The History of the Christian Church

This episode is a bit different from our usual fare in that it’s devoted to the subject of art in Church History. It’s in no way intended to be a comprehensive review of religious art. We’ll take just a cursory look at the development of art in the early centuries. Much has been written about the philosophy of art. And as anyone who’s taken an art history course in college knows, much debate has e...

As I record  & post this episode, a new movie’s out called Logan. It’s appears to be the last installment for the venerable X-Men character Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman. Logan was an immortal who became the subject of a secret military experiment gone wrong. His skeleton was infused with a fictional metal called adamantium that bears the hardness of a diamond. (more…)

This is part 6 of our series titled The First Centuries , in Season 2 of CS. In the last episode we took a look at the Church Father Irenaeus . This episode we’ll consider Tertullian .That may prompt some to wonder if we’re going to work our way through ALL the church fathers of the Early Church. Uh, no – we won’t. Just a few. While he’s known to history as Tertullian, his full name was Quintus Se...

The First Centuries – Part 5 // Irenæus The historical record is pretty clear that the Apostle John spent his last years in Western Asia Minor, with the City of Ephesus acting as his headquarters. It seems that during his time there, he poured himself into a cadre of capable men who went on to provide outstanding leadership for the church in the midst of difficult trials. Men like Polycarp of Smyr...

Have you noticed that, generally-speaking, Christians like to argue? Maybe we get it from our spiritual ancestors, the Jews. Once while on a tour of Jerusalem at what are called the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount, our Jewish guide told us that a frequent joke among his people was that where there are 2 Jews, there’s 3 opinions. Yeah; it seems controversy has been a part of the history of The C...

In part 1 we took a look at some of the sociological reason for persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Then last time we began a narrative-chronology of the waves of persecution and ended with Antonius Pious. A new approach in dealing with Christians was adopted by Marcus Aurelius who reigned form 161–180. Aurelius is known as a philosopher emperor. He authored a volume on Stoic philosophy...

This is part 2 in our follow-up series on the first centuries in Church History. We’re concentrating on the persecution Jesus’ followers endured. In part 1, we examined the social & civic reasons for persecution in the Roman Empire. The suspicion of nefarious intent by Christians, fueled by their withdrawal from society due to its tacit connection to paganism, morphed into a suspicion of cover...

Welcome BACK to Communion Sanctorum: History of the Christian Church. We ended our summary & overview narrative of Church History after 150 episodes; took a few months break, and are back to it again with more episodes which aim to fill in the massive gaps we left before. This time, we’ll do series that go into detail on specific moments, movements, people, places, and other topics. (more&hell...

The final episode of Communio Sanctorum. We look briefly at the reaction of some Protestants  to Manifest Destiny. DL Moody, The Holiness Movement, Phoebe Palmer, The Azusa Street Revival. This 150 th episode of CS is titled The End. 150 episodes! And this is the rebooted v2. We had a hundred episodes in v1 before I started over again in an attempt to clean up the timeline and fill in some gaps. (...

This 139 th episode is titled Evangementalism ,We’ve spent a couple of episodes laying out the genesis of Theological Liberalism, and concluded the last episode with a brief look at the conservative reaction to it in what’s been called Evangelicalism . Evangelicalism was one of the most important movements of the 20 th C. The label comes from that which lies at the center of the movement, devotion...

The title of this 138 th episode is Liberal v Evangelical In our last episode, we considered the philosophical roots of Theological Liberalism. In this, we name names as we look at its early leaders and innovators. When I took a philosophy course in college, the professor dispensed on us sorry, unwashed noobs his understanding of faith and reason. After a lengthy description of both, he concluded...

The episode is titled Why So Critical? Two episodes back we introduced the themes that would lead eventually to Theological Liberalism . The last episode we talked a bit about how the church, mostly the Roman Catholic church, pushed back against those themes. In this episode, we’ll go further into the birth of liberalism. The 20 th century was unkind to Theological Liberalism, with its shining vis...

