Paleo Protestant Pudcast

This topic is one that is on the surface too political for confessionalism Protestantism (which is more about church life than society).  But Christian nationalism is not only trending but a natural for confessional communions, for two reasons. The first is that Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians all grew up in Christian "nations"; our churches began during a period of European history someti...

The co-hosts, Anglican  Miles Smith , Lutheran  Korey Maas , and Presbyterian  D. G. Hart return after a long semester to talk about eschatology among Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians.  Some listeners may be surprised to learn that amillennialism is the ho-hum mainstream view among Lutherans (compared to Presbyterians where it generates much excitement and zealous adherence). Among Protesta...

The pudcast returns with consideration of confessional Protestant piety in relation to the purity culture that ran in evangelical circles during the 1990s and 2000s. The co-hosts, Anglican  Miles Smith , Lutheran  Korey Maas , and Presbyterian  D. G. Hart  discuss in particular two recent defenses of an evangelical subculture that developed in reaction to a society that pastors and parents thought...

Don't let that click bait fool you. Confessional Protestants have been in the news -- not for being named in the Epstein files.  A Lutheran Church Missouri Synod district president has been charged with possessing child pornography, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland resigned for failing to protect church members from abuse, and Presbyterians in the United States have excommunicat...

We were down a man this time. Our Anglican co-host,  Miles Smith , was on the road which left  Korey Maas (Lutheran) and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) trying to maintain pudcasting standards.  We had help from our colleague in the English Department, Jason Peters , who grew up Christian Reformed and switched to Eastern Orthodoxy.  We talked about the various strands of Orthodoxy in America, what the...

This discussion among the co-hosts,  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), has almost nothing to do with Thanksgiving but it does resume the last one about the Anglican Church in North America.  Miles Smith provides an update on the ongoing efforts to resolve conflict over allegations of sexual misconduct by Archbishop Steve Wood .  He also comments on t...

The bumper music for this episode, chosen by our Presbyterian producer, comes from the 1964 comic rendition of an Anglican homily by Alan Bennett ("My Brother Esau, Beyond the Fringe").  The subject discussed by pudcast co-hosts,  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) may be the same -- Anglicanism -- but the approach is not comedic.  Anglicans around the...

A recent article announced a shift, some call it vibe, others a mood, that is making Christianity more acceptable or less appealing than it used to be in Aaron Renn's " negative world ." This is related to a question of what influence churches have on a society and its culture.  Aaron Renn interviewed several leaders among the effort to take back the mainline Protestant denominations (from a fall...

It is back-to-school time and the co-hosts,  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) are getting ready for classes. This makes it a good time to reflect on the kind of education that nurtures confessional Protestant piety and practice -- for both ministers and church members.   The recording starts with each member of the "broadcasting team" talking about u...

To put the question even more pointedly, with lots of stereotyping to go round, when do Lutherans of German descent who settled mainly in the northern mid-western states pay attention to Baptists in the South? This was the subject of the recent recording when co-hosts, Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) discussed Scott Yenor's article on what Southern...

The topic this time is evangelical sacramentalism courtesy of a good short article by Gillis Harp , a retired professor of history at Grove City College. With Dr. Harp, the co-hosts, Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) talk about the recent elevation of the sacraments among Protestants, whether this is a function of Protestants trying to retrieve the ch...

The death of Pope Francis and the election of a new pope -- Leo XIV -- were the circumstances for co-hosts,  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) to talk about relationships between Protestants and the papacy.  The conversation ranged widely, from assessments of Francis, speculation about Leo, and general observations about Christianity's need for a soun...

The Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican heirs of the Protestant Reformation continue to make news by not attracting attention from observers of American Protestantism.  The co-hosts, Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), talk about two recent articles about traditional Protestantism that either imply or claim that such Christianity is down on the mat for th...

This time co-hosts  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) talk about whether non-denominational Christianity is the future of American Protestantism and what stake confessional Protestants have in denominational structures. The basis for discussion is  sociologist Ryan Burge's analysis of church statistics whose numbers indicate the remarkable increase of...

The Pudcast returns with co-hosts   Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) in the after glow of a very long holiday season -- that seems to get longer the older the observer becomes.  The recording starts with question of whether the five to six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years -- when everyone seems to return to pandemic levels of output in the wo...

When most confessional Protestants are preparing for end-of-calendar-year holidays, they are likely thinking about Lutheran seminary education.  For that reason, this discussion with co-hosts  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) will be a treat.  The basis for discussion is an article that Korey Maas wrote for the Acton Institute publication,  Religion...

The vibe for this recording was solemn even if the co-hosts  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) were also excited for the upcoming marriage of our only confessional Protestant bachelor (sorry ladies). The reason for the somber mood was Miles Smith's piece at MereOrthodoxy on evangelicals and politics.  There he suggests that American Protestants have l...

We did try, the we being co-hosts  Korey Maas  (Lutheran),  Miles Smith  (Anglican), and  D. G. Hart (Presbyterian). The plan was to have a Zoom chat with listeners. We did but only one listener showed up.  We will have to take another run at this. Even so, the lack of other chatters and despite some technological glitches, the co-hosts still managed to talk about what it means to belong to the ch...

The Woody Allen movie, "Manhattan," includes a scene where two couples are walking and the one played by Michael Murphy and Diane Keaton unveil their Academy of Overrated.  To this body they assign Gustav Mahler, Isak Dinesen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, Norman Mailer, Mozart, , Vincent Van Gogh, and Ingmar Bergman.  The co-hosts on this recording, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglica...

The co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith @IVMiles (Anglican), and D. G. Hart @oldlife  (Presbyterian) have returned to campus and are so dedicated to their audience that they carved out time before the semester starts to talk about denominational news.  Summers are when the NBA hosts its championship so that commissioners from confessional Protestant communions  have something to watch aft...

The whole crew ( D. G. Hart -Presbyterian, Korey Maas -Lutheran, and Miles Smith -Anglican) returns in this discussion of Miles's review of several recent books by evangelicals who left evangelicalism to become - you guessed it - exvangelicals. These books parallel the rise and fall of the Young Restless Reformed which was the subject of this  article .  These trends also coincide with the increas...

Summer has made convening the co-hosts more challenging than when the academic calendar locks these confessional Protestants down. For this episode, the pudcast needed to aspire to Internet greatness without the presence of our Lutheran colleague, Korey Maas .  This left D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) and Miles Smith (Anglican) to talk about Mile's new book, Religion and Republic: Christian America fro...

One reason for the appeal of Christian Nationalism - either in its current form or its 1980s Moral Majority version - is the loss of moral norms in the wider society.  American Christians (Protestants more than Roman Catholics) functioned in their society relatively comfortably with generic Christian morality as the standard for public and private behavior.  As a moral consensus has eroded (is Don...

The confessional Protestants from south central Michigan return to the topic of the last conversation - how much Christianity in the modern West dependes on the Roman Catholic Church -- with particular reference to the cover that Rome gives to Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians.  For instance, can our communions oppose abortion more plausibly and vigorously because Rome, a big player in world...

This relatively brief conversation is downstream from previous discussions and arguments about Christian Nationalism first at Reformed Forum and then at Presbycast .  Dr. Miles Smith (Anglican) and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) had the benefit this time of Dr. Korey Maas ' (Lutheran) presence to function as the adult in the room.  Topics ranged from the generational appeal of Christian Nationalism (bo...