Homebrewed Christianity

Latest Episodes:

Thriving Is Climate, Flourishing Is Weather with Pam King Jun 25, 2026

Show notes

Pam King is back, and this conversation moved at the pace it wanted to. She runs the Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the framework she has built there is the most useful integration of psychological science and Christian theology I have come across — six facets that spell THRIVE, with a telos she calls the reciprocating self. We started with Stanford and seminary and ended with how the church is asking nine-year-olds to defend their interpretation of Torah when what they actually need is a fifth adult who knows their name. In between: the difference between flourishing and thriving, the Altadena fires Pam watched from her office window, how Winnicott's good enough mother maps onto how children come to relate to God, what Mark Labberton's seminary depression taught him about liturgy, why I rebuilt our confirmation class around questions instead of doctrines, and the prayer I have been praying with my daughter Khora since she was an infant. You can check out her previous visit on the podcast here.

Books we touched on:

The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective, with Jack O. Balswick and Kevin S. Reimer. Her foundational telos book.
Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing, with Justin L. Barrett.
The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a Silicon God Arrives, It Will Be the God We Deserve with Robert Wright Jun 22, 2026

Show notes

Bob Wright is back, and The God Test is the AI book I had been waiting for someone to write — the only one I have read that takes the spiritual stakes of the technology with the seriousness Teilhard would have. It opens with the interview Bob conducted with a young Geoffrey Hinton in 1983 — now anointed by The New York Times as the godfather of AI, now also one of its loudest doomers — and pivots into what Bob did not understand in that hotel room forty years ago: that we would build something as powerful as the human brain without ever first having to understand the brain. The bottom-up approach won. We are now inside the consequences. We spent the hour on Teilhard's noosphere acquiring silicon neurons, on why Bob argues accelerationism is lethal, on the difference between cognitive sovereignty and cognitive empathy and why both are now in jeopardy, on whether the algorithm has already occupied the very inner room from which sovereignty would be exercised, and on the closing line of the book — which I will not spoil here, except to say it is the kind of line you stop reading after.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, The Evolution of God(Pulitzer Prize finalist), and Why Buddhism Is True. His newest book, The God Test, is out from Simon & Schuster in June 2026. He is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York and president of the Nonzero Foundation. His Nonzero Newsletter and Nonzero Podcast (currently in rotation with Paul Bloom) live at nonzero.substack.com — and yes, I am a paid member. Books surfaced in this conversation: The God Test (the book at hand), The Evolution of God (the silicon-god closing line of The God Testpicks up the long arc of Evolution directly), Why Buddhism Is True (the contemplative-traditions stretch of the conversation), and Nonzero(the non-zero-sum framing that runs under everything Bob does).

Previous Episodes with Robert Wright

Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Decisional vs. Emotional Forgiveness: The Distinction Most of Us Have Been Missing with Everett Worthington Jun 14, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Everett Worthington spent thirty years building the most rigorously tested forgiveness program in psychological science — and the day he turned in his first book on the subject was the day his mother was murdered in a home invasion. Three years later, his brother, who had discovered her body, took his own life, after Everett — a psychotherapist, a big brother — had failed to talk him into counseling. So this is not abstract research. The man giving us the REACH model, the distinction between decisional and emotional forgiveness, the six-step protocol for responsible self-forgiveness, and a vision of forgiveness scaling from heart to home to homeland is the man who has had to apply every move he teaches to the people he loved most. We spent the hour on the science, the tools, and at the end, on why the algorithmic version of America is currently training us to become exactly the kind of community in which forgiveness will not happen.

Dr. Everett L. Worthington Jr. is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he taught for more than forty years before formally retiring in 2017 and remaining affiliated with the department. A licensed clinical psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association's Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, he has published more than thirty-eight books and four hundred scholarly articles across forgiveness, humility, positive psychology, and marriage and family. His REACH forgiveness program has been validated by more than thirty randomized control trials worldwide.

Explore the Science of Forgiveness — Greater Good Science Center

The GGSC forgiveness hub brings together research, practices, and essays for anyone thinking seriously about forgiveness — theologically, pastorally, or personally.

Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There Was a Time When God Was Gods with Ilia Delio Jun 09, 2026

Show notes

Ilia delivered the Axial Age lecture this past week from her temporary post in Germany, and the questions came in fast enough that we ended up touching the third rail of the whole class — the rise of monotheism. Yes, there was a time when God was not. Yes, there was a time when God was gods. Yes, Psalm 82 is in your Bible, and yes, Yahweh shows up at the divine council to judge the other deities. If that sounds sacrilegious, you might be exactly the right person to take this class. The Axial Age is when the I gets invented, the score gets written, the disengaged knowing that becomes science comes online, and 60,000 denominations begin arguing over whose copy of the score is correct. We are still inside its inertia. We are also — Ilia argues, and I think she is right — already past its hinge.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, and American theologian specializing in science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics, and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.

Previous Episodes with Ilia Delio

Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Religion Has a Physiology: Ilia & Tripp on Why Rituals Come Before Beliefs Jun 02, 2026

Show notes

This is the first Q&A of The Future of Religion, and the questions did exactly what good questions do — they pulled the lecture into places I had not planned to take it. Ilia opens by reframing my religion before belief lecture in her own cosmological key, and then we are off: three centimeters per second and the C-fibers, the knife edge at fifty bodies where the old bonding mechanisms fail and religion has to be invented, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, the Baptist accidentally serving Eucharist at an Episcopal cathedral, and the line that closed it — what if success as clergy is not rewriting the score, but learning to play the music that is already in the room? More than a thousand of you are in this class now. The questions are doing the work.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Machine Is a God Image with Ilia Delio May 30, 2026

Show notes

Ilia Delio and I sat down a week before The Future of Religionclass opens, in front of 500 people who already knew what they were signing up for. The conversation ranged — from the brain mutation she underwent when thirteen years of neuroscience gave way to a monastery ("Thomas Merton was my concussion"), to the single verb she would change in Pope Leo XIV's brand-new AI encyclical (turn remain into become), to why she keeps insisting both the problem and the cure are religious. AI is not what is annihilating us. Our refusal to acknowledge the divine ground within us is what is annihilating us. The machine is just where we have been projecting the search. The class opens next week. This conversation is the on-ramp.

You can WATCH this conversation on YouTube

⁠⁠Join our upcoming online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Problem Is Not Poverty. It Is Wealth. w/ Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty May 28, 2026

Show notes

Some conversations want to be in a coffee shop, not a studio — and this is one of them. Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty and I share a particular endangered species of Baptist heritage, the small, ecumenical, justice-formed wing whose patron saints include her father, Glenn Hinson, the Baptist church historian who taught half my div-school professors how to take the contemplative tradition seriously. So before we got anywhere near the politics of freedom, the problem of wealth, or the murderus super chickens of late-stage neoliberalism, we sat in her father's legacy for a while. The conversation took a different shape because of it. What follows is a slow take — on the perversion of freedom in white Christian America, the way our politics has lost any room for loss or failure, and what theological education has to do now if it is going to do anything at all.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty is the J. Roy Davis Family Chair of Theology and History at Union Presbyterian Seminary's Charlotte campus, where she teaches theology and ethics. Ordained in the PC(USA), she previously taught for nearly two decades at Bellarmine University, and earned her PhD from what is now UPSem. The books that anchor this conversation: Authentic Christian Freedom: Deconstructing the American Gospel of Liberty (the newest, on freedom's misuse in white Christian America); The Problem of Wealth: A Christian Response to a Culture of Affluence(Orbis, 2017 — winner of the Catholic Press Association's first-place prize in Catholic Social Teaching); and Dutiful Love: Empowering Individuals and Families Affected by Serious Mental Illness.

Theology Beer Camp 2026 — The God-Podcalypse — hits Kansas City October 8–10, exactly one month before the election⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Thirty scholars (Ilia Delio, Cornel West, Diana Butler Bass, Gary Dorrien, and a stack more), thirty God-pods, four post-apocalyptic stages, and the community everyone keeps telling us is the real reason they come back. Come find your people at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp ⁠⁠

⁠⁠Join our upcoming online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preaching in the WTF Zone: Leah Schade on Saying Something True When the News Will Not Stop May 25, 2026

