Is America Possible?

When the birthday-card version of America's founding is everywhere.

Tripp Fuller and Homebrewed Team

Jun 30, 2026

I keep waiting for the fireworks to feel like celebration. They don’t.

We’re inside the year America throws itself a 250th birthday party, and you can already feel the machinery warming up — the bunting, the founders quoted out of context, the slogan-sized history that flattens a contested, bloody, unfinished experiment into a greeting card. There’s a story certain people badly want to tell about the church and the country this year, and it is a small story. A nostalgic one. The kind that requires you to forget most of what actually happened in order to feel good about what’s happening now.

That’s the water we’re swimming in. It’s exactly why I asked Corey Walker what he was carrying into this moment.

Walker is Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and he does not hand you the birthday-card version. He hands you winter.

Watch the lecture and you’ll see why that word does so much work. In the late fall of 1775, a reluctant revolutionary wrote to his father-in-law hoping the coming winter would put a stop to the king’s ravages — a winter that would clear the ground for a new nation, a new people, a new experience of freedom. Two centuries later Gil Scott-Heron reached for the same season and meant the opposite by it: Winter in America, 1973, a country in crisis, segregated and intimidated and watching the price of everything soar while the rich wanted more. Two men, one season, two utterly different things. One hoping winter would birth a nation. The other watching what that nation became.

We are living in both winters at once. That’s Walker’s gift here — he refuses to let us pretend the cold is new.

And then he does something braver than diagnosis. He goes looking for what’s still possible in the cold.

He turns to Ella Baker, who said a strong people don’t need strong leaders — which is a quiet bomb in a culture forever scanning the horizon for a savior on a white horse. He turns to a scene in Faneuil Hall in 1850, where Frederick Douglass is prosecuting his case against an America that cannot bring itself to treat Black people justly, and a stunned room falls silent, and Sojourner Truth asks him one thing: Frederick, is God dead? Not a rejection of his analysis. An opening. A refusal to believe the winter gets the last word.

And he turns to Vincent Harding’s question — the one I haven’t been able to put down since I watched this — Is America possible?

Sit with how much that little question refuses. It refuses to be settled by the Declaration in 1776. It refuses to be settled by the parades in 2026. Harding asks it not as despair but as an invitation, because a thing that was never finished is a thing that can still be made. That’s not naive optimism. That’s the opposite. It’s what you say when you’ve looked clearly at the worst of the story and decided the story isn’t over.

Here’s where I have to put myself in it, because Walker won’t let me stand at a safe distance and neither will the gospel.

We who call ourselves the community of the faithful have confessed our belief in God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer, the Spirit the Sustainer. And in the same breath, in this same land, we have built altars to a different trinity — a Constantinian Christianity, a rapacious capitalism, a devastating colonialism — and that trinity has baptized conquest, sanctified greed, and crucified the innocent on the cross of empire. That’s not a sermon about them. The bunting is on our churches too. The nostalgia is doing its narcotic work on us as much as anyone.

The way through is not a stronger man. It’s staying awake.

That’s the whole stake of this anniversary, and it’s why we made the thing I want to invite you into. Corey Walker’s lecture is one of ten in Unsettled Ground: Faith & the American Story at 250 — a summit Diana Butler Bass and I put together because we knew this year would drown in Christian nationalist celebration, and people of faith deserved a chorus instead of a slogan. Ten scholars. No assigned theme. Each one bringing the full weight of a lifetime’s study to a single, honest question: what does it actually mean to tell the truth about faith in America right now?

It’s pay-what-you-can, including zero. Every talk comes with a discussion guide, built for your church or classroom or the friends you argue with over coffee. We’d love to have you.

Walker leaves us with two questions, and I’m going to leave you with the same two, because I think they’re the only ones worth carrying into this winter.

Is God dead?

And is America possible?

Stay awake.

Join Diana Butler Bass and Tripp Fuller via Livestream on Thursday!

The Story They’re Telling and the Story We Need
Thursday, July 2nd (8am PT / 11am ET)
Watch live or via replay on YouTube!

You were taught not to bring up religion or politics at the dinner table. We built a whole show around breaking that rule. This week, Tripp and Diana pull up chairs for the one that's about to be everywhere: America turns 250 in 2026, and the people with the loudest microphones are already telling you what it's supposed to mean. There's a flood of Christian nationalist retrospectives coming, and we are not interested in the sanitized version. We want the actual story — messier, holier, more contested, and a lot more interesting than the one being sold.

Register Now for the 2026 Online Summit with Diana and Tripp!

This summer, Diana Butler Bass and Tripp Fuller are hosting Faith at 250 — an online summit gathering leading religion scholars, church historians, and theologians to reflect on America’s 250th anniversary. With the current administration leveraging the semiquincentennial toward a narrow rendering of the church’s history and witness in America, and a flood of Christian nationalist celebrations on the horizon, we wanted to create something different. Each contributor — including Randall Balmer, Juan Floyd-Thomas, Bill Leonard, Elesha Coffman, Corey Walker, Jennifer Harvey, Reggie Williams, Andrew Root, Adam Clark, Glenn Jonas, Kevin Carnahan, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove — offers a lecture on whatever they are carrying into this moment, whether that’s a deep read on a chapter of our religious past, a close look at a particular tradition or movement, or a forward-looking meditation on the challenges ahead. No one was asked to fit a theme. The result is a chorus, not a single argument.

Every talk is roughly 30 minutes — designed so a group can watch together and still have time for real conversation — and each comes with a companion discussion guide and resource list pointing you to the scholar’s books, articles, and projects. Whether you’re a pastor planning programming for your congregation, a facilitator leading a book club or adult ed class, or an individual learner who wants to think more carefully about faith and the American story, this summit was built for you. Diana and Tripp will also host live conversations with several contributors throughout the summit. Head to www.TheologySummit.com to register and get access to every lecture, livestream replay, and discussion guide.

Join Us at Theology Beer Camp 2026 - Will You Be There?

THEOLOGY BEER CAMP
October 8-10, 2026 - Kansas City, MO

Theology Beer Camp is a unique three-day conference that brings together of theology nerds and craft beer for a blend of intellectual engagement, community building, and fun. Organized by Homebrewed Christianity, this event features a lineup of well-known podcasters, scholars, and theology enthusiasts who come together to “nerd out” on theological topics while enjoying loads of fun activities.

GET ALL BEER CAMP INFO!

GET BEER CAMP TICKETS!

NOW ANNOUNCING:
The Theology Beer Camp Pre-Event

We’re excited to share details about our Pre-Event experience. Think of it like a theological pre-game.

Led by Thomas Jay Oord and Jonathan Foster, we’re bringing you a fantastic lineup of scholars, authors, pastors, and practitioners. This workshop-style gathering is a focused deep dive into Open and Relational Theology before the main event begins.

Think of it as:

A relational head start on Beer Camp
A chance to explore ideas in greater depth
An opportunity to meet people and start building connections before the larger gathering begins

Topics include: