Evangelical fire. Ritualist depth. Mormon theology. Culture, music, and modern Christianity.
Empire of the Son is a Christian history and theology podcast about the movements, controversies, and imaginations that have shaped the modern church, especially in England, over the last three centuries. From Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholic slum priests to Mormon theology, Christian metal, historic sermons, and the strange edges of religious culture, each episode tries to get behind the slogans and return to the sources. Not to win arguments, but to understand them properly.
Serious research. Clear argument. Lived faith.
Publisher
Matthew James
Category
history · religion & spirituality · religion & spirituality
Who was Charles Lowder, and why does he matter in the history of Anglican ritualism?
In this short introduction, I look at Lowder as more than a controversial Victorian priest. Because he was one of the key figures in the rise of ritualism, and one of the men who helped carry sacramental, disciplined, visibly Catholic Anglican religion into some of the hardest urban conditions in England.
Lowder matters for church history, but he also matters because he forces the question of what the Church is for, and who it is really willing to live among.
So this is a short introduction to who Charles Lowder was, what he did, and why he mattered.
12 Mar 2026
What is Ritualism? A Short Introduction
What is ritualism, and why did it cause so much controversy in nineteenth-century English Christianity?
In this short introduction, I look at ritualism as more than “fancy church” or clerical taste. Because ritualism was bound up with bigger questions about worship, beauty, sacraments, priesthood, the poor, and what the Church of England was for.
For some people, it looked like a dangerous drift toward Rome. For others, it was a way of bringing dignity, reverence, and the visible life of the Church back into places that had been starved of both.
So this is a short introduction to what ritualism was, where it came from, and why it mattered.
12 Mar 2026
Stairway’s No Rest No Mercy: Christian Apocalypse in a British Metal Key
Stairway’s No Rest No Mercy is not just a Christian metal album with loud guitars. It is a record shaped by apocalypse, judgement, bondage, Babylon, Zion, and spiritual conflict.
In this video I look at how this Midlands-based British Christian metal band built a world of cosmic struggle, moral seriousness, and resistance to counterfeit glory. This is not “safe” music with distortion added. It is a theological vision in metal form.
We look at songs like “Battle of Heaven,” “Spirit of Guilt,” “Bondage,” “Meet the Maker,” and “The Great Whore of Babylon” to ask what kind of Christianity this album is trying to build in the listener, and what it means to hear Christian faith in such stark, apocalyptic terms.
This is part of my ongoing series on Christian heavy metal, theology, and culture on Empire of the Son.
#ChristianMetal #HeavyMetal #Stairway #NoRestNoMercy #ChristianMusic #BritishMetal
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