Show notes

The volume of "I genuinely don't know what to preach anymore" emails landing from clergy has become its own data set. Pastors are not okay. So I did the only honest thing — I outsourced your questions to the one person whose books, research, and classroom hours have been training people for exactly this moment. Leah Schade is back on Homebrewed, and she has spent the better part of a decade surveying thousands of preachers about what it actually costs to stand up on Sunday and tell the truth. We talked about fear, the unity trap, the cut-flower problem in progressive preaching, the assessment tool that turns courage into context, and the very specific reasons your sermon last week left your stomach in knots. This is the conversation I would want sitting next to me on a Saturday night when the sermon will not come and the news will not stop.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary. Her newest book,Preaching and Social Issues: Tools and Tactics for Empowering Your Prophetic Voice, is the practical, aggressively pragmatic follow-up to her 2019 Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide. Previous Podcast Visits Include: ⁠Faith During an Ecological Collapse ⁠and ⁠Preaching in a time of Crisis from Corona to Climate⁠

Theology Beer Camp 2026 — The God-Podcalypse — hits Kansas City October 8–10, exactly one month before the election⁠⁠⁠⁠. Thirty scholars (Ilia Delio, Cornel West, Diana Butler Bass, Gary Dorrien, and a stack more), thirty God-pods, four post-apocalyptic stages, and the community everyone keeps telling us is the real reason they come back. Come find your people at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp ⁠

⁠Join our upcoming online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Darkly Radiant Struggle with Gary Dorrien May 23, 2026

Show notes

Gary Dorrien joins me and Aaron to close out six weeks of Theology for Troublemakers with a session that covered more ground than any before it — Kelly Brown Douglas as the fourth womanist founder, the double negative she cut from Resurrection Hope that contains the argument she's still wrestling with, Raphael Warnock as the student James Cone staked his hopes for Black theology on, the last conversation Gary had with Cone before he died, and forty unsparing minutes on Niebuhr's Zionism that ended where Gary needed it to end: Palestinian children are every bit as precious as Israeli children and no less deserving of a decent future. If you want the lectures, the readings, the supplemental interviews, and the discussion guides, head to www.HomebrewedClasses.com.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Theology Beer Camp 2026 — The God-Podcalypse — hits Kansas City October 8–10, exactly one month before the election⁠⁠⁠. Thirty scholars (Ilia Delio, Cornel West, Diana Butler Bass, Gary Dorrien, and a stack more), thirty God-pods, four post-apocalyptic stages, and the community everyone keeps telling us is the real reason they come back. Come find your people at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp

Join our upcoming online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠⁠The Future of Religion ⁠⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠⁠

Previous Episodes with Gary or Aaron

Gary Dorrien is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Religion Before Belief: What's actually dying and what was always the deeper thing May 18, 2026

Show notes

Most weeks now I get an email from someone who's sure they've believed a lie their whole life — that the faith holding their family, their friendships, their sense of self together is collapsing, and they don't know who they are without it. I've been that person more than once. So in this essay I want to say the thing I wish someone had said to me: what's dying might not be your faith. It might just be your idea of what your faith was. Drawing on Whitehead's four stages of religion — ritual, emotion, belief, rationalization — I make the case that belief-centered Christianity is a late, late development, maybe 200 years old in its current intensity, not 2,000. For most of human history religion was bodies moving together, food shared, the dead remembered. The relationship was never in the certainty. It was always in the meal. If you're in the panic right now, this one's for you. Pull up a chair.

If this conversation is interesting, then come join me and Ilia Delio for our upcoming class, The Future of Religion, where we will digging in to the evolution of religion, its current belief centered crisis, and the possibilities on the horizon.

This audio essay is the kind of theology you will find at ⁠Process This — my Substack⁠. You the ⁠join 75k+ subscribers⁠ and get them all delievered to your inbox or ⁠follow the podcast feed⁠ wherever you listen.

Join our upcoming online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION⁠

Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, ⁠The Future of Religion ⁠— for everyone who’s read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn’t quite fit anymore. Together they’ll trace religion’s evolutionary arc and map what’s emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you’re able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at ⁠www.thefutureofreligion.com⁠

⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp 2026 — The God-Podcalypse — hits Kansas City October 8–10, exactly one month before the election⁠⁠⁠. Thirty scholars (Ilia Delio, Cornel West, Diana Butler Bass, Gary Dorrien, and a stack more), thirty God-pods, four post-apocalyptic stages, and the community everyone keeps telling us is the real reason they come back. Come find your people at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp ⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected