Process This: Essays at the Intersection of Philosophy, Science, Religion and Culture
Dr. Tripp Fuller
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- 19
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- 2025
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About Process This: Essays at the Intersection of Philosophy, Science, Religion and Culture
Essays at the Intersection of Philosophy, Science, Religion and Culture
- Publisher
- Dr. Tripp Fuller
- Category
- religion & spirituality · society & culture
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- No
- First episode
- 13 Feb 2025
- Latest episode
- 18 May 2026
Latest episodes
19 episodes in the feed.
18 May 2026
Religion Before Belief: What's actually dying and what was always the deeper thing
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 This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
12 May 2026
Binge-Watching as Spiritual Formation (And Not in a Good Way)
A year ago I started binge-watching shows during workouts and didn't notice when it became a problem. Then a new season dropped, I finished it in 48 hours, and I sat in front of the screen feeling a specific blankness — that sensation of having consumed something and received nothing. This essay is about that feeling. Not screen time. Not the hours. The architecture beneath them, and what it is doing to our capacity for depth. This is the first in a short series of essays in conversation with the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, whose book The Disappearance of Rituals I cannot stop thinking about. Han names what most of our cultural commentary cannot quite reach: the loss of the forms that once let experience accumulate into meaning. Over the next several essays I'll put his diagnosis to work on the actual texture of our lives — our screens, our feeds, our worship, our politics, our relationships. Here is the question this one leaves you with: what have we quietly trained ourselves out of? 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 This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
22 Apr 2026
The Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Nonviolence as Metaphysical Revelation
There is a habit in Western theology so old it feels like air: imagining God as the supreme instance of coercive power — the divine despot whose omnipotence is measured by the capacity to override whatever resists. Whitehead called this the deep idolatry, and we would rather work like cross-builders than cross-bearers because of it. This essay argues that nonviolence is not a secondary ethical application of Christian faith, a political strategy, or a counsel of perfection for those with the luxury to afford it. Nonviolence is a metaphysical revelation — a disclosure of the actual structure of divine agency in the world, worked out across the long history of the cosmos and concentrated in the particular life of a first-century Jewish peasant. The power made perfect in weakness is not an exception to how the universe works. It is the deepest account of how the universe works. I am writing as someone who has done the cross-building too, and this is my attempt to name what is at stake when we make that choice, and what becomes possible when we stop. 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. This lecture was sponsored by Humanitas, the Anabaptist Mennonite Centre at Trinity Western University. I was honored by the invitation, and the three days I spent with students and faculty were some of the best conversations I've had this year. My thanks to Dr. Myron Penner, who runs the Centre, and to Dr. Shannon Parrott and Dr. Jesse Nickel for their responses to the lecture — responses that sharpened the argument in real time. And to the Canadian podcast listeners who came out after the talk: you made the trip. ONLINE CLASS - Theology for Troublemakers: Christian Social Ethics from the Margins The injustices we face are immense — but they are not unique. Previous generations confronted the same powers with theological conviction and strategic brilliance. The question is whether we'll learn from them. This 6-week online course, led by Dr. Gary Dorrien and Dr. Aaron Stauffer, recovers the radical tradition of Christian social ethics — from Reverdy Ransom and Reinhold Niebuhr to James Cone and the Welfare Rights Movement — and asks what faithfulness demands of us right now. Weekly lectures, live Q&A conversations, guest lecturers, and an online community included. 💰 Donation-based — including $0 🔗 Sign up at HomebrewedClasses.com This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
15 Apr 2026
Two Eyes, One Reality: Toward Fuller Knowing
