Monday Minutes E2_An Atheist Stumbles into Theology Beer Camp 2025
As I bump some Grammatrain and/or Third Day…
So, first time at Theology Beer Camp, thrown by Tripp Fuller and the Family (sounds like a musical group, and two come to mind but one of them starts with a person’s name I’d rather not say). It was a special blend of wonderful people sensitive to how their Christian faith must respond to dystopic conditions, good food, fellowship, and kick ass sessions. Dope.
Why did I go? Good question. I didn’t know until I arrived.
While there were scholars present who are focused on an academic analysis of theology, religious studies, philosophy of religion, and the like, this wasn’t AAR. Less on the theoretical and more on the existential, these three days were about embodied renewal, enrichment, and mandate. Falling in love with God again persuades one to engage the world passionately, “groaning” with all creation toward that state of holistic justice where all are kin in the “kindom.”
Buuuuttttt…
I’m not particularly interested in “God” in the way many people attending Beer Camp are. At this point (and perhaps for longer than I knew), I would be defined on many scales in the philosophy of religion as a nontheist. As with Nietzsche, the idea of “God” is no longer compatible with the world I’ve co-created, which contains my own conclusions of what should and shouldn’t be done, who I can have sex with and when, and not much hope in immortality/heaven/afterlife. At least any immortality/heaven/afterlife that is more than my bodily decomposition transforming into dirt eaten by worms and plants and taking varying shapes perpetually ad infinitum. And, of course, the absence of a literal belief in a traditional life after death is not a point of contention for many believers, as well.
However, this doesn’t take away from the very dope something happening over these three days.
Anyway…
I ask again: why the hell was I at Theology Beer Camp? Though pursuing aims that are seen by some as uncommon, having pursued secular studies in theological seminaries and gaining many theologically minded nerd friends from professors to clergypeople as well as doing philosophy of religion in other sectors always keeps me within reach of wormholes that can pull me back into the realm of the confessional every now and then. Tripp and Tony Jones opened a wormhole and I happened to be lurking somewhere close enough for the abduction. And I’m glad they did.
With people who were exploring fresh ways of thinking about how to make their faith active in a world riddled with ICE agents brutally mistreating humans, civil wars over resources and the lack thereof, the hiding of the despicable histories of the government, I found solace. A rendering of the Gospel that destroys altars erected to church at the expense of systemic justice for the most vulnerable as communicated by Stacy and Juan Floyd-Thomas pierced the ears and hearts of all under their spell. As Peter Enns and Jared Byas invited Keri Ladouceur and myself into a conversation on the possibilities of the Bible in a modern era, I enjoyed a playfully robust discussion on the role of metaphor, how we co-create meaning with any text, and how beautiful reimagining our relationship to the text in question can be (Killah Priest, “B.I.B.L.E.”). After those moments, I thought about how the Bible had unintentionally been used to wound me and those in the church I was raised in ways that stifled the flourishing of authentic humanity, empathy, justice, and creativity. While I don’t ever foresee any of the plethora of more or less “accepted” Bibles of various sects being central to my life again, I walked away from that session reminded that the text, in its beneficial and problematic entanglement, has so many resources that can be used atheistically and/or theistically in the struggle to realize the other side of the sharpest of birth pangs Philip Clayton tells us all of creation from the Big Bang to the mother’s travail in childbirth is/are “groaning” for.
That’s what a nontheist can get from spending three days with passionate theists who strive to become God(s) and transform the world as the world transforms them.
