Cloud of Witnesses Radio

He “blew up overnight” but the real story is years of research, catechesis, and court-tested thinking. Why does a trial lawyer’s mindset work so well for Orthodox apologetics?

Cloud of Witnesses Mario Andrew, Jeremy Jeremiah, Michael, and James St Simon talk with online Orthodox Christian apologist Alex Sorin (https://www.youtube.com/@Alex_Ortodoxie/videos) and we wrestle with a challenging line from Father Josiah Trenham: the Church doesn’t need you to defend her. So what is apologetics for? We land on a grounded answer: not saving the Church, but curing ignorance and clearing away myths, including “Constantine set the canon at Nicaea” and blanket accusations about icons, saints, and idolatry. If you care about evidence-based faith, patristics, and a historically rooted Christianity, you’ll leave with better questions and sharper tools.

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Panel:
Michael w/ Red Lines  @redlineshq
James St Simon  @jamessaintsimon
Mario St Andrew  @AndrewStMercy  
Jeremy Jeremiah
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This edition was available to Cloud of Witnesses Patreons since July 6, 2026.

Her dad died by suicide when she was 9 and it rewired everything. Years later, a hunger for truth pulled her from non-denominational church to Hebrew Roots, then to Orthodox liturgy.

A faith crisis rarely starts with an abstract argument. Sometimes it starts with a funeral, a silent house, and a kid trying to understand why a father is suddenly gone. Our guest Taylor Biss (Voice of Taylor on Instagram) joins Jeremy Jeremiah of Cloud of Witnesses from Australia to share the story that shaped her: losing her Catholic father to suicide at nine years old, growing up detached, and carrying questions about grief, isolation, and what God does with the brokenhearted.

• childhood trauma after a parent’s suicide and the loneliness that follows
• wrestling with fears about eternity and learning to trust God’s compassion
• a decisive encounter with prayer and a message about God’s heart for daughters
• being discipled by older women and learning the basics of Christian faith
• tensions in non-denominational church life when serious Bible questions arise
• why Hebrew Roots feels solid at first through Torah, Sabbath, and festivals
• the movement’s internal chaos, sacred name confusion, and anti-divinity claims about Jesus
• a 2020 Israel trip exposing racism and excuses framed as “bloodline” privilege
• leaving Hebrew Roots, resisting New Age drift, and seeking reverent worship
• stepping into Orthodox Christianity and returning to weekly liturgy with her children

Taylor walks us through the moment everything changed at seventeen when she finally said yes to church and encountered Christ through prayer and a message about God’s heart toward daughters. We talk about discipleship, older women stepping in with real spiritual care, and how discovering the Father’s love can heal places you didn’t even know were starving. From there, the conversation turns to something many listeners will recognize: reading the Bible deeply, asking sincere questions, and realizing the non-denominational model often cannot answer with consistency or depth.

That hunger for truth leads Taylor into the Hebrew Roots movement, Torah-keeping, Sabbath practices, and biblical festivals that feel “original” at first, until the cracks show up: endless private interpretations, sacred name confusion that wrecks prayer, and even teaching that denies the divinity of Jesus. A trip to Israel in 2020 becomes a major turning point as she sees racism and spiritual double standards up close. When she finally steps away, she admits how close she comes to drifting into New Age spirituality, before a longing for reverent worship pulls her toward historic Christianity and her first Divine Liturgy during Holy Week and Pascha.

If you’ve wrestled with deconstruction, Hebrew Roots, church hurt, or a search for Orthodox Christianity that actually feels grounded, this one will meet you where you are. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s searching, and leave a review then tell us: what question or moment most shaped your faith journey?

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

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We wrestle with the moral cost of war through a modern Odyssey lens, especially what it means to see the divine image in people you might be ordered to kill. We ask whether “necessary” violence can ever be clean, and why the ones who protect everyone else often carry scars the rest of us never have to bear. 

• Athena’s beheading as a symbol of desecration and conscience 
• war as ugly even when defense feels necessary 
• Zeus’s law of hospitality set against survival and self-defense 
• the fog of war and our limited moral vision 
• Plato’s Euthyphro as a test for confident moral claims 
• the “dark knight” role and taking blame for the public good 
• Oppenheimer parallels and the burden of consequential choices 
• film critique on flattened characters while still recommending it 
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Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/jRXxRaqK9

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We connect headlines, books, and everyday dating talk to one repeating theme: we blame the world to avoid looking at our own hearts. We argue that Orthodoxy answers secular modern habits by restoring a sacramental view of worship, marriage, and repentance. 

• praying for peace while discussing the damaged Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv 
• Metropolitan Saba on secularism shaping prayer, fasting, marriage, and death 
• challenging materialism and “Western baggage” that flattens spiritual life 
• Southern Baptist Convention vote on women pastors and how Orthodoxy honors women 
• A Confederacy of Dunces as a warning about pride without self-examination 
• why being correct can turn into cruelty without humility and repentance 
• the marriage and dating crisis as a symptom of Enlightenment rationalism 
• marriage reduced from covenant to contract and people treated like counterparties 
• “dating market” language and ROI thinking as a form of dehumanization 
• Orthodox marriage as martyrdom through crowning, sacrifice, and theosis 
• comments on worship music, entertainment, and why Orthodox chant feels sacred 
• latria and the Divine Liturgy as the missing category in many Protestant frameworks 

Please do leave us a comment down below. As you can see, we may read some of these on air in the future. If you haven't already, give this video a like. Please go check out and subscribe the various channels represented here in this episode. 

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/jRXxRaqK9

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The movie many are hating on for the wrong reasons!  This is not the movie they think it is.

Cloud of Witnesses, Jeremy Jeremiah, James St Simon, Michael, and Mario Andrew, break down the most unforgettable moments from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and why the homecoming story hits harder when the music, visuals, and symbols keep pointing back to love and loss. We wrestle with the film’s biggest moral turn: the fear of an outside enemy flips into the recognition that we might be the problem.

• the siren song motif returning at the reunion with Penelope
• Odysseus holding on to the pin as a symbol of home
• the dog recognizing Odysseus and what that reveals
• the claustrophobia and horror of the Trojan horse
• Nolan’s visual storytelling through light, color, and disorientation
• “the people from the sea” as a mirror for self-deception
• Nolan’s modern guilt theme contrasted with Homer’s cosmic order
• mythic heroes with clear morality versus modern conflicted heroes

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/jRXxRaqK9

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Audio: https://cloudofwitnessesradio.buzzsprout.com
Please leave a comment with your thoughts!