Theology with questions, edge, and a table nearby.
Homebrewed Christianity is an interview-driven theology show where Tripp talks with scholars, theologians, and philosophers about Christianity under pressure. It favors big questions, long answers, and the messy space where doctrine meets empire, race, organizing, prayer, movies, and community life.
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Homebrewed Christianity is a long-running theology conversation show with a seminar-table mind and a church-basement sense of humor. Tripp serves as the recurring conversation lead, setting up big questions and then letting guests work through them at length. The show is especially interested in what Christian ideas do when they meet history, power, race, war, organizing, and ordinary communities. It is not content to leave doctrine as an abstract system. Doctrine becomes something to test against empire, the Black social gospel, nonviolence, love, parables, film, and the shape of public life. Recent episodes feature Gary Dorrien and Aaron Stauffer on social ethics and activism, Thomas Jay Oord on a theology of love, Philip Clayton on rebuilding Christian doctrine, and John Dominic Crossan on Jesus, Galilee, parables, resurrection, and distributive justice. The conversations often begin with class material, live Q&A, or event framing, then open into wider arguments about what Christian faith means in action. The pacing is measured but rarely sterile. Banter is part of the entry point. A joke about donation levels or theology camp can sit next to a grave account of drone warfare, white supremacy, or the moral habits of empire. That mix gives the show its texture. It trusts the audience to stay with complexity. It also refuses the idea that theology belongs only to professionals. Academic categories are welcomed, but they are pushed toward practical questions: how communities organize, how traditions get remade, how scripture provokes, and how faith might resist despair without becoming sentimental. The show is best for listeners who already enjoy Christian thought and want it sharpened by history and moral argument. It can be dense. It can be playful. It is often both at once.
Made for: Best for Christians, theology students, group leaders, faith leaders, small group leaders, book clubs, and theology-curious listeners who want faith discussed with intellectual seriousness and moral stakes. It suits people who enjoy long-form guest conversations more than quick devotional takeaways.
What sets it apart: Homebrewed Christianity stands out by letting academic theology stay complex while constantly pulling it toward lived practice, public ethics, and community formation. Its mix of scholarly guests, informal banter, classes, Q&As, and critique gives it a distinctive public-theology texture.
Our goal is to bring the wisdom of the academy's ivory tower into your earbuds. Think of each episode as an audiological ingredient for your to brew your own faith. Most episodes center around an interview with a different scholar, theologian, or philosopher.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Homebrewed Christianity turns demanding theological ideas into candid conversations about scripture, prayer, culture, political power, and the moral complexity of public life.
Homebrewed Christianity treats theology as a live conversation, moving among guest interviews, class Q&As, and reading-group discussions. Tripp asks how religious ideas behave under pressure: in prayer, biblical interpretation, political violence, policing, and accounts of human…
One juke joint, two churches, and your tidy map of the sacred needs redrawing.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A peacemaking argument that keeps war, drones, and moral certainty in the same room.
The piece settles into a hard political-theological argument about war, drone strikes, Dr. King's warning about America, and the effort to hold Obama inside the same frame as American violence.
A film conversation that treats black theology as the broadest frame for the movie.
It treats the movie as a meeting place for black theology, the blues, and the juke joint, all held in the same frame. The central question is simple but wide: how does one meet God?
Ruth becomes a pointed challenge to post-exilic rules about ancestry, belonging, and what restoration is supposed to mean.
John Dominic Crossan's fourth Q&A with Tripp takes up Ruth, Jonah, and Job as challenge parables, then narrows into a careful reading of Ruth as a story that unsettles a community's drive to restore order.
Bonhoeffer's person-versus-principle question becomes a test of how religious authority gets used.
The episode frames Bonhoeffer's Christology as a pressure test for religious thought: whether Christ is met as a living person in revelation, or reduced into a principle that can be handled and used.
Wes Ellis presents prayer as surrendering mastery so silence can become love for others.
Prayer feels hard in this episode for a very current reason: a culture trained to expect every unknown to be solved, whether by technology or sharper theology, does not easily make space for mystery.
A Honduras case study on gang arrests, scarce police resources, and the moral cost of working within broken trust.
This conversation with Ross Halperin looks at what justice can mean when police are neither reliable nor trusted partners. He follows a clandestine effort in Honduras that worked across police, prosecutors, witnesses, informants, and the community, even handling basics like…
A thoughtful Whitehead preview on religion, evolution, value, and creative human life.
Alfred North Whitehead's Religion in the Making comes through as a live reading-group preview, with Tripp and Andrew Davis setting up the book around religion's role in human nature and evolution.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.
Tripp Fuller introduces a preview session for a reading group on Alfred North Whitehead's 'Religion in the Making', featuring philosopher Andrew Davis.
Tripp interviews Ross Halperin, author of 'Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land'.
Vincent Lloyd (Villanova) and Luke Bretherton (Oxford, Church of England priest) discuss their Columbia University Press book 'What Is Political Theology?', co-written with a third author, and why they wrote it as three voices from different disciplines.
This episode introduces a donation-based class called Theology for Troublemakers, featuring ethicists Gary Dorrien and Aaron Stauffer, who explore social ethics through historical lectures and contemporary conversations with activists.
This episode features an interview with Thomas Jay Oord discussing a systematic theology of love, with casual banter about their long-term collaboration and podcast history.
This episode features a conversation with Philip Clayton about building a new architecture for Christian doctrine, sparked by experiences at Theology Beer Camp and an improv game.
This episode introduces a lecture series featuring Gary Dorrien exploring the history and contemporary relevance of the black social gospel and Christian social ethics in America.
This episode is a live Q&A session with John Dominic Crossan discussing connections between Jesus' message in Galilee, Passion Week, resurrection, and early church development.
Tripp opens by framing apocalypse as unveiling and moves the conversation toward peacemaking in a time of war.
Tripp kicks things off by steering the conversation toward Theology Beer Camp 2025 and the idea of apocalypse as unveiling, framed as a refusal to give in to despair.
Tripp hosts a fourth Q&A with John Dominic Crossan.
Tripp Fuller argues that religion "started with bodies around a fire," not doctrines, and that the modern form of religion was already "elite-bound, individualist, disembodied" before the deconstruction wave.
Homebrewed Christianity centers Wes Ellis’s Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age on why prayer feels impossible in a secular age.
This episode features an interview with scholar John Dominic Crossan discussing historical Jesus, parables, and the kingdom of God in its historical context, based on questions from an online Lent class.
This episode features a special interview with the late Reverend Jesse Jackson, discussing his life, civil rights leadership, and black theological tradition during a lockdown conversation.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Marvin Wickware discusses the tension between practicing love and understanding power in democracy and Christianity, based on his book 'Loving Through Enmity' and his experiences as a black theologian.
This episode features an interview with investigative journalist Ross Halperin about his book on justice, violence, and policing in the United States, focusing on low solve rates for homicides and shootings.