Podcasts about american protestant

  • 51PODCASTS
  • 85EPISODES
  • 45mAVG DURATION
  • 1EPISODE EVERY OTHER WEEK
  • May 23, 2025LATEST

POPULARITY

20172018201920202021202220232024


Best podcasts about american protestant

Latest podcast episodes about american protestant

Across the Divide
The Privilege and Responsibility of Christian Pilgrimage in the Holy Land with Mae Elise Cannon- Touring the Holy Land #7

Across the Divide

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2025 55:39


In this episode of the Touring the Holy Land Series, Jen has a conversation with Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon, the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace. Mae shares some of her transformative experiences traveling and leading trips in Palestine-Israel. She unpacks the role that privilege plays when foreigners travel to the region, emphasizing the cognitive dissonance  that travelers often face when encountering conflicting narratives and the systemic injustices that Palestinians endure. Mae shares about how Churches for Middle East Peace facilitates Christian Holy Land pilgrimages, fostering transformative possibilities for Christian peacebuilding through multi-narrative trips that uplift diverse perspectives from Palestinians and Israelis.In their extended conversation for our Patreon supporters, Jennifer and Mae discuss the impact of Christian pilgrimage on Palestinian communities, highlighting both the economic and emotional significance of solidarity. To access this extended conversation and others, consider ⁠supporting us on Patreon⁠. Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace. Cannon formerly served as the senior director of Advocacy and Outreach for World Vision U.S. on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC; as a consultant to the Middle East for child advocacy issues for Compassion International in Jerusalem; as the executive pastor of Hillside Covenant Church located in Walnut Creek, California; and as director of development and transformation for extension ministries at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois. Cannon holds an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary, an MBA from North Park University's School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an MA in bioethics from Trinity International University. She received her first doctorate in American History with a minor in Middle Eastern studies at the University of California (Davis) focusing on the history of the American Protestant church in Israel and Palestine and her second doctorate in Ministry in Spiritual Formation from Northern Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books including the award-winning Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World and editor of A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land. Her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Christianity Today, Leadership Magazine, The Christian Post, Jerusalem Post, EU Parliament Magazine, Huffington Post, and other international media outlets.If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting our work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/AcrosstheDivide Follow Across the Divide on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠⁠⁠‪@AcrosstheDividePodcast‬⁠⁠⁠Across the Divide partners with Peace Catalyst International to amplify the pursuit of peace and explore the vital intersection of Christian faith and social justice in Palestine-Israel.Show Notes:Vox article on the influence of the book Exodus by Leon UrisCMEP TripsCMEP Action alert

New Books in American Studies
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books in American Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

New Books in Islamic Studies
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books in Islamic Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

New Books Network
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

New Books in Intellectual History
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books in Intellectual History

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

New Books in Higher Education
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books in Higher Education

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Christian Studies
David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

New Books in Christian Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2025 81:43


Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur'an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship.  Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary (NYU Press, 2024) examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders' ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations. The Rev. Dr. David D. Grafton is the Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations on the faculty of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford International University Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

The Aaron Renn Show
The Managerial Revolution in American Churches | Christopher Schlecht

The Aaron Renn Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2025 37:07


Join host Aaron as he interviews Christopher Schlecht, Senior Fellow of History and Director of the Classical and Christian Studies Program at New St. Andrews College. They discuss Schlecht's fascinating doctoral dissertation "Onward Christian Administrators," which explores how business management practices transformed American Protestant churches in the early 20th century. Discover how this administrative revolution influenced church architecture, theological controversies, and even women's ordination in unexpected ways.Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Across the Divide
The History of American Protestant Pilgrimage in Palestine with Stephanie Stidham Rogers- Touring the Holy Land #2

Across the Divide

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2025 57:26


In episode 2 of the Touring the Holy Land series, Jen talks with historian Stephanie Stidham Rogers about the history of Protestant pilgrimage in Palestine. They discuss the historical context and cultural influences in the 19th century that shaped the phenomenon of Western Christian tourism in Palestine. Stephanie explains how American Protestants viewed the Holy Land as a "frontier" and the role that Orientalism played in shaping their understanding of the land of the Bible and the people who inhabited it.In their extended conversation for our Patreon supporters, Jen and Stephanie discuss more of Stephanie's own journey and the marginalization of research on the Holy Land in the early 2000s . To access this extended conversation and others, consider ⁠supporting us on Patreon⁠. Follow Across the Divide on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠⁠⁠‪@AcrosstheDividePodcast‬⁠⁠⁠Across the Divide partners with ⁠Peace Catalyst International⁠ to amplify the pursuit of peace and explore the vital intersection of Christian faith and social justice in Palestine-Israel.You can learn more and register for the March gathering hosted by Telos at telosgroup.org/gathering2025Stephanie Stidham Rogers is an author, independent scholar, humanities expert, and semi-retired University Professor. She resides in both Seattle and Tampa with her husband and family. Stephanie's Published Books:-Inventing the Holy Land : American Protestant pilgrimage to Palestine, 1865-1941 - ⁠https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739148426/Inventing-the-Holy-Land-American-Protestant-Pilgrimage-to-Palestine-1865%E2%80%931941⁠ -Suffragist Migration West after Seneca Falls, 1848–1871 - ⁠https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B004AO9MNS⁠

Generations Community Church
Emotional Faith Triggers - Audio

Generations Community Church

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2024 21:36


Our lives are filled with symbols...from the unassuming golden arches of McDonalds to the family Christmas tree that's put up each year. Symbols are used and matter, because of their potential to evoke powerful memories and emotions. Take, for example, the first time the family Christmas tree is put up - after "mom" or "dad" or a child has died. All of a sudden, this simple object of Christmas becomes an avenue for renewed grief and grieving. It's no longer just a family tree - but a reminder of what has been lost. What many American Protestant don't realize is that God loves to use symbols to trigger our emotions and our memory.

Death To Tyrants Podcast
Ep. 318 - Bad Theology Leads to Bad Actions, with Father John Whiteford

Death To Tyrants Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2024 65:05


My guest this week is one of my favorite men to have on the show: Father John Whiteford. Fr. John is Archpriest and pastor at St. Jonah Orthodox Church in Spring, Texas. Fr. John was a representative of the ROCOR Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America at the signing of the Act of Canonical Communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, in Moscow, on May 17, 2007. He is currently the general editor of the St. Innocent Liturgical Calendar. He is also the dean of the southern deanery (Texas and Louisiana) of the Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America ROCOR. He is here to discuss the bad theology being preached by many American Protestant preachers that is leading to horrible death and destruction in the Middle East. There is a trend amongst many American Christians that the State of Israel must be supported and defended no matter what. Because of a very modern take on certain scriptures, many believe the Jews are God's "chosen people", the State of Israel is the same thing as the Biblical Israel, dispensationalism is a legitimate Biblical teaching, and that modern day Judaism is the same thing as the Judaism of the Old Testament. Fr. John explains where these misconceptions arose from and why and how they're not only against true Church teachings but also lead to horriific consequences. As St. Matthew said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." Links for this episode:         Donate to the St Theodosius fire damage fund here:   Donate to the show here:  Visit my website:  Audio Production by Podsworth Media: Leave us a review and rating on iTunes! Thanks!

The American Reformer Podcast
Please Do The Reading (ft. Michael Lynch)

The American Reformer Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2024 81:10


Michael Lynch, Teaching Fellow at the Davenant Institute, joins Timon and American Reformer Contributing Editor, Mike Sabo, to breakdown what's wrong with most American Protestant political thought.    #MichaelLynch #Davenant #Reformed #Magistrate #Church #Leadership #Pastor #Protestant #Politics   Listen in for a fresh perspective on the development of American protestant political thought and the duties and authorities of civil magistrates and clergy to protect "true religion" that holds fast to natural law and biblical principles.   Learn more about Michael Lynch's work: https://davenantinstitute.org/tag/michael-lynch/ https://calvinseminary.academia.edu/MichaelLynch   ––––––   Follow American Reformer across Social Media: X / Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/amreformer Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmericanReformer/ Website – https://americanreformer.org/   Promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day, by donating to The American Reformer: https://americanreformer.org/donate/   Follow Us on Twitter: Josh Abbotoy – https://twitter.com/Byzness Timon Cline – https://twitter.com/tlloydcline   The American Reformer Podcast is  hosted by Josh Abbotoy and Timon Cline, recorded remotely in the United States, and edited by Jared Cummings.   Subscribe to our Podcast, "The American Reformer" Get our RSS Feed – https://americanreformerpodcast.podbean.com/ Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-american-reformer-podcast/id1677193347 Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/1V2dH5vhfogPIv0X8ux9Gm?si=a19db9dc271c4ce5

Benders of the Arc
Episode 19: Churches for Middle East Peace (Part 2)

Benders of the Arc

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2024 24:20


Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Cannon holds an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary, an MBA from North Park University's School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an MA in bioethics from Trinity International University. She received her first doctorate in American History with a minor in Middle Eastern studies at the University of California (Davis) focusing on the history of the American Protestant church in Israel and Palestine and her second doctorate in Ministry in Spiritual Formation from Northern Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books including the award-winning Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World and editor of A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land. Her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Christianity Today, Leadership Magazine, The Christian Post, Jerusalem Post, EU Parliament Magazine, Huffington Post, and other international media outlets.Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is a coalition of more than 30 national Church communions and organizations working to encourage U.S. policies that actively promote just, lasting, and comprehensive resolutions to conflicts in the Middle East. CMEP helps church organizations, leaders, and individuals nationwide advocate in a knowledgeable, timely, holistic, and effective way to express their concerns about justice and peace for all peoples in the Middle East.CMEP uses three primary strategies to encourage U.S. policies that promote a just peace: Educate; Elevate; and Advocate.

Benders of the Arc
Episode 18: Churches for Middle East Peace (Part 1)

Benders of the Arc

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2024 28:33


Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Cannon holds an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary, an MBA from North Park University's School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an MA in bioethics from Trinity International University. She received her first doctorate in American History with a minor in Middle Eastern studies at the University of California (Davis) focusing on the history of the American Protestant church in Israel and Palestine and her second doctorate in Ministry in Spiritual Formation from Northern Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books including the award-winning Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World and editor of A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land. Her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Christianity Today, Leadership Magazine, The Christian Post, Jerusalem Post, EU Parliament Magazine, Huffington Post, and other international media outlets.Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is a coalition of more than 30 national Church communions and organizations working to encourage U.S. policies that actively promote just, lasting, and comprehensive resolutions to conflicts in the Middle East. CMEP helps church organizations, leaders, and individuals nationwide advocate in a knowledgeable, timely, holistic, and effective way to express their concerns about justice and peace for all peoples in the Middle East.CMEP uses three primary strategies to encourage U.S. policies that promote a just peace: Educate; Elevate; and Advocate.

The International Living Podcast
Episode 39: Temple-Hopping in Lampang, Thailand

The International Living Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2023 36:19 Transcription Available


This week we're talking to Rachel Devlin about her recent exploration way off the tourist trail…to the north of Thailand and the city of Lampang—the provincial capital.Though Thailand was never formally colonized by the West, its northern provinces—particularly Lampang—were heavily influenced by British and American immigrants. American Protestant missionaries arrived in the mid-to-late 19th century. At the same time, the British took advantage of the then-booming teak industry.Today, the city of Lampang—a mere 90-minute drive from Chiang Mai—heads the province of the same name. Though it's a sprawling, modern metropolis set against a rural backdrop of rice fields and small mountains, you can still find evidence of these British teak wallahs, or loggers, around Lampang's old town. It's a city of traditional crafts—the local ceramics are a highlight—and ancient ways. Reflecting a clash of cultures that's endured for centuries, the local Buddhist temples are built in a Burmese style, in some spectacular settings. In between visiting those, Rachel got to enjoy the local cuisine, night markets, vigorous hiking, and a 1930s Hollywood/Broadway connection that's controversial to this day.But for Rachel, who's lived in nearby Chiang Mai for years, the simple conveniences of Thai life are always the most enjoyable. Though Lampang's history and culture is impressive, it's also a top spot to just chill. In her own words: “This is a great place to stroll, stop for some $4 rice or noodles from a street cart, get a massage for $6, and take in the lovely old buildings.” Join host, Jim Santos, as he meets Rachel Devlin in the latest episode of Bigger, Better World.Read her full article in the August issue of the International Living Magazine: Temples, Teak Barons, and Mystical Quartz in Thailand. If you're enjoying the podcast, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform: https://lovethepodcast.com/internationalliving.Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Re-integrate
MAE ELISE CANNON: Spiritual Practices that Fuel Active Engagement in Society

Re-integrate

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2023 46:48


There have been Christians throughout history who God has called to societal activism on behalf of the poor and oppressed. And the power in which they did so was found in their inner faith practices that connected them intimately with God through Christ and His Spirit. Mae Elise Cannon is the author of Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action (IVPress, 2013). As both a historian and a Christian advocate for peace and justice in the Middle East, she explores the direct connection between Christians' personal relationship with God and their outward actions of kindness, mercy, compassion and advocacy. She looks at how several notable Christian historical figures were able to engage in their societal challenges because of their spiritual practices.  Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Here is our interview with Mae Cannon.   Cannon formerly served as the senior director of Advocacy and Outreach for World Vision, as a consultant to the Middle East for child advocacy issues for Compassion International in Jerusalem, as the executive pastor of Hillside Covenant Church in Walnut Creek, California, and as director of development and transformation for extension ministries at Willow Creek Community Church. She holds an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary, an MBA from North Park University's School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an MA in bioethics from Trinity International University. She received her doctorate in American History with a minor in Middle Eastern studies at the University of California (Davis) focusing on the history of the American Protestant church in Israel and Palestine.  Mae Cannon is also the author of Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World (with a forward by John Perkins) (IVPress, 2009) and the editor of A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land (Cascade Books, 2017). You can purchase these books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. You can order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about this book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off. Thanks for listening! Please leave offer a review and share this podcast with your friends.  Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson (@Bob_Robinson_re) and David Loughney (@David_Loughney). Go to re-integrate.org for the latest articles on reintegrating your callings with God's mission and online resources for further learning. You can also find out about a Bible study book that you can use in your small group or individual devotions: Reintegrate Your Vocation with God's Mission. On Reintegrate's podcast page, you'll find more episodes and ways to email us to comment on this podcast. Music provided by Brian Donahue.

