Divine Deviance: A Roadmap for Resistance to Christofascism

An overview and glossary for the Divine Deviance series

When the machinery of Christofascism—that dangerous fusion of religious authority with authoritarian politics—seems all-encompassing, resistance requires more than conventional opposition. It demands what I call "divine deviance": embodied practices that find the sacred precisely in what empire labels deviant. This series explores how vulnerability, transgression, and joy become unexpected sources of resistance when systems of control attempt to determine who counts as fully human. These essays aren't abstract theorizing but emerge from lived experience—my journey from evangelical fundamentalist to transgender theologian—while drawing from critical theory, liberation theology, and the wisdom of marginalized communities who have always known how to create possibility in the shadows of empire.

The Essays

1. The Fairground Conversion — Explores how nationalist mysticism shapes consciousness through ritualized performances of patriotism. Through my journey from Lee Greenwood-weeping teen in a cowboy hat to critical theologian, this essay examines how Christian nationalism operates not just through force but by making the American Dream feel holy—and how authentic spirituality often emerges precisely through challenging these false transcendences. Drawing from Dorothee Sölle's critique of Christofascism and Butler's theory of subject formation, it reveals how the very intensity of nationalist devotion creates possibilities for its undoing.

2. Sacred Empire, Profane Bodies — Analyzes how Project 2025 represents a sophisticated evolution of Christofascism that transforms theological violence into seemingly neutral market operations. From my perspective as a transgender woman, this essay examines how religious objections to certain bodies become translated into medical policies, economic barriers, and administrative procedures that determine which lives can flourish and which must struggle to survive. Using Michel Foucault's concept of disciplinary power and Achille Mbembe's necropolitics, it exposes the machinery of control that operates not through crude repression but through administrative violence.

3. Naked Blasphemy — Chronicles how a teenage act of attempted blasphemy—stripping naked on a beige carpet to renounce God—unexpectedly revealed the paradox that authentic divinity emerges precisely when domination is refused. Through this intimate story, the essay explores how vulnerability itself can be transformed from a site of control into a wellspring of resistance and solidarity. It engages Judith Butler's work on vulnerability as a political technology and Sölle's concept of creative disobedience to illuminate how transgression itself can become sacred encounter.

4. Shitting with the Bathroom Door Open — Examines how "progressive" religious spaces often perpetuate institutional violence through subtler mechanisms of control. When a pastor compared my public transgender identity to "shitting with the bathroom door open," I discovered how vulnerability operates as a sophisticated political technology—one that systems manipulate while divine deviance reclaims as a source of connection. It explores how power functions through what Michel Foucault identified as pastoral power—authority that claims to care for both individual and collective welfare while actually increasing precarity.

5. ACAB (Including the Cop in Your Head) — Investigates how systems of power maintain control not just through external force but by teaching us to police ourselves and each other. Drawing from Augusto Boal's concept of the "cop in the head," this essay explores practices for disarming internalized authority and building networks of solidarity that make such policing increasingly obsolete. It connects Butler's theory of subjection with the lived experiences of marginalized communities creating alternatives to state violence.

6. Desire is the Doorway to Liberation — Argues that authentic desire functions as revolutionary force. The essay examines how religious institutions and capitalism operate as interlocking systems of desire management, while marginalized communities—especially queer and trans folks—demonstrate how desire exceeds these constraints, generating alternatives where systems of control claim nothing can grow. It brings Audre Lorde's concept of erotic power into conversation with José Esteban Muñoz's queer futurity to reimagine desire as collective world-making rather than individual consumption.

7. Collective Care in the Spaces Between — Explores how networks of mutual aid create alternatives to both Christofascism's false community and technofeudalism's isolation. Through interdiscordance—the resonance between individual discomfort and collective resistance—we discover practices of care that sustain resistance while prefiguring the world we're fighting to create. It examines how marginalized communities have always created counter-publics where alternative forms of connection and support flourish outside institutional control.

8. Sacred Memory Against Empire — Examines how Christofascism maintains power through weaponized amnesia and how liberatory counter-memory practices—particularly as developed in womanist thought and Sylvia Wynter's counterpoetics—offer resources for resistance that transcend the limitations of Christian frameworks while preserving wisdom from many traditions of struggle. It explores how embodied practices of remembering differently challenge the very categories through which empire understands humanity.

