"I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."-Constantine, probably The 4th century has begun to dawn. The Christian church is in hot water. The new system of tetrarchy established by Diocletian has already started to tee...

"Conference room, five minutes!" -Emperor Constantine, probably 325 AD was a year of rebirth. The Church was recovering from the Diocletianic Persecution, the worst wave of violence and discrimination faced thus...

"Y'all gon' make me lose my mind up in here."-Emperor Diocletian, probablyThe third century wasn't a great time to be a Roman. But believe it or not, it was a great time to be a Christian! Churches were built, the fa...

Imagine you had a friend who was, I dunno, an alien. They have no grasp of life on earth, no understanding of human customs, minimal grasp of the language, culture, music, anything like that. And so for years, they under...

Have you ever had to move across the country? It's a life-changing experience. Disrupting your regular routines and rhythms, adjusting to a totally foreign environment, learning new regional customs. Now imagine being forced to move...

Did you know that Saint Patrick was the first Christian clergyman to ever don a priestly robe in green? No?That's because it's not true! There's a lot of mythology around our boy, Paddy. But that just makes his story that muc...

Every sport has a Wayne Gretzky. A Hank Aaron. A Michael Jordan. The 4th Century didn't have Michael Jordan, though. It had Augustine of Hippo. And maybe Augustine didn't drop 30 points against the Jazz with a flu (or whatever), but...

When most Christians (okay, all Christians that aren't Catholic) look back on the Reformation, we typically do it with a little twinkle in our eyes. It feels like a time of triumph, of sticking it to the man once and for all. In rea...

Imagine that you're a teenager. You live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and your parents have just died, leaving behind a Bruce Wayne-esque amount of wealth and land. This is any kid's dream come true. The world is your oyster. ...

"Awwww here it goes." --Kel Mitchell, Kenan and Kel We're back in the early church again, which means we're into the story of Christian persecution in the Roman Empire. The 3rd Century was no pleasant time f...

John Brown was a man on a mission from God. Or so he thought.Less than a decade before the Civil War began, John Brown would attempt to lead a slave rebellion by taking over a military armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Although unsucces...

Is our nation more divided than ever? Are we losing the ability to respectfully disagree with each other?Welcome to our first ever bonus episode: Chump Talk. In these episodes, we'll tackle larger ideas and themes in the culture and talk...

Have you ever heard someone say that Christianity is anti-intellectual? Well, you should send them this episode. And have them 'like' and 'subscribe' too, that would help us a lot. But anyways. Justin Martyr was a 2nd-...

As you guys know, we love presenting church history as a beautiful anthology of the story of God's people. Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the vastness of that story when we don't venture out of our own contexts.So today, we're goi...

"Why are you booing me? I'm right!"- the early church, probably The first century was a funky time to be a Christian, but persecution as we know it was pretty scattered and sporadic. In the second century though, things are sta...

In our newest piece in our series of Early Church lore, we discuss another tale of martyrdom, that of Perpetua and Felicity. The early third Century was not an easy time for Christians in Northern Africa. But as so many tales of ma...

"It's hard out here for a pimp." -the early church, probably As we continue our aptly named series, "The Early Church Gets the Worm," we discuss one of the most pressing topics for early Christians: persecution in the ...

GUESS WHO'S BACKMan, it's been a minute you guys. I don't know if you missed us, but we definitely missed you. This kicks off our new season, "The Early Church Gets the Worm." We'll be focusing on, you guessed it, stories f...

In many parts of the world, the question of whether you're a Catholic or Protestant means a lot more than if you submit to the Pope, or how you feel about Martin Luther. One such place is Northern Ireland. For generations, the peop...

Have you ever wondered why some churches use grape juice for communion, while others insist on using wine instead?The answer is more complicated than you think. Or it might be less complicated, I don't know, I feel like you're probabl...

Church history isn't always as, well, historically reliable as we wish it was. Sometimes the stories of saints and heroes tend to blur the lines between fact and fiction. That would be the case of Saint Dymphna, an Irish-Catholic...

It's 1550. A generation has passed since the Reformation swept across Europe like a wildfire. The Catholic Church has launched the Counter-Reformation, a multi-layered initiative to restore the continent to its former Roman glory. ...

In the 5th Century, the Western Roman Empire is on its last leg. Riddled with internal conflict, external threats, and even theological disputes tearing at the fabric of the Church, Rome has seen better days. And the great shadow o...

If you're not a Baptist (and we still love you even if you are), you're probably no stranger to the idea of infant baptism. The doctrine of paedobaptism is saturated with the idea that the children of believers are heirs of the cov...

Beginning as a fringe interpretation of the creation story in Genesis, the Serpent Seed Doctrine asks a question that no one really seems to be asking: what if Satan and Eve had a little...fling?It's a wild doctrine with even more of a ...