The Cappadocian Fathers Have you ever thought you should know more about the Apostolic Fathers of the church, but have been daunted by shelves of intimidating dusty volumes with long homilies by someone who might be named St Pachyderm of Anastasia? You like the story of St Nicholas slapping a heretic, but you've been [...]
Do you remember that creepy movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Some kind of alien bug invades earth and takes over people's bodies replacing them with soul-less replicas. The horrible thing about the film is that the aliens are not huge hybrid insectoid lobster monsters, but just as ordinary as the guy and girl next door. [...]
As a former Anglican I distrust church synods. Here's why. The General Synod of the Church of England is at it's foundation, a democratically minded, man made institution. It was founded in 1970 on the foundations of the Church Assembly which had been in existence since 1910. The Church Assembly was a consultative body of elected [...]
Over at Brandon Vogt's website Strange Notions here and here I have a set of arguments for God's existence which are not philosophical arguments based on Design, Prime Movers, etc, but on physical, historical evidence. The argument and evidence goes like this: If atheistic materialism is true, then the natural world must be a closed system. Everything [...]
St Francis of Assisi ...and can change you too. One of the things that makes St Francis so popular is that he was so utterly and completely converted. He was rooted and engrafted into Christ through several remarkable events that transformed him from the inside out. It is this profound and radical encounter with [...]
Maybe it's just me, but I seem to hear an increasing amount of grumbling from about the state of the church. Some folks complain about the new generation of priests, "All these guys seem to care about is lace and china tea cups! Are they all pansies? What's going on? Why do they have to return [...]
The Cowper Madonna by Raphael "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant" wrote Bl. John Henry Newman. As part of my research for a book on married priests I am reading Christian Cochini's tome Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. It's a masterful piece of scholarship which examines the early church's views [...]
St James Here is my latest article for Catholic Exchange. It's unlocks an interesting detail about St James and the dating of the New Testament. Bible scholars piece together details of evidence to build up a full picture of the New Testament authorship and dates. Their work is like that of a detective—picking up a [...]
On Monday the Church of England did not simply vote to ordain women as bishops. The members of the General Synod made an even more historic decision. They decided once and for all the true nature of the Church of England. After the Protestant Revolution of the sixteenth century it was very clear for three hundred [...]
Review by guest blogger and Standing on My Head book reviewer Christian LeBlanc. I love history. And I also love not just books about history, but reference books about history. They clog my bookshelves because I learned it's cheaper to own them than check them out of the library over and over again. They do tend [...]