9. Dancing with the Spirit of Liberation — Concludes the series by integrating joy into resistance. Drawing from Emma Goldman's insistence that revolution must include dancing, this essay develops concrete practices for sustainable resistance that celebrates life even while confronting death-dealing systems. It engages with Ashon Crawley's concept of "otherwise possibility" and prefigurative politics to show how celebration isn't distraction from resistance but essential to its success.

Conclusion

Divine deviance isn't merely theoretical—it's a lived practice of finding liberation in the very qualities empire deems threatening. These essays don't offer comprehensive solutions but starting points for what must be a collective, evolving process of resistance. They provide no guarantees of success, only the possibility of greater integrity, deeper solidarity, and glimpses of what liberation might feel like. The threats we face are real and intensifying, but our hope isn't abstract optimism—it's concrete experience of alternatives already emerging in spaces empire doesn't control. The Spirit of Liberation moves between us, opening possibilities where none seemed to exist, calling us toward a freedom that can only be found together.

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Glossary of Key Terms and Thinkers

ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) — Slogan asserting that policing as an institution inherently corrupts those within it, regardless of individual intentions. It recognizes that the problem isn't "bad apples" but a system designed to protect property and maintain social hierarchies rather than ensure collective wellbeing.

Anarchism — Anarchism is a political philosophy and social movement that opposes all forms of hierarchical domination—whether by the state, capitalism, or other coercive institutions—and seeks to build a society based on voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and direct democracy. Anarchism emphasizes self-governance, collective responsibility, and prefigurative politics—creating the world we want in the here and now. It rejects the notion that order requires authority, instead advocating for decentralized, non-hierarchical structures that enable human dignity, autonomy, and solidarity. Far from chaos, anarchism is an ongoing struggle to dismantle systems of oppression while cultivating alternative ways of living that are liberatory, egalitarian, and sustainable.

Anti-process — A psychological defense mechanism where potentially threatening information is preemptively recognized and supressed before it can cause cognitive dissonance. The subconscious compromises information that would challenge existing beliefs, creating a disconnect that makes certain ideas seem implausible regardless of their merit. This mechanism helps explain why people can be intellectually capable of understanding counter-arguments yet remain unswayable in their convictions.

Anzaldúa, Gloria — A Chicana feminist theorist, poet, and activist whose work explores borderlands consciousness—the experience of living between cultures, languages, and identities. Her concept of "nepantla" describes the liminal in-between spaces where transformation becomes possible despite discomfort. She developed the theory of "conocimiento," a form of embodied knowledge emerging from lived experience, particularly experiences of rupture and transformation. Her writing insists that those marginalized by multiple systems of oppression develop unique insights precisely because they must navigate contradictory expectations and realities.

Affective Politics — Recognition that political engagement operates not just through rational argument but through emotions, sensations, and embodied experiences. It examines how feelings like fear, hope, or disgust shape political realities and how transforming our emotional landscapes becomes essential to political change.

Biopower — A concept developed by Michel Foucault to describe how modern states exert control over life itself, managing populations through policies, institutions, and discourses that regulate bodies, health, reproduction, and death. Unlike older forms of sovereign power that worked through direct violence or coercion, biopower operates through surveillance, medical knowledge, statistics, and social norms, shaping how people live, work, and even understand themselves. It manifests in public health policies, reproductive laws, policing, and eugenics, defining whose lives are valued and whose are expendable. While biopower can be used for welfare (such as vaccination programs), it also serves systems of oppression by reinforcing racial, gendered, and economic hierarchies under the guise of "protecting" or "improving" society.

Boal, Augusto — A Brazilian theater director and activist who developed Theater of the Oppressed, a radical approach that transforms spectators into participants, enabling people to recognize and challenge internalized oppression. His concept of "the cop in the head" describes how domination operates not just externally but through our own internalized beliefs, shaping how we police ourselves and each other. Boal’s theatrical techniques offer a means of rehearsing resistance, creating spaces where people can experiment with breaking free from oppression in ways that prepare them for real-world transformation.

