WOF 439: Is Christianity Useful to the West?

The Enlightenment believed reason was its own authority. Heteronomous authority was anathema. Autonomy was the ideal. Thus, the Church's hierarchical structure was viewed as enslaving. In light of this critique, Newman offered an insightful defense of freedom and truth in the Cat ...  Show more

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. In 2025, Word on Fire Catholic Ministries celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. And in October of that sa ...  Show more

Has Christianity been a net positive or negative for humanity? If you wander into an online debate between an atheist and a Christian apologist, you may hear an enthusiastic discussion on just this topic, with the Christian arguing that Jesus' teachings led to the development ...

What made the first Christians so different from their surrounding culture?  How did their worship differ from the way the average Roman citizen viewed the gods?  Why did the early church view themselves as a family and why is that so significant?  We’ll discuss these question ...

Ray, Mark, and Oscar answer listener questions during a live Q&A, with Oscar appreciating the unfiltered nature of the discussion. When asked about the hardest questions to answer, Mark admits it's when he doesn’t know the answer and pretends he does. Ray recalls stru ...

In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Podcast, J. Warner asks an important question: If you're a Christian, why is this the case? How we answer this question is critically important given the growing hostile nature of our culture related to classical Christianity. J. W ...