The WorldView in 5 Minutes
Fox News trying to censor Tucker Carlson on Twitter, Christian persecution in Tajikistan, America's burdensome debt

The WorldView in 5 Minutes

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2023


It's Tuesday, June 13th, A.D. 2023. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus.  (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson Christian persecution in Tajikistan Persecution against Christian churches is on the rise in Tajikistan.   In May 2022, Sulaymon Davlatzoda, a Tajikistan senior state religious affairs official, told Protestant church leaders that the government would no longer register new churches. Plus, anyone under 18 years of age is prohibited from practicing the Christian faith or taking part in church activities.  America's burdensome debt Does the U.S. government have a big debt problem? In the last 12 months, President Biden has racked up another $2.1 trillion in federal debt. That's up from a $438 billion deficit in 2015 when Barack Obama was president which is a 5-fold increase.   And that's up from a deficit of $22 billion back in the year 1997, when Bill Clinton was president, representing a 120-fold increase.  Regardless of what modern economists say, the wisdom of God in the book of Proverbs reminds us that “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7) Indictment of Trump didn't decrease popularity The present controversies do not appear to be hampering Donald Trump in the Republican race for the presidential nomination. Real Clear Politics has the former president at 53.6% up from 44% back in March.  That's a 31.8% lead ahead of Ron DeSantis. And Joe Biden and Donald Trump are neck and neck on the un-favorability rating — both at 55%. Rick Warren objecting to Baptists cutting ties over women pastors The Christian Post reported on Rick Warren's campaign to allow for women pastors in the Southern Baptist Church. Warren's Saddleback church is appealing the Southern Baptist Convention's decision to cut ties with the church over the issue. Christianity Today claims that 73% of American Evangelicals are okay with women preaching in a Sunday service.  And a recent survey conducted by Lifeway Research found that 55% of Evangelical pastors are okay with women serving as a senior pastor in a church. And the trend continues. Research conducted in 2016 found 21% of professional clergy in the US were women, up from 2.3% in 1960. 57% of Protestant churches prepared for active shooter A Lifeway survey discovered that 57% of American Protestant churches have prepared for an active shooter incident on church premises. And 54% claim to have armed church members as part of the plan. That's up from 45% claiming to have armed church members attending services back in 2019.   However, 21% of  Protestant churches do not allow firearms on church property at all. The survey did not ask if the church was ready for spiritual attacks.  Ephesians 6:13 says, “Take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” And 1 John 4:4 reminds God's people that “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 100 African leaders to U.S.: Respect our Biblical values Increasingly, African nations are the target of the Western woke, pro-abortion, and anti-family agenda through U.S. foreign assistance programs.   Representing Bethany Christian Services, American Red Cross, Oxfam, International Rescue Committee, Islamic Relief, Catholic Relief Services, Care USA, Save the Children, and World Vision, an organization called Interaction.org lobbies the federal government for diverting funds towards these types of programs. InterAction explicitly promotes a universal “right” to abortion and increased funding for “women's rights and feminist organizations.” Last week, in light of these Western commitments, more than 100 African parliamentarians and religious leaders from 15 countries sent a letter to the U.S. Senate and House leadership, requesting that Africa's pro-life and pro-family values be respected.   There was special concern about President Biden's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding. The U.S. spends $40-$50 billion per year in foreign aid. Fox News trying to censor Tucker Carlson on Twitter And finally, will Twitter replace Fox News as a go-to for conservative Americans?   Tucker Carlson has topped 115 million Twitter streamings or downloads for his first commentary on Twitter. His second commentary, issued on June 8th, is pushing 55 million. After booting Carlson from their Fox News prime time programming, the self-styled conservative news organization experienced a prime time ratings drop of 37%, according to Deadline.com. Fox News is registering at 1.42 million views now -- down from 3 million when Tucker Carlson was on his game.   Axios reports that Fox News has responded to Carlson's Twitter activity with a cease and desist letter. Carlson's lawyers have responded with this statement: “Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election. Tucker will not be silenced by anyone. ... He is a singularly important voice on matters of public interest in our country, and will remain so." Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Tuesday, June 13th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ. Print story CA eager to call parents “abusive” who don't affirm transgender kids California AB 957, now before the State assembly, would amend the code to give the state the authority to remove children from their homes if their parents refuse to “affirm their gender,” reports LifeSiteNews.  Those parents would be categorized as “abusive.” It would also require schools, churches and other organizations to follow suit or face repercussions for 'impacting the health, safety and welfare of [a] child.' Nicole Pearson, founder of the Facts Law Truth Justice law firm, told the Daily Signal: “This is a horrifying bill for children, and for parents and guardians not just in California, but across the country. Gavin Newsom is gunning for president in 2028. If he signs this bill into law, here, it will be headed to every state if he wins.

The Conversation
The Conversation: Tourism authority fights to stay afloat; Bicentennial marks milestone in Protestant missionary history

The Conversation

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2023 35:00


The Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority struggles to find legislative backing; Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the second wave of American Protestant missionaries in Hawaiʻi; Creator shares the joys of Hamakua-grown, ginger syrup

Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The F-Word (are confessional Protestants fundamentalists?)

Paleo Protestant Pudcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2023 56:34


This time co-hosts ⁠Miles Smith⁠ (Anglican), ⁠D. G. Hart⁠ (Presbyterian), and ⁠Korey Maas⁠ (Lutheran) talk about the limitations of the American Protestant binary that divides white Protestants into either evangelicals or mainline (can you say "liberal"?). If a Protestant group doesn't fit one of those molds, that leaves "fundamentalist"? The inhumanity! Each of our communions has brushes with positions, episodes, and sensibilities that might produce charges of make fundamentalism. At the same time, in a world of getting along either for the sake of mainline Protestant ecumenism or evangelical niceness, polemics about doctrine, liturgy, or even the church calendar can strike moderate Protestants and outside observers as mean and therefore fundamentalist. To help with this session's talking points, panelists mention several books that might be useful for listeners wanting to get up to speed on confessional Protestants in relation to fundamentalism. These include: Milton Rudnick, Fundamentalism & the Missouri Synod Allen Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians James Christian Burkee, Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict That Changed American Christianity Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design D. G. Hart, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America No sponsors this time. The pudcast was hoping for something Big Pharma related since the television series Dopesick made a deep impression. But reading upbeat copy about a genuine social crisis is not what fundamentalists or confessional Protestants do. Follow us @IVMiles and @oldlife.  Korey Maas remains unfollowable.  

The Conquering Truth
The Importance of Communion

The Conquering Truth

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2023 76:35


Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper is considered a sacrament or ordinance in almost all churches that call themselves Christian. It is one of two sacred rites, the other being baptism, that is universally practiced across Christendom and can be considered a defining practice related to being a Christian. But within the American Protestant church, communion has lost much of its significance within the life and worship of the church. According to a study from 2012, only 1% of Southern Baptist churches practice weekly communion. In this episode, we want to focus on why communion is important. We discuss how it unifies the church, how it proclaims the holiness of God, and how it proclaims the gospel through the separation between believers and unbelievers. We also discuss how communion is related to church discipline and how the church's failure to observe and show honor to the reality of our communion with Christ and with one another makes being cut off from the table seem insignificant. Please join us as we discuss this incredibly important topic. Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC Hosts - Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn Technical Director - Timothy Kaiser Theme Music - Gabriel Hudelson

Reformation Baptist Church
The Importance of Communion

Reformation Baptist Church

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2023 76:00


Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper is considered a sacrament or ordinance in almost all churches that call themselves Christian. It is one of two sacred rites, the other being baptism, that is universally practiced across Christendom and can be considered a defining practice related to being a Christian. But within the American Protestant church, communion has lost much of its significance within the life and worship of the church. According to a study from 2012, only 1- of Southern Baptist churches practice weekly communion. --In this episode, we want to focus on why communion is important. We discuss how it unifies the church, how it proclaims the holiness of God, and how it proclaims the gospel through the separation between believers and unbelievers. We also discuss how communion is related to church discipline and how the church's failure to observe and show honor to the reality of our communion with Christ and with one another makes being cut off from the table seem insignificant. Please join us as we discuss this incredibly important topic.--Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC-Hosts - Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn-Technical Director - Timothy Kaiser-Theme Music - Gabriel Hudelson

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 21: Decide to be Happy

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 2, 2023 44:29


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 20: World's Greatest Birthday Party

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2022 30:50


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 19: Wonder Working Power

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2022 38:10


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 18: When Christmas Comes

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2022 27:54


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 17: Tomorrow is Yours. Come and Get It

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2022 34:48


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 16: The Joy of Life, All Your Life

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2022 30:18


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 15: Positive Thinking and Successful Living

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2022 30:16


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 14: How You Can Stop Worrying

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2022 30:08


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 13: Happiness Can Be Yours

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2022 31:30


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 12: You Can Overcome Any Problem 03

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2022 29:58


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 11: You Can Overcome Any Problem 02

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2022 31:22


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 10: You Can Overcome Any Problem 01

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2022 27:48


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 9: You Can Have Self Confidence

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2022 28:58


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 8: Trust in God

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2022 29:44


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 7: Relax and Enjoy New Strength

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2022 31:48


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 6: How to Relax

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2022 32:06


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 5: How to Develop the Power of Enthusiasm

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2022 28:50


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 4: How to Break the Worry Habit

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2022 27:50


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 3: Get Power and You'll Have Power

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2022 27:42


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 2: Every Problem Contains its

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2022 32:44


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale
GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale Episode 1: Don't Be Afraid of Anything

GSMC Classics: Norman Vincent Peale

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 15, 2022 29:04


Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking. He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932 his retirement in 1984. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. GSMC Classics presents some of the greatest classic radio broadcasts, classic novels, dramas, comedies, mysteries, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. The GSMC Classics collection is the embodiment of the best of the golden age of radio. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through the classic age of radio, with this compiled collection of episodes from a wide variety of old programs. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed and some shows might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

Boys' Bible Study
A Box of Faith (2015) feat. Jim Beird TEASER

Boys' Bible Study

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2022 2:09


Subscribe today for access to our full catalog of bonus episodes, including 2+ new episodes every month! www.patreon.com/boysbiblestudy Disguised as a heartwarming story of a young girl's steadfast devotion to God, A BOX OF FAITH is classic Christian movie misdirection. Dior's father is sent to jail after being framed for stealing from his workplace, and Dior opts to run away rather than be sent to foster care. She lives in her family's storage unit, in which she finds a mysterious box that essentially allows her to mail her prayers directly to God and get an answer from Him almost instantaneously. But this plot goes off the rails quickly when several characters separately engage in discourse about how Dior deserves to have her prayers answered because she is good at earning money. She meets another homeless girl named Emma who is portrayed lazy and freeloading, and the Box notably doesn't grant Emma's requests. Also, an incompetent yet enthusiastic social worker named Ms. Ward takes great interest in Dior's case because she thinks Dior is “ambitious” and “wants to do things in her life”. American Protestant media is always equating strong virtue with financial success, but the appearance of this theme in A BOX OF FAITH is shocking in what could have easily been a straightforward and silly story about the supernatural power of the Christian God. Our dear friend (and Ash's roommate!) Jim Beird makes his podcasting debut to educate us on Arizona culture and ruminate with us as we ask - does God really have a plan for our pathetic little lives?  View our full episode list and subscribe to any of our public feeds: http://boysbiblestudy.com Unlock 2+ bonus episodes per month: http://patreon.com/boysbiblestudy Subscribe to our Twitch for monthly streams: http://twitch.tv/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/boysbiblestudy Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy

The Treadweary Podcast
The invisible God... (Pastoral Letter, March 2022)