Butler, Judith — A Philosopher and gender theorist who revolutionized our understanding of power, identity, and resistance with their work on performativity, subjection, and vulnerability. Their theory of gender performativity reveals how gender is not an innate essence but a set of social norms continually reenacted and enforced through discourse, habit, and power. Butler’s analysis of how norms operate on our very sense of self has shaped feminist and queer theory, providing critical tools for understanding both oppression and the means of subverting it. Their work insists that power is never absolute—where there is subjection, there is also the possibility of reworking and refusing the scripts we inherit.

Christofascism — A reactionary political and theological movement that distorts Christianity’s liberatory message to justify authoritarianism, nationalism, and capitalist exploitation. As theologian Dorothee Sölle described, it empties Christian imagery of its radical call for justice, turning Jesus’s solidarity with the oppressed into a privatized “personal salvation,” his critique of wealth into prosperity gospel, and his vision of communal liberation into hierarchical structures demanding obedience. Christofascism operates by aligning religious devotion with state power, using moral panic, patriarchal authority, and exclusionary nationalism to uphold systems of domination while masking them in the language of faith.

Cognitive Dissonance — The mental discomfort experienced when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or perceptions simultaneously, or when new information conflicts with existing beliefs. This psychological state produces tension that individuals try to reduce either by changing beliefs, rejecting new information, or rationalizing inconsistencies. Understanding cognitive dissonance helps explain why confronting people with facts that contradict their worldview often strengthens rather than weakens their original beliefs, as they seek to resolve discomfort through defense mechanisms rather than belief revision.

Conocimiento — A term from Gloria Anzaldúa referring to an embodied, spiritual, and political awareness that emerges through encounters with difference, contradiction, and rupture. Unlike purely intellectual understanding, conocimiento integrates body, mind, and spirit through a transformative process triggered by discomfort or crisis. This form of knowing embraces ambiguity and liminality, recognizing how marginalized people develop unique insights by navigating contradictory realities. Conocimiento becomes both healing practice and political strategy, transforming personal pain into collective insight that challenges dominant frameworks while imagining alternatives.

Colonized Consciousness — The condition in which those subjected to colonization—whether directly or through generations of entanglement in the colonial project—internalize the worldview, values, and self-understanding of the colonizer. It reveals how imperial power does not rely solely on external force but works by remaking imagination itself, making alternatives to domination seem unthinkable. Even those positioned as colonizers were often once colonized, yet their complicity deepens their responsibility for dismantling these structures. Decolonizing consciousness is essential for liberation, requiring a radical unlearning of imposed identities and a reimagining of ways of being beyond the logic of empire.

Counter-Memory — Womanist theologian Emilie Townes describes counter-memory as communal practices that resist dominant historical narratives. More than just correcting facts, counter-memory involves embodied practices of remembering differently, creating continuity where empire insists on rupture, and preserving knowledge that official archives systematically exclude.

Counterpoetics — Sylvia Wynter's concept describing practices that challenge colonial frameworks for understanding humanity. Moving beyond demanding inclusion within existing categories, counterpoetics reimagines what it means to be human outside Western/colonial definitions. These practices—found in literature, music, community rituals, and political movements—create new languages and frameworks that refuse the dehumanizing logics of colonialism, racism, and capitalism, prefiguring alternative ways of being human that exceed imposed limitations.

Counter-publics — Alternative spaces of discourse and community created by marginalized groups when the dominant public sphere excludes or misrepresents them. Unlike private retreats from public life, counter-publics actively engage with broader society while nurturing different norms, languages, and ways of relating. They serve as incubators for new political identities, survival strategies, and cultural forms that challenge hegemonic assumptions. Examples include Black churches during civil rights movements, feminist consciousness-raising groups, queer underground scenes, and disability justice networks—all creating infrastructure for both immediate survival and long-term transformation.

Crawley, Ashon — Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia who explores the concept of "otherwise possibility"—how marginalized communities create alternative ways of being that defy the constraints imposed by dominant systems. His work examines Black Pentecostalism, queer Black life, and the aesthetics of breath and sound, arguing that spirituality and artistic practices generate forms of existence that dominant frameworks cannot fully contain or control. Crawley’s vision expands how we think about resistance, embodiment, and the sacred, revealing radical possibilities hidden within everyday Black life.