I've been wearing glasses since seventh grade, when I discovered mid-car-ride that the rest of my family could actually read a license plate and I had no idea that was something people could do. When the optometrist put corrective lenses in front of my eyes for the first time, I gasped. That's the image I keep coming back to when I think about what happens when a philosophy filters out whole categories of human experience — not maliciously, just structurally, the way astigmatism works. You adapt so well to what you're missing that you don't know you're missing it. This essay is about that. It started with a conversation I witnessed between Philip Clayton and Dan Dennett — two brilliant philosophers, one coffee shop moment, and a question that stopped everything: where in a purely physical universe does "mattering" actually live? It moved through two more conversations in an Edinburgh coffee shop a week apart — one with a theologian who could defend every doctrine but couldn't explain why holding his newborn made him weep, and one with an evolutionary biologist who could describe the neurochemistry of her daughter's depression but couldn't answer the question her daughter was actually asking. Both were half-blind in the same direction, just from opposite sides. What I'm after here is coherence. Whitehead's test, Griffin's challenge, Clayton's emergence framework — the claim that a philosophy failing to account for time, causation, moral urgency, beauty, consciousness, or the felt reality of love isn't humble or rigorous. It's just incomplete. And the good news is that correcting for both eyes doesn't require abandoning science or embracing magic. It requires something harder: sitting with the full weight of human experience and refusing to explain any of it away. You can read this essay and find plenty of others on my Substack, Process This. Join 600+ Listeners, 30 theologians, & 30 God-Pods at Theology Beer Camp 2026 this October 8-10 in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE CLASS - Theology for Troublemakers: Christian Social Ethics from the Margins The injustices we face are immense — but they are not unique. Previous generations confronted the same powers with theological conviction and strategic brilliance. The question is whether we'll learn from them. This 6-week online course, led by Dr. Gary Dorrien and Dr. Aaron Stauffer, recovers the radical tradition of Christian social ethics — from Reverdy Ransom and Reinhold Niebuhr to James Cone and the Welfare Rights Movement — and asks what faithfulness demands of us right now. Weekly lectures, live Q&A conversations, guest lecturers, and an online community included. 💰 Donation-based — including $0 🔗 Sign up at HomebrewedClasses.com This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
16 Mar 2026
The Person, Not the Principle: How Bonhoeffer’s Christology Became Treason — and What Eric Metaxas Did With It
This is an audio essay from Process This, my Substack — head over there if you want more essays like this one, and subscribe if you want them delivered to you. In this one, I'm going deep on a question that sounds biographical but is actually theological: how did Dietrich Bonhoeffer — the man who stood at a lectern in 1933, surrounded by Nazi-pin-wearing theology students, and told them that the historical Jewish particularity of Jesus Christ was "the last truth separating the churches from barbarism" — how did that man become the patron saint of Christian nationalism? The short answer is Eric Metaxas, a bestselling biography, and a fabricated quote. But the real answer is older and more dangerous than any of that, because what Metaxas did to Bonhoeffer is exactly what the German Christians did to Jesus — they turned a Person into a Principle, kept the symbol, and evicted the flesh. Bonhoeffer had a word for it in 1933. He called it Docetism. And here's the thing that should take your breath away: his Christology is not just the subject of the abuse — it is its diagnosis. I'll also tell you about the five-minute rant I recorded and deleted, what Bonhoeffer's Christmas 1942 letter to the resistance said about contempt, and why I think the most important question he leaves us with is not primarily about Eric Metaxas — it's the one he put to those sweat-soaked students, and puts to us now: which are you following — the Person or the Principle? You can subscribe to the Audio Essay podcast feed here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2 Mar 2026
MAGA and the Post-Christian America: A Meditation on Power, the Cross, and the World We're Choosing
In this audio essay from my SubStack ,Process This, I take Stephen Miller's claim that the "real world" is governed by strength and force and use it as a window into something much bigger than one political figure—a diagnosis of the soul of America. Drawing on the thesis Tom Holland developed in Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, Reinhold Niebuhr's The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, and the Black prophetic tradition of King and West, traced by Gary Dorrien in his 3 volume history of the Black Social Gospel movement, I argue that what we're witnessing isn't actually Christian nationalism triumphing—it's post-Christian nationalism wearing Christian clothes. The cross is still everywhere, but the crucified one has been removed, and what's left is just Rome again: empire, domination, and the ancient lie that might makes right. But here's where it gets really interesting—Niebuhr doesn't let progressives off the hook either, naming them as "children of light" who kept the Christian ethics of justice and victim-focus but severed them from grace, forgiveness, and the theological roots that make them sustainable. It's a prophetic call that refuses easy partisanship, traces the American rhetoric of force back through white supremacy to its Roman origins, and ultimately invites us back to the "sublime madness" of King's Beloved Community—where power is redefined not as domination but as the capacity to achieve a shared, constructive purpose. You can subscribe to the Audio Essay podcast feed here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
