The History of the Christian Church

This, the 127th episode of CS is titled, “Which Witch?” and is a brief review of the well-known but poor understood Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials are often brought up by critics of Christianity as examples of religious intolerance & superstition. And while they did indeed carry a bit of that, they were far more an example of a breakdown in the judicial system. The phrase “witch-hunt” refers to an attempt to find something damning in an otherwise innocent victim. What’s rarely mentioned is that while there was a brief flurry of witch-hunting that went on in the New England colonies, it was a long practice back in Europe from the mid 15th thru mid 18th Cs. It reached its peak between 1580 & 1630. It’s difficult to sort out how many were executed but scholars say it was from a low of 40,000 o as high as 60,000. (more…)

This episode is titled, A City on a Hill, and returns to our look at the Propagation of the Christian Faith in the Americas. Back in Episodes 105 & 6, we breached the subject of Missions in the New World. We shared about the role the Jesuits played in the Western Hemisphere. While the post-modern view of this era tends to reduce all European missionaries in a monochromatic Euro-centrism that leveled native American cultures, that simply wasn’t the case. Yes, there were plenty of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestants who conflated the Gospel with their native culture. But there were also not a few missionaries who understood the different and valued the uniqueness that was native American cultures. They sought to incarnate the Christian message in those cultures and languages. That often got them in trouble with officials back home who wanted to exploit the Native Americans. In other words, it isn’t just modern Liberation Theology advocates who sought to protect the peoples of the New World from the exploitive injustices of the Old. Many early missionaries did as well. (more…)

This is part 2 of The Rationalist Option on Communio Sanctorum, History of the Christian Church. In our last episode we took a look at eh genesis of the Enlightenment in England & France. We’ll come back to France  a bit later after taking a brief look at the Enlightenment in German & Russia. Germany took a bit longer to join the Enlightenment. That was due in part to the condition of the land following the Thirty Years War. It’s estimated the population shrank from 20 million to just 7 after it. There’s also the issue of Germany not really being a country. It was at that time a collection of independent statelets, united by language & culture, but divided between Catholics & Lutherans. (more…)

The title of this episode is, The Rationalist Option Part 1. I want to give a brief comment here at the outset that this episode doesn’t track much of church history per se. What we do over the next minutes is take a summary look at the European Enlightenment. We need to because of the ideas that come out of the Enlightenment to influence theology and the modern world. The 30 Years War ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. But decades of bitter conflict left Europe a ravaged land. People were weary of conflict, both military and theological. And even though the 30 Years war was over, the decades following were by no means peaceful. Among other things, they witnessed the English Civil War with its execution of Charles I, and yet more wars between European powers, albeit on a smaller scale. Against this turmoil-laden background, a new spirit was brewing in Europe: one desperate to make a break with the past with its religious tension, dry scholasticism, incessant bickering and occult fetishes the Renaissance and Reformation seemed to have spun off. By the mid 17th C, the seeds of the Enlightenment, were well sown. (more…)

This is the second episode in which we look at English Puritanism. We left off last time with King Charles I fleeing London after breaking into The House of Commons to arrest some Puritan members of Parliament he accused of treason. The men had been warned and had fled. What Charles had hoped would be a dramatic show of his defense of the realm against dangerous elements, ended up being an egregious violation of British rights. So in fear for his own life, he packed up his family and headed out of town. Back in London, John Pym the leader of Parliament, ruled as a kind of king without a crown. The House of Commons proposed a law excluding the king-supporting faction of bishops in the House of Lords from Parliament. Other members of the House of Lords surprisingly agreed, so the clergy were expelled. This commenced a process that would eventually disbar anyone from Parliament who disagreed with the Puritans. The body took on an ever-increasing bent toward the radical. Feeling their oats, Parliament then ordered a militia be recruited. The king decided the time had come to respond with decisive action. He gathered loyal troops and prepared for battle against Parliament’s militia. Civil War had finally come. (more…)

In this episode, we’ll take a look at English Puritanism. In Episode 96, Title English Candles, we consider the arrival of the Reformation in England and the career of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of the Anglican Church. When Catholic Mary became Queen, she persecuted Protestants. But when Elizabeth ascended the English throne a new day dawned for the Reformation there. Queen Elizabeth followed an median course between conservatives who sought to retain as much of the ancient practices & beliefs as possible, and the Calvinists who believed the entire life and structure of the church ought to adjust to what they saw as the Biblical norm. During Elizabeth’s reign, that delicate balance was maintained; but tensions surfaced repeatedly. Her strength and decisiveness restrained them, just barely. (more…)

In this, the 121st episode of CS, we return to our narrative timeline for church history. Before the 10-episode The Change series, we left off with the Reformation in Europe as it interfaced with the Rationalism of the Renaissance in what’s called Protestant Scholasticism. Let me be clear; there’s much that took place in Europe during the Reformation we skipped over because it would have gotten us into the proverbial weeds of details that while a few might find interesting, most would regard as that which makes some accounts of history so laborious; that is, a lot of names & dates. (more…)

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ]  

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ] This episode continues our series examining the impact Christianity had on history & culture. Today we take a look at how the Faith impacted the world’s view of women. Contemporary secular feminism came about because of the Christian Gospel’s elevation of women. As with so many other privileges and liberties, as well as the prosperity many in the Western world enjoy; they find their origin in a Biblical view of the world and Mankind’s place in it. But as secularism gained traction in the 20th C and God was increasingly pushed from the public square, privilege became entitlement, liberty devolved to license, and greed turned prosperity into massive debt. All because the moral base that made them possible was forfeited in favor of the fiction told by secularism. (more…)

[The substantive content of this and the entire “The Change” series of podcast-episodes for Communion Sanctorum is indebted to the excellent book by Alvin J. Schmidt titled How Christianity Changed the World. ] This episode is part 3 in a series examining  the impact Christianity has had on history & culture. Today we go even further in our examination of the sanctity of life that’s been the focus of the previous 2 episodes, but today, we look at it specifically in Christianity’s regard for the Sanctity of Sex. As we begin, I want to pause to say that what we’re going to look at today may offend the sensibilities of some of our more secular &/or liberally-minded listeners. The redefinition of gender that’s become a hot topic of late has split the church, as well as the wider culture. It’s not my intent here to develop a theology of gender, merely to give an accurate, albeit summary, review of sexual ethics in Church history. So summary are the following comments they border on being simplistic, and for that I apologize. (more…)