Creative Disobedience — Dorothee Sölle's concept describing how authentic spiritual practice often requires transgressing religious authority. Unlike mere rebellion that remains trapped in the logic it opposes, creative disobedience enacts alternatives that challenge oppressive systems while opening new possibilities for genuine community.

Disciplinary Power — Michel Foucault's term for how modern power operates not primarily through obvious force but through mechanisms that train people to monitor and correct themselves. Unlike earlier forms of power that punished bodies directly, disciplinary power shapes subjects who internalize norms and regulate themselves, making external control less necessary.

Discourse — The systems of language, knowledge, and meaning that shape how individuals and groups understand and navigate the social world. It includes the dominant narratives, assumptions, and frameworks that define what is considered true, possible, or legitimate within a given cultural or political context. Drawing from Michel Foucault, discourse is not just about communication but about the way power operates through language and representation. It determines which ideas, identities, and relationships are recognized, shaping how people think about race, gender, class, morality, justice, and belonging. Discourse operates across institutions, media, and everyday interactions, reinforcing norms, hierarchies, and subject positions.

Divine Deviance — Practices that find the sacred precisely in what empire labels "deviant," generating possibilities where systems of control claim none exist. It's "divine" not because it appeals to supernatural authority but because it touches something beyond the categories empire provides—moments of connection, aliveness, and possibility that exceed what's permitted within imperial frameworks.

Erotic Power — Audre Lorde's concept describing the erotic as a deep resource of feeling, creativity, and knowledge that extends far beyond sexuality. For Lorde, the erotic constitutes a form of power that patriarchal systems must suppress because it connects people to their deepest desires and capacities, threatening systems based on alienation and control.

Fascism — Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian political ideology that seeks to consolidate power through ultranationalism, militarism, and the violent suppression of opposition. It thrives on hierarchical social order, the myth of national rebirth, and scapegoating marginalized groups, often portraying itself as a response to perceived decline or humiliation. Unlike traditional conservatism, fascism rejects democratic norms outright, glorifies obedience, strength, and domination, and uses propaganda, surveillance, and state-sanctioned violence to enforce conformity. While often associated with historical regimes like Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany, fascism remains an ever-present threat, adapting itself to new contexts by exploiting economic crises, cultural anxieties, and populist rhetoric to justify its pursuit of absolute power.

Foucault, Michel¹ — A French philosopher who reshaped how we understand power, knowledge, and subjectivity, showing that oppression does not operate solely through coercion but also by shaping what is considered possible, normal, or true. His work on biopower, governmentality, and disciplinary institutions reveals how modern systems of control—such as prisons, schools, and medical discourses—produce compliant subjects. At the same time, Foucault also explores the cracks within power, emphasizing that resistance emerges wherever power attempts to define and limit life. His work remains foundational for those seeking to understand how domination works and where resistance can take root.

Goldman, Emma — An Anarchist activist, writer, and orator who insisted that revolution must not only fight oppression but also embrace joy, pleasure, and the full expression of human life. Her famous declaration that she did not want a revolution in which she could not dance was not just about personal freedom but a rejection of the false separation between politics and desire. A fierce critic of capitalism, the state, and patriarchy, she advocated for free speech, workers’ rights, and sexual liberation while challenging moralistic and authoritarian tendencies within radical movements. Goldman's vision of anarchism as both struggle and celebration continues to inspire those who refuse to accept a liberation that demands self-denial.

Gospel of Empire — Perversion of Christian message that transmutes Jesus's challenge to imperial power into justification for domination. It functions by selectively reading scripture, emphasizing texts that support hierarchy and obedience while ignoring or reinterpreting Jesus's solidarity with the oppressed and critique of wealth.

Heteronormativity — A system presenting heterosexuality and binary gender as the only natural, normal expressions of sexuality and gender. More than just prejudice against LGBTQ+ people, heteronormativity structures institutions, language, and imagination itself, making non-conforming lives appear impossible, unnatural, or threatening.

Interdiscordance — My term for the resonance between personal experiences of dissonance (feeling "out of place" or "wrong" within dominant systems) and broader patterns of social oppression. It describes how connecting individual discomfort with collective struggle creates opportunities for insight and action that neither individual resistance nor abstract solidarity could generate alone.

Liberation Theology — A theological movement from the perspective of the oppressed, insisting that faith must drive material and social transformation, not just personal salvation. First developed in Latin America by theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff, it asserts that God sides with the poor, demanding direct action against capitalism, imperialism, and racial injustice.