16 Feb 2026
The Cloud and the Kingdom: Discerning the Spirits of a New Economic Epoch
I don't remember who first told me to read Yanis Varoufakis's Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, but whoever you are—thank you and also how dare you. This book broke something in my brain, in that good way where you realize the map you've been using doesn't match the territory anymore and now you have to rethink everything. Varoufakis isn't a theologian, but reading him felt like encountering a prophetic voice—someone naming the powers and principalities of our moment with a clarity that made me uncomfortable in all the right ways. So what you're about to read isn't exactly a book review. It's more like the stuff that ran through my head while I was reading—the connections I couldn't stop making to our faith, our politics, our souls. I kept thinking about Paul's language of powers and principalities. I kept thinking about the psalmist's warning against idols. I kept thinking about Jesus flipping tables in the temple, and wondering what he'd do with an algorithm. Varoufakis gave me a new vocabulary for something I'd been feeling but couldn't name: the sense that we've crossed into a new kind of unfreedom, one that's less about chains on our bodies and more about the curation of our desires. Consider this an invitation. Read the book. Argue with it. Let it mess with you. And then let's figure out together what faithfulness looks like when the lords live in the cloud. You can subscribe to the Audio Essay podcast feed here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11 Feb 2026
Steve Bannon Is Not an Idiot: Reinhold Niebuhr's Unheeded Advice for a Democracy in Crisis
This is an audio essay from my Substack, Process This. Look, I wasn't planning to write 5,000 words on Steve Bannon, but then he goes on his podcast and announces that ICE—the same agency that just shot two American citizens in Minneapolis—is going to "surround the polls" in November, and I couldn't help myself. So I went back to Reinhold Niebuhr's 1944 book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, where he divided the political world into naive idealists who think reason and dialogue will save us, and moral cynics who understand power but recognize no law beyond their own will. Turns out Niebuhr basically wrote Bannon's biography eighty years early. This essay traces how Bannon evolved from "flooding the zone with shit" to proposing armed federal agents at polling places—and why liberals kept bringing fact-checks to a knife fight. Niebuhr called the children of darkness "wise" because they understand self-interest, but he also called them "evil" because they serve no good beyond domination. The question he leaves us with is whether the children of light can get wise without losing their souls. Spoiler: he doesn't promise we win. PS. I was in the middle of writing a completely different essay on Niebuhr before Bannon interrupted me. I loved re-reading The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness recently, and it's way too timely. You can subscribe to the Audio Essay podcast feed here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11 Feb 2026
The Allure of the Screen and the Erosion of the Soul: Smartphones, Fascination, and the Call to Contemplation
This is an audio version of an essay on my substack, Process This. In it, I explore the tension between contemplation and fascination in the digital age, particularly regarding smartphone use. Inspired by my son's school essay on phone-free schools, I took up a Lenten social media fast. Learning how deeply our digital habits have affected our capacity for genuine connection has been revelatory. Inspired by recent conversations with philosophers Kevin Hart and Norman Wirzba, I develop a distinction between contemplation and fascination. Through their attention-fragmenting design, smartphones ultimately create hollow connections that diminish our ability to be present with others and ourselves. Rather than advocating for complete technological rejection, I think about intentionally cultivating contemplative practices as a counterbalance to digital habituation, suggesting that creating space for more profound attention may be essential to human freedom in our increasingly digitized world. