PODCAST · religion
Theology Nerd Throwdown
by Dr. Tripp Fuller & Rev. Bo Sanders
Tripp & Bo get nerdy talking about theology, faith, life, and other things.
Episodes
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Bo’s Top 10 from Theology Beer Camp
One week after Theology Beer Camp 2026, Bo and I are still catching up on sleep and still processing what happened in Kansas City. Bo brought a top 10 list of camp reflections, and I had no idea what was on it. Along the way, we got the backstories: Bo discovering that the Tolkien scholar he was...
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It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black
Camp is less than a week away. Bo is calling in from the camper in his Idaho driveway, unshowered after a few days of replacing floors, and announcing that Jesus might be our only hope. As the guy with the high Christology, I'm going to enjoy reminding him of that. I tried out some of my camp…
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The Misplaced Concreteness of a Single Outcome + the God-Podcalypse
FYI... I was on a very large dose of steroids for a month for poison ivy, which made me a bit "more porous and transparent" about my love of hanging out with the BoDaddy. So that's the energy. I went looking for my camp planning notes this week and instead found the auto-updating document where...
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What If We're Still in the Early Church? A TNT on Whether Religion Gets to Evolve
Bo sent me a meme. That's the whole setup. An account called Reasoned Reality posting "seven core Christian doctrines invented after Christ died, and the church wrote down the exact dates" — Trinity 325, original sin with Augustine, Anselm in 1098, inerrancy in a Chicago hotel in 1978, the…
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A Baptized Neighbor-Neglecting Device
I sent Bo a seven-page show proposal this week, which is roughly six and a half pages more than the bullet points he normally sends me the day before. It came out of a lecture I gave in my Luther Seminary class where I kept telling Bo stories as examples, and finally thought — I should just try...
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Three Books and a Meme: on Brin, Gleick, Baudrillard, Debord, & The Contraction of the Present
Bo's mic died, so this one almost didn't happen — and then it turned into one of the best hours we've recorded. He came back from a week of night school, a home renovation, a bike ministry, and a community center opening with four conversation partners he had pulled off his shelf to put in…
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We've Engineered a World with Nothing to Say and a Listener with No Ears
We started with alt-blonde beards, the Lakers selling for $12.5 billion, and the gambling apps that will call you with Super Bowl tickets when you lose your year's income and cancel your account when you win. Then Bo told the story of the four-clergy ministerium in Twin Falls discovering that…
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Performing for the Digital Slave Master: Bo Sanders's Strava Confession and the Hell of the Same
Bo listened to last week's Jamie Smith conversation and came back this Friday with a follow-up on his own — Jamie has been Bo's favorite frenemy for a decade, and the dark-night processing changed the conversation in ways Bo did not see coming. Which turned out to be the perfect on-ramp for the...
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Puff, Puff, Passages: Bo and Tripp on the Bible, the Ban List, and the Books We Would Take to a Desert Island
Bo had a week. So did I. He is running a plumber-exterminator-HVAC gauntlet and moving eighteen pews for the new community center. I flew across the country for the funeral of one of my best friends from div school. We came back to the table anyway. What we got is one of the wildest, most...
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The Angel of History, the End of History, and the End of the Liberal Subject
Bo drives this week. He has spent seven days chewing on Kevin Carnahan's visit — the America 1940s–1980s was a mirage argument — and comes back with a run of philosophical frames he wants to test. Walter Benjamin's Angel of History (the 1940 essay on the Klee painting where the angel is being…
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America Was a Mirage: Kevin Carnahan on Why the Moral 1940s–1980s Was an Accident
Bo is back from fishing (tight lines). Kevin Carnahan is back at the table. And the subject is Kevin's lecture at the Theology Summit, whose central claim is that America was never actually good. The moral America a lot of us grew up thinking existed from the 1940s to the 1980s was a mirage.…
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If an AI Says It Loves God, How Would You Test It?
Bo went fishing. Josh Patterson came over. If you take Bo Daddy and divide by two, you get J Paddy — which is how we know the substitution worked. In two hours we somehow got from Johnny Depp in half his Jack Sparrow makeup at a Los Angeles grocery store, to whether thin places are actually thin…
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Over/Unders, Mount Rushmores, and Shooting Fish in Barrel
Bo and I leaned all the way into the wacky-morning-sports-talk-radio format this week — over/unders, a Mount Rushmore or three, and a Name That Name segment where I almost broke Bo with clues about a French Catholic medievalist who turned into one of the most important theorists of the twentieth...
