Category: History/Church History
Marcion’s “Gift”
The church’s participation in various historical injustices is a familiar theme, one rehearsed in some instances to discredit her, but in others to prompt her to needful repentance. But the primordial sin of the church which makes other, more tangible...
‘Passages,’ Chapter 1
(originally published on “Passages”) Who wrote the Nicene Creed? Why did the estimated 300 bishops present at the Council of Nicaea use terms such as “Light of Light… consubstantial… proceeding…” and more to describe God? Is the creed even intelligible...
Announcing “Passages”: A New Podcast from Mere Orthodoxy
(originally published on the Passages podcast home page) “O gladsome light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed! Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the...
Presbyterians in Egypt
Writing a report of his time as a missionary in Egypt, Andrew Watson had this to say about Egypt’s Christians: “In general, the Copts are a simple-minded, devout, religious people, with great reverence for the Scriptures.”[1] The stated goal of...
Back to the Sources: Notes on Chesterton the Historian
G.K. Chesterton wore many hats in his lifetime. His enterprises as a writer, philosopher, and theologian yielded a majority of the recognition, but we ought also consider Chesterton the historian. Chesterton—though it was not explicitly amongst his primary faculties of...
The Via Media of George Herbert
In these pages, M.H. Turner and Paul Owen ably articulate and defend the Reformed and Anglo-Catholic manifestations of Anglicanism, respectively. In doing so, they reflect a tension that has existed since the English reformation. As someone standing between these two...
Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?: A Defense of Anglo-Catholicism
M. H. Turner’s “Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?” seems to be written largely as a lament of the influence of the Oxford Movement on the ACNA. Turner calls Anglicans back to what is characterized as “Anglicanism in the...
Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?
By M. H. Turner If you have been an Anglican in North America for more than a decade or two, there is an experience you have almost certainly had. You have known someone who got up one day and jumped...
Our Fathers Left Us Evangelicalism
My Father Left Me Ireland is a memoir of longing and reclamation. Michael Brendan Dougherty recounts his rediscovery of his cultural roots and taking possession of an absent heritage as he reconnected with his absent Irish father. Dougherty sought an...
Happy Reformation Day, or, How Melanchthon Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jesus
Obviously, everyone should celebrate Reformation Day. At this point, even the Church of Rome has surreptitiously attempted to take on board many of the Reformation’s emphases, albeit in impure form and without the necessary dogmatic changes—er, development[1]—that would allow her...