Beyond Latin America, Black Liberation Theology (James Cone) confronts anti-Black racism, while Womanist and Mujerista theologies center Black and Latina women’s struggles against both racism and sexism. Asian and Dalit theologies challenge colonial and caste-based oppression, and Indigenous theologies reclaim spirituality outside colonial frameworks. Queer Liberation Theology (Marcella Althaus-Reid) critiques religious heteronormativity, affirming queerness as a site of divine liberation.

Across these traditions, Liberation Theology remains a living movement, insisting that faith is inseparable from justice and that theology must not only interpret the world but help transform it.

Lorde, Audre — A Black lesbian feminist, poet, and theorist Audre Lorde transformed how we understand desire, pleasure, and power with her concept of "the erotic as power." She argued that the erotic is not just about sexuality but a deep, embodied knowledge that connects us to joy, creativity, and resistance. Systems of oppression, she maintained, suppress this power to maintain control, training people to fear their own emotional and sensory depths. Lorde’s work remains a call to recognize difference not as a source of division but as a well of strength, demanding that justice movements embrace the full complexity of identity, feeling, and lived experience.

Mbembe, Achille — A Cameroonian philosopher who developed the concept of "necropolitics" to examine how sovereignty operates not just through law and governance but through the power to determine who may live and who must die. Expanding on Foucault’s theory of biopower, Mbembe analyzes how colonialism, apartheid, and contemporary neoliberalism maintain control by exposing certain populations—particularly Black and Indigenous peoples—to premature death, abandonment, or unlivable conditions. His work reveals how modern states wield death as a political tool, shaping global inequalities while masking them as natural or inevitable.

Metaxu — Simone Weil's concept describing elements that both separate and connect us—barriers that paradoxically enable relationship. Like a wall between gardens that both divides and joins them, metaxu functions as mediation between the human and divine, the finite and infinite. For Weil, everything in the world can function as metaxu: beauty, art, friendship, even suffering. These realities simultaneously reveal our separation from transcendence while creating pathways toward it. This concept helps illuminate how spaces of separation can become sites of connection, how boundaries can enable rather than prevent relationship, and how the very things that mark our limits can become bridges to what lies beyond them.

Muñoz, José Esteban — A queer theorist who developed the concept of “queer futurity”, arguing that queerness is not merely a fixed identity but a horizon of possibility, a longing for a world not yet here. In Cruising Utopia, he explores how marginalized communities create glimpses of freedom through performance, art, and chosen kinship, resisting the limits imposed by dominant structures. Muñoz critiques the "here and now" of assimilationist politics, instead affirming that queerness always gestures toward something more—an alternative reality where oppression does not define the boundaries of life, love, and desire.

Mutual Aid — Voluntary, reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit, typically organized through horizontal networks rather than hierarchical institutions. Unlike charity, which maintains power disparities between givers and receivers, mutual aid operates through relationships of solidarity and shared power. These practices—from tenant unions to community healthcare networks, food distribution to skill-sharing—create infrastructure for survival outside capitalist exchange while building relationships that challenge atomization and dependence. As theorized by Peter Kropotkin, mutual aid represents not simply emergency response but an alternative social principle challenging both state control and market competition.

Natality — Hannah Arendt's concept describing the human capacity for new beginnings. More than just biological birth, natality represents our ability to introduce genuine novelty into the world through action and speech. For Arendt, natality stands against totalitarianism's attempt to make people superfluous, affirming that each new person brings unpredictable potential into political life. This concept illuminates how collective liberation depends not just on critiquing what exists but on affirming our capacity to begin something genuinely new—to act in ways that disrupt what seems inevitable and create openings where none appeared possible.

Necropolitics — Achille Mbembe's term describing how political sovereignty manifests as the power to determine who may live and who must die. It examines how systems create "death-worlds" where certain populations are rendered socially and politically dead while still biologically alive, particularly through colonial and racial violence.

