The History of the Christian Church

The title of this 138th episode is Liberal v EvangelicalIn our last episode, we considered the philosophical roots of Theological Liberalism. In this, we name names as we look at its early leaders and innovators.When I took a philosophy course in college, the professor dispensed on us sorry, unwashed noobs his understanding of faith and reason. After a lengthy description of both, he concluded by saying that faith and reason had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Reason dealt with the evidential, that which was perceived by the senses, and what logic concluded were rationally consistent conclusions drawn from that evidence. Faith, he declaimed, was a belief in spite of the evidence. When I asked if he was thus saying faith was irrational, he just smiled.That professor was an adherent of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. In Kant’s work Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, Kant argued reason is able to comprehend anything in the realm of space and time; what he called the phenomenal realm. But reason is useless in accessing the noumenal, or spiritual realm transcending time and space.Kant didn’t argue against the existence of the spiritual realm. He simply said it’s only something we can experience by feelings. We can’t really THINK about it in the sense that it touches the rational mind.Traditional, orthodox Christians pushed back against the Kantian view of faith as feeling by reminding themselves Jesus said the greatest command was to love God with all they had, including their minds. But liberals found in Kant’s philosophy a justification for unhitching reason from faith and for allowing modern people to live in a secular world while still enjoying the benefits of religious sentiments about ultimate meaning. In other words, it allowed them to get along content with the WHAT of life in the world, without having to bother much with the HOW, or concern themselves at all with WHY.A few years after the publication of Kant’s Critique, the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, going against the heart and soul of Christian apologetics dating back hundreds of years, said the heart of Christian Faith isn’t a historical event, like the Resurrection. It was, he argued, a feeling of one’s absolute dependence on a reality beyond one’s self. That awareness, he claimed, could be developed to the point where a person would be able to imitate Jesus’ own good deeds.He wrote, “The true nature of religion is immediate consciousness of Deity as found in ourselves and the world.” This earned Schleiermacher the title, Father of Theological Liberalism. Schleiermacher was born in a pious Moravian home, but as a young man, he imbibed the rationalism of the Enlightenment and became an ardent apologist for accommodating Christianity to popular society. As a professor of the newly founded University of Berlin, he insisted debates over proofs of God’s existence, the authority of Scripture, and the possibility of miracles weren’t the issues they ought to focus on. He said that the heart of religion had always been feeling, rather than rational proofs. God is not a theory used to explain the universe. Rather, God is to be experienced as a living reality. For Schleiermacher, religion isn’t a creed to be pondered by the rational mind. It’s based on intuition and a feeling of dependence.Orthodox Christians who identified religion with creedal doctrines, Schleiermacher maintained, would lose the battle for the Faith in the Modern world because those creeds were no longer rationally acceptable. Religion needed to find a new base. He located it in feelings.Sin, Schleiermacher said, was the result of people living by themselves, isolated from others. To overcome the sin that makes man independent from God and others, God sent a mediator in Jesus Christ. Christ’s uniqueness wasn’t in doctrines about his virgin birth or deity. No à What made Jesus a Mediator who can help us is the perfect example he was of one utterly dependent on God. By meditating on Christ’s example, and feeling our own inner sense of dependence on the universe around us, we too can experience God as Jesus did.In Schleiermacher’s theology, the center of religion shifts from Scripture to experience. So, the Biblical criticism we looked at in the last episode can’t harm Christianity, since the real message of the Bible speaks to an individual’s own subjective pursuit of the divine. The Bible doesn’t need to be factual or true, as long as it affects the feeling of dependence that is the spark that leads to spiritual illumination.Albrecht Ritschl enlarged on Schleiermacher’s ideas, taking them mainstream.For Ritschl, religion had to be practical. It began with the question, “What must I do to be saved?” But he eschewed the merely theoretical. So the question “What must I do to be saved?” can’t just mean, “How do I get to heaven after I die?” Ritschl said salvation meant living a new life, free from sin, selfishness, fear, and guilt.Ritschl’s practical Christianity had to be built on fact, so he welcomed the search for the historical Jesus we talked about in the last episode. The great fact of the Christian Faith is the impact Jesus made on history. Nature, he maintained, gives an ambiguous understanding of God while History presents us with moments and movements that convey meaning.History conveys meaning alright – but I’m not sure all that history’s given us a less ambiguous understanding of God than Nature.Ritschl asserted religion rests on human values, not science. Science conveys facts, things as they are. Religion weighs those facts and attributes more or less value to them.Many Christians of the late 19th C considered Ritschl’s work helpful. It freed them from the destructive impact of the increasingly secular pursuits of history and science. It allowed biblical criticism to use scientific methodology in determining things like authorship, date, and the meaning of Scripture. But it recognized religion is more than facts. Values aren’t under the purview of science; that’s religion’s turf.Protestant Theological Liberalism accepted higher criticism’s denial of Jesus’ miracles, His Virgin Birth, and His preexistence. But that did not in any way diminish Jesus’ importance. For Liberals, His deity didn’t need to arise from His essence. It resides in what Jesus MEANS. He’s the consummate human being who shows us the path to enlightenment and nobility. He’s the embodiment of supremely high ethical ideals whose example inspires us to emulate His example. For Liberal Christians, The Church didn’t come out of some actual, factual events around Jerusalem 2000 years ago, it arose from Jesus’ awe-inspiring example. The Church isn’t a community of people who believe in a literally resurrected Savior so much as a value-creating community that gives meaning and mission to life. That mission is to create a society inspired by love, the Kingdom of God on earth.The impact of this Theological Liberalism wasn’t felt in just one denomination or region. It challenged traditional groups all over Europe and North America.  It appeared in the churches of New England with the moniker: New Theology. Its leading advocates came out of traditional Calvinism. Its greatest early popularizer was Lyman Abbott. Then came Henry Ward Beecher, William Tucker, and Lewis Stearns.Prior to 1880, most New England ministers and churches held to basic orthodox doctrines . . . The sovereignty of God; the depravity of humanity in original sin; the atonement of Christ; the necessity of the Holy Spirit in conversion; and the eternal separation of the saved and lost in heaven and hell.But after 1880, each of those beliefs came under withering fire from Liberals. The most publicized controversy took place at Andover Seminary. The seminary was established by Congregationalists 80 years before to counter Unitarian tendencies at Harvard. Attempting to preserve Andover’s orthodoxy, the founders required the faculty to subscribe to a creed summarizing their adherence to classic Calvinism. But by 1880, under the influence of liberalism, several of the faculty could no longer make the pledge. The spark that lit the flames of controversy was a series of articles in the Andover Review by liberal professors who argued the unsaved who die without any knowledge of the Gospel will have an opportunity at some future point to either accept or to reject the Gospel before facing judgment.Andover’s board filed an action against one of the authors of the articles as a test case. After years of moves and counter-moves, in 1892 the Supreme Court of Massachusetts voided the action of the Board. By then, most denominations had their own tussles with liberalism seeking to infiltrate their colleges and schools.The response to Protestant theological liberalism was a movement which many of our listeners have heard of – Evangelicalism.Evangelicalism began in England in the 19th C, an epoch that in some ways singularly belonged to Great Britain. It was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. London became the largest city and financial center of the World. British trade circled the globe; her navy ruled the seas. By 1914, Britannia ruled the most expansive empire in history.But the rapid commercial and industrial growth wasn’t equally distributed across England’s population. The pace of change left many stunned. Every traditionally sacred institution cracked at its foundation. Some feared the horrors of the French Revolution were about to be repeated on England’s hallowed shores while others sang the praises of Lady Progress and dreamed of even greater advances. They regarded England as the vanguard of a new day of prosperity and liberty for all. Fear and hope mingled.As the Age of Progress dawned in England, Protestants attended either the Anglican Church or one of the Nonconforming denominations of Methodist, Baptists, Congregationalist, and a handful of smaller groups. But now, for maybe the first time, Christians from different denominations also formed specialized groups with a specific aim; like distributing Bibles, redressing poverty in urban slums, teaching literacy, and supporting missionaries in the far-flung reaches of the Empire.While liberalism grew in seminaries and colleges among professors and theologians, many ministers working in churches as local pastors and the people in the pews grew increasingly uncomfortable with the emerging doubt in the intellectual centers of their denominations. They may not be as sophisticated or learned in the academic pursuits of the experts, but by golly, they didn’t think a PhD was necessary to believe in or follow God. And if holding a Ph.D. meant having to deny cardinal doctrines of the Faith, then no thank YOU, very much.Evangelicals pushed back on Liberals, saying Christians ought not just to accept what Science says, just because it says it. History proves today’s so-called “science” is tomorrow’s mockery. The Christian faith isn’t just about how it makes you feel and the meaning it brings you. It’s a Faith that rests on the actual, literal events of history. To deny those facts and events is to depart from traditional, orthodox Christianity.The Evangelical Movement began with the work of John Wesley and George Whitefield. Its main characteristics were its emphasis on personal holiness, arising from a conversion experience. It was also devoted to a practical concern for serving a needy world. That holiness and service were nourished by devotion to the Bible which was regarded as inspired and inerrant. The Evangelical message went forth from a large minority of Anglican pulpits and a majority in other denominations.The headquarters of Evangelicalism was a small village three miles from London called Clapham. It was the residence of a group of wealthy Evangelicals who practiced remarkable personal piety. The group’s spiritual leader was John Venn, a man of culture and sanctified common sense. They met for Bible study, conversation, and prayer in the library of the well-to-do banker, Henry Thornton.But the most famous member of the Clapham Groups was William Wilberforce, the parliamentary statesman. Wilberforce found a universe of talented help for Evangelical causes among his Clapham friends. These included John Shore, Governor-General of India; Charles Grant, Chairman of the East India Company; James Stephens, Under-Secretary for the Colonies; and Zachary Macauley, editor of the Christian Observer.At the age of just 25, Wilberforce was dramatically converted to Christ after reading Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.  He possessed all the qualities for outstanding leadership: ample wealth, a liberal education, and outstanding talent. Prime Minister William Pitt said Wilberforce had the greatest natural eloquence he’d ever known. Several testified of his amazing capacity for close friendship and his superior moral principles. For many reasons, Wilberforce seemed providentially prepared for the task and the time.He once said, “My walk is a public one: my business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the part which Providence has assigned me.”Under Wilberforce’s leadership, the Clapham friends were knit solidly together. At the Clapham mansion, they held what they called “Cabinet Councils.” They discussed the wrongs and injustices of their country, and the battles they’d have to fight. Inside and outside Parliament, they moved as one, delegating to each member the work he could do best to accomplish their common purpose.They founded . . .The Church Missionary SocietyThe British and Foreign Bible SocietyThe Society for Bettering the Condition of the PoorThe Society for the Reformation of Prison Disciplineand many more. Their greatest effort though was the campaign to end slavery. Which is a tale I’ll leave for others to follow up.While the Clapham group accomplished much, it was their role in abolishing slavery that provides a sterling example of how an entire society can be influenced by just a few.