The Treadweary Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2022 4:47


“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” – Colossians 1:15              A picture paints a thousand words. We have heard that phrase a million times. There is a lot of truth to that, because we are very willing to believe our eyes much more than we will our ears as we listen to another account from someone else of what they saw.               The same is true of stories. We like our stories, but if they can come with pictures…even better. For 80% of Americans, watching television is the first choice of leisure activities. When asking a similar audience, studies have shown that half of all Americans prefer watching the news rather than reading it. The readers of news also surpassed listeners by 34% to 19%. In other words, we like our pictures.              This is not new. There is this myth in history that once the Enlightenment came, the whole world became literate, or at least an overwhelming percentage of it did. This was mostly true of the clergy and the nobility, but for the common man, and even for some elites, literacy was an afterthought.  Hence the amount of art that makes up the architecture of churches in Europe. With this art came beauty and innumerable practices in our ecclesiastical tradition that have added greatly to the habits of congregations around the world. Illiteracy was the reason why St. Francis created the Nativity scene so that the poor would know the story of Christmas. It is why we have statues and paintings of biblical heroes, and why hymns exist to try and teach the faith through melodies that get stuck in our heads. With 1 in 7 Americans being functionally illiterate, these pictures added to our stories would not be considered antiquated but necessary for the nurturing of the faithful in all generations.              As we enter into Lent this month, one of the Lenten devotions that is almost as old as the church itself is the walking of “The Stations of the Cross.” Originating during pilgrimages to Jerusalem where travelers desired to walk in the footsteps of Christ to Calvary along the Via Dolorosa, the “Stations” are a mainstay among our Catholic and Anglican brothers and sisters (especially on Fridays during Lent), and have seen a resurgence in Lutheran denominations since the 1960's. Based on fifteen events in the account of Good Friday and Easter, from the agony in the garden to the resurrection, the walk is always accompanied with visuals and Scripture in order to capture all the senses so that we might find ourselves sucked into the most important time in history.               This year, our youth are going to explore three stations each week, and then make their own interpretation of each one using old magazines to construct collages. This allows them room to use their imaginations and make the events of their redemption more real for them.               Now, some Protestants get angry about pictures in church because of the idea that we are not supposed to make graven images. This is why, in the American Protestant tradition, very few churches have a crucifix or art to assist in our worship because we believe it to be blasphemy and a sin. Yet, let me ask you this, did Jesus have a body? Did He have a face and skin? Did He have blood pumping through His veins? Yes, He did. Jesus is the breaker of any expectations we may have around images of God because He is God made manifest before us. He is the image of the invisible God. He is God con carne. He is the One who speaks to Philip, “The one who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) God uses all sorts of physically ordinary things to convey His promise and redeem His creation. The physical Body of His Son dying on a cros

Chrysalis with John Fiege
3. Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap — The Biblical Call for Ecological Care

