Have Classical Christian Schools made Christian Colleges Redundant?
Release Date: 06/28/2023
It's Like Confessional Protestantism Doesn't Exist
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
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, (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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 "" and the other is Casey Spinks "?" The conversation may not be as hopeful as some listeners want. But along with the on non-denominational...
info_outline
Confessional Protestantism and Denominationalism
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
This time co-hosts (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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 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...
info_outline
Teach Us To Number Our Holidays (so they don't turn into seasons)
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The Pudcast returns with co-hosts (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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...
info_outline
Merry, Merry Lutheran Seminary
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
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 (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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...
info_outline
A Tragic Election?
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The vibe for this recording was solemn even if the co-hosts (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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 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...
info_outline
The Live Show that Almost Died
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
We did try, the we being co-hosts (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (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...
info_outline
How Theologians Achieve Greatness
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The Woody Allen movie, "Manhattan," includes a 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, (Lutheran), (Anglican), and (Presbyterian), consider their own list of overrated theologians. The ones discussed are Karl Barth, the Juergen Moltmann, and C. S. Lewis. The reason behind raising the question is not to...
info_outline
Only Presbyterians Have Assemblies but Most Protestants Assemble
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The co-hosts, (Lutheran), @IVMiles (Anglican), and @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...
info_outline
Why Don't Exvangelicals Check the Tires of Confessional Protestantism
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
The whole crew (-Presbyterian, -Lutheran, and -Anglican) returns in this discussion of Miles's 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 . These trends also coincide with the increase of ," 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...
info_outline
Can You Have A Christian America Without Christian Nationalism?
Paleo Protestant Pudcast
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, . This left (Presbyterian) and (Anglican) to talk about Mile's new book, . 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,...
info_outlineDid 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. Lutheran Church Missouri Synod colleges are not immune to these challenges.
Even while Christian colleges struggle in the United States, the growth of classical Christian schools and academies (not to mention charter schools and homeschooling) show that parents are more active in superintending the primary and secondary education of their kids. In the case of families and churches where children are catechized and also receive religious reinforcement at school, what is the point of such a child going to a Christian college? If kids already have a solid religious and educational training, what value does Christian higher education add (especially if it is expensive)?
These were questions co-hosts Miles Smith (Anglican), D. G. Hart (Presbyterian), and Korey Maas (Lutheran) kicked around during a recent recording. The discussion was very much open-ended -- many more questions than answers. But everyone did seem to agree that Christian schooling in America may be going through a transition that could well leave Christian higher education in the lurch.
This recording was obviously sponsored by Hillsdale College, a Christian college of an unusual kind, even though the institution went unnamed to protect the innocent.
Listeners may follow us on Twitter @IVMiles and @oldlife. Dr. Maas refuses followers.