The episode is titled Why So Critical?Two episodes back we introduced the themes that would lead eventually to Theological Liberalism. The last episode we talked a bit about how the church, mostly the Roman Catholic church, pushed back against those themes. In this episode, we’ll go further into the birth of liberalism.The 20th century was unkind to Theological Liberalism, with its shining vision of the Universal Brotherhood of Man under the Universal Fatherhood of God. Yet, many mainline Protestant denominations still hold solidarity with Liberalism. It was Professor Sydney Ahlstrom’s view that liberals had provoked as much controversy in the 19th century as the Reformers did in the 16th. The reason for that controversy lay in their objective, stated by one of its premier advocates and popularizers - Harry Emerson Fosdick. In his autobiography, The Living of These Days, the influential pastor of the famous Riverside Church in New York City, said the aim of liberal theology was to make it possible “to be both an intelligent modern and a serious Christian.”Liberals hoped to address a problem may be as old as The Faith itself: That is, how can Christians reconcile their faith to the intellectual climate of their time without compromising the Essentials of The Gospel? By the evaluation of modern Evangelicals, Liberalism failed in that quest precisely because they DID compromise those essentials in their desire to be relevant among their unbelieving peers. Richard Niebuhr expressed the irony of theological liberalism when he said in liberalism “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”Personally, I’ve been reluctant to produce this episode because the more I’ve studied Theological liberalism, the less certain of being able to handle it competently I’ve grown. Definitions for it are no easier than for political liberalism. In fact, many deny that Protestant liberalism is a theology at all. They refer to it as an “outlook,” or “approach.” Henry Coffin of Union Seminary described liberalism as a “spirit” that honors truth so supremely and it craves the freedom to discuss, publish, and pursue what it believes to be true.But then, if THAT is true, it must certainly lead to certain convictions that derive values and produce judgments. And THAT is precisely what we see the history of Protestant liberalism producing.In the words of Bruce Shelley, “Liberals believed Christian theology had to come to terms with modern science if it ever hoped to claim and hold the allegiance of intelligent men.” So liberals refused to accept religious beliefs on authority alone. They insisted faith must submit to reason and experience. Following the thinking of the Enlightenment, of which they were the spiritual children, they claimed the human mind was capable of thinking God’s thoughts after Him. So, the best insight into the nature and character of God wasn’t His self-revelation in Scripture, which smacked of the old authoritarianism they eschewed; it was human intuition and reason.By surrendering to what we’ll call “the modern mind” liberals accepted the assumption of their time that the universe was a massive but synchronized machine, like a well-made watch. The key to this machine was Unity.I’ll come back to that in a moment, but a little editorializing seems in order. And while some may be rolling their eyes, I think this is germane to what this podcast is – a review of History – specifically Church History. I just made reference to “the modern mind.”Modern is another term that has multiple meanings. Historians use it to refer to the Modern Era, which they debate over the time span of, but let’s go with the common view that it runs from about 1500 to 1900-ish. So wait! IF the Modern Era ended at the beginning of the 20th century, what Era are we in now? The Atomic or Nuclear Era, the Post-Modern Era, the Information Age? Different labels get assigned to the current historical epoch. But don’t we still refer to current trends and fashions as being “modern”? Aren’t we “moderns” in the sense that we’re living NOW? Not many people would want to be considered not modern.It gets confusing because the word modern is plastic with a lot of different meanings and connotations. But here’s where it adds to the confusion as it relates to our discussion on theological liberalism, and some of this spills over into political liberalism. There was a desire to accommodate Christian theology to the modern mind. By which emerging liberals meant accepting the findings of “modern science” as (air-quote) fact and making theology fit into those supposed facts. But there’s a difference, a vast difference between facts and interpretations of facts. A few years after a so-called “Fact” was established by science, others came along to say, “Yeah, uh, we weren’t quite right about that. It’s actually this.” And, it wasn’t uncommon for even that revised new paradigm to be revised yet again.Is coffee good or bad for you? Right now, it’s good. But wait a month and it’ll be bad again, But not to worry, a year out, coffee will be the key to long life and amazing prosperity. Okay. I exaggerate, but not by much.My point is this, the current moment, what we mean by at least ONE of those definitions of “modern” – has a nasty habit of thinking that just by virtue of the fact that we’ve progressed to this point, we’re now smarter, more enlightened and so better than all the moments before this. There’s a kind of arrogance that seems endemic to the fact that we’re here now – the most evolved and educated class of human beings history has known.But a few moments from now, the people living then will think the same thing about themselves and see us as unenlightened bores. And the modern mind will have moved on to the new so-called facts of what turns out to not be science but is in truth scientism.When theology is hitched to “the modern mind” as liberals aimed to do, its eternal verities are traded in for the changing whims of what that is now, and now, then now. And we have to unhitch the adjective ‘eternal’ from those verities – because they simply aren’t true any longer.Okay, end of the editorializing. Adopting the modern view that the universe was a vast harmonious machine, liberals aimed for Unity. They tried merging revelation with natural religion and Christianity with other religions by looking for common themes. Thus, the study of comparative religions was born as an academic pursuit. They aimed to lower the wall between those who were saved and the lost, between God and man.Liberals regarded the traditional and orthodox belief in a transcendent God who exists in a realm above and beyond the natural as stalling their agenda to unify and harmonize. They blurred the lines between the natural and supernatural and equated the spiritual realm with human consciousness. The spiritual realm became little more than the intellectual and emotional activity of human beings. And God was defined as the universal life force that even now is creating the Universe. One liberal said it this way, “Some call it evolution; others call it God.”Remember, theological liberals, aimed to harmonize science with faith. The newest darling on the scientific scene was Darwin and his emerging theory of everything – Evolution by Mutation and Natural Selection. Theological Liberalism had no problem accepting Darwin’s theory.While the challenge of some of the assertions of science to orthodox Christianity was serious, they were secondary to the new views of history. Those views were adopted from the scientific method, which began a rigorous review of the assumptions that had framed classical or traditional history. If facts are based on evidence and repeatable observations, what were we to do with history, which by its very nature refers to the past? Historical criticism became the framework for a new generation of historians and academics. If a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, events regarded by traditional history as certain were now suspect until proven true. Modern sensibilities were read back into and layered over persons and events of the past.The application of these liberal principles of historical inquiry to the Bible was called “biblical criticism.” But don’t understand the term criticism here to be pejorative. Biblical criticism simply meant a study of Scripture in order to discover its real meaning. But Biblical criticism discarded the dogmatics of traditional inquiry in favor of a more rationalistic approach.Biblical criticism flowed into two streams, lower and higher criticism. The low-critic dealt with the problem of the physical manuscripts and codices. Their goal was to find the earliest and most reliable texts of Scripture, as close as possible to the originals. The work of lower criticism helped produce the large number of New Testament manuscripts we have today and assisted translators in the work of producing modern Bible versions.Higher criticism proved to be a very different matter. The high-critic wasn’t so much interested in the accuracy of the text. He was more concerned with the meaning of the text. To get at that meaning, he often read between the lines or went behind the text to the events assumed to have produced it. This meant discovering who wrote it, when, and why. Higher criticism held that we can only get at the meaning of a passage when we see it against its background. Higher critics then went to work, systematically dismantling traditional views regarding hundreds of passages. A beloved Psalm, attributed in the text itself to David, higher critics tell us wasn’t written by King D. All because it has a word scholars say wasn’t used for forty-two years after David. So, it must have been written by the Jews in exile.The methods of Biblical higher criticism weren’t new. They’d been in use for a while on other ancient texts. But during the 19th century, they were applied to the Bible. And for many liberals, all it took was some scholar with a Ph.D. to say a traditional view of a passage was wrong, it was this other thing, for them to categorically throw over tradition in favor of the new view.Higher criticism agreed generally that Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch as both Jews and Christians had universally agreed till then. Instead, they’d been penned by at least four authors. And passages that seemed to be prophetic of future events must have been written after the events they supposedly foretold because modern scientific sensibilities don’t allow for the supernatural. High-critics said the Gospel of John, wasn’t = John’s Gospel, that is.Diverging from the discipline of Biblical Criticism was what’s known as the search for the “historical Jesus.” Liberals like the idea of Jesus, if not the actual Jesus presented in the Gospels. You know, the One Who made a whip and cleared the temple and called people white-washed tombs. A liberal reforming Jesus was someone they could get behind, but not the substitutionary-atoning Jesus of the Epistles because THAT Jesus meant a Holy God whose justice demands a sacrifice to discharge sins. And that was an archaic idea no longer acceptable to modern sensibilities. So, liberal critics assigned themselves the mission of saving Jesus from such barbaric and outdated modes of thinking. They assumed the early church and writers of the Gospels embellished Scripture to that end. It was their task to sift through the text and pull out what was legitimate and what was bogus.Literally dozens of so-called “lives of Jesus” were written during the 19th century, each claiming it revealed the true, historical Jesus. While most contradicted each other, they nearly all agreed to disavow the miraculous was central to the genuine Jesus story. They were bound to this since “science” proved the impossibility of miracles.Quick editorial comment – Let’s be clear, the scientific method can’t prove miracles are impossible. Miracles are by their very definition outside the realm of scientific investigation because repeatability is one of the required elements of the scientific method. Miracles, by the very definition, are a contravention of the laws that govern the material realm, and AREN’T typically repeatable. Miracles are unexpected!In their quest to merge science and faith, liberal theologians allowed the so-called facts of their time to be the filter through which they re-worked the content of the Christian Faith. They said Jesus not only didn’t work miracles, He never claimed to be the Messiah, or that history would climax in His visible return to establish the kingdom of God.The cumulative effect of all this was the doubt cast on the Bible as the inspired and infallible Word of God as the authority for faith and practice.When higher critics were done, Liberals were free to sort through Scripture to pick and choose what they wished. They read the Bible through the filter of evolution and saw a progression from blood-thirsty deities requiring sacrifices, to the Jews who embraced the idea of a righteous God served by those who pursue justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. This progressive revelation of God reached its climax in Jesus, where God is portrayed as the loving Father of all Humanity.So far, our review of Theological Liberalism has seemed bent toward a tearing down of traditionalism. That looks at just one side of the liberal coin. The other side was the concurrent movement known as Romanticism.During the early 19th century, Romanticism was a movement that flowed mainly in the artistic and intellectual communities. It looked at life through feelings. The Industrial Age seemed to many to reduce man to a cog in a vast societal machine. Romanticism was an attempt to lift man out of the gears and set him down as a glorious creator and engineer. Man was evolution’s apex achievement and had every right, duty even, to exalt in his lofty place, as well as to aspire to even greater heights. Romanticism focused on the individual and his/her ambitions to attain their ultimate potential. This was the genesis of the Human Potential Movement.So on one hand, liberals aimed for unity, but Romanticism exalted the individual. Liberalism broadened its agenda to unify the two by harmonizing them.Theological liberalism saw itself as the force to do it. Biblical Criticism had rescued the historical Jesus from the muck and mire of traditional orthodoxy. Romanticism then wanted to plant the idea of Jesus in the hearts of all people so they could become all their potential made possible.