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 80k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. Related Resources Norman Wirzba Love's Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis (Book) This Sacred Life: Humanity's Place in a Wounded World (Book) “Attention and Responsibility: The Work of Prayer” in The Phenomenology of Prayer (Article) Farm to Table Theology (HBC Podcast) The Way of Love (HBC Podcast) Kevin Hart Contemplation: The Movements of the Soul (Book) Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (Book) Hartmut Rosa Being at Home in the World (Podcast) Resonance In An Accelerated Age (Podcast) Related books by Rosa:The Uncontrollability of the World , Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, and his newest book, Democracy Needs Religion. 3 Days of Craft Nerdiness with 50+ Theologians & God-Pods and 600 new friends. A Five-Week Online Lenten Class w/ John Dominic Crossan Join us for a transformative 5-week Lenten journey on "Paul the Pharisee: Faith and Politics in a Divided World."This course examines the Apostle Paul as a Pharisee deeply engaged with the turbulent political and religious landscape of his time. For details and to sign-up for any donation, including 0, head over here. _____________________ Hang with 40+ Scholars & Podcasts and 600 people at Theology Beer Camp 2025 (Oct. 16-18) in St. Paul, MN. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 45 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Theology Beer Camp | St. Paul, MN | October 16-18, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
6 Feb 2026
Cheap Grace in a Red Hat, Stealing Bonhoeffer’s Fire: What Bonhoeffer Actually Meant—and Why It Condemns His Admirers
Friends, this week we're diving into something that's been eating at me for a while now—how the architects of Christian nationalism have had the audacity to claim Dietrich Bonhoeffer as one of their own. I'm talking about Project 2025 invoking "costly grace" as if Bonhoeffer wasn't writing about them. Here's the thing: when Bonhoeffer penned those famous words in 1937, he wasn't crafting a devotional for suburban book clubs—he was running an illegal seminary under Nazi surveillance, training pastors who were forfeiting their careers, their pensions, and their safety to follow Jesus instead of the Führer. The German Christians of his day fused faith with national identity, blessed political power, and demanded loyalty to a strongman who promised to make their country great again. Sound familiar? The brutal irony is that those who now quote Bonhoeffer are functionally aligned with the very forces he resisted—they're the German Christians quoting the Confessing Church, and that's about as theologically obtuse as Caesar celebrating the cross while forgetting he's the one who put Jesus on it. Costly grace is still available, y'all—it just actually has to cost something. Read the full essay and subscribe for more at my SubStack, Process This You can subscribe to the Audio Essay podcast feed here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 Feb 2026
The Exhausted Soul and a World Gone Mute: The Economy That Ate Your Soul and Wants to Blame You
Okay, so you know that bone-deep exhaustion you feel? That sense that no matter how hard you run, you're still falling behind? What if I told you that's not a personal failure—it's a structural trap? German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has been asking why modern life feels like a whirlpool we can't escape, and his diagnosis is devastating: our growth economy requires our exhaustion. It's a feature, not a bug. But here's where it gets good for us theology nerds—Rosa's solution isn't just slowing down. It's something he calls resonance, and when you hear him describe it, you're gonna think, "Wait, that sounds like prayer. That sounds like what church is supposed to be." This essay is my attempt to lay out Rosa's big ideas and why I think every person of faith should be paying attention to this guy. We're reading his new book Time and World with Matt Segall this February, so consider this your on-ramp and feel the lure. If you want to join the Rosa reading group this February, become a member of the Process This Substack and you will get invited to all the zoom sessions and have access to the recordings after. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? This Lenten class begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
19 Jan 2026
Bonhoeffer’s Warning, Unheeded: the Moral Collapse of White Evangelicalism