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I'm Unsinkable. I'm Already Dead: A TNT on Doubt, Faith, and the Galilean Vision
A Substack subscriber named Jennifer recently emailed me a list of thirty questions she had wanted to ask in the live chat but never got to. So we did the only honest thing — pulled in Josh Patterson from Rethinking Faith as a third voice (he just took a job working with Ilia Delio, so he had...
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The Pope, the Plantation, and the Algorithm: A Theology Nerds Throwdown
Bo and I started with bikes, a Pentecost-red pair of glasses, and my new Crazy Chicks ballcap. We did not stay there. By the end we had hit the evolutionary anthropology of religion before belief, Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical, Gandalf telling Denethor exactly where he can put his stewardship, and...
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They Love Your Questions — Just Not Your Conclusions: Tim Whitaker on Evangelicalism, Apologetics & the Sleight of Hand
Tim Whitaker finally shows up on TNT, and I want you to know that within the first five minutes he informed us he was homeschooled and never went to college, that his biggest word is "dispensationalism," and that he is a type six on the Enneagram who doesn't know if he can trust people enough to...
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If This Is the End Times, I'll Be Your Huckleberry: Peter Thiel's Antichrist Theology
It's May 15th, 2026 — recording live from what Bo accurately described as Jurassic Park, because Raven the chicken was laying an egg on my thigh while we were discussing the Antichrist, and Marceline was on my back pecking my head before we hit record, and I just want you to know that this is the...
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The Hyperlink Permission: How Dispensational Eschatology Reads the Bible & Why It Gets Wild
We were supposed to do this one last week, but things happened and the Antichrist got bumped a week. Worth the wait. Bo spent the extra time going back to the Eerdmans Bible Dictionary he bought in 1992 when he enrolled at Canadian Bible College in Regina, Saskatchewan, because we live in a…
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Big Nephilim Energy: A Field Guide
Tripp walked into his local cigar lounge this week and walked out with a one-and-a-half-cigar lecture on the Nephilim from a true believer — and now he and Bo are doing what a few regular chat-room members asked for, a full TNT on fallen angelic watchers, giant hybrid offspring, CRISPR, Peter...
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Just War for People Who Actually Know What It Means w/ Kevin Carnahan
So many clergy members and theology nerds messaged me after JD Vance told the Pope to dial back the theology talk that I had no choice — I called my friend Kevin Carnahan, co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics and author of an extremely technical book on just war theory that...
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The Consequences, Not the Mechanism: What the Resurrection Narratives Are Actually About
It's Holy Week, which means Bo and I finally stopped talking about chickens, bikes, and CCM songs long enough to do theology — though we did all of those things first. The actual idea Bo had was simple and turned out to be genuinely illuminating: what if we worked our way backwards through the...
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Spiritual Warfare to Spiritual Welfare: Bo's Four Stories of Reclaiming Charismatic Practice
Happy birthday to Haven, who turns nine today! He’s my third kid, which means the Fuller household has been thoroughly outnumbered for a while now, which also means it is absolutely appropriate that Bo and I spent a Friday morning talking about demons. This one started where all the best TNT...
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The Two Foundation Stones Holding Up Everything You Hate About American Politics
It's TNT, it's a Friday, and Bo came in hot — with a week's worth of text messages about natural law, JD Vance, and the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary conservatism that started innocently enough and ended somewhere near Bruno Latour and the cloaking of power. Before we get there, I...
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The Podcast That Wasn't Supposed to Last 18 Years & Vintage Theo-Blog War Stories
Eighteen years. That's how long Homebrew Christianity has been doing this thing — and to celebrate, Bo pulls out trivia, giveaways, and a surprise birthday guest in Brian McLaren, who drops in to talk about hope with longer timeframes, process theology as medicine for hardened neo-Platonism, and...
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Seduced into Self-Exploitation: Liberation Theology for the Algorithmic Age
Bo and I came in hot this week — Five Iron Frenzy concert tonight, a heated Chick-fil-A debate (Bo is wrong), In-N-Out orders, and the things southern Idaho doesn't have — before diving into the first five of ten thesis statements from the book I'm writing on the digital colonization of the self.…
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Parables, Panopticons, and Pinterest
Bo and I kick off with some old-school podcasting war stories — the duck connector, paying per megabyte, and the time I edited a famous theologian's interview so aggressively that a fan called me out for making them sound like a different person. Then we roll into our alphabet soup series with G...
