Welcome to Mortification of Spin, a casual conversation about things that count with Carl Truman,

Todd Pruitt, and Amy Bird. Mortification of Spin is a weekly podcast from the Alliance of Confessing

Evangelicals. History is bunk, or so the saying goes. But what does the Mortification of Spin

team with its resident church historian

have to say about that? Is it really important for Christians to study church history? Let's find out.

Well, thanks for joining us today.

There's a famous quote from Henry Ford.

It might be apocryphal, but I really hope it's true, because it kind of fits my image of him,

where Henry Ford said, history is bunk.

And I thought, no better person to ask about that assessment of the value of history than one of our own MOS team members here.

Of course, many of you know Carl Truman as a podcaster,

but on the side, he also teaches history every once in a while at Westminster

Seminary.

And so, Carl, is there any value to what you do?

Is there any value to what you studied and what you teach and what you write about?

Or is it really just kind of a big con job in order for you to, you know, have a cushy living?

It's a big con job just for having a cushy

living. You've rumbled me. I think it's, I think a knowledge of history is important for a number of

reasons, not least that it pays my mortgage. But I also think that history, a knowledge of history

is critical for understanding identity in the present, if I could put it that way.

And it's interesting you cite Henry Ford because I think he did actually say something like that.

But I've recently been reading Russell Kirk's autobiography, The Sword of Imagination.

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