Theology Pub, a new community outreach program from the Highland Park Presbyterian Church, is starting small, but has big aspirations. The series of casual discussions might have taken its inspiration from a joke credited to W.C. Fields: “Everybody’s got to believe in something; I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Adam Walker Cleaveland, 35, a parish associate at HPPC, hosted the first Theology Pub on a recent Monday night at the Toadstool Pub in Highwood. With the Hacienda Brothers on the sound system, the Blackhawks on TV, and bowls of pretzels, mixed nuts and potato chips on the tables, the stage was set for the first of what Walker Cleaveland said he hopes will be a monthly informal interfaith gathering of believers, non-believers, and doubters alike where “people get together in a public space for drinks and conversation about spirituality and life.”
If Walker Cleaveland is disappointed that on this night only one person showed up (besides a reporter in attendance), he does not show it. He has over the past decade, he said, led successful incarnations of this program in California, Oregon and, most recently, Winnetka. One memorable evening, he recalled, he was co-leading with a female rabbi who specialized in writing sexuality curriculum for Judaism’s Reform movement.
“I looked around the pub,” he smiled, “and noticed we had people aged 21-80. We had Christians, Jews, and even atheists sitting around the bar talking about faith and sex. It was bizarre, but really beautiful at the same time.”
Theology Pub is an outgrowth of recent national studies that find a growing population of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, and who resist congregational affiliation, as was noted in a 2014 Pew Research Center study.
“Back in the day,” Walker Cleaveland noted, “our culture was one where you would start a worship service and people would fill the church; an if-you-build-it-they-will-come kind of thing. More and more, it is important to go out into the community where the people are. People have said to me, ‘I have a buddy and he and I like to have conversations like this. He’s not going to come to church with me, but he will come out with me and have a beer.'”
Walker Cleaveland has established ground rules for Theology Pub, the most important being “Everyone’s voice has the right to be heard.”
But he is not offering answers or solutions to life’s biggest questions.
“It’s not my hope that I will wrap things up at the end,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to leave at the end feeling like they’ve got it all figured out. If you leave with more questions (to continue the conversation) then I feel like I’ve done my job and we are headed in the right direction.”
Ted Dunn, 40, too, does not betray any letdown that he is the only participant this evening. The Lake Bluff native and his wife have lived in Highland Park for two years and began attending Highland Park Presbyterian Church this fall. A graduate of Lake Forest College with a degree in philosophy, he said he was looking forward to “hanging out with Adam over a few beers.”
Their conversation wended its way into a discussion about pluralism and what it means to hold beliefs in a way that is respectful of others with different viewpoints.
What’s next? Walker Cleaveland allows that he would like to have a beer-and-carols night over the Christmas holidays. But for now, he said, “This is a good beginning.”
After an almost an hour, he and Dunn were still talking.
For updates on Theology Pub, visit the church’s website at http://www.facebook.com/HighlandParkTheologyPub
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Donald Liebenson is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.