Paleo Protestant Pudcast
40 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 days ago - ★★★★★ - 46 ratingsProtestants outside the orbits of evangelicals and mainliners talking about church stuff.
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Episodes
Can You Have A Christian America Without Christian Nationalism?
July 08, 2024 16:01 - 47 minutes - 21.7 MBSummer 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 from the Founding to the Civil War. The conversation explores the Protestant character of American ...
How to Avoid Antinomianism in Preaching (and Preachers)
June 11, 2024 15:04 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBOne 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 Donald Trump up or down stream from Pride Month?), churches may need to be more intentional about t...
Do Confessional Protestants Need Rome for Civilizational Cover?
April 12, 2024 15:45 - 54 minutes - 24.9 MBThe 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 affairs, already does? Co-hosts, Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Kore...
The Appeal of Christian Nationalism
April 03, 2024 21:54 - 52 minutes - 24 MBThis 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 (boomers turn out to be reliable -- who knew?), the traction it receives among Lutherans in the LCMS...
Confessional Protestants and Israel (ancient and modern)
November 27, 2023 20:56 - 51 minutes - 23.4 MBThe Pudcast and co-hosts return thanks to the news coming out of the Middle East and stories about American Protestants' understanding of Israel and Jews. Co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) talk about eschatology, Protestant familiarity with Israel (thanks at least to the Old Testament), the degree to which confessional Protestants (unlike American men who think about Rome) think about Jerusalem. Among t...
What Are Denominations Good For? Absolutely Something!
October 30, 2023 20:22 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBAfter a long hiatus, the Hillsdale History Protestant confessionalists are back to talk about denominations under the broader heading of institutional Christianity. Co-hosts include Korey Maas, resident Lutheran, Miles Smith, resident Anglican, and D. G. Hart, resident (alien) Presbyterian. A question that haunts confessional Protestants is whether denominations as a vehicle for ministry have run out of steam thanks to the rise of megachurches, affinity networks among congregations of a part...
Machen Day for Confessional Protestants
July 28, 2023 16:23 - 50 minutes - 45.9 MBOn July 28, 1881, J. Gresham Machen was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Four decades later he was an important figure in the Presbyterian controversy between conservatives and modernists, thanks in part to his 1923 book, Christianity and Liberalism, which (if you do the math) turns 100 this year. Co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) talked earlier this week about Machen, his book, and the author's significance. Thi...
Have Classical Christian Schools made Christian Colleges Redundant?
June 28, 2023 12:33 - 56 minutes - 25.6 MBDid you know that the enrollment of Mennonite students at denominational colleges is in decline (and has been or a decade)? You probably didn't and you may not care if you have traditional confessional Protestant disregard for Anabaptists. But that trend is not isolated among Mennonites. Evangelical colleges have struggled with declining applications and enrollments even to the point where -- despite changing from colleges to "universities" -- administrators gut departments in the humanities...
Confessional Protestants and the Negative World (conversation with Aaron Renn)
May 12, 2023 18:37 - 1 hour - 32.2 MBThis recording takes a different direction as co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) welcome Aaron Renn to the Paleo-Protestant Pudcast. Aaron Renn is a consultant and keen observer of American cities and social trends who has taken an active interest in American Christianity and political conservatism. Many will know him from his First Things piece on the three worlds of evangelicalism (positive, neutral, and negative). Those ...
Are Confessional Churches Like Confessional States?
May 01, 2023 19:16 - 1 hour - 28.1 MBAnglicans were in the news in April which provoked co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) to talk about they way confessional states operate in comparison to confessional churches. Are confessional states like England or Scotland stricter than their respective national churches? How strict can churches be when their punitive instruments are ministerial and declarative? Also, can confessional churches have more freedom in a liberal so...
The F-Word (are confessional Protestants fundamentalists?)
April 04, 2023 20:55 - 56 minutes - 25.9 MBThis time co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) talk about the limitations of the American Protestant binary that divides white Protestants into either evangelicals or mainline (can you say "liberal"?). If a Protestant group doesn't fit one of those molds, that leaves "fundamentalist"? The inhumanity! Each of our communions has brushes with positions, episodes, and sensibilities that might produce charges of make fundamentalism. At the ...
