What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? In this episode, we gather for a post-Christmas, post-New Year pastoral debrief. We talk about symbols and meaning, Christmas and holidays, signs and seasons, and how modern churches quietly cleared the path for culture to push Christ out of Christmas without much resistance. We explore the strange and largely arbitrary ways the world measures time, along with the old Adam’s never-ending pyramid project. That is, his need to build meaning upward by effort, progress, and control rather than receive it as a gift. From there, we return to symbol and meaning. We ask why ancient liturgy’s nostalgia or ornamentation, but the distilled shape of reality itself, why the Lord’s Supper isn’t a side practice, but the beating heart of the Church, of worship, and of the Christian life. And why stories’ decorations for faith, but the way truth takes on flesh and finds us where we actually live. This is a conversation about time, worship, memory, and why the Church invents meaning but receives it again and again at the table.

What God perceives is not what our eyes see; he is focused on righteousness because his love creates what is righteous.

On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.

Mass Effect. In this episode, we continue our reading of The Smalcald Articles, focusing on Luther’s critique of the Roman Mass and all its consequences for the churches and Christian life. We discuss mimetic desire, sacrificial religion, the exclusive work of Jesus.

An Arm-Twisting Confession. In this episode, we read Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles on the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Why did he have to have “his arm twisted” to write them? What is he trying to teach the churches about the gospel? How does the gospel circumscribe and define the Church, worship, and Christian life? Why does something written in the 1530s matter today? We look to answer all these questions and more on this episode of the Banned Books podcast.

This is the fourth installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.

The reason Christians argue so much about the sacraments is because, deep down, they matter.

Today on the Christian History Almanac, we head to the mailbag to answer a question about practices surrounding Holy Communion.

The “mystery of faith” entails the article of faith: Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and, finally, his Parousia.

Protestants, in my view, don’t suffer from a Goldilocks problem. They have an arrogance problem.

Wetly All the Way. In this episode, we visit with author Kathryn Morales about her new book, Remembering Your Baptism. We discuss who should be baptized and why. How many times does someone need to be baptized? Can someone fall away from baptism, and what if someone doubts that baptism saves them from judgment and death? This and much, much more on today’s episode of the podcast.

We don’t need another brand. We need a people who remember who they are. And that’s us, Gen-X.