I love beer. I love it enough that I decided to learn how to make it. It helps that making beer is an uptight person’s dream-come-true: steeping the grains in water that’s just the right temperature; adding hops at just the right time to balance the sweetness of the wort (aka pre-beer); selecting just the right yeast to bring out just the right flavors; keeping the fermenting beer at just the right temperature.
But after a decade of making my own (mostly mediocre, if I’m honest) beer, I can still say that most of why I love beer is because I was introduced to it as an exchange student in Germany. Beer was a normal part of life, integrated into weekly rhythms of rest, relaxation, relationship. I’m also a bit uptight, so beer loosened my worry about the constant mistakes I was making while learning German.
I love beer. I also love religion. I’m Christian, but if I’m honest, most religions make me glad in my heart (and my head). Most beers (even my own mediocre ones) do too. Most of the time.
Before Germany, I grew up in a home where alcohol was rarely around, and for good reason: there’s a not insignificant amount of alcoholism in my extended family. What was lacking in booze, however, was more than compensated for in Bibles. It seemed like there was at least one Bible in every room of my house growing up. On its face, this wasn’t a bad thing. But I gradually learned that the church my parents attended—for all its benefits and meaningfulness for them—had an unhealthy relationship with the Bible.
Rather than a source of wisdom or an instrument used to worship the God Whence its inspiration comes—in the life of my childhood church community, the Bible was what we worshipped. People at church were obsessed with the Bible, and for a time it was my obsession too. Its power and mystery were seductive, intoxicating. And if I’m honest, this is still true for me today. The difference is that I stopped worshipping the Bible a long time ago. For me, the Bible points to God, Who is far more powerful, mysterious, beautiful, life-giving, loving, and liberating than any assemblage of scriptures.
Those of us who craft things—beer, liturgy, scholarship—know the power of the practice and participation in our craft. We also know that, at our best, we’re trying to be good hosts. We’re creating space for others to learn, to heal, to connect, to laugh, to love, to liberate and be liberated. We’re doing it for ourselves too (most brewers drink beer, and religious professionals who care about their personal and spiritual formation meditate, pray, and worship regularly). We know that our crafts are tools; sacred tools, to be sure, but only because they serve to free us to live fully and honestly in the moments of existence given to us. And we have experienced how they connect us to ancestral wisdom and the Source and End of our existence.
Thirsty for more? (Sorry, dad joke.) While United can’t offer education in craft brewing (our new St. Paul neighbors have that covered), we’ve got a few generations of progressive Christian theological education under our belt. Our faculty are committed and diverse, and know a thing or two about doing religion responsibly. Personally and professionally, we know the damage that has been and is being done by bad theology. And we know the liberating power of ethical religious engagement. If your craft is religion, theology, chaplaincy, the arts, social transformation, come talk to us!