Monday, October 21, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 21st of October 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

A very happy Monday to you- this post “Here we still stand” conference Monday, as always, the conference is a blast, exhausting; I meet new people and see old friends and don’t get to spend nearly as much time as I’d like to with most. Can you go next year? Maybe? It went on sale Saturday and usually sells out within a week.

You can also go to GTItours.org and look for information if you are interested in a tour next September through Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva- a Reformation tour through Germany and Switzerland- gtitours.org for more info.  

A very small fraction of listeners were able to come to my talk- a few more were able to stream it (or see my morning live almanac discussions with Grant Klembara- we did the top 5 churches you need to visit and the top 4 things you need to know to understand the American church) 

My talk was on the supposed death of the church- and I wonder if any other talk “title” got as much discussion as mine. “The church can’t die!” Yes, the ‘ekklesia’ the people called out will never cease to exist, but the buildings and bureaucracy can be rocked and shocked and even raised to the ground. In my talk, I used G.K. Chesterton’s 100-year-old work “The Everlasting Man” to discuss what he called “the five deaths of the church”… And this wasn’t the crux of my talk- I went on to discuss apathy and the nones, BUT, saying “the five deaths” of the church begs the question: what were they? And if the church isn’t dead- what happened?

Let’s go: 

The first death of the church for Chesterton is the rise of Arianism and the reign of Emperor Julian the Apostate. This is after Nicea and the “victory of orthodoxy” or whatever and the new Western Emperor decides to dutch the faith and make Hellenism the philosophy du jour. Arianism went unchecked (that is, the idea that whatever Jesus is, it’s less than God), and you would be excused for thinking that the 300-some-year-old religion was going to go the way of all religions.

Of course, it didn’t- but Chesterton takes us to the south of France in the 1200s for the next death of the church- the rise of the Albigensians. This would lead to a “crusade” not against the Turks or the Saracen but against the fellow Christians who were embracing gnosticism. Gnosticism- the old heresy that denies physical reality or at least physical “significance.” And so, a religion that has at its heart an incarnate God (in the flesh) and believes in the resurrection of the body isn’t going to flourish amongst gnostics.

And so, you start to see that Chesterton’s “deaths” of the church aren’t actual deaths. But they sure felt like it at the time. And even still- Chesterton writes that: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again, for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave.”

He goes on to give us 3 more “deaths,” these being the rise of Renaissance Humanism, the Enlightenment, and Darwin. All 3 of these are similar in their disposition (at least in some cases) against Christianity.

The Renaissance, for a Catholic like Chesterton, elevated the individual over the institution. As the Renaissance and concomitant Reformation took hold, it looked like the church may have been done for (of course, those of us on their side of the Reformation might see things a little differently- as if the late medieval Western church had a “sickness unto death” that needed emergency surgery to stay alive).

And then, of course, both the Enlightenment and Darwin- or at least some adherents to this movement used the elevation of the “rational” or “scientific” as a foil to the “supernatural”… of course, the church might sing with Elaine Stritch that famous refrain “I’m Still Here”- as once again these were threats- “death threats” that the church survived. Are the numbers dire (some of them, at least)? Could apathy be a “death sentence” for the church? It will take engagement and conversation, prayer and patience to work through- but, as her savior does too- the church knows its way out of the grave.

“How did we get here”? Well, that was part of my streamed conversation with Grant and I’ll expand on a future weekend edition.

 

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary from Psalm 75:

No one from the east or the west
    or from the desert can exalt themselves.

It is God who judges:

    He brings one down, he exalts another.

In the hand of the Lord is a cup

    full of foaming wine mixed with spices;


he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth

    drink it down to its very dregs.

As for me, I will declare this forever;

    I will sing praise to the God of Jacob,

who says, “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked,

    but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up.”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 21st of October 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose Boilermakers played Friday night, but like with the Trojans, we’re just gonna forget this weekend ever happened. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man reminding you “de jure” is Latin for according to the right “du jour” is French for of the day- like the soup- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.