This is an audio essay from my SubStack, Process This. You can head over here to read or watch the entire essay. I grew up as a Baptist church planter's kid, and the church gave me everything that matters most to me—my faith, my love of Scripture, my relationship with Jesus. But for over two decades now, I've watched the tradition that formed me transform into something I barely recognize. In this essay, I explore the concept of "sequential complicity"—how small, seemingly reasonable compromises lock communities into escalating patterns of moral accommodation. Using research on how ordinary German Christians became bystanders during the Nazi era, I trace a similar pattern in white American evangelicalism: from the real origins of the Religious Right in the 1970s (hint: it wasn't abortion), through Reagan, through the Iraq War, and into the Trump era. The data is stark—white evangelicals have undergone the most dramatic ethical shift of any religious group in modern polling history. And the most devout churchgoers aren't the exception; they're the most captured. This isn't an outsider's attack. It's a lament from someone who still reads his Bible every night and talks to Jesus before bed. I'm not asking anyone to become a Democrat. I'm asking whether the sequence has carried us somewhere we never intended to go—and whether it's too late to find our way back. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 75k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. UPCOMING ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? For over five decades, Dr. John Dominic Crossan has been one of the world's foremost scholars of the historical Jesus—rigorously reconstructing the life, teachings, and world of a first-century Jewish peasant who proclaimed God's Rule in Roman-occupied Galilee. His work has shaped an entire generation of scholarship and transformed how millions understand the figure at the center of Christian faith. This Lenten class begins where all of Dom's work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 Jan 2026
Paul Tillich's Socialist Decision and the Crisis of American Christianity
This is an audio essay from my SubStack, Process This. You can head over here to read or watch the entire essay. In this episode, we explore Paul Tillich's largely forgotten 1933 work The Socialist Decision, written as Hitler rose to power and costing Tillich his professorship and homeland. Here, I explore what it reveals about the current crisis of American Christianity. Tillich argued that authentic human existence requires holding two roots in tension: the "powers of origin" (belonging, tradition, community) and the "prophetic demand" (justice, critique, openness to the stranger). When we collapse into one or the other, we get either authoritarian tribalism or rootless abstraction, and Tillich saw both failures at work in Weimar Germany. The parallels to our moment are striking: white Christian nationalism offers powerful symbols of belonging without prophetic self-criticism, while progressive Christianity has often provided critique without the embodied community and sacred symbols that move the human heart (something I explored here in The Perfect Storm). Tillich's prescription—what he called "theonomy"—charts a third way: a faith rooted in Scripture, sacrament, and particular community yet free because all these point beyond themselves to a God no finite form can capture. This essay was inspired by two recent Substack posts from two of my regular reads, Tony Jones’ What the Hell is Going On and Robert Wright’s Some useful Trump-Hitler comparisons (in light of Minneapolis and Venezuela). Tony ends his post by saying, “I don’t know what will replace Christendom as our moral framework... Some days — and today is one of those days — I fear that we’re too fragmented to come back together under any single umbrella of morality.” Tony and I had a rather lengthy text exchange about it, and in it, I said, “It seems as we lose the cultural and ethical inertia of Christendom, Evangelicals get mean, and Mainline Protestants turn to vapid nostalgia.” As I was doing dishes and ruminating, I thought of Paul Tillich’s The Socialist Decision, an often-neglected work, and found it helpful in processing the current moment. What sparked it? Robert Wright’s measured and provocative reflections on useful Trump-Hitler comparisons. If this essay is interesting, then check out all three. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 75k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City! UPCOMING ONLINE CLASS: The Rise of the Nones One-third of Americans now claim no religious affiliation. That's 100 million people. Ryan Burge & Tony Jones have conducted the first large-scale survey of American "Nones", which reveals 4 distinct categories—each requiring a different approach. Understanding the difference could transform everything from your ministry to your own spiritual quest. Get info & join the donation-based class (including 0) here. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
24 Nov 2025
Finding Our Way Forward: How Whitehead Shows Us Religion as Life's Creative Force
