Russia has been actively involved in the Syrian Civil War since September 2015. During its campaign there, the Russian military has reportedly been able to improve old weapons systems and test new ones. How much has the mission affected Russia's arms sales to other countries? Here is a quick analysis and some "hot takes" on this question.

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Image credit: Maxim Maximov on Wikipedia.

The Christianization of Scandinavia did not happen quickly.  This was a process rather than a quick event.  And during this process, the old traditional Norse religion and new faith interacted in ways that blurred the many differences between them.  “Pure Christianity” had a hard time spreading in this environment, and the Christians took a number of actions to help their faith grow.  These actions included legislation and putting Christian beliefs into a Norse context.  In addition to looking at these conversion methods, we will also talk about how Christianity appeared in the Norse sagas after conversion.

The thumbnail image shows a soapstone mould that could help create both cross and Thor's Hammer pendants. From Wikipedia page.  Credit: Ktp72.

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In this final episode of our "Psychology of Faith" series, we will be talking about definitions of faith but also about how faith is manifested in a believer. Is faith part of "nature" or "nurture?" How is faith "lived?" Building upon previous episodes' points about Christianity, this episode shows that the Christian concept of faith is more than just a "belief in something." It also encourages action and change in a believer.

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Picture credit: WomansDay.com

How does humankind respond to revelation or the idea of a divine being? In this, the third part of our "Psychology of Faith" series, we focus on the views of Christianity to explain the possible responses to the idea of God: atheism, the worship of nature, and a life of faith on God. Ideas from theologians Augustine and Thomas Aquinas about man's choice between a Creator and Creation will be used to explain these responses.

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What relationship does faith have with the intellect? Does religion truly try to engage with the rational mind as Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Alvin Plantinga would suggest? Or is the "F&M Complaint" from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx correct in asserting that faith needs a "badly aimed intellect?" We will look at some of these views in this podcast, as well as the consequences of the faith-intellect relationship.

This is the second episode of a four-part miniseries about the Psychology of Faith.

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This episode is the first of a four-episode miniseries about the psychology of faith. In this first installment, we will look at the relationship between psychology and faith. Are they compatible? Can psychology answer every question? To help answer this, we will look at the work of 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas as well as modern psychologists such as W.W. Meissner.

Chetwynd is a town of about 3,000 people in the British Columbia Rockies. Over the town's history, the area has been a base for fur, lumber, oil, and other industries. Known as Little Prairie until the 1959, Chetwynd has also acted as a hub for nearby communities and projects in the B.C. Peace Region. This project was a personal interest to me, as I grew up a half away from Chetwynd.

CHET TV's documentary "Chetwynd International Chainsaw Carving Championship The Carving Dream:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3zIWqSaAV0

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Photo by Christian Basar, 2019

The Teutonic Knights took part in crusades against pagan Prussia and Lithuania in the 13th and 14th centuries. After Lithuania converted to Catholicism and made an alliance with Poland, the German crusader order eventually fell to insignificance. However, the Teutonic Knights' legacy lived on in the German imagination, being envisioned in the 18th century as a proto-German empire and gaining a place in Adolf Hitler's Nazi ideology in the 20th. This brief survey will look at how the German crusaders left their mark on the Baltic region.

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Episode Thumbnail: "Coat of arms of the Teutonic Order" uploaded to Wikipedia by Madboy74

The "Holy Russia" ideology developed over the centuries since Rus' conversion to Byzantine Christianity in the year 988. Various factors were responsible for the imagination of Russia as a holy place, which was eventually centered around Muscovy. These factors included a strong church-state codependency in the Byzantine tradition, Constantinople's adherence to the Florentine Union with the Catholic Church (and thus perceived apostasy), and Byzantium's fall to the Ottoman Turks very shortly after. The "Third Rome" was a related moniker for Russia, which suggested that Muscovy was the final true Christian realm. This podcast will look at "Holy Russia" in action at various points in Russian history, including the "raskol'," during which Russian Orthodox Christianity split into two religious factions.

Special thanks go to Professor Andrew Gow, for whose course I originally wrote a paper on which this podcast was based. His advice was very helpful during the research portion of that work.

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Russia's military intervention in the Syrian Civil War since September 2015 has been one of the most important turning points in that conflict.  In this episode we will look at some of the history behind Russo-Syrian relations, the Kremlin's reasons for getting involved in the Syrian Civil War, and some of the benefits that Russia has gained from the first major military deployment outside of the former Soviet Union's territory.

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