Chrysalis with John Fiege

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2021 85:36


Environmental activists often focus on facts and data, as if more climate information will lead to more climate action. That strategy may be effective with some communities, but overall it hasn't prevented global emissions from climbing year after year or habitats from being destroyed day after day.Many folks in the environmental movement are thinking a lot about how to make messaging more effective. But it's not just the message we need to question—it's also the messenger.In the U.S., white evangelical Christians are not known for their strong support of environmental protections or for believing that humans are even causing climate change, but maybe they haven't had the right messengers.Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is an evangelical Christian climate activist, which is not a combination of descriptors we often hear. Kyle has spent years building a movement of young messengers from within the evangelical community who speak a new language of creation care.He believes that Christians don't need to look any further than the Bible to become fierce and passionate advocates for ecological protection and climate action.Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was National Organizer and Spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action before becoming Vice President at the Evangelical Environmental Network.I met Kyle in 2019 at a week-long climate storytelling retreat in New York City. I was super excited to continue our conversation here and dive deeper into his own ecological awakening, what scripture says about caring for the environment, and how Christians and non-Christians alike can find common values and build power together to care for life on Earth across cultural lines that often divide us.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Rev. Kyle Meyaard-SchaapRev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap serves as the Vice President of the Evangelical Environmental Network. He holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies from Calvin University (B.A. '12), a Master of Divinity degree from Western Theological Seminary (M.Div. '16), and is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA). Much of his professional experience has involved the integration of theology, science, and action toward a deeper awareness of the Christian responsibility to care for God's earth and to love one's neighbors, both at home and around the world. Kyle has been named to Midwest Energy Group's 40 Under 40 and the American Conservation Coalition's 30 Under 30 cohorts for his work on climate change education and advocacy. Most recently, he was named a Yale Public Voices on the Climate Crisis Fellow for 2020. His work has been featured in national and international news outlets such as PBS, NPR, CNN, NBC News, New York Times, Reuters, and U.S. News and World Report. He is married to Allison and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with their son, Simon.Quotation Read by Rev. Kyle Meyaard-SchaapThe Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. - Wendell Berry © Wendell Berry. This poem is excerpted from New Collected Poems and is reprinted with permission of the Counterpoint Press.Recommended Readings & MediaTranscriptionIntroJohn FiegeEnvironmental activists often focus on facts and data, as if more climate information will lead to more climate action. That strategy may be effective with some communities, but overall, it hasn't prevented global emissions from climbing year after year or habitats from being destroyed day after day.Many folks in the environmental movement are thinking a lot about how to make messaging more effective. But it's not just the message we need to question—it's also the messenger.In the US, white evangelical Christians are not known for their strong support of environmental protections or for believing that humans are even causing climate change, but maybe they haven't had the right messengers.Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is an evangelical Christian climate activist, which is not a combination of descriptors we often hear. Kyle has spent years building a movement of young messengers from within the evangelical community who speak a new language of creation care.He believes that Christians don't need to look any further than the Bible to become fierce and passionate advocates for ecological protection and climate action.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapSo when humans read, have dominion and subdue the earth, and they separate that, from the rest of scriptures witness, which is that Christ is creations true king, then it's easy for us to say, "Well, I guess we have a blank check. Let's do whatever we want." Instead of saying, "Well, let's shape our dominion in our rulership after creation's true king, which is Christ." And when we actually do that, then the way we have dominion and subdue the earth is going to look a whole lot different. It's going to look a whole lot less like privilege and a whole lot more like responsibility.John FiegeI'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was National Organizer and Spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action before becoming Vice President at the Evangelical Environmental Network.I met Kyle in 2019 at a week-long climate storytelling retreat in New York City. I was super excited to continue our conversation here and dive deeper into his own ecological awakening, what scripture says about caring for the environment, and how Christians and non-Christians alike can find common values and build power together to care for life on Earth across cultural lines that often divide us.Here is Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap.---ConversationJohn FiegeYou grew up in Michigan. And that's where I wanted to start. Can you tell me where you grew up? And as a child, what was your relationship to the earth, to the forest, to the ocean, to the rest of life on the planet?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, absolutely. I did. I grew up in Holland, Michigan, which is a beautiful, small town, on the shores of Lake Michigan, western part of the state and grew up, you know, minutes from Lake Michigan. So the beach and dunes were always a big part of my life growing up, as was camping, and just enjoying the beautiful landscapes of Michigan. Northern Michigan, with it's in the lakes and forests, and obviously, Lake Michigan and the coast there. So creation and its beauty, you know, was always a part of my childhood and my upbringing. I can't say it was always a conscious part, though. We didn't talk often about our relationship to the natural world, our responsibilities toward it. My community was a beautiful Christian community, that that taught me lots of really important lessons and values and virtues. But I don't remember a conversation about God's creation and our relationship to it, our responsibility to it, certainly nothing about climate change. And I don't remember outright hostility, to be honest. I think a lot of people expect that from a small Evangelical community like mine. What I remember most was just silence, around climate change, around environmental issues in general, pollution. Except for recycling, which I'm not sure we would have done if the truck didn't pick it up at our curb every other week for us. Except for that, I can't really remember any intentional choices that we made as a family or as a larger Church community. And, and so my childhood was marked by kind of this dissonance between my experience of God's grandeur in these beautiful, breathtaking landscapes that were just a part of me and a part of my life growing up, and the relative silence around those gifts. Silence around what our responsibility would be toward those things. I think it was taken for granted that these things were here, and very little conversation about how to protect them, or what our faith, well how our faith could inform the way we approached questions about how to protect those gifts.Right. And an interesting thing, though, is even if you're not talking about it, in articulating this connection, you obviously had that really profound experience with the natural world. Even if kind of culturally, politically it wasn't, you know, positioned that way. Do you have any, like, particularly strong memories of an experience that has really stuck with you in terms of being in the natural world?Yeah, I think more than one experience, I think I have just a general sense memory, of being in the sand and in the water in Lake Michigan. I don't think I ever really reflected on how formative that body of water was to me and continues to be for me. It's almost like a my center of gravity. I travel a lot for my work, but I feel most at home back in this landscape in Michigan, close to the lake. It's my directional guide for someone who struggles with innate sense of the cardinal directions with Lake Michigan's always West. So if I know where Lake Michigan is, I know where West is. So I think more than kind of a general, distinct, or discreet memory, just the the general sense memory of being near Lake Michigan, of going to Lake Michigan often in the summers, going to the beach often, being in those dunes, being in the water. A couple of years ago, I was invited to a multifaith space where people were invited to bring a part of creation that's meaningful to them to the space, and to kind of offer it to the group. And I brought a vial of Lake Michigan water because that was the only thing I could think of, right? Lake Michigan is the spot for me. Yeah.John FiegeOh, that's awesome. Yeah, I've, over the last couple years, I've started, when meditating, I've started visualizing, being in the surf of the ocean and having the water come in and out in the same cadence as the breath. And that's, I've really, like connected with that as like a technique. And I've thought about it. And I realized, you know, I grew up going to the Atlantic Ocean every summer for a long time. And it's so embedded in me and in my psyche. It sounds like you might have a similar water relationship there.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, I love that! I love that. And people who grew up in the mountains speak similarly about the mountains. I don't think I realized it, until relatively recently, the impact that that gift has had on me in my life. Yeah.John FiegeOh, that's awesome. Can you tell me the story of your brother spending a semester abroad in New Zealand?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, so my older brother is three years older than me. My hero for much of my life, continues to be one of my best friends. He went off to a semester abroad program in New Zealand when he was a sophomore in college, and I was still in high school, I was a junior in high school. And he grew up, you know, in the same kind of milieu as I did. Pretty conservative, Evangelical Christian community. Very, very little discussion around the environment around climate change in particular, pollution, and the environment in general. And he went on this semester abroad trip, which was designed for Christian college students to engage the disciplines of ecology, biology, environmental science, and biblical studies and theology, in conversation with each other, to examine this beautiful, unique ecosystem in New Zealand; and to bring theological questions and biblical insights into conversation with what they were discovering. And he came back totally transformed.John FiegeIt sounds like an amazing program!Kyle Meyaard-SchaapIt does! I almost went on the same program myself! I ultimately chose to take a different trip elsewhere, but it was an amazing trip. And he came back pretty on fire for what he had learned, and particularly for the way that the trip helped him integrate his existing Christian values, with his burgeoning understanding of the environmental and climate crisis. I think the climax of his return was when he announced to the family...I forget what it was...a couple of days, maybe a week or two, after he came back that because of what he had learned, he was now a vegetarian. Which for my Midwestern, pretty conservative meat and potatoes family, that was pretty shocking. I remember for myself as a junior in high school, I didn't know anybody like me who had ever made that choice. And I had the caricature in my mind of the hemp-friendship-bracelet-weaving, vegan-pizza-eating, throw-paint-on-fur-coats-on-the-weekends-vegetarian, and I was forced to to either keep that caricature and then put my brother in that camp along with them, which was painful, or to suspend my assumptions and hear him out. And he was gracious and patient, and kind of laid out for me all of his rationale for the decision. And most importantly, he helped me see why that decision to become a vegetarian was not a jettisoning of the values that we had been taught by our community. It was, in fact, a deepening of those values. It was a way for him to live more fully into those values, like loving our neighbor, loving God, caring for God's creation. All of the values that we had been instilled with, it was another opportunity to express those values more deeply. And that was, that was a real lightbulb moment for me. I think I had assumed that to make those kinds of decisions or to care about something like the environment or climate change, I would need to turn my back on my community, turn my back on the lessons I learned in Sunday school, turn my back on the values that were instilled in me by my family. And he was the first person who gave me permission to recognize that actually taking these things seriously and doing something about it is a way for us to live more fully into those lessons and those values that we had been taught.John FiegeGreat. That's so interesting, because it seems to set up a trajectory for so much of what you've done since. I'm thinking in particular about this idea, this assumption that, if we just explain the facts, if we just reveal the scientific truth, and everyone would be like, "Oh, okay! Well, let's change everything now!" You know? And it doesn't work that way. You know, we're changed by the people who are closest to us. And that's the key that unlocks people's ability to transform. So I'm wondering if you can kind of start with that moment with your brother. And you know, what path did that take you on? And what does your work and life look like now? And in particular, I'd love to hear you talk more about the work you're doing with young people, and that idea of change from within the community.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapAbsolutely. So that that experience with my brother was really the spark that was fanned into flame, when I myself went off to college a couple years later. Went to a small Christian liberal arts school here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I took classes, and had professors, and read books, and went to lectures, and made friends and all of it just combined to continue to advance my understanding of what my faith had to say about the environmental crisis and the climate crisis in particular, and in how my commitment to my faith was drawing me more deeply into action. At the same time, I was studying religion there. I thought I was going to be a biology major, and all of the intro to bio classes were closed. So I signed up for a religion course, because I had to take two of those as a requirement of the school I was at, and I loved it! I loved it! It was scratching the itch I didn't know I had. It was asking the questions that really got me excited. So I continued to pursue that. I was studying scripture and theology deeply at the same time as I was being exposed to the realities of the climate crisis, being exposed to activists who were doing something about it, embedding myself in a community of peers who are passionate about these things. And were asking these questions too. And all of that led me to after graduation to pursue a seminary degree. I was feeling a call to serve the church. I was pretty clear at that time that that particular calling was likely not to be a traditional pastor of a congregation, but to help the church understand that addressing the climate crisis and taking care of God's creation is a fundamental component of what it means to be a Christian.John FiegeDid you have any models for that? Where did that idea come from? That was in seminary school that you first conceived of that as a calling?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, it was. I had a few models. One model was actually the founder of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which I think we're going to talk about in a minute, that I had gotten to know over the last couple of years at that point, his name was Ben Lowe. He was certainly a model for me. Other models were Evangelical Christians, or Christians in the Evangelical space, who are active on social justice issues in general, Shane Claiborne, is certainly an influence on me and other Christian activists, who use this language. Who talk about how caring for the vulnerable, protecting the oppressed is a fundamental part of the church's calling in the world. And it's not an ancillary issue for a handful of members in the church who have a predisposition to care about those things. It's not an affinity group on the sidelines of the church. It's at the heart of the church's mission in the world, especially when it comes to climate change. It's just a fundamental part of what it means to follow Jesus and in the 21st century. And so I did have a few models for that. I also had terrific mentors, who helped expand my idea of what could be possible, who kind of helped me discern this calling and tease out the shape of it. And that took some time. That took a few years to really get a sense of the particular shape of that calling. I entered seminary with a general sense that I was called to serve the church in some way. And I was passionate about social justice at the same time, and then over the course of my time in seminary, and conversations with mentors, that the shape of that calling really kind of filled out.John FiegeAnd how would you describe the work that you've done since seminary?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah. So since seminary, I have been working with Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which is a national organization of young Christians around the country, many with a very similar story to mine grew up in a conservative Christian community, were not given a whole lot of tools to help them integrate their faith and the values they were being taught in church and Christian day school, in many cases, with the realities of climate change, and environmental degradation. Many of them came to be concerned about the climate crisis. But were often told they needed to keep that separate from their life at church. So, many of them would join a Sierra Club or three-fifty protests on the weekend, and then go to church and not tell anyone about it. Because they felt implicitly or explicitly that they were told that those things had to be separate. So my ministry really for the last several years, since seminary has been to come alongside these young people, and to hopefully catalyze the kind of experience that I had. Because of my brother, because of other experiences because of other people I had in my life, that wedded together my faith and my faith values with climate action, to do that, for young Christians across the country, and to hopefully, create a space where that transformation can happen more quickly. Because it took me years, and where that transformation can happen for more people more quickly. And that can translate into a movement within the church of young people calling the church back to our own stated values, our own calling in the world, and can translate into real political pressure that can hopefully create the circumstances that will lead to policy change that can address the climate crisis at the speed and scale necessary. So I use the word ministry, because I believe that's what I'm doing. I believe that's what this is. That this calling I have to educate, equip, and mobilize young Christians. And recently, I actually transitioned to a role with Y.E.C.A parent organization where I'm now the vice president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, continuing to support Y.E.C.E., but also leading other programs for other Christians across the country to. I do believe this as a ministry and I believe I'm called to this ministry. Because the gospel of Jesus, in Jesus's own words is about setting the oppressed free, proclaiming good news to the poor, and climate action is that, and the church needs to recognize that and to get to work.John FiegeWell, great. I'm curious to hear more about, kind of your assessment of how that is going. But before we do that, I want to just jump into more of the heart of some of these ideas that I think that you spend your time steeped in and talking about. So I wanted to jump into this book you contributed to called Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care. I was wondering if you could talk about the evolution of the idea of creation care. So let's let's start in 1967, when historian Lynn White Jr. wrote an explosive article in the science in the journal Science called the historical roots of our ecological crisis, he cites the Dominion Mandate from Genesis in blaming the Judeo Christian tradition for its abusive attitudes towards the Earth and its non-human creatures. So here's Genesis 128, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." What do you hear in this passage, and how do you think it's been read or misread by Christians or non-Christians?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapHmm. That's a terrific question. And you're right. I think a lot about this. So I'll try to be concise, but I am a preacher by training. This is one of the passages I've maybe thought most about. So I hear a few things. I think the first thing we should name is that read on its face in the English translation from the original Hebrew that you just read. It sure sounds like God has given humans license to do as they please with creation. However, I think my seminary education in particular has sensitized me to the importance of a slow, and careful, and contextual reading of Scripture. So when I hear that passage, I want to ask the question, "What's around it? What's around that verse, those verses that can help us contextualize that command?" And when I asked that, I see a couple of things. The first thing I see is that that command comes after 27 verses of God, creating and reveling in that creation. Genesis 1 says, "God looks at what he had made and calls it good," says that seven times and in the Hebrew imagination, the number seven connotes wholeness, perfection, even holiness. So having that Hebrew word in there, "Tov," seven times, for good, signals something to the original listeners, right? God is calling God's creation maximally good. This is this creation, I'm making as good as it gets. And the other thing I see is, pretty clearly, creations true king going about the work of creating, right? The language of dominion, and rulership evokes kingship. And so when we see God giving humans the command to subdue, have dominion over. That is the language of kingship. And we have to ask ourselves, "Is God really placing humans as creations true king? Or does the rest of Scripture attest that creations True King is actually Christ?" And if that's the case, then we have to ask ourselves, "Is our dominion separated from the dominion of Christ's or is our call to rule over creation supposed to be shaped in a particular way?" I would argue our call to dominion is derivative of Christ's true claim to the rulership of all of creation. And if that's the case, then our rule has to be shaped after the way that Christ rules and scripture is quite clear about how Christ exercises his authority over creation. We see it in the Incarnation, when he empties himself and and takes on human form, and limits himself in human form, to bring creation back to himself. I think Paul says it really well in Philippians, when he says that Christ did not see equality with God as something to be exploited for his own advantage. But he emptied himself and became a servant when he came to serve us in the Incarnation, and in his death and resurrection. So we see that Christ as creations true king exercises Dominion in a particular way, and it's not through exploitation, or through domination, it's through humble sacrifice, and through service. So when humans read, have dominion and subdue the earth, and they separate that, from the rest of scriptures witness, which is that Christ is creations true king, then it's easy for us to say, "Well, I guess we have a blank check. Let's do whatever we want." Instead of saying, "Well, let's shape our dominion in our rulership after creation's true king, which is Christ." And when we actually do that, then the way we have dominion and subdue the earth is going to look a whole lot different. It's going to look a whole lot less like privilege and a whole lot more like responsibility. Responsibility to serve that which we are ruling over. And I think Genesis 2 actually supports that interpretation. Genesis: 1 and 2 are two creation accounts in Scripture. Genesis 1 is really high minded language that belongs and, you know,magisterial archives along side the decrees of the king, but Genesis 2, the language is really intimate and earthy. It's a story about a God who stoops in the mud and forms humans with his hands, and then breathes his own breath into it, into the humans that he's creating. And the first command he gives to humans in Genesis 2 is to serve and protect creation. Genesis 2:15 has the Hebrew words "svad" and "shamar," the garden, those are often translated as till and keep it, which I don't like. Really, when you actually go to the Hebrew, it's pretty clear the word Avad. The Hebrew word Avad is all over the Old Testament. So we have a good idea of what it means. It's almost always used in the context of service and even slavery. And Shamar is also used everywhere. And it's quite clear that it connotes jealous protection and proactive guarding from harm. So in Genesis 2, God takes the humans he just made, puts them in the garden and says, serve and protect this, this thing that I've made. I think when you put that next to Genesis 1's call to dominion, it's quite clear that both of them are calling humans toward a particular responsibility to creation. Not to privilege, but to responsibility.John FiegeWow. Well, that amazing textual reading you just gave it, makes me think about the Protestant Reformation. In the sense that so much of the tumult in the church over the past millennium, has been about who interprets the Bible. And the Protestant Reformation was all about the ability of everyone to be able to read and interpret the Bible as they'd like. But when I listened to you have this amazingly learned and nuanced interpretation of the contextual reading of any one particular line, you know, it makes it gives me pause. I was like, "Yes, we should all be able to read ourselves." But that doesn't mean we don't need help from people who spend their lives studying the intricacies of a very complex text with very old language, that can be interpreted in many different ways. How have you approached that?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, I like that a lot. I think you're right. And I think we can have both at the same time. I think we can invite people to experience scripture on their own terms. Because I do believe that Scripture is alive, that it is less an object to be dissected, which much of modern interpretive methods have tried to do and it's much more a living subject to be encountered. I believe the Holy Spirit works through our engagement with scripture to shape and change us. So I want people to encounter scripture on their own. And at the same time, I want people who have, like you said, spent their lives studying the cultural context of Scripture, studying the linguistic intricacies of Scripture. I want those people also speaking into folks' individual readings of Scripture to help people understand some of the complexities of what they are reading and what they're experiencing. You know, much of especially modern Evangelicalism, has emphasized a plain reading of the text. And that has been held forth as a way to honor scripture and honor the Bible on its own terms. I actually interpret that as the opposite. I think that's doing scripture a great disservice by ignoring all of the depth that is present in Scripture, that can be gained through a deep study, and winsome explication of it.John FiegeYeah. And it's a bit like constitutional originalism. I see a lot of parallels there with this very plain reading of texts. And it's interesting what you say about interpretation. Where, you know, some of the brilliance of these texts, is their openness and their invitation for interpretation and invitation for nuance, and like almost built in layeredness of meaning, and what meaning could be. And to read that plainly can, as you say, really be a disservice to it.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, absolutely. And it's even, there's even more layers than constitutional originalism when it comes to the Bible because the Constitution was written in English, older style English, but English nonetheless. But, you know, Scripture is coming to us through the Hebrew language and the Greek language. Coming to us through a variety of manuscripts, different versions, different interpretations, different translations. There's there's a longer history and more layers of interpretation they're already baked in. So to pretend like we can read the Bible in English and read it, you know, to gain everything we possibly can from it in that one English reading, again, just does a disservice to the complexity and the depth of Scripture.John FiegeLet's go back and read Lynn White Jr's article from 1967 very briefly. What I find interesting is that while he clearly blames the Judeo-Christian tradition for our ecological crisis, as he calls it, his solution is not to abandon religion or even Christianity. He says, "I personally doubt that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by applying to our problems more science and more technology." Instead his solution is St. Francis of Assisi. He wants to dig back into Christian history and on earth, more earth friendly theologies that have been suppressed over time. And I'd love to read just his last paragraph from his piece. He writes, "The greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history, Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man's relation to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He failed. Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with Orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecological crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refill our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint of ecologists." I think of our current Pope Francis, I think he would agree. There's this dominant secular idea of replacing Christianity with a purely scientific worldview. But that's not what Lynn White Jr. is calling for. What do you think when you hear this passage? I don't know if you've read it before, but what does it make you think?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapI'm always struck when I'm reminded of Lynn White's conclusion. There's no doubt that this paper looms large in environmental consciousness, particularly in the consciousness of the modern environmental movement, it because in many ways it was one of the catalysts for it. I appreciate his recognition that religion and the Judeo-Christian worldview is so part and parcel with Western civilization that I don't even think a project to jettison it is possible. And I think that's what he's saying too. He's saying, look, we're not going to replace the cultural impact, but the cultural foundations of the Judeo-Christian worldview and Western civilization, probably ever. So how do we work in recognition of that reality toward a better spirituality, a more earth friendly, Judeo-Christian perspective. So I appreciate that. And that's in many ways what we are trying to do in our work. St. Francis is a great example. Scripture is full of support for Saint Francis' kind of spirituality that recognizes the inherent goodness and the inherent sanctity of the created world. Scripture shouts this stuff, not just in Genesis, but all over Psalms, Job, the Pentateuch, the Law, the Gospels, Colossians, Ephesians, Revelation, it's everywhere! Romans. You can't run away from it. And you know, people like St. Francis and other leaders have shown us what it looks like to take those teachings and turn it into an operative theology and a way of life. And this is part of our heritage, too, right? I think that the Church, often especially after the Reformation, the Protestant Church tends to think that the Church of Jesus Christ in the world was established when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the wall, to the door of the church. But it goes back so much farther. And that's all our heritage and that's all worth reexamining. Especially in the light of the current ecological crisis that we are in. We have tools and resources. The church has tools and resources at its disposal that we can use to help understand the crisis we're living through and can point us forward, give us a way forward toward positive action.John FiegeYeah, great. Well, can you talk about Christian environmental stewardship and how that grew out of a response to this criticism of dominion as domination?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapSure, yeah. So the Lynn White article was a catalyst for a lot of Christians to examine Christianity's perspective around dominion, and how that influences the way we interact with creation. And that started some conversations that kind of culminated in the late 70s, early 80s. Around this concept of stewardship, that was kind of the Protestant Churches, at least in America, the Protestant church's answer to Lynn White's, I think, correct critique of dominionist theology, and the Church saying, Look, Lynn White is right! The Bible does not give us a blank check to do whatever we want with creation. Dominion does not mean domination. It means stewardship, it means wise management. And so stewardship became kind of the dominant frame that was articulated by Christian environmentalists and Christian theologians just looking to try to do better theology, say, look, Dominion. Dominionism, isn't it. Stewardship is much closer to what Scripture is talking about. So stewardship was a necessary corrective and a really important step in the right direction. It wasn't without its limitations, though. One limitation is that from a communication standpoint, a lot of rank and file folks and churches didn't quite understand what it meant. And there was a lot of confusion around are we talking about stewarding creation? Are we talking about why stewardship of money. A lot of studies have been done that show that Christians dominant views on stewardship centered around money still. So stewardship had always been used around language of finances and money, and so to add stewardship onto conversations around ecology and creation felt a little confusing to a lot of folks in the church, and it continues to confuse some people. Another limitation of the stewardship model is it creates unnecessary distance between us and the rest of creation. A steward is someone who is outside of and separate from the thing that is being stewarded. A steward is a custodian, a manager, but it can separate us from the rest of creation and kind of reinforce the hierarchy that dominionism created between us and the rest of creation. When in fact, I think scripture actually teaches us that humans are much more radically interconnected with creation. We are not separate from creation, we are created ourselves. We have a unique role to play in the midst of creation, but we are not separate from it. So stewardship kind of developed out of Lynn White's critique, and now, some of us in the church are thinking about stewardship and its legacy. We're grateful for the ways that it's reframed dominionism, but trying to imagine other ways to think about our relationship to creation that might be more effective in mobilizing Christians toward deeper action and care for the earth.John FiegeAnd this seems to be this, this problem of our separation from the rest of the natural world. You know, that's a problem shared by the broader environmental movement. This idea of locking away nature as wilderness in reserves, as important as that might be, it's not everything. And it creates this distance. As a replacement for the concept of stewardship, you suggest the idea of kinship and commonality in difference. I think this is a really wonderful idea for our view of both the nonhuman and the human world. Can you explain what you mean by kinship? And maybe talk about this beautiful metaphor you use of the mother and the child?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, sure. So the the project of the Beyond Stewardship book was to imagine multiple different vantage points that we might use to better understand our relationship to the natural world. So I highly encourage reading the whole book because the contributors offer other really insightful perspectives about how we can think about our relationship to the rest of creation. My contribution was, as you said, this idea of kinship, and off the bat, I want to say, this is certainly not a unique idea. Indigenous cultures, throughout time and space, have been articulating our relationship with creation as one of kinship. And I also think that the Old Testament, and the new, but especially the Old Testament, attests to this relationship too. And what I'm trying to get at with kinship is this idea that, for so much of the Christian Church's history, we have elevated ourselves above the rest of creation. We have elevated our uniqueness over against creation and diminished or completely flattened out our commonality with the rest of creation, in a way that I don't think Scripture supports. I think Scripture is clear that humans are different in an important way from the rest of creation, but not separated from it. One of the ways I think Scripture does that really beautifully, is I often say this in my presentations, and people are surprised, but humans don't have their own special creative day to themselves. Humans are created on the same day as all of the other land creatures, day six, when God creates badgers, and beavers, and billy goats. He also creates human beings.John FiegeRight. And that's not insignificant.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapRight! It's a really brilliant reminder for humans that, hey, we may have this unique image of God thing, which actually, is a call to responsibility and privilege. But we are embedded in creation. We are a part of creation in really important ways. And I think kinship helps us remember that and center that and keep that front of mind. So that the way I tried to express that is through the metaphor of a mother and a child. And I think that was on my mind because when I was writing this chapter, we had recently had our first child. And the metaphor is essentially trying to get at this idea that a mother and a child are deeply connected, right? They are connected through shared DNA, they're connected through shared spaces, but they're different. They are different beings. So just as we are different from other creatures in creation, we also have shared features, we have commonalities. We are all created from the same earth, from the same stuff, we were created on the same day in Genesis 1. In Genesis 2, that connection is even deeper through the the use of a Hebrew pun. The scripture in Genesis 2 says that God formed Adom, which is where we get the English name Adam, for the first man scripture actually never named Adam as Adam. It's just the Hebrew word Adom, which is "man from the soil," Adamah, we are Adom from the Adamah, we are soil people is essentially what Genesis 1 says. And we share that with the rest of creation. So there's a deep kinship and similarity between us and the rest of creation, while distinctiveness and distinction, and we have to hold both of those at the same time, right? We cannot elevate our uniqueness at the expense of our commonality, and we can't collapse our uniqueness for the sake of emphasizing our commonality because that also doesn't honor scriptures witness scriptures witness is that we are radically embedded in the rest of creation. We are radically connected to the rest of creation. And we are unique in that we alone bear the image of God, we alone were called to exercise authority, exercise responsibility toward the rest of creation. We have to hold both of those at the same time.John FiegeAnd that idea of kinship and commonality and difference. It feels like, it's such a beautiful way to live your life in so many ways. It's not just about the environment. But when we talk about race or human rights, or so many other things that that we're dealing with that centering around kinship and commonality in difference is, it's hard to fault that.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, yeah, I think you're right, I think it it extends to a lot of our lived experience. And I think it can inform a lot of the conversations we're having right now, like you said, around race, civil rights, immigration reform, a lot of social justice issues that at their root, in my opinion, are kind of the product of elevating one at the expense of the other. Usually elevating our difference at the expense of our commonality. But if we can find a way to honor our commonality, and our differences, at the same time, recognize that we have commonality and difference, then I think we could we could go a long way in healing some of the divides and divisions that exist.John FiegeYeah, for sure. This mother child relationship is a metaphor used in many cultures across history. But usually in terms of Mother Earth, where we're the children. What you're doing here is flipping the metaphor. We are the mother and the earth is our child. Seeing Earth as our child brings with it, this kind of fierce sense of love and protection and adoration. Do you have a sense of how this image of us loving and protecting the earth as our child is resonating with pastors and congregations and other Christians?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapHmm. I love that. I actually hadn't considered that I had kind of borrowed that metaphor and flipped it on its head. But you're right. I one of my favorite books of the last year is Braiding Sweetgrass, and Robin Wall Kimmerer talks often about how humans are the youngest siblings among the rest of creation, how we have the most to learn from our siblings and creation, about how to live in harmony and in reciprocity with Mother Earth. So yeah, you're right, I flipped it. And and I kind of make us as the mother, because we are given in scripture, this responsibility to steward, to rule over, again, ruling as Christ rules, which is through sacrifice and service, seeking the good of that which is ruled. To your question of how it's resonating, even though as I said, indigenous thinkers and wisdom keepers have been teaching this for millennia. The white Evangelical Church is very much steeped in kind of Dominionism. And I think stewardship even is still trying to break in 40 years after it was put forth as an alternative. So I think the jury's still out, we have a long way to go in reaching pastors with this kind of idea in reaching lay folks and lay leaders with this idea that our relationship to the rest of creation is much more intimate and interconnected than we often think. So I don't have a whole lot of data on that yet. I hope that I hope that in the next several years that this idea can continue to get some traction and can start to make a difference.John FiegeAwesome. You talk about liturgies of kinship, that have been enacted for centuries, including the "Canticle of the Sun," a song written by none other than St. Francis of Assisi. And that reminds me of the second encyclical of the current Pope Francis, which takes its name from the first line of a canticle. I just want to read for a second how Pope Francis begins the encyclical. "Laudato si mi Signore, praise be to you my Lord. In the words of this beautiful canticle St. Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. Praise be to You, my Lord, through our sister, mother earth, who sustains and governs us and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts wounded by sin is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself burdened and laid waste is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor. She groans and travail. We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth. Our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air, and we receive life and refreshment from her waters." What did "Laudato Si," the Pope's second encyclical mean to you, as a Christian, if not a Catholic?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapI remember being deeply moved. As I read it. It's just such an important teaching from such an important figure. And like you said, even though I'm not Catholic, I can recognize the beauty of it, the heart of it. I just think the importance of such of such a consequential teacher and leader in the church, saying the things that are said in that encyclical, right, are hard are hard to overemphasize. I think it's so important. And studies have actually shown that even Protestants were affected by the encyclical. Some of their views on creation and the environment and climate kind of spiked after the release, most evidence shows that it went down again. So I wish that had been sustained. But it had an impact even outside of the Catholic Church, and certainly on me personally, I think it's a gift to the Church universal for all time that will be treasured for a long time.John FiegeSo I wanted to talk a bit about the idea of love. Love is an essential element in Christianity. Here's 1 John 4:8 from the King James Version. "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." In your work, it seems to me that you're making an argument to Christians that the biblical idea of love must be expanded to include the nonhuman world. Similar to Aldo Leopold's call and his land ethic to enlarge the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or Albert Einstein's call to widen our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. How is your call for love of the nonhuman world in harmony with these ideas are distinct from them?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, you're right. That is what I and others in this movement are trying to do. We're calling the church to expand our understanding of love and who our object of love is. I think it's distinct because the way that I understand this call to an expansive love is rooted in a command given by Jesus in Matthew 22 and other passages in the gospels too, you'll find this in Mark and Luke as well. When Jesus is asked by a teacher of the law, which is the greatest commandment, this questioner is trying to trip Jesus up, because at the time there were over 630 commands in the Torah. So essentially, he's asking Jesus to choose a side, and Jesus refuses to play that game. And he says, actually, I'll tell you this, all of those laws and commandments can be boiled down to these two: love God with everything you've got with your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And that is the heart of, I believe our call to care for creation and address the climate crisis. Because if we are truly going to love God and love our neighbor, in this 21st century, when the evidence is clear, that God's creation that God called good, that is the work of God's hands, is being degraded and destroyed. Creations own ability to praise God and worship God is being inhibited through human actions, then what better way to love God than to protect those works of God's hands? What better way to love God than to ensure that the rest of creation can do what it was created to do, which is to give praise and honor and glory to the Creator. Taking care of creation and addressing the climate crisis is a concrete way for us to get better at loving God. And it's a concrete way for us to get better at loving our neighbor. Because we know that the effects of pollution, the effects of the climate crisis are human. In their effect, in their impact. We know that especially black and brown communities are being disproportionately harmed by environmental pollution. We know that poor communities are being disproportionately harmed by climate impacts. So taking care of creation, loving creation, addressing the climate crisis, are actually ways for Christians to get better at following Jesus' command. When Jesus said, this is the most important thing that you can do. This is the center of my ethic. Love God with everything you got and love your neighbor as if their present circumstances and future prospects are your own. We believe in the work that we do. And I certainly believe that addressing environmental pollution that harms people's ability to flourish and thrive on the earth, and addressing the climate crisis, which is killing people right now. Right is a way for us to tangibly get better at obeying that command. I also believe that the outpouring of love when we cultivate love for creation, the effects of that love will mean that we are really practically also expressing love for God and our neighbor at the same time.John FiegeWow, that's really beautiful. So let's talk about language for a moment. Language is important in so many ways, it can unite us and build community or it can divide us along lines of identity. It can quickly signal commonality and just as easily signal opposition. In this country, the environment is often seen as a concern of liberals in cities, and when Christians don't identify with those broad political or cultural labels, they often think that the environment cannot and should not be a concern of theirs. You don't use these broad, nebulous terms of nature, or the environment very often you talk about the creation and creation care. What are your thoughts on the complicated nature of relationship, of language and, and how you can use a word to connect with one group, but at the same time, that same word might alienate or repel another group?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah, I completely agree. I don't think I can offer thoughts that are any better than the thoughts you can just offer. That's those, that was beautifully put. And that's exactly right. And it's central to the work of anybody who's trying to organize a community around a particular issue or toward a particular action is, first and foremost, you have to understand who you're trying to reach, you have to understand your community, you have to understand what they care about, you have to understand how they perceive their identity, you have to understand what values drive their actions, and then find the language that will connect to those identities to those values. Right, rather than alienate, and creation and creation care. And using those words is one way that we try to do that. But you know, a lot of the research bears out what you shared, which is that language is the the message is critical. How you share the message is critical, depending on who you're trying to reach. And in many ways, the messenger is almost more important than the message itself too. Who is delivering that message? Are they an outsider or do they get us? Do they understand who we are? Do they share important values? And do they share our identity or not? All of that goes into whether or not anyone is receptive to any kind of message. And just like my brother gave me permission to lean more deeply into who I was, and the values that I held dear in my action on this. That's what we try to do with the people we're talking to. Give them permission to recognize how their existing identity and the values that already drives them are exactly the identity and the values that the movement needs and that they can bring to bear on this issue. A lot of people in the Evangelical church, a lot of folks right of the political center, hear a lot of environmental language. And a lot of times they hear it communicated as essentially saying here are all of the ways that you and the community you love are wrong. Here are all of the ways that you need to change the life that you love to be more like us. Doing so will alienate you from people you love. But don't worry, because it'll make you more like us and the world way more like we want it to be instead of hearing here are all of the things about you and the community you love that are great. Here are other people who share your values that are taking action, as a way to deepen those values. When you take action to join them, you become more connected to them, you become more connected to your community. And the world becomes more like you want it to be.John FiegeThat makes me think a bit about the enlightenment and the scientific revolution where, you know, at that time, you know, truth and knowledge came from people. You believed it because this person said it was, so that may be your priest, that might be your king. And that's where truth came from. And one part of the Enlightenment project was to replace that with objectively verifiable scientific knowledge that isn't dependent on who's saying it. And it feels like we're still fighting that battle, sometimes where sometimes I feel like the environmental movement is saying, "Just look at the science! We don't need to have opinions. We don't need to have personalities. We don't need to have identities. We just need to look at the data and it'll tell us where to move." But that is not that simple. And it's not how people work. It's not how the vast majority people work. And even the people it does work for, does it really? Or is it actually cultural things that are predisposing them to accept scientific knowledge?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapYeah. And it ignores such a huge swath of human psychology, right? Like, we are rational beings, but that is hardly all of who we are. We are also cultural and social beings. We're tribal beings. So yeah, so much of the social science and psychological research is bearing out what you're saying, which is that you know that the scientific revolution has done wonders for the human condition. But it has also, in many ways, at least in the project that you just explained, it has issued huge portions of what it means to be human, in its pursuit of communicating truth and ignores that for millennia, humans have interpreted and understood truth very, very differently. And that's not going to go away anytime soon.John FiegeRight, exactly. So in the foreword to beyond stewardship, Bill McKibben writes, in the most Christian nation on earth, the most Christian people have grown ever more attached to leaders in causes antithetical to the idea of taking care of the earth. And here's what you wrote, in a CNN, Op-Ed entitled Young Evangelicals Are Defying Their Elders' Politics. You write, "We've grown weary of the current expression of Evangelical politics stoked by Trump's Republican Party, that seeks to convince us that faithful civic engagement is a black and white, 'us vs. them' proposition where danger to our way of life lurks around every corner and that our overriding political concern should be our own cultural power and comfort rather than advancing the good of our neighbors. Many of our peers have simply left the Evangelical tradition behind, fed up with how selfish, some of the followers of our famously selfless Savior have become." Wow, those are really strong words! I feel like, you know, are you are you channeling the book of Job here?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapThere was some pathos in that, yeah!John FiegeSo I pulled this Job 34. "Can someone who hates justice govern? Will you condemn the just and mighty One? Is he not the one who says to Kings, 'You are worthless,' and to nobles, 'you are wicked,' Who shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor, for they are all the work of his hands?" How have American Evangelicals become so aligned with worthless kings and wicked nobles who trade in destruction of the natural world? How do you understand that?Kyle Meyaard-SchaapWow, great question. So I've thought a lot about this, as you might imagine, and I think it's the result of a couple of realities. I think one explanation that's necessary is understanding the history of suspicion around scientific discovery and scientific findings in the white Evangelical Church in America. Much of this goes back to, uh, it depends on how far you want to go back. You know, it exists in the church universal going back to Galileo and Copernicus. But more recently in the American Protestant tradition, you can kind of trace it back to the middle of the 19th century when Darwin's Origin of the Species is published. And the US church is divided on how to respond. Some churches and church leaders say, Look, we can integrate this into our understanding of Scripture, we can recognize that Scripture is not a science textbook. It's It's teaching us something other than what Darwin is explaining. And both can be true. And we can integrate an understanding of evolution into how we believe God created the earth and how God sustains it. And other portions of the church said, No, this is this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, we cannot abide this, we need to reject this because it is a threat to the authority of Scripture. It is a threat to the bedrock of our lives and our cosmology, and how we understand God to be at work in the world, and we have to reject it. These camps kind of solidified into what became known as the modernists and the fundamentalists. The modernist arguing for integration of evolution into Christian life and the fundamentalist arguing for rejection of it. And it kind of came to a head in the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s, when a teacher in Tennessee was put on trial for teaching evolution in school. And it became this national frenzy, the front page of all the papers around the country and Clarence Darrow. And William Jennings Bryan, went head to head and the fundamentalists won! William Jennings Bryan won the case! The teacher was convicted, but in the court of public opinion, the fundamentalists looked backwards, they looked ignorant, and public opinion really turned against those who are arguing to keep evolution out of schools. And the fundamentalists were kind of humiliated. And they, in many ways, went underground tended to their wounds, but didn't disappear. They were building institutions, they were planting new churches. And in many ways, they reemerged with Billy Graham, in the 1950s and 60s. And his movement, which in many ways became the precursor to the Moral Majority, the religious right, the rise of the religious rights in the 80s and 90s. Which, more than Graham, to his credit, Graham always expressed concern about wedding a particular political party to Christianity. Went a step beyond Graham and really wedded Christian faithfulness and Christian discipleship to Republican politics. And created a culture for an entire generation of political participation that said, if you're a Christian, you need to check the box with a "R" next to it, that is what God requires of you. And it was it was connected to arguments around particular policy issues, especially abortion, which which was kind of engineered into a wedge issue. If you look at the history of how that happened.The religious right really has its roots in opposition to federal desegregation efforts at Bob Jones University. But these leaders who are trying to create a constituency, turned abortion into a wedge issue and organize millions of Evangelicals into their camp. And that's the legacy right? And it's rooted in this suspicion of science going back to that fundamentalist and modernist controversy. And it's rooted in what a lot of Christians were formed in, which is this idea that faithful Christian civic engagement means supporting the Republican Party. And somehow, environmentalism got wedded to this suite of conservative Evangelical policy concerns also including gay marriage, LGBTQIA rights, feminism in general, and environmentalism as secularism. Environmentalism became seen as a sibling to the evolution debate. An effort to de-legitimize the authority of scripture to replace it with observable objective of scientific method, empiricism. And so environmentalism became lumped in with this suite of policy concerns that animated the religious right, and the movement of Evangelical conservative Christians in the US. And that was exploited by fossil fuel corporations who stood to lose the most from any sort of policy to curb emissions and documents abound, attesting to the fact that Exxon Mobil all the way back in the 80s was suppressing data. That they were spending billions of dollars to resurrect the playbook of big tobacco to hire their own scientists to commission their own studies with no other purpose other than to cast doubt within public dialogue around this conversation about the severity of the problem, the root causes of it, potential solutions around it. And a lot of that money went to target Evangelical Christians, because they were already primed to be suspicious about environmentalism as an "ism," which is to say, as a system of belief ultimate answers to ultimate questions like, why are we here? Who is governing the world or what is governing the world? So they were identified as a particularly ripe constituency to be misinformed. And then they were misinformed to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. And that's the history we're fighting against. And it's really powerful, and the interests allied against our efforts are strong. Those who benefit from the status quo are very powerful. And so it helps to understand some of that history because it gives me, it helps cultivate some compassion in me. I know a lot of these people. I know, a lot of these people are my family. I have extended family, most of my extended family does not understand why I do what I do. And even comes at me sometimes on social media especially. But understanding all of the forces that have aligned against them understanding this gives me some compassion, and also helps to remember my own journey, right? It took me years to recognize this to break the spell that had been cast on me. And so if it took me years, it's okay if it takes others years to and all I'm called to do is try to be one person on that journey, guiding them toward deeper understanding and deeper action.John FiegeWell, I've never heard a more succinct, more beautifully articulated story that starts with Darwin and ends with Merchants of Doubt.Kyle Meyaard-SchaapSuccinct is generous!John FiegeHey, for a reverend, you know!Kyle Meyaard-SchaapI'm rarely described as succint.John FiegeSo what could the largely secular environmental movement learn from Christian environmentalism in the idea of creation care?Rev. Kyle Meyaard-SchaapHmm. I hope one of the lessons is that the environmental movement should try not to give up on anybody. Because I think the emergence of the Creation Care movement, the emergence of Christian and especially Evangelical action on climate change, is a great case study, in the fact that constituencies can move. Especially when those constituencies are being reached by effective trusted messengers with messages that resonate with them. So I hope the larger environmental movement can look to the Creation Care movement, as an example of a constituency that shares their ultimate