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From the Society of Spectacle to the Filioque Clause
This week Bo and I kicked things off talking about life getting smaller and simpler — from downsizing kitchens to wire racks for air quality — and I confessed that nine days of solo parenting gave me a whole new respect for single parents everywhere. Then I brought something to the table I've…
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3 Letters.? 1 Pod!
Alright folks, Bo and I are two weeks and two hours delayed because of snow, so buckle up for some cabin fever energy. We tackle the alphabet soup of theology starting with B for belonging and baptism—why there's zero agreement on how to dunk people in water despite it being central to...
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When Going to Church Makes It Worse: on Moral Bankruptcy of White Evangelicalism
Look, I wasn't planning on going here—Bo and I were supposed to get to our dictionary series on the B words. But then my algorithm fed me a parade of people I've loved my whole life defending an ICE agent shooting a mom three times through a window, calling her a "domestic terrorist," and I just...
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The A's Have It: Argument Culture, Adiaphora & Atonement Theories
What is up, Theology Nerds! This week Bo and I kicked off our Theological Dictionary of 2026—26 letters for 26, pairing theological concepts with cultural commentary. We dove into the A's: argument culture, adiaphora, and atonement. We started with Deborah Tannen's 1997 book The Argument Culture...
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The Courage of Yes: Consenting to a God We Cannot Grasp
So I made these slides for a talk on centering prayer and process theology, and instead of just presenting them, I sent them to Bo and we played a game where he tried to guess what I was going to say. What emerged was this really fun conversation about how centering prayer is just so different…
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No Room in the Inn: a Theology Nerd's Hallmark Christmas Story
🎄 NO ROOM IN THE INN: A Theology Nerds Christmas Special 🎄 Last week, Tripp and Bo played Hallmark Movie Mad Libs—and things got wildly out of hand. With answers shouted out in real time (and some help from the chat), we accidentally wrote an entire progressive Christian Hallmark Christmas…
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Venison Chili, Reindeer Farms, and the Spirit of Advent
What is UP, Theology Nerds! This week Bo and I got real caffeinated—or maybe it was eggnog—and let the vibes take us wherever they wanted to go. We kicked things off with some personal life updates (Bo got banished to an RV for being too large and loud at Christmas, and I'm navigating the trials…
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Taylor Swift, Bach, and the Death of Mainline Protestantism
What is up, Theology Nerds? Bo and I kicked off this week's episode from my pop-up ice fishing tent in 39-degree rain—complete with my new "professional lighting" that makes it look like I'm telling ghost stories—because that's just how we roll. We dove into our Spotify Wrapped numbers (156%...
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The Hour of Gratefulness
Here's our Thanksgiving episode with some vital jazzercise energy and a whole lot of carnitas-shaking—you're welcome for that visual. But then we got into the real stuff: like how exhausting it is when every single day brings another thing that would've ended any other administration, and how our...
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Blood, Wounds, and Watch Words: A Deep Dive into Radical Moravian Theology
What a fun convo! Bo and I were joined by Rev. Dr. Chaz Snider, a Moravian Minister and Radical Theologian for some nerdy goodness. We started with something that's been keeping me up at night: the dangerous decoupling of Jewish identity from Israeli identity in certain conservative circles, and...
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Truck Stops Without Trucks & Churches Without Christians
Well folks, we started off talking about Bucky's (the truck stop that doesn't allow trucks - make it make sense), but then things got real when I shared about this secret squirrel meeting I went to about combating white Christian nationalism in Idaho. Bo and I went deep on religious pluralism…
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Why Your 'Biblical' Christianity Might Just Be Colonial Nonsense
Wow, this episode was a wild ride! Bo and I kicked things off recapping the absolute magic that was Theology Beer Camp in St. Paul - seriously, the energy this year was different, more connected, more like a family reunion of podcast nerds day-drinking and talking theology. Then we dove into what...