The title of this episode is Push-BackAs we move to wind up this season of CS, we’ve entered into the modern era in our review of Church history and the emergence of Theological Liberalism. Some historians regard the French Revolution as a turning point in the social development of Europe and Western Civilization. The Revolution was in many ways, a result of the Enlightenment, and a harbinger of things to come in the Modern and Post-Modern Eras.At the risk of being simplistic, for convenience sake, let’s set the history of Western Civilization into these eras of Church History.First is the Roman Era, when Christianity was officially opposed and persecuted. That was followed by the Constantinian Era, when the Faith was at first tolerated, then institutionalized. With the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Europe entered the Middle Ages and the Church was led by Rome in the West, Constantinople in the East.The Middle Ages ended with the Renaissance which swiftly split into two streams, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. While many Europeans broke from the hegemony of the Roman Church to launch Protestant movements, others went further and broke from religious faith altogether in an exaltation of reason. They purposefully stepped away from spirituality toward hard-boiled materialism.This gave birth to the Modern Era, marked by an ongoing tension between Materialistic Rationalism and Philosophical Theism that birthed an entire rainbow of intellectual and faith options.Carrying on this over-simplified review from where our CS episodes have been, the Modern Era then turned into the Post-Modern Era with a full-flowering and widespread academic acceptance of the radical skepticism birthed during the Enlightenment. The promises of the perfection of the human race through technology promised in the Modern Era were shattered by two World Wars and repeated cases of genocide in the 20th and 21st Cs. Post-Moderns traded in the bright Modernist expectation of an emerging Golden Age for a dystopian vision of technology-run-amuck, controlled by madmen and tyrants. In a classic post-modern proverb, the author George Orwell said, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”In our last episode, we embarked on a foray into the roots of Theological Liberalism. The themes of the new era were found in the motto of the French Revolution: “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”Liberty was conceived as individual freedom in both the political and economic realms. Liberalism originally referred to this idea of personal liberty in regard to economics and politics. It’s come to mean something very different. Libertarian connects better with the original idea of liberalism than the modern term “liberalism.”In the early 19th C, liberals promoted the political rights of the middle class. They advocated suffrage and middle-class influence through representative government. In economics, liberals agitated for a laissez faire marketplace where individual enterprise rather than class determined one’s wealth.Equality, second term in the French Revolution’s trio, stood for individual rights regardless of legacy. If liberty was a predominantly middle-class virtue, equality appealed to rural peasants, the urban working class, and the universally disenfranchised. While the middle class and hold-over nobility advocated a laissez-faire economy, the working class began to agitate for equality through a rival philosophy called socialism. Workers inveighed for equality either through the long route of evolution within a democratic system or the shorter path of revolution via Marxism.Fraternity, the third idea in the trinity, was the Enlightenment reaction against all the war and turmoil that marked European history till then; especially the trauma that had rocked the continent through endless political, economic, and religious struggle. Fraternity represented a sense of brotherhood that rolled across Europe in the 19th C. And while it held the promise of uniting people in the concept of the universal brotherhood of man under the universal Fatherhood of God, it quickly devolved into Nationalism that would only lead to even bloodier conflicts since they were now accompanied by modern weapons.These social currents swirled around the Christian Faith during the first decades of the Age of Progress, but no one predicted the ruination they’d bring the Church of Rome, steeped as it was in an inviolable tradition. For over a thousand years she’d presided over feudal Europe. She enthroned dozens of monarchs and ensconced countless nobles. And like them, the Church gave little thought to the power of peasants and the growing middle class. In regards to social standing, in 18th C European society, noble birth and holy calling were everything. Intelligence or achievement meant little.Things began to heat up in Europe when Enlightenment thinkers began to question the old order. In the 1760s, several places around the world began to feel the heat of political unrest. There’d always been Radicals who challenged the status quo. It usually ended badly for them; forced to drink hemlock or such. But in the mid and late 18th C, they became popular advocates for the middle-class and poor. Their demands were similar: The right to participate in politics, the right to vote, the right to greater freedom of expression.The success of the American Revolution inspired European radicals. They regarded Americans as true heirs of Enlightenment ideals. They were passionate about equality; and desired peace, yet ready to fight for freedom. In gaining independence from the world’s most formidable power, Americans proved Enlightenment ideals worked.Then, in the last decade of the 18th C, France executed its king, became a republic, formed a revolutionary regime, and crawled through a period of brutality into the Imperialism of Napoleon Bonaparte.As we saw in an earlier episode, the Roman Catholic church was so much a part of the old order that revolutionaries often made it an object of their wrath. In the early 1790s, the French National Assembly sought to reform the Church along rationalist lines. But when it eliminated the Pope’s control and required an oath of loyalty on the clergy, it split the Church. The two camps faced off against each other in every village. Between thirty and 40,000 priests were forced into hiding or exile. Atheists recognized the cultural wind was now at their back and pressed for more. Why stop at reforming the Church when you could pry its grip from all society? Radicals moved to remove all traces of Christianity’s influence. They adopted a new calendar and elevated the cult of “Reason.” Some churches were converted to “Temples of Reason.”But by 1794 this farce had spent itself. The following year a statute was passed affirming the free exercise of religion, and loyal Catholics who’d kept a low profile during the Revolution returned. But Rome never forgot. For now, Liberty meant the worship of the goddess of Reason.When Napoleon took control, he struck an agreement with the pope; the Concordat of 1801. It restored Roman Catholicism as the quasi-official religion of France. But the Church had lost much of its prestige and power. Europe would never again be a society held together by an alliance of altar and throne. On the other side of things, Rome never welcomed the liberalism reshaping much of Europe’s courts.As Bruce Shelley aptly remarks, Jesus and the apostles spent little time talking about political freedom, personal liberty, or a person’s right to their opinions. Valuable and important as those things are, they simply do not come into view as values in the appeal of the Gospel. The freedom Christ offers comes through salvation, which places a necessary safeguard on liberty to keep it from becoming a dangerous license.But during the 19th C, it became popular to think of liberty ITSELF as being free! Free of any and all restraint. Any restriction on freedom was met with a knee-jerk opposition. Everyone ought to be as free as possible. The question then became; just what does that mean. How far does “possible” go?John Stuart Mill suggested this guideline, “The liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of all.” Liberty meant the right to your opinions, the freedom to express and act upon them, but not to the degree that in doing so, you impinge others’ ability to do so with theirs. Politically and civilly, this was best made possible by a constitutional government that guaranteed universal civil liberty, including the freedom to worship according to one’s choice.Popes didn’t like that.In the political and economic vacuum that followed Napoleon, several monarchs tried to re-establish the old systems of Europe. They were resisted by a new and empowered wave of liberals. The first of these liberal uprisings were quickly suppressed in Spain and Italy. But the liberals kept at it and in 1848, revolution temporarily triumphed in most European capitals.Popes Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI by all accounts were good men. But they ignored the emerging modernity of 19th century Europe by clinging to a moribund past.There are those who would say it’s not the duty of the Church to keep pace with changing times. The truths of God don’t change. So on the contrary, the Church is to remain resolute in holding to The Faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Faithfulness to the essentials of the Christian Faith is not what we’re referring to here. You can change the flooring in your house without agreeing with the world. Some Popes of the late 18th to mid 19th century seemed to kind of pull the blinds of Vatican windows, trying to keep out the philosophical ideas then sweeping the Continent. That posture toward the wider culture tended to only further alienate the intellectual community.This early form of Liberalism wanted to address historic evils that have plagued humanity. But it refused to allow the Catholic Church a role in that work as it related to morality and public life. Liberals said politics ought to be independent of Christian ethics. Catholics had rights as private citizens, but their Faith wasn’t welcome in the public arena. This is part of the creeping secularism we talked about in the last episode.One of the lingering symbols of papal ties to the Medieval world was the Papal States where the Pope was both spiritual leader and civil ruler. In the mid-19th C, a movement for Italian unity began that aimed to turn the entire peninsula into a single nation. Such a revolution wouldn’t tolerate the Papal States. Liberals welcomed Pope Pius IX, who seemed a reforming Pope who’d listen to their counsel. In 1848, he installed a new constitution for the Papal States granting moderate participation in government. This movement toward liberal ideals moved some to suggest the Pope as leader over a unified Italy. But when Pius’ appointed Prime Minister of the Papal States was assassinated by revolutionaries, Pius rescinded the new constitution. Instead of putting the revolution down, it broke out in Rome itself and Pius had to flee. With French assistance, he returned and returned the Papal states to an absolutist regime. Opposition grew under the leadership of King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. In 1859 and 60 large sections of the Papal States were carved away by nationalists. Then in March of 1861, Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed King of Italy in Florence.But the City of Rome was protected by a French garrison. When the Franco-Prussian War forced the withdrawal of French troops, Italian nationalists invaded. After a short engagement in September of 1870, Rome surrendered. After lasting for a millennium, the Papal States were no more.Pius IX holed up in the Vatican. Then in June 1871, King Victor Emmanuel transferred his residence to Rome, ignoring the protests and threatened ex-communication by the pope. The new government offered Pius an annual salary together with the free and unhindered exercise of his religious roles. But the Pope rejected the offer and continued his protests. He forbade Italy’s Catholics to participate in political affairs. That just left the field open to more radicals. The result was a growing anticlerical course in Italian civil affairs. This condition became known as the “Roman Question.” It had no resolution until Benito Mussolini concluded the Lateran Treaty in February 1929. The treaty stipulated that the pope must renounce all claims to the Papal States, but received full sovereignty in the tiny Vatican State. This condition exists to this day.1870 not only marks the end of the rule of the pope of civil affairs in Italy, it also saw the declaration of his supreme authority as the Bishop of Rome in a doctrine called “Papal Infallibility.” The First Vatican Council, which hammered out the doctrine, represented the culmination of a movement called “ultramontanism” meaning “across the mountains.” Originally referring to the Pope’s hegemony beyond the Alps into the rest of Europe, the term eventually came to mean over and beyond any mountain. Ultramontanism formalized the Pope’s right to lead the Church.It came about thus . . .Following the French Revolution (and here we are yet again, recognizing the importance of that revolution in European and world affairs) an especially strong sense of loyalty to the Pope developed there. After the nightmare of the guillotine and the cultural trauma of Napoleon’s reign, many Catholics came to regard the papacy as the only source of civil order and public morality. They believed only popes were capable of restoring sanity to society. Only the papacy had the power to guide the clergy to protect religion from political coercion.Infallibility was suggested as a necessary prerequisite for an effective papacy. The Church had to become a monarchy adjudicating God’s will. Shelley says as sovereignty was to secular kings, infallibility would be to popes.By the mid-19th C, this thinking attracted many Catholics. Popes encouraged it in every possible way. One publication said when the pope meditated, God was thinking in him. Hymns appeared that were addressed, not to God, but to Pius IX.  Some even spoke of the Pope as the vice-God of humanity.In December 1854, Pius IX declared as dogma The Immaculate Conception; a belief that had been traditional but not official; that Mary was conceived without original sin. The subject of the decision was nothing new. What was, however, was the way it was announced. This wasn’t dogma defined by a creed produced by a council.  It was an ex-cathedra proclamation by the Pope. Ex Cathedra means “from the chair,” and defines an official doctrine issued by the teaching magisterium of the Holy Church.Ten years after unilaterally announcing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Pius sent out an encyclical to all bishops of the Church. He attached a Syllabus of Errors, a compilation of eighty evils then in place in society. He declared war on socialism, rationalism, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, public schools, Bible societies, separation of church and state, and a host of other so-called errors of the Modern Era. He ended by denying that “the Roman pontiff ought to reach an agreement with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”It was a hunker down and rally round an infallible pope mentality that aimed to enter a kind of spiritual hibernation, only emerging when Modernity had impaled itself on its own deadly horns and bled to death.Pius saw the need for a new universal council to address the Church’s posture toward Modernity and its philosophical partner, Liberalism. He began planning for it in 1865 and called the First Vatican Council to convene at the end of 1869.The question of the definition of papal infallibility was all the buzz. Catholics had little doubt that as the successor of Peter the Pope possessed special authority. The only question was how far that authority went. Could it be exercised independently from councils or the college of bishops?After some discussion and politicking, 55 bishops who couldn’t agree to the doctrine as stated were given permission by the Pope to leave Rome, so as not to create dissension. The final vote was 533 for the doctrine of infallibility. Only 2 voted against it. The Council asserted 2 fundamentals: 1) The primacy of the pope and 2) His infallibility.First, as the successor of Peter, vicar of Christ, and supreme head of the Church, the pope exercises full authority over the whole Church and over individual bishops. That authority extends to all matters of faith and morals as well as to discipline and church administration. Consequently, bishops owe the pope obedience.Second, when the pope in his official capacity, that is ex cathedra, makes a final decision concerning the entire Church in a matter of faith and morals, that decision is infallible and immutable and does not require the consent of a Council.The strategy of the ultramontanists, led by Pius IX, shaped the lives of Roman Catholics for generations. Surrounded by the hostile forces of modernity; liberalism and socialism, Rome withdrew behind the walls of an infallible papacy.

