Religious Socialism Podcast · DSA Religion and Socialism Commission

Socialism Nerd-Out with Tripp Fuller

·56 min·3 clips

Tripp says the resurrection means “crosses don’t have the last word” and that God is “cross dead.”

Ralph welcomes Tripp Fuller, introduced here as someone with a PhD in philosophy and religion and as a podcaster. The conversation starts with the ordinary question of how a life like his gets built. Fuller begins in rural North Carolina. He talks about growing up as a pastor's kid in a family he sees as unusually open on women doing things and on science. That church life was not narrow or fearful for him. It felt like a good way into faith. He also points to his father's organizing work with people living with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. Those church members were part of protest activity at a time of social ostracism. From there the discussion moves into the habits of thought that connect theology, philosophy, and politics for him. Fuller says process thought helps him see relationships as already entangled. For him, value comes through relationship. Responsibility does too. That frame reaches beyond church life into other religious traditions, nations, economies, and the human relation to nature. The host then presses him on the overlap between process thought and Marx. Fuller treats that overlap as real and useful, but also historically complicated. He notes that some of Marx's assumptions about energy belong to a different intellectual moment and that science should not be flattened into a slogan. He does not want Marxism treated like a scientific badge. He argues that people can do more damage than good when they explain science to actual scientists with too much certainty and too little humility. He compares that habit to bad Christian meme culture that confidently states claims most Christians never believed. The episode closes with an invitation toward Theology Beer Camp in Denver and a reminder that the show also lives in the orbit of organizing and community-building.

As heard by us

A careful conversation about faith, philosophy, and social responsibility that keeps the ideas close to lived reality.

Tripp Fuller comes across as a pastor's kid from rural North Carolina, shaped by parents who gave him a Baptist church with room for women and a respect for science.

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Why you'd press play

You want faith, Marx, process thought, and church politics without the tempo getting rushed.

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