CR101 Radio - Podcast Network

When the foundations seem destroyed and evil appears entrenched, Psalm 11 answers despair with faith: the righteous are not called to flee in fear but to trust the Lord and remain righteous. David’s confidence rests in the sovereignty and justice of God, whose throne is in heaven, whose judgment cannot be corrupted, and whose hatred of violence guarantees that evil’s apparent victories will be ove...

The priesthood of all believers is not a New Testament novelty but an Old Testament doctrine rooted in God’s covenant declaration that His people are a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:5–6), a royal calling conditioned on obedience to His law and directed toward the establishment of His Kingdom. This priesthood is not sacerdotal or sacrificial in the atoning sense Christ alone fulfills that but royal an...

I have before me a treasured book first published in 1875, written by one of America’s great Christian educators. Recently, while lecturing at an Ivy League law school, I met his great-grandson a pleasant young man dressed like a semi-hippie who admitted that he and his brother went to great lengths to conceal their relationship to this remarkable ancestor, a former university president known for...

In this broadcast, R.J. Rushdoony, Otto Scott, and R.E. McMaster discuss the moral and religious collapse of the Western world and its profound impact on economics, politics, and society. McMaster emphasizes that government and economics are extensions of religious ethics, noting stark contrasts between Protestant-influenced North America and Catholic/Latin cultures, particularly in terms of produ...

Titanism is the glorification of human effort that seeks to do the impossible, often disguising pride as virtue. Rooted in Greek mythology and revived by Romanticism, it celebrates defying limits, fate, and even God, treating failure itself as proof of greatness. Within the church, Titanism appears when believers ignore God’s clear commands about limits, stewardship of time, and fruitfulness. Scri...

Twice recently friends asked my opinion of glamorous new “charities” their women’s groups had adopted causes I’ll call the Friends of the Whoopee Indians and the Christian Mission to Ivy League Hopheads. I told them frankly I thought little of either, because real charity begins at home. In nearly every church there are elderly couples needing weekly help with housework, shopping, or caring for a...

Mrs. B___ lives in a lovely home in an elite neighborhood and prides herself on being a “good” liberal parent, insisting her teenagers bring home every sort of troubled classmate. When her house was burglarized clearly by youths who knew exactly what to take she felt no anger, only a sort of thrilled moral superiority. Rather than blame the thieves, she blamed “society,” insisting that we are all...

This passage explores the origin and meaning of the word nag, tracing it from its Scandinavian roots meaning “to gnaw, bite, or burrow” to its modern sense of persistent, irritating talk or complaint. The imagery comes from rats gnawing in thatched-roof houses during the Middle Ages, producing an unending, unwelcome noise hence the connection to human nagging. Solomon recognized the difficulty of...

You've done the hard thing. The Lord has blessed it. And the men who turn up looking for a row aren't your enemies — they're your brothers. Ephraim sat out seven years of plunder, then ambushed Gideon at the peak of victory. Gideon answers softly, magnifies their gleaning above his vintage, and the wrath goes out of them in three sentences. A covenant if-then you can use in your marriage, workplac...

Some years ago, when a farmhouse caught fire in the middle of the night, the family barely escaped, but the tidy housewife paused in the burning living room just long enough to straighten a crooked picture before running outside. The entire home soon burned to the ground, but at least the picture was straight when it perished. That story comes to mind when I hear certain preachers today: the flame...

In John 14 our Lord speaks words of deep comfort to troubled disciples by answering their fears with Himself: He is the way to the Father, the truth incarnate, and the life victorious over sin and death. To know Christ is to know the Father, for He is God in the flesh, and through union with Him believers already belong to the Father’s house and its eternal promise. Though He departs visibly, He r...

This session frames the family as a fundamentally religious institution—not merely sociological or economic—and uses Psalm 127 to argue that true “security” (personal and national) is futile unless the Lord is the builder; the psalm’s startling point is that children, raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, are God’s appointed “weaponry” for cultural and spiritual conflict, “arrows” by w...