This is an audio essay from my Process This substack. In it, I reflect on Alfred North Whitehead and what he can teach us about religion in our time. You see, Whitehead didn't see religion as just doctrines or institutions—he understood it as a creative force that connects our deepest ideals with the passion that actually moves us to act in the world. And here's what's beautiful: he shows us that the divine isn't a force that dominates or controls, but a gentle invitation woven through all of reality, calling us toward truth, beauty, and goodness. We're not passive recipients of this, we're active partners, and every act of kindness, every moment of genuine connection actually adds something real to the universe that wouldn't exist without us. The real transformation in history, whether it's been the Civil Rights Movement or the climate movement today, happens not through force and domination, but through the slower, harder, more beautiful path of persuasion—changing hearts and minds one person at a time. And here's what gives me hope: nothing we do in love is ever lost. It all becomes part of this larger story of the universe moving toward wholeness. So in this post-religious age, we desperately need this capacity to be moved by beauty and called by goodness. The question isn't what we believe, it's whether we'll let ourselves be caught up in this larger movement of love. To join the Whitehead reading group, become a supporting member of the Process This Substack. In addition to Zoom invites to the reading group and archives of each session, you will get an ad-free podcast feed of the podcast and invites to all the other live streams with friends like Diana Butler Bass & Ryan Burge. UPCOMING ONLINE ADVENT CLASS w/ Diana Butler Bass Join us for a transformative four-week Advent journey exploring how the four gospels speak their own revolutionary word against empire—both in their ancient context under Roman occupation and for our contemporary world shaped by capitalism, militarism, and nationalism. This course invites you into an alternative calendar and rhythm. We'll discover how these ancient texts of resistance offer wisdom for our own moment of political turmoil, economic inequality, and ecological crisis. This class is donation-based, including 0. You can sign-up at www.HomebrewedClasses.com This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 70,000other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5 Nov 2025
An Adventure in Ideas: Discovering Whitehead's "Religion in the Making"
In this audio essay, I explore why Alfred North Whitehead's "Religion in the Making" might be exactly what we need in 2025—especially if you're someone who's done with traditional religion but can't shake the feeling that something sacred is going on. I share Whitehead's remarkable story: a Cambridge mathematician who didn't even start teaching philosophy until he was 63, who lost his son in WWI, and whose wife Evelyn taught him that beauty and love aren't decorations on philosophy—they are the philosophy. Writing in 1926 amidst post-war trauma and scientific revolution, Whitehead saw past the tired warfare between science and religion to something more generous: What if the universe isn't dead matter but alive with meaning? What if we're not weird exceptions in a meaningless cosmos but examples of what the universe has been doing all along? I explain why this matters for anyone deconstructing faith, loving science, seeking justice, or simply hungry for a spirituality that's intellectually honest and alive to mystery. Most beautifully, Whitehead reminds us that religion isn't about safety or certainty—it's an adventure of the spirit, and maybe it's time we said yes to that adventure again. To join the Whitehead reading group, become a supporting member of the Process This Substack. In addition to Zoom invites to the reading group and archives of each session, you will get an ad-free podcast feed of the podcast and invites to all the other live streams with friends like Diana Butler Bass & Ryan Burge. UPCOMING ONLINE ADVENT CLASS w/ Diana Butler Bass Join us for a transformative four-week Advent journey exploring how the four gospels speak their own revolutionary word against empire—both in their ancient context under Roman occupation and for our contemporary world shaped by capitalism, militarism, and nationalism. Advent marks the beginning of the church year—an invitation to step out of the empire's time and into God's time, where the last are first, the mighty are scattered, and a child born in occupied territory changes everything. This course invites you into an alternative calendar and rhythm. While our modern world races through December toward consumption and productivity, Advent calls us to a different time—a counter-imperial waiting, a subversive hope, a radical reimagining of how God enters the world. What will we experience? Each week, we'll hear one gospel's unique vision of the birth narrative, allowing Matthew, Luke, John, and Mark to speak in their own voices about what it means for God to show up when empires think they're in control. We'll discover how these ancient texts of resistance offer wisdom for our own moment of political turmoil, economic inequality, and ecological crisis. This class is donation-based, including 0. You can sign-up at www.HomebrewedClasses.com Sign up HERE to stay up to date on Theology Beer Camp 2026 & get EARLY ACCESS to the cheapest tickets. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 70,000other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5 Jun 2025
The Perfect Storm: Why Liberal Christianity Faces an Existential Crisis
