This one is a preview of something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time — a class on the history of Christian social ethics that’s actually useful for the moment we’re in. Cornell West calls Gary Dorrien the greatest living Christian social ethicist, and after spending any amount of time with him, you understand why.
Gary and Aaron Stoffer joined me to give people a taste of what’s coming in Theology for Troublemakers, and what they gave us was a genuine history lesson that landed like a live wire.
We started with Gary’s own formation — a rural Michigan kid who never took a school book home until second semester senior year, who walked into a Catholic church and couldn’t stop staring at the figure on the cross, who read a biography of King in ninth grade three times and went looking for the theologians King mentioned in the public library and found none of them. That kid became one of the most important social ethicists of our time. From there we moved into Norman Thomas’s warning — that American populism always surges toward a dictator who scapegoats the vulnerable — and what the left’s recurring failure to build cross-racial, multi-issue coalitions has to do with where we are now.
Gary named the nineties as the most demoralizing decade of his life: TINA, triangulation, NAFTA, three-strikes, welfare gutted, and a Democratic Party that treated its progressive base as something to prove it could overcome. He was not gentle about Clinton, or Obama, or the way purity politics has consistently kneecapped the left’s ability to organize. He was hopeful, carefully, about cooperatives, about DSA’s organizing culture in New York, and about the strange opening the current moment creates for public theology.
The class runs the whole history — from the Black Social Gospel and the new abolitionists to the Christian realists to Yoder and Dorothy Day — and Aaron frames it all in terms of what congregations can actually do with it.
Go to homebrewclasses.com. This is the class for right now.
Join Our New Donation-Based Online Class - Theology for Troublemakers!
The injustices we face are immense—but they are not unique. What theological and ethical tools and ideas can we take from previous generations to confront our social ills today?
For over four decades, Dr. Gary Dorrien has been one of the foremost scholars of liberal theology, social ethics, and democratic socialism—tracing the movements and figures who dared to believe that Christianity demands justice. His multi-volume histories have shaped how a generation understands the social gospel, Black theology, and the ongoing struggle for a more just world.
This course begins where all serious social ethics must begin: with the social movements themselves. What was actually happening when Reverdy Ransom and Ida B. Wells called for a “new abolition”? How did Reinhold Niebuhr’s realism shape—and sometimes limit—Christian engagement with power? Why did welfare mothers become the leaders of a national movement for economic justice? What made James Cone declare that Black Power was the gospel?
Only by understanding what these figures and movements accomplished thencan we wrestle with what faithfulness demands of us now.
WHAT IS INCLUDED?
6 Pre-Recorded Lectures: Each video lecture features Dr. Dorrien’s masterful teaching, drawing on decades of historical research and his landmark scholarship in social ethics and liberal theology.
6 Livestream Conversations: Each week includes a live conversation with Gary Dorrien, Aaron Staufer, and Tripp Fuller—your chance to ask questions and engage directly with one of the world’s leading scholars of Christian social ethics.
Guest Lecturers: Learn from a diverse range of voices including Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Joe Strife, Nicholas Hayes Mota, Carolyn Baker, Colleen Wessel-McCoy, and Charlene Sinclair.
Online Community: Connect with other participants in the private Facebook group and access all lectures and livestream replays on the Class Resource Page.
ASYNCHRONOUS CLASS: You can participate fully without being present at any specific time. Replays are available on the Class Resource Page.
COST: A course like this is typically offered for $250 or more. Your contributions are what make our classes possible. We invite you to contribute whatever amount you feel led to give (including $0).
Join Us at Theology Beer Camp 2026!
Something is brewing for Theology Beer Camp 2026. And we’re kicking things off with a little beautiful chaos.
We are launching an epic giveaway. Not a prize bundle — a care package for apocalyptic times.
We’re giving away “Broadcast from the Wasteland: The Beautiful Resistance Collection” — 15 books that won’t let you stay comfortable:
Authors who go after white evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and empire economics — hard
Explorations of disgust theology, enemy love, and the sacred work of untangling church from state
Voices broadcasting hope from the ruins, helping you see what’s ending and imagine what comes next
Your resistance reading list. Your broadcast from the wasteland. Your invitation to the work of reconstruction.
Three winners. Here’s what’s up for grabs:
🥇 Grand Prize ($1,200 value)
Choose 10 books from the collection
Two TBC 2026 tickets — in-person or online, bring a friend
Two custom 1L steins for toasting the revolution
🥈🥉 2nd & 3rd Place
Choose 5 books from the collection
👉 Enter now: tinyurl.com/TBC26GiveAway
Ready to lock in your spot before the announcement? 🎟️ Grab your ticket now
Because if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s this: gathering, questioning, laughing, and rebuilding together isn’t optional anymore.
Enter the giveaway, watch the livestream, and see you at camp. 🍻
