran Mission Institute in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1873. A banker in Knoxville (near Galesburg, IL) persuaded the Institute to relocate and it was renamed …
Not too long ago I wrote about North Park College’s 1985, senior-laden men’s basketball team’s journey to the school’s FOURTH national championship. Coach Bosko led that team in his first year after working as the top assistant coach for many years. Preparing for the 1985-86 season, Bosko now faced fielding his first recruiting class as …
My alma mater, North Park College (now University), completely dominated NCAA Division III Mens Basketball just prior to my arrival on campus. With a cumulative record of 86-10, in 1978, 1979, and 1980, NPC won the national championship three times in a row. Growing up in Minnesota, I never saw any of those early championship …
Here’s a rich, pensive, jazzy, new version– out less than a week– of the beloved Swedish hymn, “Blott en Dag” (English title, “Day By Day”) written by Carolina Sandell-Berg (or, as we used to call her in the old country of Chicago, where she has her own statue: Lina Sandell). The recording artist is Sven …
A couple of weeks ago the local “alternative” radio station, WKQX aka Q101, announced it would devote the entire weekend to playing the “greatest alternative music from the last 50 years”. So all the way back to 1970, I guess! Now, I do sometimes listen to this station for one or two songs, but only …
Hey kids! I know it’s early for Christmas music. However, a recent post by Nancy Wiebe Mazurowski reminded me of music that is deeply rooted with me, so I bringz to y’all the Festival of Lessons and Carols, recorded at Queen of All Saints Basilica, Chicago, in December of 1987, featuring the North Park College …
My Alma Mater, North Park University (Chicago, IL), used to be a national powerhouse in Division III (non-scholarship) men’s basketball. North Park won national championships in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1985, and 1987. The hoops’ team fell on very hard times after the release of the head coach who guided the Viking ship to the last …
Garrison Keillor has occasionally referenced the basement of a Lutheran church as well as a dinner entrée called a casserole (aka hotdish) during his successful, long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. I was raised in a denomination, i.e., the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), which is similar to Lutheran (two sacraments: baptism and communion). I …
In December 2015 I wrote about evangelical Wheaton College’s decision to suspend Larycia Hawkins, its’ first ever female African American tenured professor due to a seemingly innocuous FB post. Well, the acrimony intensified and now Professor Hawkins will not return. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/wheaton-christian-college-professor-larycia-hawkins-muslims-worship-same-god In my EPB post, I referenced a similar trial of a Seminary professor, Fred …
Wheaton College is a nondenominational evangelical Christian institution located in the Western suburbs of Chicago that maintains a special relationship with the Reverend Billy Graham (currently 97 years old). Wheaton operates the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, The Billy Graham Museum and Archives, and the Billy Graham Scholarship Program. According to a website called First …
From Church Pew to Daley Plaza, the Tragic Descent of Chicago’s Troubled “Sign Guy” by Mark Erickson
This is a sad story about life and mental illness in the great city of Chicago. Approximately 15 years ago, Pastor Arthur A. R. Nelson invited an Iranian immigrant, Farhad Khoiee-Abbasi, to worship at North Park Covenant Church, located in Chicago, Illinois. Farhad, an engineer by training, became a Christian and an active church member. …
Passage from Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Zira: I should have said that chimpanzees had no part in the destruction of Earth. Only the gorillas and the orangutans. E.2.: What’s the difference? You’re all monkeys. Cornelius: Please do not use the word ‘monkey.’ We find it offensive. As an archeologist I had access …
What follows are image scans of a pamphlet printed by the North Park College News in 1926. I found it this week among my stuff in Portland. I don’t know why I have it, or why this document, amongst all the David Nyvall/North Park/Mission Friend/Covenant materials in my parents’ home which could have survived, this …
Flying through the night on a fourteen-hour Japan Airlines Chicago-to-Narita flight had me thinking back on my long, soon-ending career as a Covenant Police officer. Twenty years and now I’ll get my military pension. Time had flown by. I served ten years in Washington protecting Covenant officers while they were looking for government funding …
Here’s a great blog post from Frances Archer about the neighborhood up in which I grew, North Park, in Chicago: A few weeks ago I told you I grew up in what amounted to a shtetl, an Old World Jewish town, on Chicago’s Far North Side. That’s not quite the whole story. A single point …
By Bradfordboy60 Transferring from the University of Pittsburgh to North Park College [now North Park University] was a difficult adjustment. It was a hard and lonely first quarter singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land. But, once negotiated, North Park became the place where I made some of my dearest friends and most treasured …