This is an audio essay from my SubStack, Process This. You can head over here to read or watch the entire essay. I've been tracking the peculiar contradictions of American religious life for years now, and there's one puzzle that keeps me up at night: Why does liberal theology keep producing brilliant scholarship while liberal churches empty out? It's not just a marketing problem or bad leadership—it's what my friend Bo Sanders calls a "perfect storm." In this episode, I dig into the fundamental incompatibility between liberalism's love affair with individual choice, Christianity's call to communal formation, and consumer capitalism's corrosive effects on both. We've got a faith tradition that's too secular for believers, too religious for secularists, and too academic for everyone else. Meanwhile, 55% of mainline Protestants voted for Trump, so we can't even claim the "liberal" label fits the folks in our pews. I walk through five predicaments killing liberal Christianity—from what Henry Nelson Wieman called "spiritual thinness" to what I'm calling "liberal laryngitis," the inability to speak clearly on anything that matters. Add cultural shifts that make Sunday just another day for Target runs, and you've got churches with pipe organ endowments bigger than their mission budgets, wondering why nobody shows up. But here's the thing: something valuable dies if we lose thoughtful faith entirely. The question isn't whether liberal Christianity deserves to survive—it's whether we can build something sturdy enough to weather this storm. Maybe it's time to take Whitehead's advice and "disembark on Mount Ararat" to build something entirely new. Fair warning: This one's going to make some folks uncomfortable. But as Niebuhr reminds us, Christianity always stands under judgment—including its liberal expressions. ____________________________________________________________________________ I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 80k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. Theology Beer Camp | St. Paul, MN | October 16-18, 2025 3 Days of Craft Nerdiness with 50+ Theologians & God-Pods and 600 new friends. Online Class: Rediscovering the Spirit: Hand-Raisers, Han, & the Holy Ghost "Rediscovering the Spirit: Hand-Raisers, Han, and the Holy Ghost" is an open-online course exploring the dynamic, often overlooked third person of the Trinity. Based on Grace Ji-Sun Kim's groundbreaking work on the Holy Spirit (pneumatology), this class takes participants on a journey through biblical foundations, historical developments, diverse cultural perspectives, and practical applications of Spirit theology. As always, this class is donation-based, including 0. To get class info and sign up, head over here. _____________________ Hang with 40+ Scholars & Podcasts and 600 people at Theology Beer Camp 2025 (Oct. 16-18) in St. Paul, MN. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 45 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 Apr 2025
Standing With God in Gethsemane's Darkness: Bonhoeffer's Call to a Faith of Solidarity in Suffering
This is an audio version of an essay on my substack, Process This. In it, I unpack Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological reflection on Jesus' experience in the Garden of Gethsemane, which he sees as a central metaphor for authentic Christian faith. I struggle with Bonhoeffer's conviction that true Christianity isn't found in religious performance or institutional power but in standing with God in suffering. Following Bonhoeffer's interpretation of Jesus's question, "Could you not stay awake with me one hour?" I explore how he sees Jesus calling believers to practice solidarity with those who suffer rather than seeking religious escape or comfort. According to Bonhoeffer, authentic faith emerges through presence in places of abandonment and vulnerability, where God is revealed not as a problem-solver but as one who enters fully into human suffering. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 80k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. 3 Days of Craft Nerdiness with 50+ Theologians & God-Pods and 600 new friends. ONLINE CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT: The Many Faces of Christ Today The question Jesus asked his disciples still resonates today: "Who do you say that I am?" Join our transformative 5-week online learning community as we explore a rich tapestry of contemporary Christologies. Experience how diverse theological voices create a compelling vision of Jesus Christ for today's world. Expand your spiritual horizons. Challenge your assumptions. Enrich your faith. As always, the class is donation-based (including 0), so head over to ManyFacesOfChrist.com for more details and to sign up! _____________________ Hang with 40+ Scholars & Podcasts and 600 people at Theology Beer Camp 2025 (Oct. 16-18) in St. Paul, MN. This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 45 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Theology Beer Camp | St. Paul, MN | October 16-18, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
28 Feb 2025