america god love jesus christ spotify new york city donald trump church lord english earth master science bible politics law news gospel care new york times west christians michigan holy spirit creator christianity vice president kings dna western romans new zealand tennessee revelation silence scripture language greek biblical praise cnn ephesians sun savior responsibility humans republicans rev doubt catholic philippians old testament psalms npr boy colossians origin indigenous pope constitution holland albert einstein pbs piece hebrew environmental substack lgbtqia similar stewardship catholic church enlightenment reformation dominion incarnation divinity love god torah republican party pope francis luther reuters species nbc news protestant mother earth evangelical grand rapids midwestern atlantic ocean orthodox galileo climate action billy graham div world report evangelicals creations christian church environmentalism protestants ecological merchants lake michigan spokesperson assisi in genesis exxonmobil op ed protestant reformation judeo christian wild things evangelicalism sierra club theses evangelical christians copernicus true king king james version chrysalis pentateuch northern michigan saint francis signore wendell berry orthodox christians bill mckibben tov robin wall kimmerer laudato si canticle creation care evangelical church shane claiborne braiding sweetgrass bob jones university franciscans adom aldo leopold schaap william jennings bryan clarence darrow laudato scopes monkey trial moral majority dominion mandate american evangelicals protestant church dominionism juan garcia american conservation coalition christian reformed church national organizer adamah protestant churches counterpoint press lynn white american protestant ben lowe evangelical environmental network young evangelicals avad
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
Can Mark Driscoll Happen Here?