Norms — Socially enforced expectations for behavior, belief, and interaction that define what is considered acceptable or deviant within a given society. They function as informal rules that regulate conduct, often operating through social reinforcement, stigma, and internalization rather than formal laws. Norms can be explicit (e.g., dress codes, professional etiquette) or implicit (e.g., gender expectations, racialized assumptions) and vary across cultural, historical, and institutional contexts. While discourse provides the ideological framework that makes norms intelligible, norms themselves dictate the expected behaviors, attitudes, and values that sustain social order.

Otherwise Possibility — Ashon Crawley's concept describing how marginalized communities create alternative modes of existence that exceed the constraints imposed by dominant frameworks. Found in artistic practices, spiritual traditions, and forms of community that dominant culture deems "impossible" or "irrational," these possibilities aren't simply responses to oppression but generative openings toward different ways of being. The concept emphasizes that genuine alternatives to current systems don't emerge through academic theorizing but through embodied practices cultivated by communities facing oppression—particularly Black, Indigenous, and queer communities whose very existence challenges what the dominant culture allows to be possible.

Pastoral Power — Foucault's concept describing authority that claims to care for both individual and collective welfare while actually increasing precarity. Unlike overtly repressive power, pastoral power operates through care and salvation, making it particularly effective when wielded by religious institutions or therapeutic authorities.

Performativity — Judith Butler's concept describing how aspects of identity are not innate essences but effects produced through repeated social performances. Unlike simple performance, which implies a pre-existing actor, performativity suggests that the "performer" is constituted through the very acts thought to express identity. Gender performativity, for instance, involves the reiteration of norms that simultaneously create the illusion of natural gender while never fully succeeding, creating openings for subversion. This concept reveals how seemingly natural categories are actually constructed through regulatory practices while pointing toward possibilities for disrupting these categories through alternative performances.

Post-Christianity — Theological approaches that engage critically with Christian tradition without accepting its institutional authority or transcendent claims. Unlike both traditional Christianity and secular rejection of religion, post-Christianity maintains complex relationship with Christian heritage while refusing its colonizing aspects.

Prefigurative Politics — Practice of embodying the world you're fighting for rather than postponing transformation until "after the revolution." It rejects separation between means and ends, insisting that how we organize resistance shapes what becomes possible afterward. Examples include horizontal decision-making in movements and mutual aid networks that demonstrate alternatives to capitalist exchange.

Project 2025 — Project 2025 is a far-reaching policy agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing organizations to radically restructure the federal government, consolidating executive power and embedding Christian nationalist governance into state institutions. Designed as a blueprint for a Republican administration, it outlines plans to dismantle regulatory agencies, expand presidential authority, and rollback civil rights protections, particularly targeting LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, reproductive freedom, and racial justice initiatives. More than a set of policy proposals, Project 2025 is a strategic effort to transform religious and ideological objections into bureaucratic norms, using the machinery of governance to impose a reactionary social order under the guise of administrative reform.

Queer Futurity — José Esteban Muñoz's concept describing queerness not as fixed identity but as horizon of possibility. It examines how queer existence gestures toward worlds beyond current constraints, creating glimpses of alternatives through performance, art, and forms of relation that dominant systems cannot imagine or contain.

Queer Theology — Theological approaches that center LGBTQ+ experiences and challenge heteronormative religious frameworks. Beyond simply arguing for inclusion, queer theology fundamentally reimagines religious concepts like incarnation, sin, and redemption through queer experience, often finding theological insight precisely where traditional religion sees deviance.

Reverse Discourse — Foucault's term for how marginalized groups can take up and transform the very categories used to oppress them. Unlike simple resistance that remains trapped in opposition, reverse discourse redirects power by using its own terms against it, creating new meanings and possibilities within seemingly fixed categories.

Social Scripts — Internalized, role-based patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling that guide how people interact and perform their identities within specific social contexts. Unlike discourse, which defines the broader systems of knowledge and power that structure meaning and legitimacy, social scripts function at the level of embodied practice, shaping how individuals enact social norms in everyday life. They provide structured, situation-specific "instructions" on how to perform social roles, such as gender, authority, professionalism, or relationships. While discourse produces the conceptual categories that define identity and power, social scripts dictate how people actually behave within those categories, making them feel natural, intuitive, or inevitable rather than consciously imposed. Drawing from Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis of social roles, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, and Michel Foucault’s analysis of discourse and power, social scripts describe the repetitive, often unconscious performances that sustain and reinforce social hierarchies.