The title of this episode of CS is Liberal.The term “modern” as it relates to the story of history, has been treated differently by dozens of authors, historians, and sociologists. Generally speaking, Modernization is the process by which agricultural and rural traditions morph into an industrial, technological, and urban milieu that tends to be democratic, pluralistic, socialist, and/or individualistic.In the minds of many, the process of modernization is evidence of the validity of evolution. The idea is that evolution not only applies to the increasing complexity and adaptation of biological life, it also applies sociologically to civilization and human systems. They too are evolving. So, progress is good; a sign of societal evolution.But critics of modernization decry the abuses it often creates. Not all modern innovations are beneficial. The increased emphasis on individual rights can weaken a person’s sense of belonging to and identity in a family and community. It weakens loyalty to valuable traditions and customs. Modernization builds new weapons that may encourage their inventors to assume they’re superior, then use them to subjugate and dominate those they deem inferior, appropriating their land and resources.Modernization is often linked to a creeping secularization, a turning away from theistic religion. Periodic revivals are viewed as just momentary blips in societal evolution; temporary distractions in progress toward the realization of the Enlightenment dream of a totally secular society.It was during the 19th C that the rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment finally moved out of the halls of academia to settle in as the status quo for European society. Christians found themselves caught up in a world of mind-numbing change. Their cherished beliefs were assailed by hostile critics. Authors like Marx and Nietzsche attacked the Christian Faith from a base in Darwin’s popular new theory.In an attempt to accommodate Faith and Reason, Ludwig Feuerbach, author of The Essence of Christianity, published in 1841, reduced the idea of God to that of a man. He said God is really just the projection of specific human qualities raised to the level of perfection.In 1855, Ludwig Büchner suggested that science dispensed with the need for supernaturalism. A materialist, he was one of the first to say that the advent of modern science meant there was no longer a need to explain phenomena by appealing to the miraculous or some ethereal spiritual realm. No such realm existed, except in the minds of those who refused to accept what science proved. He said, “The power of spirits and gods dissolve in the hands of science.”During the last half of the 19th C, Frederic Nietzsche made the case for atheism. Son of a Lutheran pastor, Nietzsche received an education in theology and philology at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig.An amateur musician, Nietzsche became friends with composer Richard Wagner, who like Nietzsche, admired the atheist Schopenhauer.In Nietzsche’s philosophy, we see the fruit of something we looked at in an earlier episode. The rationalist emphasis on reason divorced from faith leads ultimately to irrationality because it claims omniscience. By saying there IS no realm but the material realm, it closes itself off to even the possibility of a non-material realm. Yet the process of reason leads inevitably and inexorably to the conclusion there MUST be a realm of being, a category of existence beyond, apart from the material realm of nature.So Nietzsche embraced what has to be called non-rational ideas as the source for creativity, what he called “true living,” and art. An early indication his mind was fracturing, he identified as a follower of Dionysus, god of sexual debauchery and drunkenness. It’s no surprise he indicted Christianity as promoting all that which was weak. He hated its emphasis on humility and its acceptance of the role of guilt in aiming to better people by moving them to repentance and renouncing self. For Nietzsche, the self was the savior. He advocated for people to exalt themselves and unapologetically assert their quest for power. He coined the term Übermensch, the superman whose been utterly liberated from the outdated mores of Biblical Christianity and governed by nothing but truth and reason. This superman decides for himself what’s right or wrong.Nietzsche claimed “God is dead,” so no absolutes exist. There were no facts, only interpretations. Many creatives; authors, painters, and researchers were inspired by Nietzsche and used his writings as inspiration.It was at this time that advocates for what was called comparative religions argued Christianity ought to be studied as just one of several religions rather than from a confessional perspective that views it as TRUE. The assumption was that religion, just like everything else, had evolved from a primitive to a more complex state. A comparative study might find the core idea that united all religions, just as paleontologists looked for the common ancestor to man and apes.By the second half of the 19th C, derivations of the word “secular,” along with new words like agnostic, and eugenics, were part of European vocabularies. Secularization was identified with an emerging modernist separation of morality from traditional religion.Thomas Huxley minted the word agnostic to distinguish mere skeptics from hard-boiled atheists. It seems his development of the term may have actually helped many students, academics, and members of the upper classes in Victorian England shed traditional religious faith and embrace Rationalist-styled unbelief. They did so because they could now express their growing discomfort with supernaturalism without having to go all the way and declaim any belief in a Supreme being. It provided some philosophical wiggle room.Francis Galton introduced the word eugenics in 1883 to designate efforts to make the human race better by “improved” breeding. Galton, an evolutionary scientist, believed eugenics would favor the fittest human beings and suppress the birth of the unfit.In light of all this, it’s not hard to understand why Christian leaders were suspicious that “modernity” and “secularization” seemed to go hand in hand. Many materialists came right out and said they were the same; to be modern meant to be secular and hostile to religious faith.In 1874 John Draper published the hugely influential History of the Conflict between Science and Religion, in which he said religion is the inveterate enemy of reason and science. European society in particular saw a collapse of the political, religious, and social masters that had steered it for centuries. In their place intellectuals emerged who sought a secular substitute to traditional religion.What made this process seemingly unstoppable was the results of modernization and the fruit of technology rapidly enhancing the quality of life across the continent. Many Christians felt they faced a losing battle defending the faith, “once for all delivered to the saints” against the onslaught of a science delivering such wonderful tools every other week.They began to wonder if they could remain “orthodox” while becoming “modern” Christians.That challenge was complicated by the work of Charles Darwin. What made it an even greater challenge was when believers heard from scientists who said they were Christians, who told them Darwin was right. Humans were descended from the apes, not Adam and Eve.Others, like Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, boldly declared Darwin’s ideas incompatible with Scripture. In 1860, Wilberforce published a well-crafted and lengthy response to the Origin of Species. He praised Darwin’s research and engaging style and even gave a nod to  Darwin’s admission to being a Christian. But Wilberforce was careful to mark out many of Darwin’s claims as erroneously conceived.Wilberforce said God is the Author of both the Books of Nature and Scripture. So it’s not possible for the two to contradict each other. It’s been the object of one branch of Apologetics to justify that ever since.In October 1860, Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley engaged in a famous debate at the British Association in Oxford over Darwin’s theories. Huxley shrewdly portrayed the cleric as meddling in scientific matters beyond his competency. Wilberforce used a classic debate rhetorical device that had little to do with the substance of the debate but would prejudice the audience against his opponent. Huxley took the barb, then turned it around and used it to paint Wilberforce as HAVING to use such tactics because of the supposed weakness of his argument. If the Bishop had stuck to the content of his original article in the British Digest, he’d have fared much better.The debate over Darwin’s theory took many turns. Some wondered if he was right that evolutionary processes were progressive in the sense that they moved toward a species perfection. Darwin had said, “As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.” Supporters of Darwinism had a rationale for what came to be known as Social Darwinism with its advocacy for racism and eugenics.Ernst Haeckel introduced Darwinism to Germany. A brilliant zoologist, in 1899, Haeckel published The Riddle of the Universe, in which he argued for a basic unity between organic and inorganic matter. He denied the immortality of the soul, the existence of a personal God, promoted infanticide, suicide, and the elimination of the unfit. Using a hundred lithographs drawn from nature (1904), Haeckel campaigned for the teaching of evolutionary biology in Germany as fact. This was in contrast with the many scientists who viewed Darwinism as an evolving theory.At the dawn of the 20th C, the debate over Darwinism continued. As early as 1910, some claimed the theory of evolution was already dead. As subsequent history has shown, yeah –uh, not quite.Under mounting pressure, Europeans who wanted to be considered “modern, scholarly” yet remain “Christian” often made accommodations in the way they expressed their faith. Early in the century, liberal theologians found new ways to describe and explain the Christian faith. Friedrich Schleiermacher proposed that Truth in Christianity was located in a personal religious experience, not in its historical events or correspondence to reality. He criticized Scholastic Protestant orthodoxy emphasizing assent to propositions about God. He said what was far more important was one’s subjective experience of the divine.Later in the century, Catholic modernists said the Roman Catholic Church must accommodate the advances in knowledge made by higher criticism and Darwinism. They also declaimed the lack of democracy in the running of the Church. Pushing back against all this in 1910 Pope Pius X condemned modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.”Faced with such dramatic changes and challenges, many 19th C Christians felt the need to define and defend their faith in new ways. That wasn’t an easy task in light of some of the charges being made against it. Those who wanted to align the Faith with the modern scholarship discovered its rules tended to ensconce naturalist presuppositions that allowed no room for the supernaturalism required in theism.Anglicans and those in the Oxford Movement saw no such need to adjust their beliefs. They simply reaffirmed the authority of their faith communities and emphasized the importance of confessions, creeds, and Scripture. In mid-July, 1833, the Anglican theologian John Keble preached a famous sermon titled, “National Apostasy,” which triggered the beginning of the Oxford Movement. Keble warned about the repercussions of forsaking the Anglican Church.We’ll take a closer look at the emergence of Theological Liberalism in our next episode.

The title of this episode is Coping.It’s time once again to lay down our focus on the Western Church to see what’s happening in the East.With the arrival of Modernity, the Church in Europe and the New World was faced with the challenge of coping in what we’ll call the post-Constantine era. The social environment was no longer favorable toward Christianity. The institutional Church could no longer count on the political support it enjoyed since the 4th C. The 18th C saw Western Christianity faced with the challenge of secular states that may not be outright hostile but tended to ignore it.In the East, Christianity faced far more than benign neglect for a long time. When Constantinople fell in 1453 to the Turks, The Faith came under a repressive regime that alternately neglected and persecuted it.While during the Middle Ages in Europe, Popes were often more powerful than Kings, the Byzantine Emperor ruled the Church. Greek patriarchs were functionaries under his lead. If they failed to comply with his dictates, they were deposed and replaced by those who would. When the Emperor decided reuniting with Rome was required to save the empire, the reunion was accomplished against the counsel of Church leaders. Then, just a  year later, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Many Eastern Christians regarded this calamity as a blessing. They viewed it as liberation from a tyrannical emperor who’d forced them into a union with a heretical church in Rome.The new Ottoman regime initially granted the Church limited freedom. Since the patriarch fled to Rome, the conqueror of Constantinople, Mohammed II, allowed the bishops to elect a new patriarch.  He was given both civil and ecclesiastical authority over Christians in the East. In the capital, half the churches were converted to mosques. The other half were allowed to continue worship without much change.In 1516, the Ottomans conquered the ancient seat of Middle Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine. The church there was put under the oversight of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Then, when Egypt fell a year later, the Patriarch of Alexandria was given authority over all Christians in Egypt. Under the Ottomans, Eastern Church Patriarchs had vast power over Christians in their realm, but they only served at the Sultan’s pleasure and were often deposed for resisting his policies.In 1629, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lucaris, wrote what was considered by many, a Protestant treatise titled Confession of Faith. He was then deposed and executed. Fifty years later, a synod condemned him as a “Calvinist heretic.” But by the 18th C, the Reformation wasn’t a concern of the Eastern Church. What was, was the arrival of Western philosophy and science. In the 19th C, when Greece gained independence from Turkey, the debate became political. Greek nationalism advocated Western methods of academics and scholarship. The Greeks also demanded that the Greek Church ought to be independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Conservatives wanted to subsume scholarship under tradition and retain allegiance to Constantinople.During the 19th and early 20th Cs, the Ottoman Empire broke up, allowing national Orthodox churches to form in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The tension between nationalist and conservative Orthodoxy dominated the scene. In the period between the two world wars, the Patriarch of Constantinople acknowledged the autonomy of Orthodox churches in the Balkans, Estonia, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia.Early in the 20th C, the ancient patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch were ruled by Arabs. But the newly formed states existed under the shadow of Western powers. This was a time when out of a desire to identify with larger groups who could back them up politically and militarily, a large number of Middle Eastern Christians became either Catholic or Protestant. But an emergent Arab nationalism reacted against Western influence. The growth of both Protestantism and Catholicism was curbed. By the second half of the 20th C, the only nations where Eastern Orthodox Christianity retained its identity as a state church were Greece and Cyprus.The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was viewed by Russian Christians as God’s punishment for its reunion with the heretical Rome. They regarded Moscow as the “3rd Rome” and the new capital whose task was to uphold Orthodoxy. In 1547, Ivan IV took the title “czar,” drawn from the ancient “Caesar” a proper name that had come to mean “emperor.” The Russian rulers deemed themselves the spiritual heirs to the Roman Empire. Fifty years later, the Metropolitan of Moscow took the title of Patriarch. The Russian Church then churned out a barrage of polemics against the Greek Orthodox Church, Roman Catholics, and Protestants. By the 17th C, the Russian Orthodox Church was so independent when attempts were made by some to re-integrate the Church with its Orthodox brothers, it led to a schism in the Russian church and a bloody rebellion.Now—I just used the term “metropolitan.” We mentioned this in an earlier episode, but now would be a good time for a recap on terms.The Roman Catholic Church is presided over by a Pope whose authority is total, complete. The Eastern Orthodox Church is led by a Patriarch, but his authority isn’t as far-reaching as the Pope. Technically, his authority extends just to his church. But realistically, because his church is located in an important center, his influence extends to all the churches within the sphere of his city. While there is only one pope, there might be several Patriarchs who lead various branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church.A Metropolitan equates loosely to an arch-bishop; someone who leads a church that influences the churches around it.Peter the Great’s desire to westernize a recalcitrant Russia led to an interest on the part of Russian clergy in both Catholic and Protestant theology. Orthodoxy wasn’t abandoned; it was simply embellished with new methods. The Kievan school adopted a Catholic flavor while the followers of Theophanes Prokopovick leaned toward Protestantism. In the late 19th C, a Slavophile movement under the leadership of Alexis Khomiakov applied some of Hegel’s analytics to make a synthesis called sobornost; a merging of the Catholic idea of authority with the Protestant view of freedom.Obviously, the Russian Revolution at the beginning of the 20th C put an end to all this with the arrival of a different Western Philosophy - Marxism. In 1918, the Church was officially separated from the State. The Russian Constitution of 1936 guaranteed “freedom for religious worship” but also “freedom for anti-religious propaganda.” In the 1920s, religious instruction in schools was outlawed. Seminaries were closed. After the death of the Russian Patriarch in 1925, the Church was forbidden to name a successor until 1943. The State needed all the help it could get rallying the population in the war with Germany. The seminaries were re-opened and permission was given to print a limited number of religious books.In the late 20th C, after 70 years of Communist rule, the Russian Orthodox Church still had 60 million members.In a recent conversation I had with a woman who grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet Era, she remarked that under the Communists the Church survived, though few attended services. Freedom of religion was the official policy under the Soviets. But in reality, those who professed faith in God were marked down and passed over for education, housing, and other amenities, thin as they were under the harsh Soviet heel. You could be a Christian under Communism; but if you were, you were pretty lonely.Several years ago, when Russia opened to the rest of the world, I had a chance to go in with a team to teach the Inductive Study method as part of Russia’s attempt to teach its youth morality and ethics.A senior citizen attended the class who between sessions regaled us with tales of being a believer under Communism. He looked like something straight out of an old, grimy black and white photo of a wizened old man with thinning white hair whose wrinkled face speaks volumes in the suffering he’d endured. He told us that he’d spent several stints in Russian prisons for refusing to kowtow to the Party line and steadfastly cleaving to his faith in God.It’s remarkable the Church survived under Communism in the Soviet Bloc. Stories of the fall of the Soviets in the early ’80s are often the tale of a resurgent Church.There are other Orthodox churches in various parts of the world. There’s the Orthodox Church of Japan, China, and Korea. These communions, begun by Russian missionaries, are today, indigenous and autonomous, with a national clergy and membership, as well as a liturgy conducted in their native tongue.Due to social strife, political upheavals, persecution, and the general longing for a better life, large numbers of Orthodox believers have moved to distant lands. But as they located in their new home, they often transported the old tensions. Orthodoxy believes there can only be a single Orthodox congregation in a city. So, what to do when there are Greek, Russian or some other flavor of Eastern Orthodox believers all sharing the same community?Keep in mind not all churches in the East are part of Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the Christological controversies in the 5th C, a number of churches that disagreed with established creeds maintained their independence. In Persia, most Christians refused to refer to Mary as Theotokos = the Mother of God. They were labeled as Nestorians and declared heretical; though as we saw way back when we were looking at all this, Nestorius himself was not a heretic. Nestorians are more frequently referred to as Assyrian Christians, with a long history. During the Middle Ages, the Assyrian church had many members with missions extending as far as China. In modern times, the Assyrian Church has suffered severe persecution from Muslims. Early in the 20th C and again more recently, persecution decimated its members. Recent predations by ISIS were aimed at these brethren.Those churches that refused to accept the findings of the Council of Chalcedon were called Monophysites because they elevated the deity of Christ over His humanity to such a degree it seemed to make that humanity irrelevant. The largest of these groups were the Copts of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Ethiopian church was the last Eastern church to receive State support. That support ended with the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974. The ancient Syrian Monophysite Church, known more popularly as Jacobite, continued in Syria and Iraq. Its head was the Patriarch of Antioch who lived in Damascus. Technically under this patriarchate, but in reality autonomous, the Syrian Church in India has half a million members.As we saw in a previous episode, the Armenian Church also refused to accept the Chalcedonian Creed, because it resented the lack of support from Rome when the Persians invaded. When the Turks conquered Armenia, the fierce loyalty of the Armenians to their faith became one more spark that lit the fuse of ethnic hostility. In 1895, 96, and again in 1914 when the world was distracted elsewhere by The Great War, thousands of Armenians living under Turkish rule were massacred. A million escaped to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Greece, France, and other Western nations where the memory of the Armenian Holocaust lives on and continues to play an important role in international relations and the development of foreign policy.