Manifesting America: MAGA & the New Civil Religion
This is an audio version of an essay on my substack, Process This. The essay explores the evolving spiritual landscape of America, noting the decline of traditional religious institutions and the rise of new forms of meaning-making. Here, I examine how Donald Trump and the MAGA movement reflect a unique manifestation of a new civil religion, combining aspects of self-creation, positive thinking, and atavism. Historical context traces the roots of self-creation from Martin Luther's reforms through the Enlightenment and the rise of consumer capitalism. I highlight how Trump's persona and the MAGA movement resonate with American cultural consciousness, focusing on self-promotion, community, and opposition. It also explores the psychological and sociopolitical implications of this movement, the erosion of community, and the yearning for a mythological past, providing insights into the appeal and dangers of this modern spiritual-political fusion. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 80k+ other people on Process This. If you want to read or watch the essay, you will find it here on SubStack. Resources: (Book) Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians, Tara Isabella Burton (Book) The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today, Byung-Chul Han (Lecture) Self-Creation, Tara Isabella Burton A Five-Week Online Lenten Class w/ John Dominic Crossan Join us for a transformative 5-week Lenten journey on "Paul the Pharisee: Faith and Politics in a Divided World."This course examines the Apostle Paul as a Pharisee deeply engaged with the turbulent political and religious landscape of his time. Through the lens of his letters and historical context, we will explore Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ Life-Vision, his interpretation of the Execution-and-Resurrection, and their implications for nonviolence and faithful resistance against empire. Each week, we will delve into a specific aspect of Paul’s theology and legacy, reflecting on its relevance for our own age of autocracy and political turmoil. . For details and to sign-up for any donation, including 0, head over here. _____________________ Join our class - TRUTH IN TOUGH TIMES: Global Voices of Liberation This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 45 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 Feb 2025
The New Colonialism: Power, Data, and the Transformation of Human Experience
This is an audio version of an essay on my substack, Process This. The essay explores how digital platforms have transformed human experience into a new form of colonialism. It discusses the historical evolution of the internet from a decentralized space to one controlled by tech giants, and highlights the data extraction, surveillance, and algorithmic governance that dominate modern digital spaces. By drawing parallels to historical colonialism, the essay outlines the systematic ways in which platforms explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate alternative ways of being social. It also examines the rise of a new digital aristocracy in Silicon Valley and the erosion of personal autonomy. Finally, it explores emerging forms of resistance and reimagination, emphasizing the need for digital wisdom, community-owned platforms, and new forms of digital literacy to reclaim human autonomy and genuine connection. I hope you enjoy it and consider supporting my work by joining 80k+ other people on Process This. You can read the entire essay HERE. Related Resources PODCAST -The Tech Takeover: Reimagining Connection in a Digital World on TNT where Tripp gets Bo's input on this essay BOOK - Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back by Ulises A. Mejias & Nick Couldry BOOK - The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can't? By Nick Couldry LECTURE - AI and the Tragedy of the Commons: a decolonial perspective with Ulises A. Mejias LECTURE - The Corporatization of Social Space by Nick Couldry A Five-Week Online Lenten Class w/ John Dominic Crossan Join us for a transformative 5-week Lenten journey on "Paul the Pharisee: Faith and Politics in a Divided World."This course examines the Apostle Paul as a Pharisee deeply engaged with the turbulent political and religious landscape of his time. Through the lens of his letters and historical context, we will explore Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ Life-Vision, his interpretation of the Execution-and-Resurrection, and their implications for nonviolence and faithful resistance against empire. Each week, we will delve into a specific aspect of Paul’s theology and legacy, reflecting on its relevance for our own age of autocracy and political turmoil. . For details and to sign-up for any donation, including 0, head over here. _____________________ Join our class - TRUTH IN TOUGH TIMES: Global Voices of Liberation This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 45 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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