Becoming Reformed after a six year sojourn in the evangelical world of Calvary Chapel, I was pleased to give up speculations about the end of the world via the notion of an imminent Rapture. There was a lack of historical support for thinking this way, and there was also a pleasing emphasis on Scripture as […]

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the joys and similarities which bind together the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. As tragic as our lack of full communion with one another is, there is a bond which unites us even now while our sacramental reunion is mostly a hope for the future. This bond is […]

My cousin’s husband who also teaches at Auburn came into the Church last week. He had been going to Mass with them but never showed any interest. We asked how he got interested and his answer was that the sermons were so horrible, he knew there must be something else there to make the people […]

Throughout the past year on Called to Communion, the various blog posts and full-length articles by the contributors have been met with objections of various stripes and sizes. It has been a mixture of excitement, hope, prayer, frustration, and calls for mercy for me to read many of those posts and the dialogue that has […]

Sometimes one of the most helpful ways to consider why we accept or reject claims of Protestantism or Catholicism is to step outside of the argument. There is so much heat and emotion that covers these issues, that it’s very helpful to go back to the basics and read the earliest debates.

There is a general presumption that the religious art seen in churches of the Apostolic Tradition inevitably leads one to idolatry. There are times when I still am overwhelmed by the beauty of the religious art which adorns the sanctuaries and naves of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But if icons and the like are truly […]

I was blessed to spend roughly 6 years as a part of the OPC. Love them or leave them, you cannot deny their tenacity for truth and orthodoxy. While the Eastern Orthodox have been called Orthodox for a long time, there is a sense in which this denomination which began in the 1930s has “earned” […]

Are our commentaries leading us to God, or to our own notion of His truth?

All mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . . As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon […]

While many of our discussions here on Called to Communion have centered around abstract and philosophical thoughts about grace, faith, hope, love and the like, it is an undeniable fact that something else has been lingering in the foreground, as it were. Those thoughts on concepts are important (and of course, we are just getting […]