This episode is titled Coming ApartEurope in the late 19th C was recovering from the Napoleonic Wars. War-weary, nations longed for a prolonged peace in which to take a breath, and consider HOW they were going to rebuild from the devastation recent conflicts had left. A plethora of new economic and political theories were available for them to choose from as they rebuilt. Most settled on economic and political ideas that were more liberal toward individual rights. The prosperity that marked Holland became a model for a good part of Europe as they moved to a free-market system. With few exceptions, the governments of Europe adopted modified parliamentary systems.This is the time when Europe moved from kingdoms to the more modern notion of nation-states.  Religious affiliation keying off the Reformation and Counter-reformation often played a part in defining borders. For instance, under the influence of Prussian leadership, Germany was fiercely Protestant while Austria was doggedly Roman Catholic. Belgium was Catholic while The Netherlands were Protestant.But maybe the most important development that occurred from the mid to late 19th C in Europe was the escalating divide between church and state.Following the Reformation, in those regions where Protestantism reigned, the church maintained a relationship with the State, much as the Catholic Church had before. But after the French Revolution, things changed. This was due to the emerging power of civil governments no longer beholden to clerical authority. The laisse-faire economics practiced across Europe birthed an economic boom that had a remarkable impact on the way people regarded much more than just economics. While many nations kept a State church subsidized by public funds, there was a boom in free churches supported solely by the offerings of their members. Being economically independent, they didn’t see the need to comply with some overarching ecclesiastical hierarchy. Freedom of thought and the freedom of the individual conscience so exalted by Enlightenment philosophy was linked solidly to the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, so that people valued their right to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. It got to the point where the free churches considered themselves as the real bastions of orthodoxy since their doctrine wasn’t tainted by economic interests and the need to endorse the State in order to keep their subsidy.While Great Britain followed a parallel track to that of the Continent in the 19th C, the Industrial Revolution had a greater impact there. The Industrial Revolution benefitted the middle class and those entrepreneurs who rode its wave, while diminishing the wealth and influence of the old nobility and pulverizing the poor. The too-rapid growth of cities led to overcrowding, slums, and increased crime. The poor lived in miserable conditions and were exploited at work. That led to a mass migration to the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It also led to the birth of the Labor Party which became a potent force in British politics. It was in England, against the back-drop of the abuses of the Industrial Revolution, that Karl Marx developed many of his economic theories.All this influenced the Church in England. During the French Revolution, it held several of the evils that had characterized the worst of the medieval church: Errors such as clerical absenteeism and holding multiple church offices for nothing more than personal gain. Then, a major renewal shook the Church of England. A reform-minded clergy took charge and bolstered by laws enacted by Parliament, were able to roll back the abuses. These reformers where of the Evangelical movement within Anglicanism, Pietists who longed to move away from the high-church magisterialism of Anglicanism to a greater solidarity with Continental Protestantism. A counter-movement responded in the Oxford movement, which  produced a kind of Anglo-Catholicism. Heavily influenced by Romanticism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Oxford movement emphasized the authority of tradition, apostolic succession, and Communion, rather than preaching, as the center of Christian worship.But it was in the free churches in England that most spiritual vitality was found during the late 19th C. The growth of the middle-class resulted in an surge in membership at free churches. Outreaches to the poor helped alleviate the suffering of tens of thousands. Others worked to enact laws to curb abuse of workers. This was also a time a massive missionary outreach from England. In a desire to help the poor, Sunday Schools were started. Others organized the Young Men’s Christian Association, the YMCA, as well as a women’s version, YWCA. New denominations were born, like the Salvation Army, whose primary focus was to help urban poor.Methodists, Quakers, and others led in the founding of labor unions, prison reform, and child labor laws. But the most important accomplishment of British Christians during the 19th C was the abolition of slavery. Quakers and Methodists had condemned slavery for yrs. But now, thanks to the leadership of William Wilberforce and other believers, the British government ended slavery. They first ended the slave trade. Then decreed freedom for slaves in the Caribbean. Following that, slavery ended in other English colonies. The British prevailed on other nations to end the slave trade. The British Navy was authorized to use force against slavers. Soon, most Western nations had abolished slavery.In the Portuguese and Spanish colonies of Latin America in the 19th C, the tension between the immigrants recently arrived from Europe called peninsulares;, and the criollos; descendants of earlier immigrants, was high. The criollos had become wealthy by exploitation of Indians and slaves. They thought themselves more astute at running the affairs of the colony than the recently arrived peninsulares. The problem was, the peninsulares had been appointed to both governmental and ecclesiastical positions by officials back home. Despite the fact that the wealth of the colonies had been dug out by the sweat and toil of the native population and imported slaves, the criollos claimed they were the cause of the wealth. So they resented the intrusion of the peninsulares. Although remaining faithful subjects, they abhorred laws that favored the home country at the expense of the colonies. Since they had the means to travel to Europe, many of them returned home imbued with the new political and economic ideologies of the Continent. The criollos were to Latin America what the bourgeoisie was to France.In 1808, Napoleon deposed Spain’s King Ferdinand VII, and replaced him with his brother Joseph Bonaparte. Resistance to King Joe centered at Cadiz, where a council called a “junta” ruled in the name of the deposed Spanish monarch. Local juntas were also set up Latin America. The colonies began ruling themselves, in the name of the Spanish king. Then when Ferdinand was restored in 1814, instead of gratitude for those who’d preserved his territories, he reversed all that the juntas had done. When he abolished the constitution the Cadiz junta had issued, the reaction was so strong he had to reinstate it. In the colonies, the criollo resentment was so strong to his iron-fisted attempt to re-assert control, they rebelled. In what is today Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay—the junta simply ignored the mandates from Spain and continued governing until independence was proclaimed in 1816. Two years later, Chile followed suit. To the north, Simón Bolívar’s army defeated the Spanish and proclaimed independence for Greater Colombia; which was eventually broken up into Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivar soon joined the independence parade.Brazilian independence came about as fallout from the Napoleonic Wars. In 1807, fleeing Napoleon’s armies, the Portuguese court took refuge in Brazil. In 1816, João [joo-auo] VI was restored to rule but showed no desire to return to Portugal until forced to 5 years later. He left his son Pedro as regent of Brazil. When HE was called back to Portugal, Pedro refused and proclaimed Brazilian independence. He was crowned Emperor Pedro I. But he was never really allowed to rule as his title implied. He was forced to accept a parliamentary system of government.Events in Mexico followed a different course. The criollos planned a power-grab from the peninsulares but when the conspiracy was discovered, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, proclaimed Mexican independence on Sept 16, 1810 at the head of a motely mob of 60,000 Indians and mestizos—persons of mixed Indian and Spanish blood. When Hidalgo was captured and killed, he was succeeded by the priest José María Morelos. The criollos regained power for a time, but under the leadership of Benito Juárez, native Mexicans re-asserted control. Central America, originally part of Mexico, declared independence in 1821, and later broke up into Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.Haiti’s independence was another result of the French Revolution. As soon as the French Revolution deprived the white population on the island of military support, the majority blacks rebelled. Independence was proclaimed in 1804, acknowledged by France in 1825.Throughout the 19th C, the overarching ideological debate in Latin America was between liberals and conservatives. Leaders of both groups belonged to the upper class. And while conservatives tended to be located in a landed aristocracy, liberals found their support among the merchants and intellectuals in urban centers. Conservatives feared freedom of thought and free enterprise while those were cardinal virtues for liberals, because they were modern and were suited to their interests as the merchant class. While conservatives looked to Spain, liberals looked to Great Britain, France, and the USA. But neither group was willing to alter the social order so lower classes could share the wealth. The result was a long series of both liberal and conservative dictatorships, of revolutions, and violence. By the turn of the century, many agreed with Bolívar that the continent was ungovernable. The Mexican Revolution seemed to make the point. It began in 1910 and led to a long period of violence and disorder that impoverished the land and caused many to emigrate.Throughout this colonial period in Latin America, the Church was under Patronato Real = Royal Patronage. The governments of Spain and Portugal appointed the bishops for the colonies. Therefore, the higher offices of the church were peninsulares while criollos and mestizos formed lower clergy. While a few bishops came to support the cause of independence, most supported the crown. After independence, most returned to Spain, leaving their seats empty.Now, we might think, “Well, that’s not difficult to sort out. Why didn’t those local sees just appoint their own bishops?” They wanted to, but in the tussle between Spain claiming the right to appoint bishops and the locals claiming the right, the Pope wavered. He did so because Spain was still a much-needed ally, while the new nations of Latin America were a substantial part of the Catholic flock. Papal encyclicals tried to walk a thin line between honoring European monarchs while at the same time culling back to the Vatican the ability to name its own bishops. It was a political sticky wicket that dominated the diplomatic scene for years.The attitude of the lower clergy, again, made up mostly of criollos and mestizos, contrasted with that of the bishops who tended conservative. In Mexico, three out of four priests supported the rebellion. Sixteen out of the twenty-nine signatories of Argentina’s Declaration of Independence were priests.You may remember the Liberation Theology movement popular across Latin America in the early 80’s. It was led largely by Roman Catholic priests. They followed in the footprints of earlier priests from a century before.

