Paradise and Utopia
Religion & Spirituality
About
A series of forty reflections on the history of Christian civilization, or Christendom. The entire podcast is organized around the theme of "paradise and utopia" - that is, of the civilization's orientation toward the kingdom of heaven when traditional Christianity was influential, and of its "disorientation" toward the fallen world in the wake of traditional Christianity's decline in the west following the Great Schism.
Episodes
- From Utopia to Dystopia II: Totalitarianism, Hard and Soft
This episode of Paradise and Utopia examines the concept of totalitarianism, distinguishing between the hard totalitarianism seen in the Soviet Union and the soft totalitarianism present in Western liberal democracies during the Cold War,…
- From Utopia to Dystopia I: How Christians Like C.S. Lewis Saw Nihilism for What It Was
Fr. John begins a new episode sequence on how traditional Christianity informed critics of ideological world-building. This episode examines C.S. Lewis and the Christian view of nihilism.
- Liberal World-Building II: American Anticommunism in the 1950s
This episode of Paradise and Utopia discusses American anticommunism in the 1950s. Fr. John explains how liberalism's emphasis on individual rights during the Cold War conditionally accommodated and highlighted religious belief.
- Liberal World Building I: When J.S. Mill met Friedrich Nietzsche
Fr. John explores the origins of American liberalism as a world-building ideology, presenting it as a rival to Communism and Nazism.
- Nazi World-Building III: The War of Annihilation
The final episode on Nazi Germany explores the nihilism of Hitler's "new order," a racist utopia based on secular ideology, and its war of annihilation during World War II.
- Nazi World-Building II: The Project of Cultural Coordination
In this episode, Fr. John describes how the Nazis, once in power, pursued a culture war against existing German values and beliefs by attacking Christianity, advancing neopaganism, and elaborating a racist utopia.
- Nazi World-Building I: When Nietzsche met Darwin in Hitler's Mind
In this episode, Fr. John launches into the darkest period of the age of nihilism, Nazi Germany. In it, he explores the conditions of Western culture following the First World War and how they subverted both traditional Christianity and se…
- Communist World Building III: The Great Terror
In this final episode dealing with the Soviet Union under Stalin, Fr. John narrates one of the most chilling episodes in the ideological project to apply the transformation-imperative to a nihilistic, post-Christian Christendom.
- Communist World-Building II: Realized Ideological Eschatology
Father John continues his account of the Soviet Union's totalitarian project of building socialism by contrasting its nihilistic ideology with the sacramental experience of traditional Christianity.
- Communist World-Building I: The Revolution from Above
In this episode, Fr. John begins a discussion of ideological world-building during the twentieth-century age of nihilism. The Communist leadership of the Soviet Union under Stalin drew on the philosophies of both Marx and Nietzsche to adva…
- Dehumanization II: The Great War and Its Cultural Outcome
Father John describes the way the First World World shattered confidence in utopia with Western Christendom, and how the growing specter of nihilism caused a small and diverse group of intellectuals to return to traditional Christianity in…
- Dehumanization I: Artistic Modernism and the Dismal Sciences
In this episode, Fr. John reviews the rise of modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century, an artistic movement that largely annihilated centuries of tradition in Western painting, music, and literature. He continues by exploring t…
- Dostoevsky IV: Restoring Christendom's Paradisiacal Culture
In this final episode telling of Dostoevsky's encounter with the "specter of nihilism," Fr. John brings attention to the novelist's characters that most revealed the radiant hope of Christ. The first of these was Prince Lev Myshkin in the…
- Dostoevsky III: Repentance Will Save the World
In this episode, Fr. John reflects on Dostoevsky's spiritual prescription for Christendom as it began to fall under the specter of nihilism. Repentance was the center of the paradisiacal culture of the first millennium, and in his novels D…
- Dostoevsky II: Shattering the Illusion of Utopian Rationalism
Returning to a literary career after a decade of exile, Fyodor Dostoevsky confronted one of the great delusions of secular humanism: that man is ultimately a rational being whose happiness depends on the exercise of self-interest. Characte…
- Dostoevsky I: A Believer among Atheists.
