Mere Fidelity

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Last month Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, which addresses generative AI and the challenges it raises for human dignity, education, just war, good work, and much more. On this episode guest Brad Littlejohn joins regular co-hosts Derek Rishmawy and Brad East to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the encyclical as well as a host of other related questions.
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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, The Pursuit of Character: Recovering the Virtues, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Register for Beeson Divinity School's 2026 Preaching Conference, July 14-16 in Birmingham, Alabama: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/preaching-institute/preaching-conference?utm_source=Mere+Orthodoxy&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Preaching+Conference+2026

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A lot of us want institutions to be clean, brave, and instantly fixed and then we join one, try to lead, and discover the painful math of limited power, limited time, and real people. We take that tension head-on by talking about what we’re calling the “Elijah syndrome”: the outsider’s sense that the whole system is compromised and that faithfulness can only exist at a distance.
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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, The Pursuit of Character: Recovering the Virtues, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Register for Beeson Divinity School's 2026 Preaching Conference, July 14-16 in Birmingham, Alabama: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/preaching-institute/preaching-conference?utm_source=Mere+Orthodoxy&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Preaching+Conference+2026

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1776 gets treated like a patriotic shorthand, but it also works like a master key for the modern world. We sit down with Andrew Wilson to talk about Remaking the World and why one crowded year can illuminate the rise of the post-Christian West better than a thousand hot takes about the last decade.

We unpack Andrew’s “WEIRDER” framework (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, ex-Christian, romantic) and trace the seven shifts that propel it: globalization, Enlightenment thought, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, democratic revolution, attempts to sideline Christianity while keeping its moral capital, and the spread of romanticism into everyday life. Along the way, we wrestle with a question Christians feel in their bones: how can a culture be shaped by Christianity and still try to move past it?
—
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, The Pursuit of Character: Recovering the Virtues, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Register for Beeson Divinity School's 2026 Preaching Conference, July 14-16 in Birmingham, Alabama: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/preaching-institute/preaching-conference?utm_source=Mere+Orthodoxy&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Preaching+Conference+2026

Send us Fan Mail
1776 gets treated like a patriotic shorthand, but it also works like a master key for the modern world. We sit down with Andrew Wilson to talk about Remaking the World and why one crowded year can illuminate the rise of the post-Christian West better than a thousand hot takes about the last decade.

We unpack Andrew’s “WEIRDER” framework (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, ex-Christian, romantic) and trace the seven shifts that propel it: globalization, Enlightenment thought, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, democratic revolution, attempts to sideline Christianity while keeping its moral capital, and the spread of romanticism into everyday life. Along the way, we wrestle with a question Christians feel in their bones: how can a culture be shaped by Christianity and still try to move past it?
—
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, The Pursuit of Character: Recovering the Virtues, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Register for Beeson Divinity School's 2026 Preaching Conference, July 14-16 in Birmingham, Alabama: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/preaching-institute/preaching-conference?utm_source=Mere+Orthodoxy&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Preaching+Conference+2026

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Idolatry is one of those Bible words that can feel obvious until you try to use it carefully. We live far from Baal temples, yet we still talk about idols constantly and sometimes we label everything as an idol until the word loses its bite. Derek and Alastair slow down and rebuild the category from the ground up, starting where Scripture starts: the Ten Commandments, the golden calf, and the question of what it means to worship the true God rather than a controllable substitute.
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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, Classical Theism: A Christian Introduction, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships