Faith and Honor

Everyone has a hot take on Evangelicals, and we wanted to bring a guest to have a conversation on who they are, where they're from, and where they're going. The role evangelicals play in English-speaking countries is very prominent, and in America they're perhaps the most influential Christian group.

It is interesting to think about what the essence of the Evangelical movement is. Have they been an asset? What are their downsides? This and more we discuss with Gregory Shane Morris, an assistant editor and columnist at the online magazine, BreakPoint.

[Please note: we experienced difficulties during this recording, and some parts had to be cut out, leaving the episode shorter than intended. Our apologies.]

The Enlightenment is one of the most prominent socio-cultural movements to have affected the Church. Today, in the aftermath of the devastated and hollowed-out Christendom, traditionalist Roman Catholics have attributed to the Enlightenment much of the destruction of the faith that was to come, and it is to the non-Catholics that they attribute its origins. In a romantic narrative, as a wave of new skeptics (led by Voltaire and others) had swept over the 18th century, doubting and undermining the foundations of Christian order, it was left to Roman Church, beleaguered and alone, to continue the traditional faith. However is there truth to this narrative? What were the sources of Voltaire's thought, and of that great wave of skepticism which had indeed swept over 18th century Europe?

In today's episode we take a look at a fascinating (but forgotten) article from the historian Richard H. Popkin: "Skepticism and the Counter-Reformation in France" (1960). This article delves deeply into the "Wars of Religion" of the 17th century, showing that the Catholic intellectuals, in their desperation to defeat the Calvinist Huguenot dissenters, deployed a nascent but extremely potent strand of skepticism originated by Michel de Montaigne and Madame de Gournay (and rooted in the rediscovered ancient writings of the brilliant but destructive philosophers Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus). The wave of skepticism that engulfs Christendom today was born then, in 17th century France. The French Huguenots were indeed defeated by this almighty "machine of war" which was forged by this alliance of the Catholics and the skeptics, teaching -- in defense of the Magisterium -- that human knowledge on its own is impossible, 'nothing is what it seems', and reason itself is impotent. In vain did the Huguenots compose their own books defending Logic and reaffirming Classical Realism. In the end, they sputtered out, and after the revocation of religious toleration in 1688, were expelled altogether. However, as the Catholics celebrated their victory, they failed to notice that a culture of skepticism had become domesticated for almost 100 years. Too late did they notice a virulent young intellectual Voltaire, who was prepared to point this skeptical "machine of war" on the Church itself, paving the way for the "French Enlightenment" where the Church would be swept away altogether. 

Article citation: Popkin, Richard H. "Skepticism and the Counter-Reformation in France." Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 51 (1960): 58–87.

In this era of church history, an abiding question revolves around Anglican identity: what are its essential contours, what are its primary markers, and what are its historic examples? We wanted to wait to cover this topic because it is a delicate question in which it is easy to err on one side or the other. 
In this, one of the first conversations on this topic, we wanted to bring on Fr. Charles Erlandson and give us his take. He is a professor and Department Chair of Church History at Cranmer Theological House, and maintains a prolific presence in blogs and on social media. 

The Founding Fathers in America have had a contested history in recent years. Men who have wrought such mighty works and an overwhelming legacy could not be left untouched by the cultural debate taking place right now. Despite the very famous and attested faithful bona fides of most of the Founders such as Patrick Henry, Dr. Witherspoon, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and others, increasing attention has been brought to a few like Thomas Jefferson who had abandoned the Christian faith. And if he, who else? The searching eye, hopeful for apostasy, had cast its glance on the grandest Founder of them all, George Washington himself. Washington famously did not talk much about his beliefs, and revisionist historians have put him in the small group of those who had abandoned faith. That is, until Dr. Peter Lillback (president of Westminster Theological Seminary) performed perhaps the most important recent effort on the culture of the Colonial era: in 2006, he published George Washington's Sacred Fire. In this vast tome, he provided one of the most epic and meticulous records of a lifetime of a man's Christian faith ever put on paper. The story that is now left to be told is George Washington's faith tradition. What kind of Christian was he? Was the most famous Founder an Anglican? Dr. Lillback joins us for this amazing episode to describe George Washington's habits of prayer, his adherence to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, his dependence on Providence and the things unseen, and the rich Anglican milieu in which he was born, married, and formed his heroic character. Don't miss this episode!