In this summary of the second chapter of his book, The Age of Nihilism, Fr. John discusses the early life and faith and incarceration of Russia's great novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Unlike his contemporaries--particularly Nietzsche--the nove…
- The Making of an Antichrist IV: "Behold the Man"
In this final presentation on the nihilistic philosophy of Nietzsche, Fr. John considers the philosopher's final work, an autobiography entitled Ecce Homo. The book's strange title is discussed in light of Nietzsche's claim to be the West'…
- The Making of an Antichrist III: An Anti-Gospel
In his continued account of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fr. John discusses the megalomaniac philosopher's effort to replace the Gospel with an atheistic "transvaluation of all values."
- The Making of an Antichrist II: Unmasking Secular Humanism
Friedrich Nietzsche is in many ways the father of modern nihilism. In this episode, Fr. John describes the philosopher's relationship to the atheism of contemporary utopian Christendom, and how the music of Richard Wagner played a role in…
- The Making of an Antichrist I: "Whoever Fears the Tip of My Spear . . ."
In this episode, Fr. John begins an account of Friedrich Nietzsche by discussing Richard Wagner, a direct influence on the philosopher whose infidelity with women and famous operatic work, The Ring of the Nibelung, helped inspire the comin…
- Introduction to Part Four of the Podcast: Friedrich Nietzsche in Bayreuth
In this introduction to the final part of Paradise and Utopia, Fr. John reads the prologue to his recently released book, The Age of Nihilism: Christendom from the Great War to the Culture Wars. The episode introduces the nihilistic philos…
- Introducing The Age of Nihilism
Fr. John Strickland gives an overview of his latest book, The Age of Nihilism, available at Ancient Faith Store: https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-nihilism-christendom-from-the-great-war-to-the-culture-wars
- At the Threshold of Nihilism: The Russian Revolution and Its Utopia Project
In this final episode of part three of the podcast, Fr. John Strickland traces the outcome of secular humanism in the case of the Russian Revolution. Though numerous Orthodox Christians warned of the impending disaster facing a post-Christ…
- Solving Post-Christian Christendom's Transcendence Problem III: The Architects of Nationalist Ideolo
Fr. John Strickland concludes his account of the origins of modern political ideology with the rise of nationalism, a force that not only proved to be a counterfeit to traditional Christianity, but the cause of one of utopian Christendom's…
- Solving Post-Christian Christendom's Transcendence Problem II: The Architects of Socialist Ideology.
Fr. John Strickland continues his account of the rise of secular ideology with a presentation on the Russian intelligentsia and the case of Karl Marx.
- Solving Post-Christian Christendom's Transcendence Problem I: The Architects of Liberal Ideology
In this long-delayed episode (due to work on The Age of Nihilism, available at store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-nihilism-christendom-from-the-great-war-to-the-culture-wars), Father John presents the historical origins of liberalism as a m…
- Age of Utopia Released
Fr. John Strickland announces the release of the third volume of his book series. The Age of Utopia: Christendom from the Renaissance to the Russian Revolution (store.ancientfaith.com/the-age-of-utopia) is a companion to the podcast, but,…
- Utopian Christianity
In the nineteenth century, some Christians in America developed radically new visions of God's relationship to man and the cosmos. This "utopian Christianity" produced Unitarianism, Mormonism, and a string of millenarian sects. Father John…
- The Forest and Its Trees: An Answer to Cyril Jenkins, Part II
In this second half of his response to a recent review of his books, Fr. John Strickland discusses his use of scholarly sources (The Age of Division required more than three hundred and fifty of them). He also reflects on how criticisms of…
- Monographs and Metanarratives: An Answer to Cyril Jenkins, Part I
In this special edition of Paradise and Utopia, Fr. John Strickland responds to a recent review of the first two volumes of his book series. In it, he notes the failure to consider the books on their own terms. He uses the opportunity to e…
- When the Romantic Agony Became Personal: The Music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Most Americans know Tchaikovsky as the composer of the delightful dances contained within the Nutcracker Ballet. As Fr. John Strickland shows, however, there is much more to be heard in their melodies, and little that was delightful about…
- Secular Glory and Spiritual Agony in the Music of the Great Romantics
What was the genius of classical music during its nineteenth-century golden age? According to Fr. John Strickland, it was an effort to rescue Christendom's transformational imperative in an age when secularization threatened to sever earth…
- Counterfeit Communion
The early nineteenth-century romantics pioneered a new way of seeking personal transformation. Following a century in which deism desecrated the world, separating heaven and earth, they wanted to re-enchant the West. But by ignoring tradit…
- A New Vision of Western History during the So-Called Enlightenment
In this reflection on an emerging post-Christian Christendom, Fr. John Strickland discusses two ways in which eighteenth-century philosophes—from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson—worked to subvert the paradisiacal culture of the ol…
- Secular Humanism and the Disorientation of Western Art during the Italian Renaissance: Part II
This is part 2 to last week's special video episode, on the revolution of art during the Italian Renaissance.