Socio-Spiritual Discernment — A practice dissolving artificial boundaries between interior spiritual experience and external social reality by examining both "motions of the soul" and "movements in the world" to cultivate paths toward liberation. Unlike traditional spiritual discernment focused primarily on individual interior life, or secular social analysis that may dismiss spiritual dimensions, this approach recognizes how personal transformation and social liberation are inextricably linked. It provides tools for recognizing how personal pain often reflects systemic injustice, while also identifying opportunities for meaningful resistance through shared vulnerability and collective action.

Sölle, Dorothee — A German liberation theologian, poet, and activist who developed the concepts of "Christofascism" and "creative disobedience" to challenge Christianity’s complicity in systems of domination. She argued that faith, when stripped of its liberatory core, can be weaponized to justify authoritarianism, capitalism, and war, turning Jesus into a tool of the powerful rather than a model of resistance. In contrast, Sölle envisioned an engaged, mystical-political spirituality that resists fascism’s demand for conformity and calls for radical solidarity with the oppressed. Rejecting passive belief, she saw theology as an act of ongoing resistance—one that requires breaking from oppressive traditions, embracing communal struggle, and cultivating a faith that fuels liberation rather than submission.

Solidarity — Practice of aligning oneself with others' struggles through concrete action rather than abstract sympathy. Unlike charity that maintains hierarchical relationships, solidarity recognizes interconnection while respecting autonomy, building power through mutual vulnerability rather than saviorism. It manifests in material support, risk-sharing, and commitment to collective liberation.

Spirit of Liberation — Rather than some cosmic authority figure, the Spirit of Liberation is possibility for fullness erupting within systems existing to foreclose it entirely—that moment when what seemed inevitable suddenly reveals itself as merely contingent. It operates through what I call "interdiscordance," when personal discomfort connects with collective suffering to create unexpected solidarity. Unlike frameworks that locate the divine within established power structures (thereby sanctifying hierarchy through holy language), this places the Spirit in future possibility—in what isn't yet but could be. When we encounter moments where the script breaks down—where our bodies or desires or imaginations refuse to comply with what power insists is normal—we participate in divine deviance, those beautiful transgressions that reveal both the violence of the current order and the possibility of something else. We see this in queer communities creating ritual from rejection, in mutual aid networks that emerge when institutions fail, in moments of shared vulnerability where people stand together despite not knowing exactly what comes next. This isn't abstract theology; it's what happens in bodies and communities that refuse to disappear even when every system is designed to erase them.

Subjection — Judith Butler's term for how subjects are simultaneously formed by power and derive agency from it. Unlike simpler models where power just acts on pre-existing subjects, subjection describes how power both creates us as subjects and provides conditions for resisting its own constraints, creating complex relationship between formation and resistance.

Townes, Emilie M. — A womanist theologian and ethicist whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, and faith, with a focus on the lived experiences of Black women. Drawing on womanist ethics, she critiques how systemic oppression operates within religious and social structures, particularly in the ways stereotypes and cultural narratives sustain injustice. In her landmark work, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil, she examines how myths and images—like the "Mammy" stereotype—shape moral imagination and reinforce white supremacy. Townes emphasizes the necessity of resisting internalized oppression, reclaiming dignity, and fostering communal survival and liberation. Her scholarship is deeply engaged in social justice, advocating for a faith that confronts structural evil and nurtures radical hope.

The Spaces Between — Liminal zones where power operates but also where transformation becomes possible through vulnerability and solidarity. These interstitial spaces exist wherever dominant scripts meet lived experience—in the gaps between institutional expectations and personal authenticity, in moments of shared vulnerability that pierce social isolation, in the creative tensions where different ways of being encounter each other. Unlike approaches focusing solely on either individual experience or systemic structures, this framework examines how power and resistance operate in the relationships and interactions connecting personal and collective life, revealing how genuine transformation often emerges precisely where established structures and identities become unstable or uncertain.

Technofeudalism — Term coined by economist Yanis Varoufakis describing how digital platforms control the infrastructure of social and economic life like medieval lords controlled land. Unlike earlier forms of capitalism focused on commodity production, technofeudalism extracts value by owning the digital spaces we increasingly need for work, connection, and basic survival.

