Body Theology
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Religious Espectrocide and Maternal Resistance: Ethical Reflections from a Testimony
Michelle is a Brazilian mother of David, a neurodivergent child diagnosed with autism. In her public testimony, she recounts a painful journey marked by experiences of exclusion and lack of understanding within her evangelical community in Brazil. In many religious contexts, autistic existence is not interpreted as part of human diversity but as a spiritual deviation to be corrected. This article proposes the concept of espectrocide, a term that designates the symbolic, epistemic, and affective erasure of autistic identities, as a tool for analyzing the specific effects of religious discourse and practices on autistic people (Freitas & Franco, in press). More specifically, religious espectrocide refers to the symbolic and structural…
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Reflections on Body Theology
Bodies matter. They shape how we experience life—through our senses, movements, and our interactions with the world. Yet, our bodies are frequently sites of inequality and violence. In 2025, state-sanctioned war and genocide (in Palestine and Ukraine to name just two places) targets and seeks to erase the bodies of entire communities, both physically and culturally. The COVID-19 pandemic has left lasting physical, mental, and societal scars, with millions facing health challenges like long COVID, deepening inequalities, and strained healthcare systems. Physical and sexual violence, especially gender-based violence, remains a global public health crisis. The bodies of Black people, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and refugees are still treated as though they…
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Lamentation of Dehumanisation: Theological Resistance and the Sacredness of the Accused Child
Atlanta, Georgia “If there’s somebody out there like that has him, I just wish they knew that somebody here loves him; that a whole lot of people love him. This whole community loves him and they want him back, too.” Camille Bell.[1] On the 21st of October 1979, nine-year-old Yusuf Bell ran an errand for an elderly neighbour at a nearby grocery store. He never returned home to his mother, who called out for him. His body was later found in an abandoned school building eighteen days later.[2] His cause of death was classified as a brutal hit on his head and strangulation. Yusuf was one of the thirty African-American…
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“We’re people, not parts of people”: Severance, trauma, and the stories our bodies tell
*Spoilers for Severance Series 2 ahead* I’ve just finished watching the second series of Severance, Apple TV’s psychological work-place thriller. It centres on the lives of employees at Lumon Industries, a biotechnology company where some workers have undergone a medical procedure, the titular “severance.” Once a chip has been implanted in their brains, a strict division is created between their professional and personal lives. Employees have no memory of their personal life while at work, and no awareness of their work life outside of the office. As a result, each individual essentially splits into two separate personas: the “innie,” confined to the workplace, and the “outie,” who experiences life beyond…
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Yet still they speak
Content warning: sexual violence But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.” (Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.) So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her. But Tamar put ashes on her head, and tore the long robe that she was…
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Mercy Under A Boundary: Toward A Spirituality Of Safeguarding In African Church Life
Introduction In March 2025, I was privileged to be one of the presenters at the Theology and Canon Law project (TCLP) Symposium in London under the theme — “Law & Religion in Times of Crisis, Challenges and Change.” As usual, my paper focused on the socio-religious injustice of witchcraft abuses and violence against societies’ most vulnerable, with the title — “Law, Religion, and Crisis: The Weaponisation of Witchcraft Accusations Against Older Women in Three African Countries.” That same day, I developed a new interest in the spirituality of safeguarding when I heard it from Dr Helen Costigane, one of the symposium’s keynote speakers. Her paper was titled “Law and religion:…
