Paleo Protestant Pudcast

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 the Matthew Wilcoxen proposal for reforming ACNA.  Disputes in the Presbyterian Church in America over women as deaconesses and or shepherdesses opened a window on the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod led by Korey Maas. All of this may sound like too much detail.  But if you believe God is in the details, you should be fine. 

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 world have been in the news, from the appointment of a new (and female) archbishop of Canterbury, to the decision by a prominent Baptist historical theologian to join ACNA.   All the recent news deserves way more than roughly 55 minutes of banter.  But with the help of our resident Anglican, Miles Smith, we learned about the choppy water in which the bishops, clergy, and laity find themselves.  

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 that everyone acknowledges but does not necessarily measure).  One of the reasons for looking to these churches instead of the Presbyterian Church in America, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is that the mainline denominations have more status than the sideline alternatives, and therefore are more likely to promote Christianity beyond the church to the culture more generally.  The pudcast co-hosts, Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) discuss these matters, even with some attention to the church's influence on the Roman empire and much later on American society during the early national period.  In the latter case, Ross Douthat's comments in an interview (read in the recording) about low-church Protestantism's influence on America are yet another aspect of Christianity's cultural influence.   

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 upcoming classes at Hillsdale College and how we situate ourselves within the framework of classical education, the "Great Books," and liberal education.  From there the conversation explores the relationship between confessional Protestantism and the kind of learning that at least pastors need, which points back to ties between the Reformation and the Renaissance, which then leads to the Renaissance's recovery of ancient Greek and Latin authors and the way Humanism cultivated Protestant understandings of education. At the very end comes some commentary on whether the Bible qualifies as a "Great Book" or is merely a "Good Book."  The co-hosts "did the reading" for this discussion which included a critique of "The Great Books," a review of a book about the Bible and classical education, and college students on the appeal of liberal education.  No sponors this episode. The Pudcast transcends money.

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 Baptist conservatives might learn from Missouri Synod Lutherans about "the left's" attack on denominational institutions.  Part of the discussion involved the Southern Baptist Convention's place in conservative politics and the New Calvinist movement.  Another part involved the dark side of church politics -- how much officers and members need to strategize and organize to defeat opponents within a communion where everyone is supposed to agree.    Articles the co-hosts mentioned included: Korey Maas on the controversy in the LCMS over Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; and the place of civil rights politics in the LCMS controversy. For any Presbyterians who might see parallels in the Lutheran and Baptist controversies with the Presbyterian conflict of the 1920s, especially over control of seminaries, this discussion at The Reformed Forum may be of use. This episode's sponor is the National Public Radio show, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." 

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 church fathers or re-enchant worship services, and the relationship between preaching and the Lord's Supper.  Spoiler alert: readers may be surprised to hear an Anglican (Dr. Harp) defend a high view of preaching.  Listeners may want to consult Luther's Small Catechism, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Shorter Catechism on the Lord's Supper to see the language used to describe the benefits of the sacrament.  

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 sound pope.  Keeping up with all of the articles about either Francis' legacy or Leo's prospects is impossible. But these were some of the articles the co-hosts consulted before being recorded. 

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 the count (think boxing).  One is Brad East's "Goldilocks Protestantism" and the other is Casey Spinks "Does Traditional Protestantism Have a Future?"  The conversation may not be as hopeful as some listeners want.  But along with the last episode on non-denominational Protestantism, this one reveals further challenges that confessional Protestant communions face.   Follow some of us -- Miles Smith @ivmiles and D. G. Hart (for now) @reallyoldlife. 

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 non-denominational Protestantism.  Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Congregationalists may sound like the ecclesiastical equivalent of Ford, Lincoln, Chevrolet, and Buick, but institutions matter to Christian faith and practice as much as they do to the manufacturing and sale of automobiles.  Follow the Anglican co-host @ivmiles and the Presbyterian co-host @oldlife.   

