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 Suppe...
Jul 01, 2025•59 min
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....
May 14, 2025•58 min
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 " D...
Apr 09, 2025•51 min
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 Congrega...
Feb 19, 2025•54 min
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 Luthera...
Jan 09, 2025•58 min
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 conf...
Dec 16, 2024•55 min
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 resu...
Nov 22, 2024•58 min
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 ...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 13 min
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 discusse...
Oct 02, 2024•37 min
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...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 3 min
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 Chr...
Jul 23, 2024•56 min
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 soci...
Jul 08, 2024•47 min
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 bas...
Jun 11, 2024•1 hr 4 min
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 (...
Apr 12, 2024•54 min
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...
Apr 03, 2024•52 min
The 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 the it...
Nov 27, 2023•51 min
After 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 parti...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 2 min
On 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. This may...
Jul 28, 2023•50 min
Did 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. Lu...
Jun 28, 2023•56 min
This 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 obse...
May 12, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Anglicans 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 societ...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 1 min
This 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 same t...
Apr 04, 2023•57 min
In 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 leaning too f...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 1 min
After 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 Anglicans, Luth...
Jan 18, 2023•1 hr
It'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 (Presbyter...
Dec 15, 2022•47 min
At 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? The...
Nov 09, 2022•51 min
In 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 the best ...
Oct 01, 2022•52 min
Upstream 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 related ...
Sep 14, 2022•51 min
The 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 damning ...
Aug 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Too 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 Assemblies of t...
Jul 11, 2022•58 min