The title of this 132nd episode is “Off with Their Heads.”In this installment, we give a brief review of the French Revolution, which may not seem at first blush to have much to do with Church History. Ahh, but it does. For this reason: What we see in the French Revolution is a proto-typical example of the Church, by which the institutional church, not necessarily the Christian Gospel and Faith, collided with Modernity.Some astute CS subscribers may take exception to this, but I’ll say it anyway è In the French Revolution we see the boomerang of the Enlightenment that sprang FROM the Renaissance, come back round to give the Church a mighty slap in the face. The Renaissance opened the door to new ways of thinking, which led first to the Reformation, which cracked the Roman Church’s monopoly on religion and made it possible for people to not only believe differently, but to go even further to choose not to believe at all. Rationalism may have ended up agnostic and atheistic, but it didn’t begin there. Some of the first and greatest scientists worked their science in the context of a Biblical worldview, as we’ve shown in previous episodes. And the earliest rationalist philosophers based their work on the evolving theology of Protestant scholastics.It was during the French Revolution when the dog bit the hand that had fed it. Or maybe better, when the lion mauled its trainer.The French monarch Louis XVI was a weak ruler and an inept politician. Economic conditions grew worse, especially for the poor, while of the king and his court were profligate in spending. In a desperate need to raise funds, the king convened the Estates General, the French parliament.It was composed of three orders, three Estates; the clergy, the nobility and the middle-class bourgeoisie. Louis’ advisors suggested he enlarge that Third Estate of the middle class so he could coerce the other two estates of clergy and nobility to comply with his request for more taxes. The ranks of the clergy were then enlarged as well by adding many parish priests to offset the bishops who were largely drawn from the French nobility. These priests were no friend to the nobles.When the assembly gathered in early May, 1789, the Third Estate had more members than the other two combined. And among the clergy less than a third were nobles. The Third Estate insisted the Parliament function as a single chamber. The Clergy and Nobility were used to operating separately so that there were three votes. They usually united to vote down anything the Third Estate of the Middle class came up with. A row ensued, but when priests sided with middle class members, it was decided things would be decided by a united house and simple majority vote. The nobility balked so Priests and Bourgeoisie formed anew body they called the National Assembly, claiming they were now the legal government and represented the nation. Two days later the entire Clergy joined the National Assembly.The economy worsened, and hunger was widespread. Fearing what the National Assembly might do, the Crown ordered it to disband and forcibly closed the doors. Its members refused to comply and continued working on a new Constitution. The king moved troops to the outskirts of Paris and deposed a prominent and popular member of the opposition government named Jacques Necker. Parisians expressed their outrage by rioting in a bout of civil unrest that reached a climax on July 14, when they took the Bastille, a fortress that served as an armory, bunker, and prison for those who’d run afoul of the Crown.From that point on, things moved quickly toward full-fledged revolution. Three days later the king capitulated and recognized the authority of the National Assembly as the new government. The Assembly then issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which became foundational to democratic movements in France and other nations. But when Louis reneged and refused to accept the Assembly’s decisions, Paris rioted yet again. The royal family became prisoners in the capital.The National Assembly then moved to reorganized France’s government, economy, and religion. The most important step in this was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, put into effect in 1790.For centuries the French church had been governed by Gallican liberties, protecting it from interference by Rome. French bishops had a buddy-system with the French Throne. But now, with the Crown gutted of authority, the National Assembly assumed the role in the Church the king had played. Recognizing the need for reform, they set to work. A the peak of church hierarchy were members of the aristocracy. These prelates weren’t used to the real work of shepherding God’s flock. Their seat was a matter of income and prestige, pomp and ceremony. Monasteries and abbeys had become private clubs filled with debauchery. Abbots were known, not for their simple homespun smocks and bare feet, but for their excessive luxury and crafty political intrigues.Some members of the Assembly wanted to reform the church. Others were convinced the Church and the Faith it was supposed to stand as the eternal servant of, was naught but a lot of hog-wash, silly superstition from times long past, and ought now be swept away. Those voices were few at first, but their numbers grew and took the foreground later in the Revolution.Most of the measures the Assembly proposed aimed at reform of the Church. But the deeper challenge leveled by some was, did the Assembly even have authority to make changes? Since when did the civil government have a say in Church affairs? And hold on – since the Reformation introduced a divide between Protestants and Catholics, which church was being addressed? A suggestion was made to call a council of French bishops. But the Assembly quashed that because it put power back in the hands of aristocratic bishops. Others suggested the Pope be invited to weigh in. But the French were reluctant to surrender their Gallicanism by giving Rome a foothold.Pope Pius VI sent word to Louis XVI the new Constitution was something he’d never accept. The king feared the Assembly’s reaction if they found out about the Pope’s resistance so he kept it secret. Then, at the insistence of the Assembly, the king agreed to the Constitution, but announced his approval was contingent on the Pope signing off. The Assembly tired of the delay and decreed that all who held ecclesiastical office had to swear allegiance to the Constitution. Those who declined would be deposed.The Church was divided.You see, in theory, those who refused were to suffer no more than a loss of office. On the basis of the Assembly’s declaration on rights, they couldn’t be deprived of their freedom of thought. And anyone who wanted to maintain them as their clergy were welcome to do so. But they were on their own. Those who signed on to the new Constitution would be supported by the state. à Again, all that was in theory. In practice, those who refused to swear allegiance were persecuted and branded as dangerous counterrevolutionaries.Revolutionary movements gained strength across Europe. Such movements in the Low Countries and Switzerland failed, but monarchs and the nobility feared the French movement would spread to other lands. That inspired French radicals to more extreme measures. In 1791, the National Assembly morphed into the Legislative Assembly, with far fewer voices calling for moderation. Half a year later, France went to war with Austria and Prussia—beginning a long series of armed conflicts that continued till the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.The day after securing victory at the Battle of Valmy, the Legislative Assembly again reformed into the National Convention. In its first session, the Convention abolished the monarchy and announced the French Republic. Four months later, the king was accused of treason, convicted and executed.But that didn’t put an end to France’s problems. The economy was in shambles in every village, town, and city. Every social class suffered. But the peasants suffered most, as they always do. They revolted. Fear of foreign invasion grew. All this led to a wave of terror where everybody was suspected of counterrevolutionary conspiracies, and many major figures of the revolution were put to death one after another at the guillotine.Combined with all this was a strong reaction against Christianity, of all stripes. The new leaders of the revolution were convinced they were prophets and engineers of a New Age where science and reason would overcome superstition and religion. They claimed that as the new age was born, time had come to leave behind the silly ideas of the old.The Revolution created its own religion, called first the Cult of Reason; later the Cult of the Supreme Being. By then the Constitution with its rights for individuals was forgotten. The revolution wanted nothing to do with the Church. The calendar was changed to a more “reasonable” one where a week was 10 days and months were named after nature. Elaborate spectacles were staged to celebrate the new age of reason and new holidays were established to replace the old religious ones. Temples to Reason were built to replace churches, and a list of saints was issued—among whom were Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Rousseau. New rites were devised for weddings, funerals and the dedication of children, not to God but to philosophical ideals like Liberty.As I record this, and you listen, with whatever activity you’re doing, all these radical rationalist ideas may seem ridiculous, in light of their short lifespan. Like demanding everyone suddenly call red blue, and blue is from now on going to be called green. Just because we say so. It would be ridiculous, were it not for the fact they were deadly earnest about it and killed thousands for no more reason than being under suspicion of calling their changes absurd.“Off with their heads” became a slogan that literally saw people slipped under the guillotine’s blade. Christian worship was supposedly permitted; but any priest who refused to swear before the altar of Freedom was accused of being a counterrevolutionary and sent to the guillotine. Somewhere between two and five thousand priests were executed, as well as dozens of nuns and countless laypeople. Many died in prison. In the end, no distinction was made between those who’d sworn allegiance to the Constitution, those who refused to, and Protestants. Although the reign of terror ended in 1795, the government continued to oppose Christianity. Where ever French troops marched and asserted their presence, their policies followed. In 1798, they invaded Italy and captured Pope Pius VI, taking him to France as a prisoner.Napoleon, who risen through the ranks of the French army, became ruler of France in November of 1799. He believed the best policy for France was to seek a reconciliation with the Catholic Church, and opened negotiations with the new pope, Pius VII. In 1801, the papacy and French government agreed to a Concordat that allowed the Church and State to work together to appoint bishops. Three years later, Napoleon decided he wanted to be more than just the First Consul of France, and fancied the title “Emperor.” He had Pope Pius officiate his coronation. Then Napoleon turned around and decreed religious freedom for Protestants.So, Pope and Emperor fell out wit one another and France once again invaded Italy ending with the Pope again in chains. But in his captivity Pius refused to endorse Napoleon’s actions. He was especially critical of his divorce from Josephine. Pius remained a prisoner until Napoleon’s fall, when he was restored to his seat at Rome. There he proclaimed a general amnesty for all enemies, and interceded for Napoleon before his British conquerors.

This 131st, episode is titled, Behind Enemy Lines.Following up their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks conquered most of the Balkans. They now controlled the former Byzantine Empire and the substantial region of Armenia. They required the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs in Constantinople to obey their rules and policies. Ottoman Turks employed their Christians subjects in key positions in the military and government. Bureaucrats who’d served the labyrinthine Byzantine system made excellent court officials in the new realm. And thousands of young Christian boys were inducted into the Janissaries; elite fighting units renowned for their ferocity and loyalty to the Sultan. If you want to read some fascinating history, dig into the story of the Janissaries.Throughout Turkish lands, Christians and Jews were given a measure of autonomy in running their own affairs. Note I said “a measure.” They weren’t free to live however they pleased. While there was a general, persistent low-grade animosity between Christians and their Turkish masters, there were periods of intense oppression and outright persecution.Western Europeans were indifferent to the plight of Eastern Christians. They were anxious to maintain a favorable posture toward the Ottomans so as to have access to the rich trade that flowed between East and West. The conspiracies and conniving that went on between the competing nations of Europe for this rich trade was a thing of legend. Sadly, it was a prime example of how the desire for wealth trumped a deeper and more pressing humanitarian directive.Thank God we’ve moved past that today, huh?Keeping our historical perspective, the lack of concern on the part of Western Europeans for their Oriental brothers and sister living under the Ottoman yoke isn’t so hard to understand. After all, how many years had it been since the rift broke East from West? It had been almost exactly 400 years. And the LAST time West met East was in the brutality of the Fourth Crusade that shattered Constantinople and ultimately left it vulnerable to the Turkish conquest.At the end of the 16th century, Jeremias II, patriarch of Constantinople, ordained Bishop Job as the first patriarch of Russia. That made Moscow a patriarchate on the same footing as the much older centers of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.In the final yrs of the 16th century, four bishops along with the metropolitan of Kiev, created what became known as the Uniate Church. These churches became an Eastern branch of the Catholic Church. They looked to the Roman Pope as their spiritual head and embraced Roman doctrine. But they kept the Byzantine liturgy and the right of their priests to marry. For three centuries, Uniate Christians were the target of fierce persecution by Cossacks. During the Cossack-Polish War of 1648–57, many Uniates were slaughtered.Eastern Orthodox or as they’re sometimes called, Greek Orthodox, theologians rejected the Protestant Reformation’s emphasis on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. But when Cyril Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, published a work in 1629 that seemed influenced by the theology of John Calvin, it sparked a firestorm of controversy and fierce opposition from other Orthodox theologians. One chapter said Scripture was infallible and inerrant, its authority superseding that of the Church. Another chapter said sinners are justified by faith rather than works and that it’s Christ’s righteousness applied by faith to repentant sinners that alone justifies.The Turk Sultan Murad IV conspired to assassinated Patriarch Cyril Lucaris, because he was regarded as a theological as well as a political troublemaker. The Janissaries were sent to kill him on June 27, 1638; his body was dumped over the side of a ship.The years 1598-1613 we labeled the “Time of Troubles” in Russia. It was a time of transition from the Rurik Dynasty to the Romanovs. The years saw a famine that killed some two million Russians, one-third of the populace. It also witnessed the Polish-Muscovite War when Russia was occupied by a Polish-Lithuanian Consortium and endured endless civil uprisings. The Romanovs went on to rule Russia for the next 300 years. During the period from Peter the Great thru Catherine the Great, Russia emerged as a military competitor to the French, Spanish, English, Prussians, and Hapsburgs. Her army and navy grew and she gained large tracts of land at the expense of Sweden, Poland, and Turkey.Russia’s conquests brought many non-Orthodox Christians under her control; mostly Roman Catholics. It also brought in many Jews. East European rulers were wary of the new Russian bear and how it’s aggression could unsettle the careful balance European diplomats had managed to secure. In 1763, King Louis XV of France declared, “Everything that may plunge Russia into chaos and make her return to obscurity is favorable to our interests.”The impact of the reign of Peter the Great on Russian society was profound. Fascinated by all things military, Peter was as ruthless with enemies as he was charming with those aimed to woo. He assumed the arduous task of transforming Russia from an agricultural backwater into a modern economic powerhouse. During a more than year-long tour of Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Austria in 1697–8, he gained a working knowledge of economics, farming, munitions, and ship-building. He visited schools, hospitals, and factories. He was warmly received by kings and queens.Once back in Russia, Peter used forced labor to build the port city of Petersburg as a “window on the West.” In 1713, it became the capital of Russia. He finally defeated the Swedes, gaining more territory. His trip to western European countries provided him with new insights into how to streamline Russia’s military, government, and schools.His opponents came from the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as what was called the “Old Believers and Ritualists” drawn from the ancient Russian nobility and the Cossacks. The clergy said Peter was engaged in a blasphemous arrogance by moving the capital from Moscow, which they regarded as a “Third Rome” to Petersburg.Unlike the clergy, the Old Believers had a different beef with Peter. They were enraged by what they called his irreligious behavior. He failed to support their departure from the Russian Orthodox Church due to a bruhaha over how to make the sign of the cross. These Old Ritualists broke with the Russian Church in the 1650s when the Metropolitan Nikon revised the liturgy along a more Byzantine fashion. Nikon said the sign of the cross was to be made with the first 3 fingers of the right hand, not 2 fingers as was the usual practice. Those who refused to put up 3 fingers were deemed heretics.So à “Off with is head.”In 1682, a leader of the Old Believers was burned at the stake. Some of his followers living in their separate communities engaged in mass suicides.Peter’s opponents among the clergy were worked up about his requiring them to adopt modern and Western clothes. Russian nobles were ordered to shave unless they paid a tax. Some Russian men assumed being bearless would bar them from heaven.Peter professed faith in Christ, but it’s questionable if he did so for purely pragmatic reasons. He venerated icons, quoted Scripture at length, cited the Liturgy by heart, and sang on occasion in church choirs. But he had little patience with the Patriarch of Moscow who opposed his “Western” innovations.One critic claimed Peter the Great’s actions toward the Church in Moscow “led to a cultural shock from which Russia never recovered.” When Patriarch Adrian died in 1700, Peter postponed the election of a new patriarch. That dealt a major blow to the traditions and the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1716, Peter declared that he alone ruled Russia, setting himself over the church.The reigns of the next several Romanovs were marked by intrigue and palace coups.For example, Peter III had a brief reign. He married the German-born and Lutheran-raised Catherine II, who converted to Orthodoxy so as to make entry into marriage smoother. Peter disbanded the secret police and favored religious toleration. He despised the Orthodox Church and was accused of leaning toward “Lutheranism.” A conspiracy headed by his wife’s illicit lover forced Peter’s abdication, then she had him murdered.Catherine became the ruler of Russia being assigned the title Catherine the Great. She built on the expansionist policies of Peter, adding 200,000 square miles to Russia. Her armies put down the Cossack Rebellion of 1773–5 and extended the borders of Russia in Crimea and Poland, Belarus, and western Ukraine. She centralized and streamlined the government, which was then run by civilians with skills like those of their counterparts in Western Europe. Russia, traditionally introspective and self-congratulatory, looked for a while to be opening to the outside world, willing to embrace the culture of its neighbors.Catherine has sometimes been portrayed as an “Enlightened Despot.” She was steeped in the literature of the French philosophes. Diderot and Grimm spent time at her court, as did other western thinkers. She mostly refrained from terror in dealing with her opponents in bringing reforms.In 1773, Catherine promoted a measure of religious toleration. She defended the Jesuits after the papacy dissolved their Order. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants enjoyed limited religious rights.But, Catherine’s openness to Enlightenment ideas had limits. She took over monasteries and turned them into state property. She was hostile to the Masons and feared the spread of subversive republican ideas by partisans of the French Revolution. She made three decrees that forced Jews to settle in a region called “the Pale” stretching from the Black to the Baltic Sea. It encompassed present-day Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. Jews lived in the Pale under harsh poverty and frequent pogroms.18th-century religious life in Europe and Asia is a harbinger of what lies ahead for us as we wrap up our narrative of church history over the next episodes.The concern expressed by Roman Catholic leaders in the face of the Reformation was that if the Protestants were allowed to break away to form their own churches and movements, the fracturing would never end and Mother Church would disintegrate into a bo-zillion daughters who looked nothing like their mother. That concern has largely proven true, as is evidenced by the literally tens of thousands of different denominations, movements, groups, and independent churches existing worldwide, all calling themselves faithful followers of Jesus and Home of the True Gospel.It’s during the 18th C in Europe, Asia, and to a lesser extent in the New World that we see that splintering reaches an exponential rate.And that’s why our review of the narrative of church history must necessarily come to a close soon. Because to carry one we’d need to track the growth and development of literally dozens of groups and that would be a royal pain in inflicted tedium. We could deprogram hardened terrorists by making them listen to that; or torture them.But, that might be a good place for burgeoning podcasters to start their own podcast. I know you’re out there. You’ve listened to CS for a while and regularly say to yourself, “I could do a better job than this.” I’ll bet you could. So--why don’t you? Start your podcast where we’ll leave off. Track the origins of your group to where we end and take it from there.As we end, I again say thanks to all you subscribers who write such glowing reviews on iTunes & Apple Podcasts, as well as those who check-in and give the CS FB page a like or leave comments.As you may or may not know, or care for that matter, I’m a pastor at an independent Evangelical Christian church in SoCal. If you like CS, don’t find my voice too annoying, and would like to hear something a little different, check out the church podcast. I teach twice a week; one is a general expository survey of the Bible. The other is a sermon where we go in-depth in the same passage. You can find it in iTunes & Apple podcasts by searching for Calvary Chapel Oxnard or going to the calvaryoxnard.org website.And for those who are really interested, I’ll soon be starting a YouTube channel where the first project with be a video version of CS.