The Cop in Your Head — Augusto Boal's concept describing internalized oppression that makes external control less necessary. It examines how we police ourselves and each other through internalized norms, making oppressive systems appear natural and inevitable while limiting our capacity to imagine alternatives.

Uprootedness — Simone Weil's concept describing the systematic destruction of the social, cultural, and spiritual roots that give human life meaning and stability. Beyond physical displacement, uprootedness involves the severing of meaningful connection to community, place, history, and tradition—leaving people alienated and adrift. Weil saw modern industrial capitalism, totalitarianism, and colonialism as forces of uprootedness, destroying organic forms of community while imposing abstract, homogenizing systems. She argued that genuine resistance requires not just political opposition but the cultivation of roots—ways of being that reconnect people to the concrete realities of place, time, and relationship.

Vulnerability — Condition of being susceptible to harm that systems of power manipulate but that can also become foundation for solidarity and resistance. Unlike frameworks that treat vulnerability as weakness to be overcome, this understanding recognizes our fundamental interdependence while transforming shared precarity into source of collective power.

Weaponized Amnesia — Strategic erasure or distortion of historical memory to maintain systems of power. More than simple forgetting, it involves active processes of silencing, discrediting, and overwriting histories that challenge dominant narratives, particularly those exposing historical violence against marginalized communities.

Weil, Simone — A French philosopher, mystic, and political activist whose uncompromising commitment to embodied truth-seeking makes her both intellectually formidable and perpetually uncomfortable for established systems. Weil's brilliance lay in her refusal to separate theory from bodily experience—working in factories despite her privileged education, joining the Spanish Civil War despite physical frailty, and ultimately dying at 34 after refusing to eat more than those in Nazi-occupied France. Her thought defies categorization, weaving Marxist critique, mystical theology, and radical ethics while refusing the comfort of any ideological home. Through concepts like "attention" (emptying oneself to truly see another), "metaxu" (elements that both separate and connect us), and "decreation" (unmaking the self to make space for reality), Weil challenges both religious authoritarianism and secular nihilism, insisting that resistance requires not just opposing oppressive systems but cultivating alternative ways of being that prioritize attention, rootedness, and mutual care—a politics grounded in the radical refusal to participate in collective violence while maintaining an almost unbearable openness to others' suffering.

Womanist Theology — A theological framework emerging from the experiences and insights of Black women, articulating faith perspectives that challenge interlocking oppressions of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation. Coined by Alice Walker and developed by scholars like Delores Williams, Jacquelyn Grant, Katie Geneva Cannon, and Emilie Townes, womanist theology centers Black women's survival strategies, communal wisdom, and spiritual practices as sources of theological insight. Moving beyond both white feminism and Black male-centered theology, it creates space for addressing how religious traditions have simultaneously served as sites of oppression and resources for liberation. Womanist theology emphasizes embodied knowledge, intergenerational wisdom, and the inseparability of personal healing from collective justice.

Wynter, Sylvia — A Jamaican writer and cultural theorist who challenges the Western conception of humanity as shaped by colonialism, racial capitalism, and Eurocentrism. She examines how modernity constructs a limited, exclusionary idea of the “human”—one that privileges whiteness, masculinity, and capital—while rendering other lives as marginal or disposable. Her work on counterpoetics and the "genre of the human" seeks to imagine new ways of being beyond colonial frameworks, reclaiming Black and Indigenous knowledge systems as vital to reconstructing what it means to be fully human.

1. Michel Foucault’s analyses of power, discourse, and subjectivity have profoundly shaped critical theory and continue to offer indispensable tools for understanding oppression. His work helps illuminate how power operates not only through institutions but also through the ways we construct knowledge, identity, and resistance.

At the same time, Foucault has been accused of sexually abusing minors, and these allegations—while debated—raise serious ethical concerns. I acknowledge these accusations without excusing them. Using Foucault’s theoretical insights does not mean endorsing his actions or overlooking the harm he may have caused. Rather, it reflects a commitment to wrestling with complex intellectual legacies, recognizing that critical theory itself demands an ongoing ethical engagement with its sources.

This approach is not about separating the art from the artist, but about grappling with the contradictions in our intellectual inheritances. The work of dismantling oppressive systems must include scrutiny of the thinkers we rely on, even as we make use of their insights.