Frog in the Kettle
February 27, 2023 22:33 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBIn this conversation, co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) lean heavily on Korey Maas (Lutheran) to make sense of the dust up in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod over a new edition of Luther's Large Catechism. It comes from Concordia Publishing House and includes essays on various theological and moral topics. Some in the LCMS have detected the fingerprints of progressive politics (or worse) in some of the essays even while others regard those critics as leanin...
More Ecclesial Than Thou
January 18, 2023 21:33 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBAfter a holiday break, co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) catch up on highlights of downtime (and don't even mention the liturgical calendar) and then converse about a species of Protestant that goes by the name, "ecclesiocentric post-liberals." A mouthful. The essay that was in the background of this discussion is here. The question of ecclesiocentrism (post-liberal or not) is of some import to confessional Protestants because Anglican...
Seasons' Greetings
December 15, 2022 18:12 - 47 minutes - 21.5 MBIt's the most wonderful time of the year because we have so many seasons to observe (do liturgical calendar adherents really think they can have it to themselves?). We have post-Thanksgiving nostalgia, the start of league play in NCAA DII basketball, the end of the academic term with finals and grading, Advent, and the excess of Christmas provides welcome push back to stale Halloween lawn displays. In this session co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (...
Singing Out of the Same Hymnal?
November 09, 2022 20:34 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBAt the end of the previous recording, co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) were talking about expectations for being a good Anglican, Lutheran, or Presbyterian. One consideration not often in the equation is singing in worship. When a church member not only shows up for the service, but pulls out the hymnal and sings along with the rest of the saints the song selected by the pastor or priest, is he or she making any kind of show of devotion?...
What Must I Do to be A Good Protestant?
October 01, 2022 21:08 - 51 minutes - 47.5 MBIn history and geography, Presbyterians are adjacent to Puritans, which makes them "hot" Protestants in the sense that they exhibit forms of piety more intense, more holiness forward than other confessional Protestants. That is the reputation anyway for British Protestantism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Over time, Presbyterians became synonymous with "God's frozen chosen" because their worship is and remains (for some) so dull and lacking in energy. Heat and cold are not...
Why Should Puritans Take All the Credit?
September 14, 2022 19:47 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBUpstream from Christian nationalism, the topic of our last discussion, is the use to which historians of the United States have put denominational or church history in describing American identity (and with it American nationalism). In this recording, co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) talk about Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian reactions to the way two or three generations of American historians, literary scholars, and faculty in rela...
What Confessional Protestantism Teaches about Christian Nationalism
August 19, 2022 20:16 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBThe Magisterial Reformation was one version of Christian nationalism way before evangelical historians and hysteria prone journalists discovered the sources of support for Donald Trump. Co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian hopes for and reliance on civil government. They kick off the discussion in reference to two pieces that describe Christian nationalism in da...
Boys of Summer
July 11, 2022 16:37 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBToo much for any single podcast to cover, but the regulars, co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) give it their best college try. The topic that was supposed to drive this conversation was the annual meeting of synods and general assemblies. But because Presbyterians are much better organized (some call it anal) than Anglicans and Lutherans, the confessional Protestants only had the Christian Reformed Church Synod, and the General Assemblie...
Why Do You Need to Learn to Pray?
May 24, 2022 17:56 - 49 minutes - 44.9 MBAnother potentially controversial subject -- especially given Presbyterians' tradition of kvetching (and more) about prayer books -- but once more co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) avoid conflict. It's a shame. This recording's subject is the degree to which confessional Protestants rely upon read or formal prayers, how that affects occasions (like men's Bible study) when spontaneous prayer may be in order, and the effects on devotion...
Easter Afterglow
April 28, 2022 14:32 - 50 minutes - 46.1 MBChristians on social media got a lot of mileage out of typing "He is risen!" on a specific Sunday in April. Some Presbyterians wondered about all the hub bub since during the week leading up to Easter Sunday, Jesus was was risen on each and every day. This episode brings co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), together to talk about Easter, the liturgical calendar, and what it means or doesn't mean to them. The hope was for interlocutors to ...
How to Start a Protestant Magazine
April 05, 2022 14:38 - 55 minutes - 38.1 MBThe short answer is: go back to the early days of First Things and convince its founding editor, Richard John Neuhaus, not to convert to Roman Catholicism. Short of that, co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) consider why Roman Catholics have so many magazines and Protestants are limited to Christian Century, Christianity Today, and World Magazine (which is in a long winded way the successor to J. Gresham Machen's Presbyterian Guardian). The ...
