A couple of weeks ago I trekked to Kansas City, Missouri, where about seven hundred people, many (if not most) of them professional clergy or theological scholars, ran and attended panels on various topics … and enjoyed a whole lot of beer. As I wrote in my newsletter after I got back, it turns out theology and beer go together pretty well!
The event was much like a small science fiction and fantasy convention; however, although I’m used to attending cons I felt out of my depth a lot of the time. I figure that’s because even though I like thinking about God, I’m no theologian and a lot of the details went over my head. Also, I drink a beer now and again but I’m no kind of beer expert! That said, some of the panel discussions were right up my SF&F street, covering the importance of the “scouring of the Shire” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (with a nifty Hobbit-themed food tasting) and dystopian literature as presented in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
To give you an idea of how it went, overall, I wrote down choice quotes from some of the panels:
- “All of us have to wrestle with cowardliness.” (Cornell West)
- “Faith is a team sport.” (Craig Boyd)
- “Listening to prophets is hard.” (Jill Elizabeth)
- “What should we salvage from the old world to bring into the new world?” (Jill Elizabeth)
- “Do we even want to do right, and do we even know what right is?” (Juan Floyd-Thomas)
- “Translators make choices for you that you do not know that they made.” (Angela N. Parker)
- “I think Theological Overreach is the name of my new metal band.” (Will Rose)
- “A true scientist is actually a spiritual seeker.” (Ilia Delio)
- “We are always approximating the real.” (Ilia Delio)
- “Certainty is the one thing we should be uncertain of.” (Ilia Delio)
- “What is your dream for the earth?” (Ilia Delio)
Of course, more good things were said than those, but I couldn’t catch them all at the time!
(TBC 2026 logo.)
I ventured out of my introvert shell from time to time, enough to chat with a few people, including some of the panelists, a few podcasters, and the director of an outfit that may help me get A Church More Like Christ and my other books into libraries. (I’m mulling over the contract now.) I also brought out my guitar on Friday evening and found a few people willing to sing along with geeky drinking songs — not as many as I might’ve liked, but at least I had fun … until someone built so huge a fire in the fire pit that it drove me away!
What do you think: Is Theology Beer Camp something you might enjoy? I don’t know where it’ll be held next year, but if I can make it work I’ll go again!
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