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The One Where We Tried Something New and It Mostly Worked
We opened up the Zoom room and let listeners bring whatever questions they wanted, which turned into one of those sprawling conversations that goes from Karl Popper's tolerance paradox to the unique trauma of rapture theology to whether algae-filled church toilets are connected to the hot water...
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Against Empathy: When Christians Declare Compassion a Vice
Bo and I dive deep into a controversial AP article about Christian conservatives declaring empathy a vice - yeah, you heard that right. We unpack how figures like Ali Beth Stuckey and Joe Rigney are arguing that empathy has become a "cudgel for the left," leading Christians to affirm sin and...
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Religion Before Language: Why We Danced Before We Believed
So we're LIVE at the Common Market in Charlotte, drinking craft beverages and fielding questions from the Speaking to a Modern World conference, which means we're ping-ponging between topics faster than your algorithm-addled attention span. Josh starts us off playing voice of the people, then we...
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Heidegger Dreams and Chicken Interruptions: An Onto-Theological Throwdown
Bo and I dove deep into onto-theology after he texted me wanting to explore its "upside" - which led to a sprawling conversation about everything from James Dobson's recent death and its impact on evangelical parenting, to Taylor Swift's engagement, to my chickens interrupting the show. We…
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Love at the Center: Tom Oord's Systematic Theology Project
In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Tom Oord, who's in the middle of writing what might be the first ever systematic theology with "love" right there in the title. We dove deep into how systematic theology actually works - you know, the difference between someone like Wayne Grudem...
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From Epstein to Palestine: The Common Thread of Basic Decency
Wow, what a wild ride this turned out to be! Bo and I got into the religious landscape after I shared this crazy sticky note revelation I had at the cigar lounge - connecting Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies and Palestine through the lens of basic human decency and institutional trust. We ended up...
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Bible Bonanza: What Verses Should Actually Be Read in Schools
What's up Theology Nerds! We're back from vacation and home renovations with a special Bible bonanza episode that's equal parts hilarious and thought-provoking. Bo and I are tackling the issue of mandatory Bible reading in schools by collecting suggestions from listeners about which verses should...
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"You Met One Pharaoh, You Met 'Em All" - Remembering Walter Brueggemann
What's up theology nerds! When we lost the legendary Walter Brueggemann, I knew we had to do a proper tribute to one of the most influential biblical scholars of our time. I'm joined by Bo and Rolf Jacobson from Luther Seminary for a deep dive into Walter's life and work - this is the guy who...
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The Great Untethering: Why Everything Feels Fake
Bo comes back from an epic 22-year tradition canoe trip in the Adirondacks - complete with black flies, hypothermia, and some serious Type 2 fun - and drops maybe his most intense opening riff ever. We're talking democracy, pornography, evangelicalism, the economy, and a whole bunch of other…
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Tending to Questions: A More Hopeful Future for Liberal Faith
What's up Theology Nerds! This week on TNT, Bo and I kick things off with the breaking news about the new American Pope from Chicago (perfect timing for a Bear's Super Bowl win?) before diving into a deep theological conversation about the future of liberal Christianity. Following last week's...
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Does Liberal Christianity Have a Future?
What's up, Theology Nerds! In this episode, Bo and I tackle the existential question: "Does Liberal Christianity Have a Future?" Spoiler alert: Bo doesn't think it does, and his explanation involves both elevators and human eardrums! We dive into the fascinating history and predicaments of…
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State Mandated Bible Verses & Chronic Lonliness
What's up Theology Nerds! Today's episode goes all over the place - from Easter rituals to mandatory Bible readings, with plenty of religious baggage unpacked along the way. Bo starts us off with his discomfort over some potentially mandatory Bible reading legislation in Idaho (which I kept...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Tripp & Bo get nerdy talking about theology, faith, life, and other things.
HOSTED BY
Dr. Tripp Fuller & Rev. Bo Sanders
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Theology Nerd Throwdown have?
Theology Nerd Throwdown currently has 215 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Theology Nerd Throwdown about?
Tripp & Bo get nerdy talking about theology, faith, life, and other things.
How often does Theology Nerd Throwdown release new episodes?
Theology Nerd Throwdown publishes regularly with 215 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Theology Nerd Throwdown?
You can listen to Theology Nerd Throwdown on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Theology Nerd Throwdown?
Theology Nerd Throwdown is created and hosted by Dr. Tripp Fuller & Rev. Bo Sanders.
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