Why Not a Paleo-Protestant Story Hour Instead of a Drag Queen Story Hour?
March 21, 2022 20:36 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBThis conversation took place before Spring Break. Listeners will decide how well it aged. The question before the co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), was whether Confessional Protestants have any stake in either a David-French-like defense of Drag Queen Story Hour or a Sohrab Ahmari denunciation of such public events as the inevitable result of political liberalism. In other words, what alternatives do Protestants have other than integr...
Which Confessional Protestants are Hot?
February 24, 2022 22:00 - 51 minutes - 23.7 MBIn this recording Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) take the temperature of confessional Protestants. The notion of a "hot" Protestant has less to do with sexual appeal than with intense piety. Michael Winship's book on the Puritans uses "hot" to describe those English Protestants who were eager to carry out the reformation in the Church of England as well as in the lives, families, and vocations of believers. A similar tendency was evident in t...
If the Options are either Liberalism or Constantinianism
January 19, 2022 19:34 - 53 minutes - 24.4 MBThe regular interlocuters, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), finally get to politics -- church life can only hold your attention for so long. The reason for the shift in discussion is the larger critique that Roman Catholics and Protestants are making against political liberalism (short hand for representative government, constitutionalism, separation of powers, civil and religious liberty). (For an evangelical -- largely squishy -- take on the ...
The Point of Christmas is Not that It Was Cold
December 20, 2021 21:07 - 48 minutes - 22 MBIt is likely obvious by now that Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) together are not as funny as Lutheran Satire (Dr. Maas on his own may manifest the Lutheran spiritual gift). That is a backhanded way of saying that this episode's discussion of Christmas, Advent, and December congregational singing is not nearly as pointed or as amusing as Martin Luther Yelling about Inferior Anglican Christmas Hymns. (This episode's title comes from Luther's yell...
Come to Jesus (How Someone becomes Paleo-Protestant)
November 23, 2021 21:04 - 53 minutes - 49.3 MBKorey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) do their impersonations of evangelicals and give their testimonies in this episode. That's a way of saying they describe the biographical route by which they came to Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches, respectively. Spoiler alert: theology is important (even for Anglicans). Related: education and catechesis are also important. What may be surprising is the influence that Francis Schaeffer had on three...
Putting the Confession in Confessional Protestant
October 21, 2021 15:53 - 52 minutes - 24.1 MBKorey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) return to talk about the way that our different communions use and rely on our confessions (Book of Concord, Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Westminster Standards). We even go into the weeds of subscription, a topic that Presbyterians may have thought they owned but is also relevant to Lutherans. These men even talked about revisions to confessions and whether that undermines the status of the original confessions. ...
The Oddities of Confessional Protestant Worship
September 22, 2021 16:08 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBWhat makes Lutheran worship different from Anglican or Presbyterian forms? Would your average Anglican miss the hymns in an Anglican service? Why do Presbyterian services give so much time to the sermon? These were among several of the topics discussed in this recording with Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian). Spoiler alert: contemporary Protestants struggle with worship devices such as a prayer book.
Can Mark Driscoll Happen Here?
August 24, 2021 19:18 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBYes, that's a bit of a tease (maybe more) but it may be the best way to encourage people to listen to a conversation about church polity. Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have many differences in theology and worship and these are likely the easiest to identify. But when it comes to the structures of government that bind and unify each of these confessional Protestant communions, awareness likely diminishes. In this recording Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. ...
Rodney Dangerfields All
July 23, 2021 15:14 - 1 hour - 54.7 MBConfessional Protestants are again NOT in the news thanks in part to a new survey that breaks the white Protestant world in the U.S. down into either evangelical or mainline Protestant camps. Korey Maas, Miles Smith, and D. G. Hart (aka Bob Dole) aimed at using the recent headlines surrounding those survey results to consider what the Protestant equivalent would be to the Roman Catholic intellectual landscape that Ross Douthat outlined in First Things. As it turned out, discussion of the...