Paleo Protestant Pudcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2021 59:30


Yes, that's a bit of a tease (maybe more) but it may be the best way to encourage people to listen to a conversation about church polity. Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have many differences in theology and worship and these are likely the easiest to identify. But when it comes to the structures of government that bind and unify each of these confessional Protestant communions, awareness likely diminishes. In this recording Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) talk about the structures and procedures that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church use to regulate church life. They also discuss the degree to which church government is part of a Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian identity. Spoiler alert: Presbyterians put church government into their very own denominational label, and yet members of Presbyterian churches often do not know the basics of their own communion's government. Why Presbyterians have been so particular historically about church polity and what it means for the health of Presbyterianism that many church members are unaware of ecclesiastical government lurk in the background of this session. Spooky. So does Mark Driscoll who it turns out decided not to become ordained by an existing church but chose to start his own (along with a larger network of churches). Which leaves two questions: does church government scare American Protestant entrepreneurs away (it is a self-selecting mechanism)? If Driscoll had been ordained in a confessional Protestant church, could one of those bodies have saved him from himself?

Subliminal Jihad
[PREVIEW] #80a - CRISIS IN THE CATECHISM: Catholic Integralism and its Discontents

Subliminal Jihad

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2021 13:59


Dimitri and Khalid discuss the rising influence of Catholic integralists on the American right as embodied in Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen and others, Vermeule and Cass Sunstein's 2008 white paper on the “cognitive infiltration” of online conspiracy theory communities, the abandonment of constitutional originalism and laissez-faire everything in favor of “common-good constitutionalism”, the dream of forcing every American Protestant to attend Holy Mass, and Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule's curiously extensive Anglo-Dutch high WASP roots. [Part 1 of 2.] For access to full-length premium episodes and the SJ Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe to the Al-Wara' Frequency at patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

The Aaron Renn Show
The Cost of the Decline of Mainline Protestantism

The Aaron Renn Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2021 31:52


The decline of Mainline Protestantism, that is the historically prominent American Protestant denominations, had profound consequences for America and American Christianity.  Mainline Protestantism was how Christianity was integrated with and represented in society as a whole. With the decline of the mainline denominations, America ceased to be a Protestant, and ultimately Christian nation.This podcasts describes what Mainline Protestantism is, the origins of the term "mainline", the nature of their decline, their role in the sacred order of society, what may have led to their decline, and the consequences for the church and society.David A. Hollinger, "After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity": https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/98/1/21/873365

Religion in the American Experience
The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 2: Billy Graham

Religion in the American Experience

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2021 65:31


Hello, this is Chris Stevenson, host of the podcast series “Religion in the American Experience.” Due to the events of last week at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. we will not publish, as we usually do, our normally scheduled episode on Monday January 18th. Instead, over the next two weeks we will convene a panel of American religious history scholars to discuss how the history of religion and politics can help us better understand and react to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. The recording of this discussion will be released Monday January 25th, on Podbean, Apple Podcast and Spotify. I look forward to meeting you then!   If anyone thinks about religion in America, which thinking is absolutely essential to understand America itself, one of the first things that comes to mind, whether one is religious or not, is “Billy Graham.” And even if not, because of his 20th century (the “American century”) influence, we should think about him. Born in 1918 on a dairy farm in North Carolina, Billy Graham later would be an advisor to American presidents, travel the world including behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and fill stadiums to witness his preaching. Our discussion about this towering figure on the American historical stage will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world. Today we have with us Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University, and author of America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions and American Protestant thought. He is the author or co-editor of seven books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001, Harvard University Press). He has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, and is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History, and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary. This episode was recorded on December 8, 2020. We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the “signup” tab.

Learning for Life @ Gustavus
History, Religion, and Adult Sunday School

Learning for Life @ Gustavus

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2020 56:48


Sarah Ruble, Professor of Religion at Gustavus, on her love of history, Free Methodist background, book on American Protestant missionaries after World War II, and innovative adult Sunday School video series on Race and Christianity in the United States, as well as white evangelicals' support for Donald Trump and why learning about religion matters both generally and at Gustavus specifically. Click here for a transcript.

Theology Gals
American Protestant Denominations

Theology Gals

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2020 63:43


This week we talk about American Protestant denominations.  Support Theology Gals monthly through Patreon  Support Theology Gals with a one time donation through PayPal  Theology Gals merch  Theology Gals Journals Episode Resources: Lutheran Denominations (comparison of the LCMS and other Lutheran denominations)  American Church History - Cornerstone OPC  What's the Difference between the PCA and the OPC? Federal Vision: A Gospel Issue Theology Gals  Federal Vision: A Gospel Issue Part 2 Theology Gals  The Christian History Almanac Women can join Theology Gals Facebook Group Theology Gals-Ladies Theology Discussion and Encouragement Follow Theology Gals: On Facebook On Twitter @TheologyGals On Instagram theologygals Email us at theologygals@gmail.com  

Christian Podcast Community
American Protestant Denominations

Christian Podcast Community

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2020 63:43


This week we talk about American Protestant denominations.  Support Theology Gals monthly through Patreon  Support Theology Gals with a one time donation through PayPal  Theology Gals merch  Theology Gals Journals Episode Resources: Lutheran Denominations (comparison of the LCMS and other Lutheran denominations)  American Church History - Cornerstone OPC  What's the Difference between the PCA and the OPC? Federal Vision: A Gospel Issue Theology Gals  Federal Vision: A Gospel Issue Part 2 Theology Gals  The Christian History Almanac Women can join Theology Gals Facebook Group Theology Gals-Ladies Theology Discussion and Encouragement Follow Theology Gals: On Facebook On Twitter @TheologyGals On Instagram theologygals Email us at theologygals@gmail.com  

Practicing Gospel Podcast
Social Justice Handbook: Interview with The Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon PGE13

Practicing Gospel Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2020 33:21


My guest for this episode is The Reverend Doctor Mae Elise Cannon. Dr. Cannon is an author of six books, a speaker, advocate, and the Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace. Dr.Cannon is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Her ministry and professional background includes serving as the Senior Director of Advocacy and Outreach for World Vision-US, the executive pastor of Hillside Covenant Church (Walnut Creek, California), Director of Development and Transformation for Extension Ministries at Willow Creek Community Church (Barrington, Illinois), and as a consultant to the Middle East for child advocacy issues for Compassion International. She earned doctorates in History (Ph.D) and Spiritual Formation (D. Min). Her Ph.D focused on American History with the minor in Middle Eastern studies from the University of California – Davis, focusing her dissertation on the history of the American Protestant church in Israel and Palestine. Cannon’s Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Formation is from Northern Theological Seminary. Cannon holds an M.Div. From North Park Theological Seminary, an M.B.A. from North Park University’s School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an M.A. in bioethics from Trinity International University. Cannon completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Chicago in History, Philosophy, Social Studies, of Science and Medicine. I will have more interviews with Dr. Cannon about some of her books and her work with peacebuilding, especially in the Middle East. However, I wanted to begin with a conversation about her first book, Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World. Most of us who are caring people want to live our lives is ways that help make our world a better place. We want to participate in and advance the causes of justice, compassion, and caring so that there are less of such things as poverty, homelessness, hunger, injustice, crime, violence, and war. Often, however, the daily demands of life absorb our energies and hinder us from being involved. In addition, so many of the issues that we care about are so complex we are uncertain about how we can be involved and whether our efforts will matter. What Dr. Cannon does in Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World is to provide us with a resource so that we can know how to become involved in something that matters to us which we believe will help make the world more just, compassionate, and caring. As the subtitle indicates, small steps do matter and make a difference. Even though this work is now ten years old, I wanted you, as my audience, to know of this resource because of its continued usefulness in helping us learn about issues that concern us and becoming aware of specific initial steps we can take to get involved. In the first part of the book, Dr. Cannon gives us an orientation about what social justice is and involves. My interview with her focuses on this part. In the second part of the book (which is especially why I wanted you to know of this resource), she provides an encyclopedic list of social issues. For each issue she gives an introduction to the issue; resources, such as books and websites, for learning more about the issue; and then specific steps one can take to become involved with that issue. You can learn more about Dr. Cannon, her books, how to contact her, and how to arrange for her come and speak for your organization from her website: maecannon.com You can learn more about the work of Churches for Middle East Peace from its website: cmep.org The music for this episode is from a clip of a song called 'Father Let Your Kingdom Come' which is found on The Porter's Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter's Gate Worship Project. You can learn more about the album and the Worship Project at theportersgate.com.

How To Plant A Healthy Church
Money, Sex, and Power part 2 — Aligning Your Budgets Around Your Values And God’s Call —Kyla Morgan Young

How To Plant A Healthy Church

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2020 40:57


Kyla Morgan Young is a Doctoral Candidate at Princeton University in American Religious History. Her research focuses on how American Protestant denominations relate to money and the marketplace. She is currently a lecturer at The Ohio State University in African American Studies and an active member at Franklinton Abbey in Columbus, Ohio. Over the last decade, Kyla has served on Vineyard staffs in Ohio and Pennsylvania and was a member of the planting team in Princeton, NJ. On this week’s episode, we have part two of a fascinating conversation with Kyla Morgan Young discussing the challenging issues of Money, Sex, and Power. This time we dive into the practical topic of aligning our budgets around both our values and God’s call and vision for our churches and church plants.  Shout out to those men and women who selflessly serve on our church budget committees and task forces!    This is another “clouds and dirt” episode address both the big picture as well as on-the-ground practical takeaways for those in the trenches of local church leadership. 

How To Plant A Healthy Church
Money, Sex, and Power part 1 — How Do Our Church Structures Embody What We Believe — Kyla Morgan Young

How To Plant A Healthy Church

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2020 48:02


Kyla Morgan Young is a Doctoral Candidate at Princeton University in American Religious History. Her research focuses on how American Protestant denominations relate to money and the marketplace. She is currently a lecturer at The Ohio State University in African American Studies and an active member at Franklinton Abbey in Columbus, Ohio. Over the last decade, Kyla has served on Vineyard staffs in Ohio and Pennsylvania and was a member of the planting team in Princeton, NJ.   On this week’s episode, our hosts Michael Gatlin and Liz Moore sit down with Kyla Morgan Young. This is part one of a fascinating conversation delving into to the three challenging issues of Money, Sex, and Power specifically looking at how our church structures embody (or don’t embody) our beliefs.    This is a “clouds and dirt” episode address both the big picture as well as on-the-ground practical takeaways for those in the trenches of local church leadership.

Jesus In the Morning
America, America, What's GoingA Moral Critique by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II

Jesus In the Morning

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2019 91:00


William J. Barber II is an American Protestant minister and political activist. He is a member of the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the chair of its Legislative Political Action Committee. The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is the President & Sr. Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival; Bishop with the College of Affirming Bishops and Faith Leaders; Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary; Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the author of three books: Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing; The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and The Rise of a New Justice Movement; and Forward Together: A Moral Message For The Nation.

Keep Asking - The LifeWay Research Podcast
Episode 51: A Look at American Protestant Churchgoers and Their Views on the Sabbath and Alcohol

Keep Asking - The LifeWay Research Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2018 16:57


A look at two topics where we’ve found churchgoers often disagree on the biblical direction (and degree) for observance.

New Books in World Christianity
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in World Christianity

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:38


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis' Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Diplomatic History
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in Diplomatic History

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:38


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis' Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in American Studies
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in American Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:25


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in History
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in History

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:38


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Religion
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in Religion

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:25


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books Network
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:25


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Christian Studies
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in Christian Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:25


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in World Affairs
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in World Affairs

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2018 58:25


The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history, how they understood their actions to be in line with their faith, and their actions shaped both domestic politics and foreign policy. Heather Curtis’ Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 contributes to this burgeoning field by analyzing what motivated evangelical humanitarian aid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To tell this story, Dr. Curtis focuses on one intra-denominational Christian newspaper, the Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the Christian Herald was founded in part out of concern that the American Protestant community was becoming divided over doctrinal disputes and an underlying fear that the Christian identity of the United States was being undermined. International aid for humanitarian causes was one way to evangelize while also uniting American Protestants around a specific issue. The Christian Herald raised funds for famine relief in India and Russia, humanitarian relief in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and to support Armenians being persecuted in the Ottoman Empire. Curtis also notes the tension between the Christian Herald and the American Red Cross as both organizations sought to become the premier relief organizations in the U.S. By focusing on the Herald, Curtis sheds light on the occasionally contradictory motives that informed this aid, unveiling a tension between cosmopolitan charity that sought to provide help to anybody, and a kind of “tribal charity” that went to people who were similar to the benefactors. She highlights how techniques of publicizing catastrophes were refined, particularly the emphasis on suffering victims (as well as criticisms of those techniques coming from afflicted regions). Lastly, she exposes ongoing debates as to what it meant to be an American and a Christian. Zeb Larson is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University. His research is about the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keep Asking - The LifeWay Research Podcast
Episodes 41: How are American Protestant Churches Welcoming Their Guests?

Keep Asking - The LifeWay Research Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2018 23:03


The LifeWay Research team discusses ways churches welcome guests.

Ultimate Concerns
An American Missionary in Wartime China

Ultimate Concerns

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2018 66:56


Robert McMullen was working as a Presbyterian missionary in eastern China when Japan invaded the country in 1937. His letters describing the chaotic period that followed are presented in a new book by Charles Bright and Joseph Ho. Its title is War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937-1938. I ask Bright and Ho about their book in this episode. We discuss the goals and methods of American Protestant missionaries in modern China, with a special focus on McMullen’s career. Then we explore McMullen’s attempts to mediate between the Chinese residents of Hangzhou and the occupying Japanese forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Last, we touch on some contemporary topics raised by McMullen’s experience, including public memory of Christian missions in China and the ingredients necessary for religious communication between cultures. Theme song composed by Brian Brill. Additional music from audionautix.com, the U.S. Army Band, and Hymnary.org.

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in History
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books in History

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Technology
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books in Technology

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Communications
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books in Communications

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brill on the Wire
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

Brill on the Wire

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji's Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission's Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

New Books Network
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2018 51:05


In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) is not only a history of the American Protestant mission’s Arabic press in Beirut, which printed books  for Ottoman readers during the 19th century, but a window into the world of Arabic printing at large. Auji uses art history to chart the transition between manuscripts and printed books, using a deep appreciation for Islamic art and book-production to highlight rupture and continuity. Text and non-textual elements are used to tell a story that was not local simply to Beirut, but had connections to the entire region and the development of printing in Arabic-language script at large. Part book-history, part art history, part intellectual history, Printing Arab Modernity ebbs between lithography and typography to tell an essential narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Hala Auji is an assistant professor of art history in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a PhD in art history from Binghamton University, State University of New York, an MA in Art Criticism & Theory from Art Center College of Design, and a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include: Arabic book and print culture, 19th-century Islamic art and architecture and the| history of modern science in the Islamic world, amongst many more. She can also be found at https://www.halaauji.net/ Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ancient Faith Documentaries
Out of Appalachia: Orthodox Christianity and the Old Regular Baptists

Ancient Faith Documentaries

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2018 63:08


Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick journeys into the hollers of central Appalachia and encounters one of the least-known forms of American Protestant religion, exploring their faith, their music and one of their churches, through the eyes of an Orthodox priest raised in that tradition.

Roads From Emmaus
Out of Appalachia: Orthodox Christianity and the Old Regular Baptists

Roads From Emmaus

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2017


Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick journeys into the hollers of central Appalachia and encounters one of the least-known forms of American Protestant religion, exploring their faith, their music and one of their churches, through the eyes of an Orthodox priest raised in that tradition.