This 130th episode is titled Up North, Then South.This is the last episode in which we take a look at The Church in Europe following the Enlightenment. The narrative is nowhere near exhausTIVE. It’s more an exhaustING summary of Scandinavia, the Dutch United Provinces, Austria, and Italy. We’ve already looked at Germany, France, and Spain.The end of the 17th century proved to be a brutal time in Scandinavia. Some 60% of the population died from 1695-7 due to warfare and the disease and famine of its aftermath. As if they hadn’t had enough misery, the Great Northern War of 1700–1721 then followed. In the desperation of the times, Lutherans provide devotionals offering hope and comfort, while calling for prayer and repentance.Along with northern Germany -- Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland were Lutheran strongholds. Citizens were required to swear loyalty to a Lutheran State Church in league with absolutist monarchs.But during the Great Northern War, Swedish King Charles XII suffered a massive defeat by the Russian armies of Peter the Great. Sweden lost large tracts of land and the throne lost clout with the people. A so-called “Age of Liberty” followed that lasted most of the rest of the 18th century. The Swedish Parliament gained power and reformers gave a rationalist slant to Swedish education. They battled with Lutheran clergy who wanted to retain some  theology in the education of Sweden’s young.Many returning captured Swedes imprisoned in Russia, had converted to Pietism by missionaries sent by Francke and the University at Halle we talked about last time. The soldiers became advocates for Pietism back home. Moravians also promoted revivals in Scandinavia.After a grab for power in 1772, Gustavus III nullified the Swedish Constitution restraining the reach of royal power. He imposed a new Constitution designed to reinforce Lutheranism as the basis of government. He said, “Unanimity in religion, and the true divine worship, is the surest basis of a lawful, concordant, and stable government.” But in 1781, limited toleration came to Sweden when other Protestant groups were once again allowed. Catholicism, however, remained banned.From 1609, when the Dutch won their liberty from Spain, until Louis XIVth’s invasion in 1672, the Dutch United Provinces had its “Golden Age” and enjoyed what Simon Schama called an “embarrassment of riches.” This was due mostly to their lucrative international trade and free market economy. The Dutch eschewed the traditional monarchy dominating the rest of Europe in favor of a far more egalitarian Parliamentary system.Amsterdam was a thriving commercial and cultural center. Its population more than doubled from 1600 to 1800. Amsterdam’s docks were always packed. Its warehouses stuffed with goods from all over the world and the trade of the massive and powerful Dutch East India Company. From its earliest days, this trading enterprise supported Reformed missionary work at posts in the Malay Archipelago, Sri Lanka, and South Africa. In July 1625, Dutch traders established New Amsterdam, later known as New York City.The United Provinces were intellectual a religious crossroads for Europe through its universities, publishing houses, and churches. Protestant students from Germany, Finland, and France flocked there to study at the University of Leiden and other schools.The main task of the faculty at the University of Leiden was the study of Scriptures. Its chief professor was Joseph Scaliger whose knowledge of the classics and biblical textual criticism made him one of Europe’s premier scholars. Others notable scholars were scholars included Arminius and Gomarus.As many of our listeners know, the 17th century was the Dutch golden age of art. Thousands of painters created millions of paintings with scenes ranging from battles and landscapes, to churches, still life, and portraits. Among the more famous masters were Rembrandt, Frans Hal, and Vermeer. But by the 18th century, the quality of Dutch art had somewhat fallen.The Dutch Reformed Church affirmed the 1561 Belgic Confession of Faith. It addressed topics ranging from the Trinity, the work of Christ, and the sacraments, to Church-State relations. Although the Reformed Church was the “official” faith, the United Provinces were known for their toleration of other groups. That didn’t mean there weren’t heated theological rows. Two parties emerged in the Dutch Reformed Church: the “precise” Calvinists who wanted churches to possess binding doctrinal authority, and the “loose or moderate” Calvinists who desired greater freedom of religious thought.The Dutch Provinces often served as a haven for those seeking relief from persecution in other parts of Europe. Amsterdam was a notable home to a large Jewish community. Some 70,000 French Huguenots took refuge there and married into the populace. An Anabaptist community flourished. Religious dissidents like Baruch Spinoza and Anthony Collins, an exile from England, weren’t much respected but they were at least not beat up.Many Europeans admired the Dutch Republic for its successful war of liberation from the Spanish, its egalitarian government, as well as its vital free market economy. By 1675, there were fifty-five printing presses and 200 booksellers in Amsterdam, adding to the burgeoning base of middle-class scholars.During the 18th century, the Dutch, while continuing to be officially Reformed, saw an increase in the number of those they’d been less tolerant toward; namely=Catholics, Dissenters, and Jews. Revivals frequently passed through more rural domains. In 1749 and 50, emotionally-charged revival meetings took place with the ministry of Gerard Kuypers. Villages in the Netherlands and nearby Germany experienced similar revivals.In a foreshadowing of Intelligent Design and the fine-tuning of the universe arguments, a number of Dutch theologian-scientists wrote works in which they sought to demonstrate that the intricacy of designs in nature prove God’s existence. Until the 1770s, the Reformed Church played a dominant role in Dutch public life. Some 60% of the population was Reformed, 35% Catholic, 5% percent Anabaptists and Jews.There really never was a Dutch version of the Enlightenment. Most of its participants never espoused a militant atheism, but sought to accommodate their faith to educational reforms and religious toleration. They appreciated the new science and advances in technology.Now we turn back to Geneva; adopted home of John Calvin.During the early 1750s, Geneva was the home of both Voltaire and Rousseau, well-known Enlightenment thinkers and scoffers at Christianity.Several of Geneva’s pastors proposed a reasonable and tolerant form of Christianity that warmed to some of the more liberal Enlightenment ideas. This was a huge turn from the position of Francis Turretin who in the mid-17th century, led the Reformed and conservative theologians of Geneva to the idea that the City was a theocracy with God as its ruler. Turretin said the government ought defend “the culture of pure religion and the pious care of nurturing the church.” Turretin’s party defended the Masoretic pointing of the Hebrew text, making this belief binding on the Swiss church. These pastors feared if Hebrew vowels were left out, the Hebrew words of the Old Testament were susceptible to interpretations that varied from those they approved. They also tried to force pastoral candidates to repudiate the doctrine of “universal grace” being championed by an emerging class of theologians.But in 1706 Turretin’s son, Jean, repudiated his father’s work and embraced a more liberal theology that advocated the role of reason in determining truth. He denied his father’s soteriology, doctrine of salvation, and eschewed limited atonement. By the 1720s, Arminianism had taken firm root in Geneva.In Feb, 1670, the Hapsburg, Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and a devout Roman Catholic, ordered all Jews to leave Austrian lands. Vienna became a major center of cultural. After the defeat of the Turks, it’s population boomed, growing from about 100K in 1700 to twice that 80 years later. The construction of the Schwarzenberg and Schönberg Palaces enhanced its prestige while the music of Haydn and Mozart made Vienna famous across Europe.The Hapsburg Emperors Joseph I and Charles VI supported Jesuit missionary efforts to convert Protestants. Jesuits created a baroque Catholic culture in Austria and Bohemia with the construction of magnificent churches in cities and the countryside.Though loyally Catholic, the Hapsburgs rejected the pope’s interference in Austria’s religious and political life. They’d proven their devotion to Rome when in 1683, Leopold saved The Church from the Turks. Austria was the “rock” on which the Catholic Church was built. It was the Hapsburgs who saved the faith form the infidel, not the pope.In October of 1740, at the death of her father, Maria Theresa took the titles Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Bohemia, and Queen of Hungary. In 1745, her husband, Francis Stephen, became the Holy Roman Emperor under the name Francis I. Disturbed by the Prussian Frederick II’s seizure of Silesia, Maria Theresa attempted to reform the military and governmental structures of Austria after Enlightenment ideals. She became the proponent of what’s called “Enlightened Absolutism.” At the same time, she was ready to apply repressive measures against those who resisted her reforms. On one occasion she warned that he is “no friend to humanity who allows everyone his own thoughts.”Maria Theresa was a devout Catholic influenced by counselors favorable to Jansenism. With the advice of her chancellor, she tried to establish a national Catholic Church in which the pope had authority only in spiritual matters.Maria Theresa did not allow Protestants to sell their property or leave her lands. She required those who refused to convert to Catholicism to emigrate to Transylvania, where Protestantism was permitted. Nor did Maria Theresa intercede to save the Jesuits when their society was dissolved. She allowed 2000 Protestants to live in Vienna, but she forced the city’s Jews to live in a ghetto.Upon the death of Maria Theresa, Joseph II passed Edicts of Toleration that allowed greater freedoms for non-Catholics and continued the policy of subjugating Church power to that of the State. He confiscated the property of over 700 monasteries, displacing 27,000 monks and nuns and used the proceeds to build new churches.Like Germany, during the 18th century, Italy didn’t exist as a nation as we know it. It was a hodge-podge of various principalities. They didn’t even share a common language.The population of the peninsula grew from eleven to fifteen million in the first half of the century. But in the 1760’s a severe famine struck Florence, Rome, and Naples.The region of Tuscany was a hot-bed of the Jansenists who, as you’ll remember, were a kind of Calvinist-Catholics.A handful of Italian academics promoted rationalist views in the Catholic church, eliminating what they regarded as backward features of Italian culture. But the Enlightenment just didn’t gain the traction in Italy it did in the rest of Europe.The popes of the 18th century had difficulty dealing with the now powerful secular rulers of Europe, no longer threatened by Church power or political machinations.Even the Papal States were frequently invaded by foreign powers. Conquerors only left after they’d secured hefty ransoms. Popes were forced to make concessions that made their weakness evident to all. Despite that, Rome continued to attract large numbers of pilgrims, students, and artists. Pilgrims hoped for a blessing from the Pope or a healing while visiting the many shrines.Then there were the youth on the Grand Tour, as it was called. They were most often graduates of Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Paris or some other school who headed to Italy to gain knowledge in classical culture. In 1776, Samuel Johnson underscored the importance of Italy as a destination for those making the Grand Tour: “A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority. The grand object of traveling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great Empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman.”Several popes supported the establishment of academies, colleges, and universities and encouraged general scholarship. Under their generous patronage Rome’s artistic riches in painting, sculpture, music, and monuments flourished. Pope Clement XI initiated plans for the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps in the early 18th century.But to give you an idea of how the tables had turned and now kings dominated popes, it was this same Clement, who became a pawn in the hands of Emperor Joseph I and Louis XIV. Louis forced Clement to issue a papal bull dealing with the Jesuit-Jansenist controversy.Papal prestige suffered seriously during the French Revolution. Pope Pius VI was obliged to condemn the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” as well as the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy.” This split the French between those revolutionaries who wanted to throw off the Absolutist government of the French monarchy but maintain their Catholicism, and those French who wanted to be done with religion as well.Bottom Line: The Enlightenment witnessed serious challenges to both the papacy’s temporal and spiritual authority.