Perry Coughlin didn't set out to become a Christian Reconstructionist. He was being trained as a Wesleyan Arminian minister when a single book reoriented everything — and the questions it raised were too large to ignore from a pulpit. In this conversation with Andrea Schwartz, Perry traces his theological journey across five decades: the grip of sovereign grace, the abiding validity of God's law,...

In Revelation, Christ condemns those in Thyatira who believed that true Christianity required studying “the depths of Satan” (Rev. 2:24). Many in the early church became obsessed with tracking evil conspiracies, corruption, demons rather than obeying the Great Commission to teach the nations Christ’s commands. Such people drifted into Gnosticism, a movement that claimed spiritual protection came f...

This passage argues that Mexico’s debt crisis in 1982 is not just Mexico’s problem but a global and particularly American one. The United States and other nations, through international loans and private banking, have tied themselves to the fate of unstable economies. Mexico’s $80 billion debt, coupled with economic collapse and inflation, threatens U.S. banks, credit availability, and the broader...

In “History” (Chalcedon Report No. 108), Rushdoony argues that history is not merely a record of past events but the remembered past shaped by faith, memory, and meaning, making it a fundamental obstacle to statist efforts to remake man. Because historical consciousness roots people in inherited loyalties, beliefs, and moral judgments, modern humanism seeks to erase history through statist educati...

This session argues that the family is God’s central institution, deliberately placed at the heart of human life so that every person—husband, wife, child—participates in the most important sphere of God’s order. Because the family forms character, transmits faith, and teaches responsibility, it is both the place of greatest blessing and the deepest vulnerability, capable of profound joy or devast...

The debate over monergism vs. synergism concerns who is decisive in salvation. Monergism teaches that salvation is entirely the work of God’s sovereign grace from beginning to end; man contributes nothing but receives grace. Synergism teaches that God and man cooperate, making man’s decision the decisive factor in salvation. In practice, synergism shifts sovereignty from God to man. If man’s will...

The debate over monergism vs. synergism concerns who is decisive in salvation. Monergism teaches that salvation is entirely the work of God’s sovereign grace from beginning to end; man contributes nothing but receives grace. Synergism teaches that God and man cooperate, making man’s decision the decisive factor in salvation. In practice, synergism shifts sovereignty from God to man. If man’s will...

Rev. T. Robert Ingram tells of a Navy commander in WWII who, during his first battle, issued grand orders “Fire one, fire two” only to erupt in panic when the enemy fired back: “The dirty so-and-so is shooting back at me!” Many are like him: bold when attacking others, shocked when the fire is returned. I once knew a woman whose razor tongue made every meeting miserable, yet she collapsed in outra...

A famous actress of the 1930s was known for her motto, “I want to be alone,” and she remained an unhappy woman to the end, proving that neither crowds nor solitude can produce happiness. True joy is not found by avoiding people or by chasing them, but by living responsibly before God and in community. As an old French saying observes, “All things can be learned in solitude except character,” for w...

Baptism succeeds circumcision as the covenant sign, preserving the same covenantal meaning while unfolding it in Christ: both testify that fallen human nature cannot save itself, that salvation comes only through death and regeneration, and that covenant membership brings both blessing and judgment. Circumcision symbolized the cutting off of the old nature and pointed forward to Christ’s atoning b...

Some people are simply too spiritually sleepy to hear anything, and writing to them is like talking to a drowsy friend who pretends to listen but is nearly unconscious. I recently heard a farmer dismiss every moral and social crisis Chavez, crime, riots, lawlessness because none of it touched him personally; but let a tire blow out and suddenly the whole world is conspiring against him. Everything...

God’s education of His people is never an easy or harmless process, because true education reshapes the whole person and therefore involves pain, testing, and the destruction of self-sufficiency. While we prefer comfort and complacency, God permits rigorous discipline even allowing Satan to sift us so that we may see the reality of evil, abandon confidence in ourselves, and cast ourselves wholly u...

We all know the frustration of speaking to someone who refuses to hear, like a young man I recently met who raged against his capable, long-suffering parents while living off their money, rejecting work, and screaming abuse whenever anyone suggested he reform himself. I’ve seen the same spirit in a minister who preached “love” while seething with hatred, attacking his congregation and exploding at...