Why Pastors Won: Talarico, Hamilton, and the Mainline Moment + a bunch of your questions

Bo showed up with mustard-yellow hands (paint, not nicotine) and a confession: the low-VOC paint in his guest bathroom smells so strong that it seems to supercharge his double IPAs. Then a little post-election processing. Two mainline Protestant pastors are headed to the Senate, I now have email threads with three senators, and Adam on Facebook asked whether Talarico, Hamilton, and company are the right answer to Christian nationalism. My theory: congregational pastors are used to leading people they love on the left side of a 50/50 room, affirming everyone's worth, and staying pragmatic enough not to get shot at.

Then your questions. Vicky asked the big one: how do you know a liberationist reading actually comes from scripture and not from the lens you brought to it? Bo walks through Ricoeur's four questions and the politics of the Gerasene demoniac (a Legion, pigs raised for Roman soldiers, and the sea). I bring in the Canaanite woman, who shouldn't exist in the gospels at all. John Augustine asked how to preach the flood without skipping the drowning. Ted, a retired Air Force officer and current Department of War civilian, asked what to make of the centurions in the gospels. That gets us Bonhoeffer at Finkenwalde, Niebuhr's uneasy conscience, and moral injury we all share as taxpayers. Plus capitalism and the prophets, my favorite Lord of the Rings embellishments, and the definitive ranking of Counting Crows songs for an acoustic cover.

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Join our Advent class⁠

⁠Tear Open the Heavens: Advent for Indifferent Strangers⁠ is a four-week online class Andy and I are teaching from Advent 1 (November 29) through Advent 4 (December 20).

Lectures: four pre-recorded lectures, two from each of us, each released the week before its Sunday. The first drops Monday, November 16.

Live conversations: five 70-minute livestreams at 10am PT / 1pm ET on November 24, December 1, 8, and 15, plus a Christmas Eve session on December 17. We unpack the thinkers and wrestle with that week's lectionary text.

Readings and replays: a 30–40 page reading packet each week, a community space, and replays on the class resource page for at least a year.

Price: donation-based, including 0.

It's timed so you can use it for your small group, Sunday school, or sermon that same week. Sign up at ⁠homebrewedclasses.com⁠

⁠⁠Come to Berlin with us in 2027⁠⁠ for a Bonhoeffer Travel Learning Experi