I have been reading liberal theology since my college days—i.e. theologies which deny many, most, or all of the major tenets of the traditional Christian Faith.  The theologies are as many and as varied as their authors, but they all share a conviction that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t say and do all the things which the New Testament recorded that He said and did, that the Gospels are not to be trusted…

The earliest Church, from the days of the apostles and into the first centuries, had an abundant share of guts and what everyone else regarded as perversity.  Its claims were so outrageous that it was hard for the average Jew or Greek or Roman to take them seriously. Those claims began immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus.  A small group of His followers—about 120 in number, hardly enough to show up in…

I sometimes tell inquirers at St. Herman’s when they ask that I began my Christian life in earnest as a Jesus People—which usually results in blank stares, since most of them are too young to have heard of the cultural phenomenon known as the Jesus People Movement.  The movement has recently come up again for notice in a film called “Jesus Revolution”, based on the true events of the founding of Calvary…

I cannot be the only one who has had the experience of visiting a non-Orthodox church service and finding it stunningly empty and plain.  After long familiarity with Orthodox worship with its icons, incense, candles, vestments, Gospel books, and crosses, attending such services produces a kind of sensory deprivation, rather like sensory overload in reverse.  Entering those churches and experiencing their services left me looking around almost madly for something focus and…

Recently I heard a very dark and serious song about the judgment of God and His wrath against sinners.  It was the folk song “Great God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down” (accessed here).  I was not aware of the song before; apparently it is an American folk song.  The oracular Wikipedia informs me that it was first recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet in 1946 and issued in 1947 by the Jubalairies,…

I would like you all to meet a young woman, raised a devout Roman Catholic, who converted to Islam.  Her online story reads in part as follows: “I’m one of the many western converts out there…I grew up in a very traditional orthodox Christian household.  My family was going to church and respecting all traditions, but it was mostly something they did out of habit, not something they actually felt…I could never…