Roads From Emmaus
Out of Appalachia: Orthodox Christianity and the Old Regular Baptists

Roads From Emmaus

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2017 63:08


Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick journeys into the hollers of central Appalachia and encounters one of the least-known forms of American Protestant religion, exploring their faith, their music and one of their churches, through the eyes of an Orthodox priest raised in that tradition.

Lifespring! Media: Quality Christian and Family Entertainment Since 2004
NewLSFB509: The New Lifespring! Family Audio Bible – 1 Corinthians 10-12

Lifespring! Media: Quality Christian and Family Entertainment Since 2004

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2016 16:52


So what’s the deal about the covering of the head and the hair length? This whole discussion seems pretty foreign to us, doesn’t it? In today’s American Protestant culture, we don’t make a big deal out of head coverings or hair length for either male or female, do we? Based on 1 Corinthians 11, are we mistaken? Is it really important to God? Let’s take a look. As is usually the case when studying Scripture, the first thing we should consider is context. What’s happening in the scene? The recurring theme in verse 3-16 is order, or the hierarchy of authority. Paul says in verse 3: Now I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Now, in the Corinthian culture, a woman who wore a head covering was showing her submission to the authority of her husband, and consequently her submission to God. Now lest we take umbrage at this concept, understand that submission does not mean that we are implying that the one who submits is “less than” the one who is being submitted to. Do you doubt that? Well, consider this. God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal parts of the One, united Triune God, are they not? Yet the Son submits to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. They are equal, yet there is an order. The relationship of the husband and wife is a picture of this relationship. In the Corinthian culture, a woman’s long hair and the covering of her head was an outward show of her agreement with the God established order. A man’s short hair and lack of head covering was the same. Now, we know that what God considers important is the condition of our heart. He looks much less at the things we do than what goes on in our heart. Yes, what we do is important, because our actions often flow from our heart. But in our culture, where head covering and hair length has little or nothing to do with our marital status, God does not care about hair and covers. But He most certainly cares about our submission to His authority, and the order He has set out for husbands and wives. Christ is in submission to the Father, the husband is in submission to Christ, the wife is in submission to the husband. No one has his or her thumb on the other. This is a love relationship, with respect and reverence. I love the lovely Lady LeeAnn and would give my life for her, just as Christ gave Himself for me. I do not lord it over her. Her well-being is my most important priority, other than serving and loving God. She responds to that love by respecting and loving me in the same way. We are equal partners, and at the same time there is the order that God laid out. And not surprisingly, it seems to be working. We truly love each other more today than we did the day we married nearly 27 years ago. Every year our bond is stronger in every way. If she were here to talk to you, she would say the same thing. So no, God doesn’t care today in our culture what is on your head. He cares about your submission to Him. That’s it. Your thoughts? Let me hear from you.

Lifespring! Family Audio Bible
NewLSFB509: The New Lifespring! Family Audio Bible – 1 Corinthians 10-12

Lifespring! Family Audio Bible

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2016 16:52


So what’s the deal about the covering of the head and the hair length? This whole discussion seems pretty foreign to us, doesn’t it? In today’s American Protestant culture, we don’t make a big deal out of head coverings or hair length for either male or female, do we? Based on 1 Corinthians 11, are...

Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World
Women and the American Protestant Mission in Lebanon

Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2016


with Ellen Fleischmann & Christine Lindnerhosted by Susanna FergusonThis episode is part of a series entitled Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman WorldDownload the seriesPodcast Feed | iTunes | Hipcast | SoundcloudIn this episode, Ellen Fleischmann and Christine Lindner discuss the history of women and gender and the American Protestant Mission in Lebanon. How did American missionary women experience and transform the American Protestant project in the Levant in the 19th and 20th centuries? How did American missionaries, both women and men, interact with women from Beirut and Mt. Lebanon, both those who converted and those who did not? And how did these heterogeneous interactions produce new experiences of womanhood, family, power, and authority in the Levant? Drs. Fleischmann and Lindner reflect on these questions based on their considerable research in Lebanon and elsewhere, and also share their thoughts about sources and strategies for tracing women's history and missionary history in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Levant.« Click for More »

Christian Humanist Profiles
Christian Humanist Profiles 73: Madness

Christian Humanist Profiles

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2016 1:00


Charles Hackney interviews Heather Vacek about her recent book "Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness."

Christian Humanist Profiles
Christian Humanist Profiles 73: Madness

Christian Humanist Profiles

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2016 1:00


Charles Hackney interviews Heather Vacek about her recent book "Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness."

New Books Network
Simon A. Wood and David H. Watt, eds., “Fundamentalism: Perspectives on a Contested History” (U of South Carolina Press, 2014)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2015 63:39


In the past few decades, radical fundamentalists have become a major force in the global world. Or at least that what we often here in media outlets or from politicians and religious figures. But what exactly does ‘fundamentalism’ mean? Does this category point to something specific and exclude phenomena that falls outside the intended use of the term? In Fundamentalism: Perspectives on a Contested History (University of South Carolina Press, 2014) editors Simon A. Wood, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and David Harrington Watt, Professor of History at Temple University, collect a broad set of essays that address just this. They investigate the origins of the term, various communities that have been classified ‘fundamentalist,’ and alternative trajectories for the deployment of the label. Most often ‘fundamentalism’ is used to designate a position that advocates a rejection of modernity, scriptural literalism, militancy, and politicization of religion. However, under further investigation the separate communities or leaders do not always comply with these positions or approaches. Additionally, we frequently find familiar positions advocating for these standpoints without being labeled ‘fundamentalist.’ While not excluding other voices the editors and most of the collection’s authors argue that the term ‘fundamentalism’ is unanchored from its American Protestant origins, obscure in its designation, and assumes religion is a separate distinct sphere of social life. Therefore, they claim it is inadequate and ineffective to employ the term as an analytical category. In our conversation we discuss early twentieth-century conservative Protestantism, Ayatollah Khomeini, American and Israeli Judaism, Islamic Education, environmental consciousness, Salafism, Sufism, Shiism, and secular societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our Life in Christ
The End Times Part One

Our Life in Christ

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2006 59:51


In response to listener requests, Steve and Bill begin a new series on the Orthodox view of the end times and the book of Revelation. With the popularity of the "Left Behind" books, the recent developments in the Middle East, and the American Protestant theological hodge podge of end time scenarios, what does the Church have to say about all of the speculations about the immanent return of Christ? In this program Steve and Bill discuss the landscape of popular end time scenarios and laugh way too much.

Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT A couple of hundred years ago, an American Protestant clergyman said, "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." That's an apt thought as faithful Catholics lament the state of the Church. Things are so bad and so overwhelming that a kind of paralysis sets in, which can easily lead to a quiet despair that "nothing can be done." But that's not true, not even close. There is much that can be done, but all of this mess and our actions in response to the mess must be viewed realistically. First, the crisis in the culture, which is little else than communism rising, is a direct result of the unfaithfulness of the Catholic Church, particularly Her leadership — but with plenty of blame to pass around to us laity as well. So when you look around the world and see it collapsing, know that the Church collapsed first. The corruption within the hierarchy became the launching pad for the greater societal evils because the Church was established by Our Blessed Lord to be the sole path to Heaven and, being so constituted, is the only force on earth that can actually push back against and defeat evil. So when you look around the world and see it collapsing, know that the Church collapsed first. Her guardians exchanged the good of Heaven for the pleasures of earth. Second, the crisis in the Church far precedes the fallout from Vatican II. The Second Vatican Council has become a kind of scapegoat in the minds of many Catholics who unthinkingly look at all the confusion following Vatican II and attribute it to Vatican II. That is a very simplistic and wrong notion. The fallout from the council was able to be generated in the first place because, behind the scenes, the seeds had already been planted for decades by modernists who cleverly hid within the cracks and crevices of the Church like termites gnawing away. All that happened after Vatican II is that they came out into the light. Third, if you go into this battle to help restore the Faith without realizing what you are up against, you will become despondent. Simply accept the fact that the corruption and cowardice across the board within the hierarchy has transformed it into an international gay-crime syndicate. As Church Militant has been told repeatedly by officials and victims who come into close contact with this syndicate, it's worse than a mafia. That is your starting point. You cannot go into battle unaware of your enemy. And within the hierarchy itself, do not talk about "good" bishops. A cowardly bishop who still privately believes the Faith but remains largely silent about the evil within the episcopate does not qualify as a "good" bishop. He qualifies as a "not active promoter" of the evil. Good bishops die for the flock and announce the truth because anything short of the fullness of the truth damns souls, including their own. So in approaching bishops in your mind, you must first think in terms of wicked, evil men, such as McCarrick, raised to the episcopate through his influence and trained to lie, cheat, deceive, in some cases, rape and, in all cases, cover it up. Then, when finally caught, they deflect and cut secret financial deals with your money. The other bishops are the cowards, those who, through their own lack of courage, will be the first damned, as St. Paul and St. John tell us. They are the ones who have permitted the wicked bishops to ascend to these great heights by going along with whatever asinine "brother bishop code" or secret handshake they have. Many of these men, nearly all of them products of deficient seminary training back in the 1960s and 1970s, are malformed in theology. It doesn't matter if they are polite or soft-spoken or great to have over to your cocktail party, men like this will abandon the faithful at the first sign of trouble — just look at their ongoing, terrified response to the COVID craziness. To whatever degree they may personally believe the Faith, they don't believe enough, and that's the point. To follow Our Blessed Lord, even as a lowly, insignificant layman, means total abandonment of self. Of course, that plays out over time, but the point is that we must be at least heading that way. Point to any bishop in the United States who is doing just that (and by "just that," we don't mean giving an occasional sound bite or making a social media posting, but one who is standing up out loud and denouncing the evil within the ranks of his own brother bishops). Wicked men enabled by cowards run the Church; accept that reality and come to terms with it. And, please, no comments about Pope Francis down below. The pope did not fall out of the sky. It was this same ecclesiastical swamp that he emerged from as well. For years, Church Militant has been saying that the constant pounding on Pope Francis is just low-hanging fruit by a bevy of social media-type Catholics to generate clicks. But when it comes to the real nitty-gritty of attacking the beast itself, the episcopate from which Jorge Bergoglio emerged, these "YouTube Catholics" are nowhere to be found. They don't organize on-the-ground efforts to help facilitate awareness. They don't put in the time and excruciating effort to investigate individual cases of episcopal corruption. That work is too hard and doesn't gin up anywhere near the number of likes and clicks and payments and emails as other content does. It's much easier to just strike for the high-visibility, low-hanging fruit of Pope Francis. All of that is part of why Church Militant began its grassroots movement that we call Resistance. It was very clear to us that all this constant bellyaching about Pope Francis was accomplishing absolutely nothing, at least for the Faith. All it does is accomplish free publicity for the clickbaiters. But we aren't interested in clicks. We are interested in souls being preserved from this evil swamp in the diocesan and parish levels where the real work of the evil is happening with gay priests, malformed RCIA directors, chanceries full of woke idiots pretending to be Catholic and so forth. Even as we speak, bishops all over the United States are denying people their freedom of conscience regarding the so-called COVID vaccination, sometimes forcing Church workers to submit or get fired. So much for compassion, tolerance and dialogue, right? And that's just one obvious example. The vax hysteria was preceded by a near-total abandonment of the Faith — in liturgy, morals, finances, doctrine — you name it, so that is where whatever effort that can be expended needs to be expended. Here's a short list of successes that Church Militant Resistance has recently had: A predator priest for the Lafayette diocese was denied parole, thanks to the letter-writing campaign held by the Lafayette Resistance A vaccine drive in the diocese of Orange, California was canceled thanks to pressure applied by the Orange County Resistance Austin, Texas Resistance got James Martin canceled from a local Catholic event Thousands of people in San Antonio pledged not to give their money to their archdiocese, thanks to efforts by San Antonio Resistance Hundreds of affidavits were signed calling for a forensic audit of the Michigan election, thanks to support from Detroit Resistance, with sponsorship from the successful "Stand Up Michigan" It's true that no one person can do everything. But you must do whatever you can. Spiritual battles very frequently play out in the material world. It's true that no one person can do everything. But you must do whatever you can. This is why the Church Herself encourages both the spiritual works of mercy as well as the temporal works of mercy. If you are able to do more than pray, then you are obligated to do so. Late next month, Church Militant Resistance is sponsoring a "Boot Camp" in Southern California and is inviting you to attend it. Please click here for details, and please consider attending. The main point is to go into all of this much more in-depth with knowledge and training on what and how to do what needs to be done in your parish or diocese. This kind of grassroots organizing is something the forces of darkness in the culture have been absolute masters at over the decades in ginning up discontent. They have taken serious advantage of the natural disposition of good Catholics and conservatives to do nothing. Like the cowardly bishops, the laissez-faire Catholic has quietly sat by and enabled the wicked in the culture to overrun it. It's time to resist. Resist it all and push back hard. Please join us in SoCal for the Church Militant Resistance Boot Camp.