This episode is title “Pressed.”In our last episode, we took a look at the French church of the 17th C and considered the contest between the Catholic Jansenists and Jesuits.It’s interesting realizing the Jansenists began as a theological movement that looks quite similar to Calvinism. Their theology eventually spilled over into the political realm and undercut the Divine Right of Kings, a European political system that had held sway in for centuries, and reached its apex in France under Louis XIV, granting him the august title of The Sun KingIn this episode, we’ll take a look at what happened to the French Protestants, the Huguenots.By the mid 16th century, Huguenots were 10% of the French population. They hoped all France would one day adopt the Reformed Faith. But their hopes were shattered by defeat in nine political and religious wars.You may remember from an earlier episode that Henry IV, a convert to Catholicism from Protestantism, that conversion being a purely pragmatic and political maneuver, granted the Huguenots limited rights in the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Thirty years later, those rights were revoked by the Peace of Alais. Then the fortified Protestant city of La Rochelle surrendered in 1628, ending any hope of France’s conversion to Protestantism.For twenty-four years, Louis XIV waged a devastating anti-Protestant campaign. Nearly 700 Reformed churches were closed or torn down. And in 1685, Louis replaced the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Fontainebleau.He ordered uniformed troops called dragoons to move into the Huguenot homes in Protestant centers. These troops were allowed by the king’s decree to use whatever means they wanted, short of murder and rape, to intimidate Huguenots into converting to Catholicism.Some 200,000 Huguenots fled France. They took refuge in Geneva, Prussia, England, and North America. Those refugees were often people of great learning and skill who enriched the intellectual and economic life of their adopted realms.But thousands of Huguenots stayed in France. Many made a show-conversion to Catholicism, while secretly remaining Protestants. They formed an underground church known as the “Church of the Desert.”  From 1684 to 98, twenty Huguenot pastors were hunted and killed.Louis XIV feared the Huguenots because he equated them with the Puritan rebels who’d executed Charles I in England in 1649. Louis was also in competition with the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, for hegemony in Europe. Allowing a large and politically powerful Protestant base in his realm didn’t commend Louis as a strong Catholic leader. He already faced criticism for not sending troops to defend Vienna from invading Turks while Leopold had. It was Louis’s plan to attack the Turks AFTER they’d taken Vienna! His plan fell apart when the Europeans managed to defeat the enemy before Vienna’s walls.Louis’ suspicion of the Huguenots seemed justified by the Camisard War of 1702 to 4. They called for “freedom of conscience” and “no taxes.” Protestant prophets predicted a liberation from their oppressors. But the prophets were proven to be of the false variety when the revolt was put down.In 1726, an underground seminary for young men was established in Lausanne, Switzerland. It received financial support from Protestants in Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands. Studies lasted from six months to three years. After that, graduates returned to minister to outlawed churches in France. If captured, they were executed.During the Seven Years War, known in the US as the French and Indian War, French Protestants became the beneficiaries of unofficial toleration. While no friend to Christianity, Voltaire assisted Huguenots by writing a book defending toleration. Finally, in the Edict of Toleration of 1787, Louis XVI gave Huguenots the right to worship.But in the three years BEFORE that, 7000 Huguenots were executed, another 2000 forced to serve in the French Navy, a kind of living death if you know anything about the life of a lowly sailor at that time.After 1760, some Reformed pastors, influenced by Voltaire, moved toward theological liberalism.From the late 17th to late 18th century, what we know as Germany today was a patchwork quilt of over 300 mostly autonomous principalities, kingdoms, electorates, duchies, bishoprics, and other political enclaves. Rarely used, the term “Germany” meant a nebulous region that included many of these regions, much like the term “Europe” refers to a continent with many nations. Germany was just one part of a larger entity known as the Holy Roman Empire. That realm included 1,800 territories. Places like Poland, the Hapsburg Empire, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Transylvania, and Italy.A Council of Electors, ranging from seven to nine, picked the Holy Roman Emperor.The Emperor’s ability to raise armies, collect taxes, and make laws was often hampered by the many groups in the empire that enjoyed a measure of their own sovereignty. The fiction known as the Holy Roman Empire ended under Napoleon.In the 1740s, Frederick the Great, King of Brandenburg-Prussia from the Hohenzollern family and Calvinists since 1613, challenged the Hapsburg’s power. At the outset of the War of the Austrian Succession, Frederick’s troops seized Silesia and Prussians became THE military power in Europe.In Germany, the leading kingdoms were Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony, the Rhineland Palatinate, Hanover, and Bavaria. Following the principle established by the Peace of Westphalia, the religion of these kingdoms was that of their prince.While Bavaria was staunchly Catholic, Brandenburg-Prussia was Calvinist with strong pietistic leanings. The rest of Germany was Lutheran of the pietist mold. A unified Germany nation would not emerge until the days of the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck in the second half of the 19th century.The emergence of Prussia as a great military power in the 18th century impressed their European neighbors. The kingdom’s army of some 83,000 ranked fourth in size among the European powers, though its landmass was a tenth of the area and only thirteenth in population. Its rulers promoted a disciplined lifestyle like that of the Pietists as a model for Prussian bureaucrats, military, and nobles (called Junkers). The highly militaristic Frederick III ruled Brandenburg from 1688 to 1713. Being reformed in theology, he encouraged French Huguenots who’d fled France to settle in his kingdom. In 1694, he founded the University of Halle as a Lutheran university. He welcomed Pietists like Jakob Spener and Hermann Francke. In 1698, Francke began teaching theology there. Frederick III made the University of Konigsberg another Pietist center.In his work Pious Desires, published in 1675, Spener, who you’ll remember was the founder of Pietism, centered his call for reform of the Church in the faithful teaching and application of Scripture. He called for daily private Bible reading and meditation and the reading of Scripture in small groups.Spener urged that pastoral training schools should not be places for theological wrangling, but as “workshops of the Holy Spirit.” Nor should seminary professors seek glory by authoring lofty tomes filled with showy erudition. They ought instead to be examples of humble service. Spener emphasized the priesthood of ALL believers. Ministers should seek help from laypeople to assist in the task of tending to the needs of a congregation instead of assuming they had to do everything themselves. Spener took this idea from what the Apostle Paul had written in Ephesians 4. As described there, pastors were to equip believers so they could do ministry.At the University of Halle, Hermann Francke insisted that those training for pastoral ministry ought to study Scripture in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek. Francke wrote: “The exegetical reading of Holy Scripture is that which concerns finding and explaining the literal sense intended by the Holy Spirit Himself.”In 1702, Francke founded the Collegium Orientale Theologicum. Advanced students could learn Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopian, Chaldean, Syriac, and Hebrew.Francke established an orphanage in Halle in 1695. He created schools and businesses including a printing house where orphans could learn a trade. By 1700, Francke’s various institutions gained the support of Emperor Frederick III, who valued their contribution in fostering Christian discipline among his students, the Prussian populace, and his soldiers. Francke wanted to make Halle a center for Christian reform and world missions. In anticipation of what George Mueller would later give testimony to, Franke wrote of examples of how he prayed for specific needs and provision came to feed the poor and keep the schools open, sometimes arriving at the last moment. He wrote: “These instances I was willing here to set down so that I might give the reader some idea both of the pressing trials and happy deliverances we have met with; though I am sufficiently convinced that narratives of this kind will seem over-simple and fanciful to the great minds of our age.”On one occasion, Frederick IV, King of Denmark, gave a direct order to his chaplain: “Find me missionaries.” That chaplain asked Francke for help. Francke proposed two students from the University of Halle. The Danish-Halle Mission was launched. On Nov. 29, 1705, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau set sail for India. Eight months later they arrived. They were dismayed to discover the horrid immorality of the Europeans there. Claiming to be Christians, the Indians assumed all believers in Christ were immoral. There was great resistance to the Gospel at first, but the missionaries’ faithfulness eventually softened the hearts of the Hindus. Ziegenbalg translated the Bible into Tamil and set up a school and a missionary college before he died at the age of 36.Christian Schwartz also served as a missionary in India. Johann Steinmetz ministered in Teschen, Silesia, Moravia, and Bohemia. Others took the gospel to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great. Halle missionaries met the physical and spiritual needs of captured Swedish troops who, when they returned to Sweden, spread Pietism in their homeland. Sixty students went forth from the University of Halle as missionaries.The press of the Bible Institute in Halle produced more than 80,000 copies of complete Bibles and another 100,000 copies of the New Testament.In 1713, the Pietitst Frederick William I became king. He not only built up the military, he funded the production of thousands of Bibles so that all his subjects could read it for themselves. When he died in 1727, some 2000 students attended the school in Halle. His orphanage served as a model for George Whitefield’s in Savannah, Georgia.We need to do a bit of summarizing now so we can avoid that thing we’ve talked about before – the reporting of history as a bunch of dates and names. I’ll do so by simply saying the Enlightenment that swept France and England, also impacted Germany. The original faculty of the University at Halle would have been shocked to see the way later professors turned away from what they considered orthodoxy.We’ll jump ahead to a bit later in the 18th century and the work of Johann Semler considered the Founder of German Higher Criticism.Semler began teaching at Halle in 1751. He’d been a student of professors who merged Enlightenment philosophy with the Faith. For twenty-two years, from 1757 till ‘79, Semler was the most influential of the German theologians. He called for a more liberal investigation of the Bible, one not tethered to long-held orthodox assumptions about the canon of Scripture or its infallibility.Semler held forth that religion and theology ought not be linked. He also set a divide between what he called the “Word of God” and “Scripture.” He maintained that not all the books or passages of the Bible were in truth God’s Word and that God’s Word wasn’t limited to the Bible.He taught that the authors of scripture accommodated their writings to the errant ideas of their times, especially the Jews. Sifting out the authentic Word of God from the mythological, local, fallible, and non-inspired dross in Scripture, by which he meant a belief in the supernatural, was the task of the wise Bible student. Then, once the authentic canon within the Bible was identified, real doctrines would need to be parsed.Astonishingly, Semler claimed his ideas were faithful to the work of Martin Luther, which they most certainly were NOT!The reaction to Semler was mixed. Some scholars supported him because his work opened a lot of wiggle-room that allowed them to accommodate the growing popularity of Enlightenment skepticism. But his critics pounced, accusing him of abandoning the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible.When Frederick the Great died in 1786, his nephew Frederick William II became King of Prussia. He attempted to rein in the growing volume of literature now exposing the German populace to heterodoxy; that is, ideas outside the pale of orthodoxy, by passing an edict calling for censorship of any work about God and morality. Any such work was to be submitted to a government commission of censors for approval.  Several Lutheran pastors resigned in protest, and the main publisher of such works moved his operations out of Berlin. The government feared radical expressions of the German Enlightenment would subvert the faith of the people and their loyalty to the State.In March 1758, Johann Hamann was converted to Christ and became a brilliant counter to the Enlightenment. He pointed out the errors in Kant’s philosophy and said the light of the so-called “Enlightenment” was cold, more like the moon, compared to that which comes from the Sun of Christian revelation in Scripture and nature.