Are Confessional Churches Like Confessional States?
Release Date: 05/01/2023
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineAnglicans 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 society that separates church and state than in one with an established church? Are confessional Lutherans and confessional Presbyterians in the United States more confessional than their counterparts in Europe where ecclesiastical establishments still exist?
News that led to these questions was first the decision of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) to re-order the Anglican communion away from the See of Canterbury (which has functioned as "first among equals" among bishops). The reason for this resolve was the Church of England's General Synod's decision to bless same-sex unions.
This piece of ecclesiastical business dovetailed with an article about the new confessional state in Britain, one that is progressive and almost as restrictive as the old confessional state of England prior to the 1829 Emancipation of Roman Catholics (and related recognition of Protestant Dissenters. The essay about the new confessional state made the arresting point that the new terms of orthodoxy, because always evolving and independent of legal mechanisms, are illiberal. Under the old confessional state, subjects knew at least what the rules were and how to seek a remedy. But in the new confessional state, rules from a 2023 orthodoxy could substantially differ the "current thing" three years down the line.
This episode's sponsor is Brunswick, the company that puts the ow in bowling.
Follow us at @IVMiles and @oldlife. If you want Korey Maas' email address, send us a direct message at Twitter.