Church Historia

Evangelical and evangelicalism are common labels used in talking about modern Christianities, but they are fairly nebulous terms with non-codified definitions. Unlike a lot of other terms used to describe Christians it is not a denominational label (e.g. Baptist, Lutheran, etc.) or an umbrella term for several denominations (e.g. charismatic, high-church, etc.). And to further complicate things, denominations can even have evangelical and non-evangelical threads within them. 

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Our last episode of 2020 features the big man himself: Jolly Old St. Nick. Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. The big man. The guy who’s coming to visit us all soon!

How did Santa evolve from St. Nicolas to a jolly portly guy in a red suit? There’s some history to be considered here, and it ends with us ultimately basking in the warm glow of the wonder of Christmas - when a little baby came to fix a broken world.

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Celebrate the Christmas season through a historical lens with us for a couple of episodes before we take a break for the Christmas season. 

The first of our two Christmas episodes looks at the season from a historical lens as we remember a time when Christmas was banned, and explores the tradition of gift-giving.

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This week we join Thomas Merton in his hermitage at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey, in Kentucky. (Our Lady of Gethsemani happens to be about an hour’s drive from the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill from episode 2, and two hours from Cane Ridge which we talked about in episode 1.)

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Join us as we head to New Orleans to visit Venerable Henriette Delille and the Sisters of the Holy Family. Henriette wanted to join the Catholic church as a nun, but was the granddaughter of an enslaved person and there wasn’t an order that would welcome her. Instead of leaving the faith altogether, Henriette founded her own order, the Sisters of the Holy Family. Through the powerful life and legacy of Henriette and the order she founded, we have a window into the experiences of the Black Catholic tradition in the South and the church’s complicated history with racism and racial justice. Henriette’s story requires us to address selected moments when the church has failed its call to support racial justice and the full personhood of all people. We discuss the mixed history of the catholic church in the South, and offer some ways to learn from the story of Henriette as we continue to work for equality and justice in the church.

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What does it mean to live a life fully devoted to God, where hands and hearts are united in a single purpose? What does it mean to love everyone equally, without giving primacy to our familial relationships?

Continuing last week’s discussion of Christianity in the South in the Early Republic, we spend this week with the Shakers, exploring their history and beliefs and the challenging questions they raise.  Originally founded in the late 18th century in England, the Shakers came to the United States via New York. In 1804, Shaker missionaries brought Shakerism to the South and started a community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, which would last over 100 years.

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In 1801, a gathering to celebrate communion in Cane Ridge, Kentucky started a movement that would go on to indelibly shape Christianity in the South and throughout the world. 

As this group of Scots Presbyterians gathered to share in the bread and the cup, they couldn’t have imagined they would soon be accompanied by thousands of others, caught up in exuberant manifestations of the Spirit. Unanticipated and unplanned, the Cane Ridge revival was both a product of its time and something brand new.

In this episode, we explore how ideas of charismatic emotive worship shaped our personal understandings of Southern Christianity. We then discuss the context around Cane Ridge and what led to this ecstatic expression of the Spirit. Finally, we’ll use Cane Ridge as an opportunity to think about questions around legitimacy and leadership within the church. 

Production Note: In the spirit of the unity and non-sectarianism of Cane Ridge, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell began an ecumenical movement that led to the development of the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Church, and the Churches of Christ. For more information on the Stone-Campbell tradition and the denominations related to them, check out this link

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