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 workplace -- is too long.  Included is attention to the particular aspects of holiday observance among Lutherans and Anglicans (with Lutherans getting lots of credit for using the phrase, "The Divine Service" most often).  Material that stimulated the discussion was Ross Douthat's speculation that secular liberalism has run out of steam and Eli Lake's report on the Jewish-Americans who wrote so many of the secular Christmas songs.  Listeners who have not seen Whit Stillman's movie, "Metropolitan" should do so asap even if it is no longer Christmas or Advent or Debutante Ball season.    Owing to the recent death of former POTUS, Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump's election victory, the co-hosts also speculated about the effects of past and future presidents on the religious vibe in the United States and elsewhere.  Bonus content: here is an introduction to Washington Irving's Old Christmas, a story that shaped American customs surrounding the holiday.  

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 and Liberty, on the late 1960s controversy at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis which led to the exodus of confessionally liberal Lutherans not only from the seminary but also from the LCMS altogether.  Among the points of controversy was the doctrine of inerrancy, which gave the conflict a certain resemblance to the Presbyterian controversy of the 1920s.  Spoiler alert: the co-hosts never mention beer and only bring up Presbyterianism at the end of the episode.  So you have to listen to the end (at least it's not behind a paywall).   The article by Korey Maas who is still not on Twitter (formerly called Twitter) is here.  The LCMS statement on the authority and infallibility of the Bible is here.   Miles Smith is still @ivmiles and D. G. Hart is still @oldlife.   As is always the case, the pudcast would not exist without the incomparable assistance of @presbycast.  

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 lost a sense of nations sitting under God's judgment. In which case, the presidential campaign and the results could be less a story of redemption than they reveal God's rebuke of an errant society.    From that starting point, conversation ranged to the degree to which confessional Protestants suffer from viewing the United States as a redeemer nation, how millennialism affects nationalism, differing estimates (Augustinian or Eusebian) of Christian government, and even whether Christians can learn a tragic sense of politics from H. L. Mencken.  No sponsors, but it should have been Joy dishwashing detergent. 

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 church, the importance of the institutional church (over against parachurch competitors), and the degree to which cultural or civilizational Christianity reinforces church ties.  Among the titles that we mentioned in connection with the effects of the Cold War on church life in the United States were Stephen Bullivant's Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America; Darin Lenz's article, "'Hail Luther's Contribution': A Sixteenth-Century Reformer in Cold War America" in Church History; and Kirk Farney's Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier.  Even "The Crown" came up (still working on "The Wire") in relation to the episode that features Billy Graham's preaching for Queen Elizabeth (Season 2, ep.6).  No sponsors this time. We would hate to sully any company or institution with this sorry technological performance. 

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 (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), consider their own list of overrated theologians.  The ones discussed are Karl Barth, the recently deceased Juergen Moltmann, and C. S. Lewis.   The reason behind raising the question is not to belittle any of these theologians' achievements but to consider how it is that a theologian -- when there are so many -- emerges as the "go to" authority for ending a doctrinal debate.  It also relates to confessional Protestant theological traditions in which those students training for a specific communion are going to be much more likely to read theologians in the Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican traditions -- instead of reading broadly in the theologians who transcend specific Protestant communions.  A final thread of conversation was whether the "big names" of Protestant theology can survive in an age of megachurches and church planting networks.   The sponsor this time is Ethan's Donut Factory in downtown Hillsdale, Michigan. 

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 after denominational meetings.  The co-hosts go through the round-up of denominational news and even though the Lutherans did not meet Korey Maas explains the peculiarities of Missouri Synod polity.   The hosts also discuss the relative toxicity of David French (who was invited to a Presbyterian General Assembly only to be uninvited) and Carl Trueman who drew crowds at an Anglican synod (Diocese of the Living Word). For anyone outside a denomination and feeling a hankering for this sort of Christian organization, Ross Douthat's nostalgia for the Protestant mainline in the United States may suggest the value of such structures.  Yuval Levin's own positive estimate of institutions is another reason to consider the superiority of denominations to networks and church-planting start-ups.   Keep an eye out for a live Paleo Protestant Pudcast sometime in September.  Information will be forthcoming (dv). 