- Secular Humanism and the Disorientation of Western Art during the Italian Renaissance: Part I
In this special video episode (the first of two parts), Father John discusses the background to the revolution in art during the Italian Renaissance. Though it produced some of the most stunning and innovative works ever, secular humanism…
- When Christendom Was Born Again V: From Adam to Prometheus
In this episode, Fr. John Strickland recounts the efforts of three Italian humanists of the quattrocento ("fourteen hundreds") to rescue the dignity of man from the pessimism of Western culture. Departing from traditional Christianity's di…
- When Christendom Was Born Again IV: Petrarch contra Pope Innocent
In this episode, Father John relates a case in which the early humanist Petrarch confronted one of the new Christendom's chief architects, Pope Innocent III. Applying his newly developed secular thinking, he rejected the pope's notorious t…
- When Christendom Was Born Again III: The Origins of the Saeculum
Modern historians often bring attention to the effects of secularization on the West. Once traditional Christianity ceased to influence Western culture, the experience of the kingdom of heaven naturally diminished, something the famous Ger…
- When Christendom Was Born Again II: Petrarch's Despair
In this episode the "father of humanism," Francesco Petrarch, broods over his sense of guilt and despair, seeking a new path for Western Christendom known as the saeculum, or "secular."
- When Christendom Was Born Again I: The Roman Revolution of Cola di Rienzo
In this anecdotal introduction to Reflection 21, Father John relates a remarkable but short-lived revolution in fourteenth-century Rome that served as a sign of what the age of utopia would bring. Listeners who enjoy the music of Richard W…
- Introduction to Part 3
Father John welcomes listeners back to the podcast with the opening to its third part, the age of utopia. He also summarizes some of the main points of his recently released book The Age of Division, which tells the history of Christendom…
- Secularizing the State, East and West
In this reflection, Fr. John Strickland relates how Christianity ceased to motivate and regulate statecraft in Christendom following the Wars of Western Religion. He discusses the cases of France, England, and New England. He concludes wit…
- Replacing Reformational Christianity
In this episode Fr. John Strickland discusses various ways in which Christendom's leadership rejected the reformational Christianity that had provoked the wars of Western religion and replaced it with science, philosophy, pietistic Christi…
- Subverting a Sacramental Culture
In this reflection, Father John Strickland turns from secular humanism to reformational Christianity to see how Christendom's paradisiacal culture was subverted by both the Protestant "Counter-Reformation" and the Roman Catholic "Neo-Refor…
- The Fall of Paradise VIII: The Wars of Western Religion
In this final episode of Part 2 of the podcast, Fr. John discusses the catastrophic wars that broke out in western Christendom during the Reformation age. These wars, along with other forces unleashed by developments in the Reformation and…
- The Fall of Paradise VII: From Communion to Commonwealth in Puritan England
In this episode Father John explores the way in which the loss of sacramental experience among Calvinists led to the rise of a political ideology that would unintentionally lay the foundation for utopia.
- The Fall of Paradise VI: The Reformation of Worship
In this episode Fr. John discusses Reformed attitudes toward worship, and the ways in which western Christendom's liturgical and sacramental foundations were eroded when they were put into practice.
- The Fall of Paradise V: The Cosmology of Calvinism
In this episode Fr. John discusses ways in which Reformed cosmology represented a shift from the heavenly immanence of paradisiacal Christendom toward the heavenly transcendence of utopian Christendom.
- The Fall of Paradise IV: The Spirit of Calvinism
In this episode Father John discusses a few tendencies in Calvinism that would serve to undermine the place of paradise in Reformation Christendom, especially the doctrine of "total depravity" and the spiritual anxiety that accompanied it.