The title of this episode is Push-Back As we move to wind up this season of CS, we’ve entered into the modern era in our review of Church history and the emergence of Theological Liberalism . Some historians regard the French Revolution as a turning point in the social development of Europe and Western Civilization. The Revolution was in many ways, a result of the Enlightenment, and a harbinger of...

The title of this episode of CS is Liberal .The term “modern” as it relates to the story of history, has been treated differently by dozens of authors, historians, and sociologists. Generally speaking, Modernization is the process by which agricultural and rural traditions morph into an industrial, technological, and urban milieu that tends to be democratic, pluralistic, socialist, and/or individu...

The title of this episode is Coping. It’s time once again to lay down our focus on the Western Church to see what’s happening in the East. With the arrival of Modernity, the Church in Europe and the New World was faced with the challenge of coping in what we’ll call the post-Constantine era . The social environment was no longer favorable toward Christianity. The institutional Church could no long...

This episode is titled Coming Apart Europe in the late 19 th C was recovering from the Napoleonic Wars. War-weary, nations longed for a prolonged peace in which to take a breath, and consider HOW they were going to rebuild from the devastation recent conflicts had left. A plethora of new economic and political theories were available for them to choose from as they rebuilt. Most settled on economi...

The title of this 132 nd episode is “ Off with Their Heads .”In this installment, we give a brief review of the French Revolution, which may not seem at first blush to have much to do with Church History. Ahh, but it does. For this reason: What we see in the French Revolution is a proto-typical example of the Church, by which the institutional church, not necessarily the Christian Gospel and Faith...

This 131 st , episode is titled, Behind Enemy Lines .Following up their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks conquered most of the Balkans. They now controlled the former Byzantine Empire and the substantial region of Armenia. They required the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs in Constantinople to obey their rules and policies. Ottoman Turks employed their Christians subjects in key positions...

This 130 th episode is titled Up North, Then South. This is the last episode in which we take a look at The Church in Europe following the Enlightenment. The narrative is nowhere near exhaus TIVE . It’s more an exhaust ING summary of Scandinavia, the Dutch United Provinces, Austria, and Italy. We’ve already looked at Germany, France, and Spain. The end of the 17 th century proved to be a brutal ti...

This episode is title “ Pressed .”In our last episode, we took a look at the French church of the 17 th C and considered the contest between the Catholic Jansenists and Jesuits. It’s interesting realizing the Jansenists began as a theological movement that looks quite similar to Calvinism. Their theology eventually spilled over into the political realm and undercut the Divine Right of Kings, a Eur...

The title of this 128 th Episode is Backing Up. … because once again we’re backtracking a bit to hop into the story of Church History earlier than where our last few episodes have taken us. We’re focusing this time on what happened in France during the late 17 th and into the 18 th century. This period saw a massive struggle between the French monarchy and two groups; Catholic  Jansenists and Prot...

In this 127 th episode of CS, titled “ Then Away ,” we give a brief account of the rise of Theological Liberalism .In the previous episodes, we charted the revivals that marked the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Social transformation is a mark of such revivals. But not all those engaged in the betterment of society were motivated by a passion to serve God by serving their fellow Man. At the same time...

This 126 th episode of CS is titled, Yet Again. Donations to keep the CS host site up are welcome and needed. You can do so at sanctorum.us. Just look for the “Donate” link. In the last episode, we considered the Second Great Awakening and ended with this . . .By the 1850s the United States was thriving , largely because of the benefits brought by the Awakening. The Mid-West was being developed, t...

This 125 th episode of CS is titled A Second Awakening. I usually leave this announcement for the end but will insert it here at the beginning. Donations to keep the CS host site up are welcome and needed. You can do so at sanctorum.us. Just look for the “Donate” link. We ended our last episode with the dour spiritual condition of both the United States and Europe at the end of the 18 th C.I menti...

This is episode 124- Decline .Following the Great Awakening, which produced a deep-seated sense of Faith in so many Americans prior to the Revolutionary War, as the new nation organized itself around its new national identity, it realized something unique was taking place. A genuine religious pluralism had taken root. That was very different from the centuries of conflict that marked the Europe th...