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 increase of Americans who qualify as "nonverts," that is, people who used to identify as some version of Christian and now consider themselves "none," as in having no religion.  For those who consider the importance of institutions, especially for confessional Protestants with  a high doctrine of the church, these trends present serious dilemmas for the ongoing ministry of  word and sacrament through the agency of an institutional church (sometimes known as denomination).  Confessional Protestants generally take denominational structures for granted even though since the rise of the megachurch (1990s), followed by social network forms of Christian cooperation and aspiration (Gospel Coalition and Acts 29, for example), more and more American Christians are unfamiliar with the institutional mechanisms for organizing ministry and belonging.  What may be especially intriguing for those with ears to be intrigued is that the shelf-life of recent evangelical endeavors in church planting run out of steam and done so almost as fast (as they tell us) as the planet is heating up.  Summer is too short for advertisements.  But Twitter access is still available for Miles Smith @ivmiles and D. G. Hart @oldlife. Please do not bother Korey Maas. He has an academic department to run. 

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 from the Founding to the Civil War.  The conversation explores the Protestant character of American society before 1865 without having an established church.  What the United States did have was the host of voluntary societies and organizations about which Alexis de Toqueville marvelled, institutions that shaped public and private sentiments in ways that were not doctrinaire but were generically Protestant.  These realities lead inevitably to questions about what relevance or wisdom this era of American history has for current elbow-throwing and breast-beating about Christian nationalism.  This recording has no sponsor but if it did, it would have to be the publisher of Miles' book, the Davenant Press.   Follow Miles Smith on Twitter @ivmiles and D. G. Hart @oldlife.  Korey Maas remains inaccessible. 

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 Donald Trump up or down stream from Pride Month?), churches may need to be more intentional about the basics of Christian morality than they were in previous generations. This discussion among the co-hosts - D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), Korey Maas (Lutheran), and Miles Smith (Anglican) goes fairly deep into the weeds of preaching the law with the unexpected twist of the Lutheran leading the charge for application and moral exhortation in sermons.   Later in the recording, the co-hosts also discuss the legitimacy of churches having a one-strike-and-you're-out policy for church officers who commit adultery through sexual sin.  Is plagiarism in preaching as bad as adultery?  Or do sexual offenses compromise a church officer's integrity in ways unlike other breaches of the moral law? Apologies to listeners for taking so long to post this recording.  Hiccups in schedules and switching podcast platforms are partly to blame.

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 affairs, already does? Co-hosts, Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) approach this question with help from two recent articles that make a point about an affinity between Protestants and Roman Catholics that keep the former from being able to disregard the latter's recent disputes over blessing same-sex unions.  One is by Carl Trueman at First Things, the other by Hans Boersma at Touchstone Magazine. This recording's sponsor is the New Heights podcast with the Kelce brothers, Jason and Travis, an easier arrangement than obtaining Taylor Swift's blessing. Listeners may follow two of the hosts @IVMiles and @oldlife. Korey Maas' administrative duites mean email is his social medium.   (Many thanks to our Southern audio engineer who makes the pudcast possible.) 

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 (boomers turn out to be reliable -- who knew?), the traction it receives among Lutherans in the LCMS, and the erosion of confidence or participation in civic and ecclesiastical institutions.  The co-hosts did not have enough time for discussion of Miles Smith's forthcoming book which bears directly on the Christian, more precisely Protestant, character of American political institutions in the Early Republic.   Listeners can follow Dr. Smith (@IVMiles) and Dr. Hart (@oldlife) on X (formerly Twitter). To keep up with Dr. Maas, follow him following his children.