Church History and Protestant Identity
June 29, 2021 19:10 - 59 minutes - 27.3 MBThe stories we tell about ourselves, our nations, and our communions matter for how we understand ourselves. Whether church history should matter as much as it does to Anglican, Lutheran, or Presbyterian identity, the origins, controversies, splits, and turning points in a communion's history matter for how church members understand themselves in relation to a Christian tradition and its ecclesiastical embodiment. It doesn't make a lot of sense, for instance, for Anglicans and Lutherans to...
The Laity and Holy Office (read ordination)
May 28, 2021 18:42 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBIn this recording, the Anglican (Miles Smith), the Lutheran (Korey Maas), and the Presbyterian (D. G. Hart), each a white Protestant man in case you did not notice, talk about pressures among confessional Protestants to open ordination beyond historic limits. It is another way of asking where the lines are between the tasks reserved for those ordained and what lay people (men or women) may legitimately do in "ministry." If every member is a minister, according to the logic of "every member...
God May Not Slumber Or Sleep But Do Confessional Protestants?
April 30, 2021 18:19 - 56 minutes - 52.2 MBScientists tell us that people ideally go through 4 to 5 90-minute cycles of sleep, that run from wake to light sleep to deep sleep to REM before repeating the process. Church historians may be tempted to conclude that confessional Protestants go through similar cycles when it comes to social reform and political activism. In the nineteenth century, for instance, Lutherans and Episcopalians in the U.S. avoided splits over the sectional crisis unlike other Protestants. One reason was that t...
Holy Time, Holy Cow!
April 01, 2021 20:31 - 48 minutes - 22.3 MBFor many confessional Protestants, this week is the big one, the Holy One. Which leads to questions about ways Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Lutherans mark time. Which days are holy, which seasons does the church follow, and to what degree does a liturgical calendar divide or separate Protestants who trace their roots to the sixteenth century? Without surprise, Lutherans and Anglicans follow the church calendar more than Presbyterians and may vary in their reasons for observance. But Ref...
Round Three: Hot Protestants, Cold Presbyterians
March 12, 2021 15:35 - 51 minutes - 23.3 MBThe three part series of comparing and contrasting confessional Protestant churches in the U.S. comes to a close with Presbyterians this time. Younger listeners may have a hard time understanding that during the two decades after World War II, Presbyterianism was in the sweet spot of American identity. Of course, that did not extend to conservative communions like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But with POTUSes and movie stars lining up to commune in mainline Presbyterian congregations...
Round Two: Anglicans
February 26, 2021 19:42 - 44 minutes - 20.4 MBThe latest recording of three Protestant history professors talking shines the spotlight on Anglicanism with Dr. Miles Smith taking heat and receiving praise for his communion's contribution to confessional Protestantism. The conversation (with Dr. Korey Mass, the Lutheran, and Dr. D. G. Hart, the Presbyterian) began with recent news about Episcopalians' apologies for hosting evangelical celebrity pastor, Max Lucado, at the National Cathedral to preach. This item provided space for distin...
Are Lutherans the Rodney Dangerfield of Confessional Protestantism?
February 11, 2021 21:47 - 44 minutes - 21.6 MBHard questions on this episode, such as why Lutherans, who have the most members, don't get more respect from other Protestants. This is the first of several episodes (God willing) on prestige and status among confessional Protestants, such as how do they rank, who has the the most appeal to evangelicals, and what do Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Lutherans know about the other communions? Still the same interlocutors, Korey Maas, Miles Smith (THE fourth), and D. G. Hart (introduced here)...
Seminaries for Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians (or all the above)
January 29, 2021 19:45 - 54 minutes - 24.9 MBIf you want to serve in a confessional Protestant communion as a minister, where should you go to seminary? Related to this is the role that seminaries play in the life of a denomination. Lutherans have closer ties to their seminaries, Presbyterians are all over the place (even though the OPC and PCA depended on seminaries for their start), and Anglicans rely often on evangelical and mainline institutions. Then there is the question of the laity (and especially women) and where they recei...
What is a Paleo-Protestant and What Does He Sound like?
January 14, 2021 21:24 - 52 minutes - 24.1 MBKorey Maas teaches history at Hillsdale College. He also talks a lot about Lutheranism of the LCMS variety. Miles Smith teaches history at Hillsdale College. He writes about Anglicanism. D. G Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College. He talks about Presbyterians sometimes with other Presbyterians. Thanks to Chortles Weakly for technical assistance.