It’s here! The first episode of Season 2 of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast is now available for download on iTunes! It’s the first of twelve weekly (mostly) episodes in which Mark Pattie and I will think aloud about our in-process book, Hope for Better Times: Pietism and the Future of Christianity.
This episode (#13 in the entire run of the series) is all about table-setting: introducing Mark and our producer/audience surrogate, my colleague Sam Mulberry; explaining more about the podcast and how it connects to the writing project; sharing our hopes for the project; and admitting some of our fears about it.
I love that one of the key themes that came up spontaneously in our conversation was that we all felt like we were embarking on an adventure, with an openness to how God might be working through this book and podcast in ways we can’t begin to anticipate.
So please give it a listen — but equally importantly, please join the conversation! What’s so exciting about doing this season of the podcast is that Mark and I get a chance to hear from our audience even before the book is written. Not only can we try out some ideas that we’ve been discussing for a long time, but we fully expect to glean new insights from the same people who will (hopefully) want to read the book itself.
You can share your comments, suggestions, and questions in multiple ways:
- Leave a comment here on the original Pietist Schoolman blog. (I’ll publish a post like this every Thursday that there’s a new episode.)
- Leave a comment over at The Christian Humanist, which is hosting the podcast and has its own PS Podcast show pages.
- Leave a comment at the podcast’s Facebook page.
Finally, a bit of trivia that I think I forgot to mention during Season 1: the theme music for the podcast is my own guitar-and-mandolin recording of my favorite Pietist hymn, “Children of the Heavenly Father.”
The Pietist Schoolman 
Chris, Mark and Sam:
First of all: thanks for these podcasts. I’m already several behind but I like that you are having a content conversation as you write.
Second: I love that Sam has a thing for “exteriorizing process.” Let there be more of his tribe.
Third: A response to “pietism.” Unlike Sam, the term has baggage for me. I grew up in a fundamentalist household with a bent toward pietism. What that looked like often was an externalization of holy, but not always corresponding with an inner work. It seemed to me to be mostly about checking the right theological boxes, holding the right theological positions, plus no dancing/gambling/boozing (of course). I’ve been reacting against it for at least 20 years. Not so that I can take up dancing/gambling/boozing, but because those finely drawn lines start to look weaponized: they become ways for me to judge, well, nearly everyone. Plus, people playing the role of holy tend to be not be sought out for important conversations.
So—I’m eager to hear more. Possibly you’ve already answered these questions in the two episodes I’ve not heard.
Thanks for listening and commenting, Kirk! In the second episode, we talked a bit about legalism and pharisaism being tensions for Pietism. But I’m sure we’ll need to come back to this — maybe in the one where we think through our version of Spener’s proposal that Christianity is experience/living.