Scholarship for Shalom

After a decade and a half as a grassroots practitioner, I returned to the academy in the spirit urged by liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez : to pursue scholarship as “reflection on praxis” to better support social justice leaders in their struggles for holistic freedom and justice.

I began work on a PhD in Theology, Philosophy & Social Ethics at Boston University in 2024. Once an educational home to MLK Jr. and Howard Thurman, their spirit still pervades this place. My work sits at a number of intersections: the spiritual and the social, faith and politics, theory and practice. As a white man who grew up on lands still haunted by the undead afterlife of plantations, I am interested in forms of praxis that can free us from the psycho-spiritual clutch of whiteness and the political-economy of racial capitalism. What practices are needed to move beyond the ways and wounds of both masters and slaves? This leads me to profess a God less interested in sovereignty than in solidarity—demonstrated in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

These interests led me down two major paths of research. The first involves expressions of sovereignty and solidarity that emerged among, against, and between Black and white communities in my home place (Fort Bend County, TX) during Reconstruction. The second involves a critical-creative reappraisal of community organizing from theological and theoretical standpoints.