What is up theology nerds? This is Tripp. And today on Homebrewed Christianity, we are joined

by a living legend, one of the greatest theological ethicists the church has ever produced,

a brilliant scholar, a lifelong activist and organizer, and the Reinhold Niebuhr chair at Union Theological Seminary in New York,

Gary Dorian. That's right. Gary Dorian's on the podcast. This is the first time he's been on,

and guess what? It's a doozy. It's amazing. We cover a host of different topics because it's

really hard to narrow things down when you're talking to the machine.

And I mean that in a complimentary way, you know, not like a negation of its humanity, but a kind of an awestruck wonder that comes about by someone who's able to produce so many amazing works and keeping his head, like the history of social ethics,

the history of the liberal theological tradition to articulate the social gospel movement,

to bring together scholarship of the black social gospel movement

and articulate it in ways the academy is just trying to catch up and put together.

He's been a pioneer weaving together.

Ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, intellectual history,

all in ways that both recognize the possibility, the vibrance, the history of liberal

Protestantism, and that demand for it to be open and transformed

by our current context. And I think you're going to hear that. It was quite a treat that he had just

finished his autobiography, a theological memoir of sorts. And so he's in the mood to tell some

personal stories, which I don't know about you, but it got me pumped

for this memoir.

And then he goes in and describes what is the nature of the liberal theological tradition?

What are the connections between theology and politics?

Who is it that animated him?

How did he find a place in the Anglican tradition?

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