America is Obsessed with Problems but Denies Catastrophe

or Why I am Pumped Cornel West is coming to Theology Beer Camp

Tripp Fuller

Apr 28, 2026

One of the most popular podcast conversations from the past year was with Cornel West. We spent the whole thing inside his Gifford Lectures — the place where he names what he calls a blues mode of philosophy and theology. A personal narrative of catastrophe, lyrically expressed. The tragic faced head on. Beauty made of the catastrophe, not despite it. And despair denied the last word.

I was thinking about our conversation, my favorite episode of The Last of Us, and what we have planned for Theology Beer Camp this year.

Here’s the part I want to say in writing.

West makes a distinction in those lectures that has been rattling around my skull for a year. He says America is obsessed with problems, but America denies catastrophe. The moment you reduce the catastrophic to the problematic, you have already deodorized the discourse. You’re a technical manager looking at human beings as a ticket queue.

Look around. We are not short on technical managers. We are not short on think pieces and strategic plans and consultants who can optimize a thing that is on fire. What we are short on — in our churches, in our denominations, in our group chats, in ourselves — is people willing to stay in the room with what is actually true.

That’s what camp is for.

Theology Beer Camp 2026 — the God Podcalypse — is October 8 through 10 in Kansas City, exactly one month before the 2026 election.

Cornel is coming. Gary Dorrien is coming. Adam Clark is coming. The three of them are sitting down for a conversation on the life and thought of James Cone, and if you have not yet been in a room where Cornel and Gary talk about Cone with one of Cone’s actual students asking the questions, you should make sure you’re in that room. Ilia Delio is coming. Bill Leonard and Diana Butler Bass are doing a church history conversation I have been trying to engineer for years. Kristin Du Mez and Jemar Tisby are coming with the full Convocation team. The Bible Divas crew is launching their new podcast on stage. Sarah Lane Ritchie. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. Stacey and Juan Floyd-Thomas. Casey Sigmon. Myron Penner. James McGrath. Nick Polk back for Tolkien. Thirty scholars. Thirty God-pods recording live. A new live podcast stage.

And the part you cannot get from a livestream: the OctoberZEST with food trucks and a bottle share, post-apocalyptic prom on opening night, on-site camp counselors, on-site AA meetings, a fully open and affirming host church, soft serve with stout-floats, and 600 of your favorite friends, new ones and old.

But the lineup is not the reason to come. The lineup is the excuse.

The reason to come is what people who have already come keep telling us afterward.

I haven’t felt the Spirit present in a church context in a long time. I was surprised to feel so spiritually impacted at an event that skews toward the intellectual and invites skepticism and doubt to the table.
— Ellen Wozniak

Or this, from a 72-year-old woman who came alone:

I got exposed to new ideas and reassured that I am doing just fine by deconstructing my faith.
— Gloria Pope

Or this, from a guy who showed up uncomfortable that camp was happening in a church building at all:

Beer Camp is worth it. If you need a place to heal, I can’t imagine a safer place.
— Kail Walker

I am not going to pretend a long weekend in Kansas City fixes anything. The Cordyceps are still going to be out there. Frank is still going to be sick. Whoever is in the White House on November 4 is still going to be in the White House. But three days of staying in the room with what is true — with the other people who are also still trying to stay in the room — is its own kind of practice.

Cornel calls it the move from wounded herder to wounded healer. It is rare and costly and not something most of us were trained for. But it is what 16 years of Bill and Frank turn into. A love song, not a survival manual.

Blues. With others. Below the cross.

• • •

Here is the part where I have to be direct with you, because the timing is what it is.

Early bird pricing ends at the end of this month. That is in the next few days. After that, the price jumps, and I am going to start getting emails from people asking if they can still get the early rate, and I am going to have to send the same kind email I send every year, which is no.

If you have been hovering — if you have read this far down the page, if a friend forwarded this to you, if you have been telling yourself you will register “soon” — that “soon” is now.

GET EARLY BIRD TICKETS HERE: theologybeer.camp

Come sing the blues with us.

— Tripp

P.S. If you have never seen Last of Us episode 3 — “Long, Long Time” — set aside an hour. You will understand why I keep talking about Bill and Frank.

P.P.S. Despair does not get the last word. We know it doesn’t. But we discover that knowing in the living, and in the singing of blues with others. That is what we are doing in Kansas City in October. Come.