On this episode, Eric Parker joins us to talk about Nicholas of Cusa (also known as Nicholas Cusanus), an important leading figure of the Renaissance period. We discuss his significance, both in his own time and afterward as his legacy carried on through western Christianity. The major impact Cusanus' thought had on classical arts and ideal aesthetics was previously discussed in Faith and Honor. In this episode we go deeper into the impact of this influential figure, discussing his life, times, aspects of his thought, and how Cusanus has influenced and shaped Western civilization and the course of Christianity.

We revisit one of our favorite topics: the incredible interest among the youth for all things traditional. In this era of change and doubt, young people seem to gravitate inexorably to that which does not change. And where everyone especially in youth culture tries to put on a facade, there is a sincere hunger for that which is unmixed and authentic. We discuss the traditionalist trends in the Catholic and Protestant worlds, looking at the demographic shifts which have produced a unique generation of youth, 18 to 25 years old. This next generation of young people has been fueling traditional Christianity, whereas Anglicanism for the last 10-20 years has been rent by more pressing matters, unaware of larger developments. If we look at the data and social trends, there seems to be an amazing opportunity for traditional Anglicanism to become ‘the best of both kinds’, a beacon in the midst of a brave new world which our young people will inevitably inhabit.

Everyone is talking about the wedding of Prince Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle, and especially the sermon delivered by Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church. Many questions have been raised about the political undercurrents behind Curry's invitation to preach at the wedding. Also of note has been the Church's moral and doctrinal bankruptcy, during the last half-century, to teach moral truth and equip the young with godly doctrine, leaving the newlywed royal couple as unwitting victims of this negligence. We discuss it all on this episode!

Marriage has become a flashpoint of contention in the heart of the Church. Despite the timeless doctrine of marriage taught by our Lord and the Apostles, and protected by the Church for 2,000 years, recent times have seen clever arguments in favor of divorce. And rather than coming from the fringes we see the destruction of marriage being advocated from the highest positions of responsibility and authority.

Our guest in working through this discussion is Dr. Gerald McDermott, chair of Anglican studies at Beeson Divinity School. Dr. McDermott took to the premier online journal, First Things, to ask: "Is Pope Francis a Liberal Protestant?"

We discuss the destruction of ethical norms in the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis, and the parallel devastation in the Episcopal Church that started in the 1960s with the "situation ethics" of one Rev. Joseph Fletcher. We end on a hopeful note, by discussing the heroic and almost superhuman stand of the Church of England in the defense of marriage in the 20th century, as the charter for the Anglican Communion in the 21st century.

he secular narrative describes the Renaissance as an era of latent atheism, rejecting supernatural perspectives and promoting only the immediately visible. Front and center in this narrative are the Perspective and Realism of the classic Renaissance paintings -- which while rightly famous, in a secular narrative indicate a lessened interest in the supernatural. The Christian, then, is put in an impossible position of choosing between the faithful and the beautiful; which has led to the growing adoption of flat Byzantine icons, and a dismissal of the religious and theological masterpieces of the Renaissance. In this incredible episode we explore the evidence of what Renaissance art really means. Together with our guest scholar, we go ad fontes, to the foundations and the primary sources directly in the 15th century, skipping the intervening 500 years of interpretations. We look at the artistic thought of the founder of Perspective, Leon Battista Alberti (the first "Renaissance man"), and the theological thought of Nicholas Cusanus, perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 15th century. What we discover is a theology of perspective, or a theology of realistic painting, where Realism serves as an expression of high theology, intensifying the religious impulse far more than the flat Byzantine paintings which preceded the Renaissance. We discover that secularism only starts to appear from the 17th and 18th centuries, and that the art generated in its wake becomes the opposite of the Renaissance: abstract, disjointed, and disintegrated. All this provides a fruitful conversation for the nature and re-appropriation of the Classical Artistic Tradition in the 21st century. Our guest scholar is John Shannon Hendrix, a professor of art and architectural history, currently teaching at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. He has also been a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Lincoln in the UK, and John Cabot University in Rome.

What should a pastor do? What are his responsibilities, and what ought to be the focus of his ministry? And how should he live his life? We live in an age where people have wildly different and sometimes contradictory beliefs about what a pastor should be about and what he should be like. Fr. Brian and Fr. Bart seek to offer some answers to these questions by calling on the Rev. George Herbert (1593-1633), who was a gifted poet and pious priest in the Church of England. We will take a look at Herbert's classic handbook, The Country Parson, to guide us into a deeper and more appropriate understanding of pastoral theology, which includes strong elements of biblical preaching, godly counsel, self-denial, generosity, and holy living for the sake of God's flock.