James W. Perkinson is a white settler colonist being slow-cooked into a bit of alternative responsibility by immersion in 40-plus years of Black survival bombast in the key of communalized rhythm, 22 years of Filipino resilience and beauty in marital intimacy, and 13 years of Native Turtle-Islander challenge and schooling under tutelage to Anishinaabe/Tzutujil visionary Martín Prechtel—as indeed, a 5-year feeding-and-scolding relationship with a local red-bird pair where he lives in inner city Detroit/Waawiyaatanong.

 

In addition to this long-standing journey into unlearning whiteness, he has continually embraced various activist commitments, including thedevelopment of inner-city cooperative housing, a decade of resistance to water shutoffs in Detroit, and more recent efforts to end the genocide in Palestine. He is an artist on the spoken-word poetry scene and currently teaches as Professor of Social Ethics at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary. He has taught and co-facilitated Ethno-Autobiography multiple times and is working to re-learn his own indigenous Celtic and Nordic ancestry.

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He holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago and is the author of eight books including:

 

• Political Spirituality in the Face of Climate Collapse: Of Monsters, Megaliths, Mules, and Muck

• Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars: The Angel of the Jordan Meets the Trickster of Detroit 

• Political Spirituality in an Age of Eco-Apocalypse: Communication and Struggle Across Species, Cultures, and Religions

• Messianism Against Christology: Resistance Movements, Folk Arts, and Empire

• Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion

• White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity

• Dreaming Moorish (a book of poetry)

• A Secret Gift Outside the Door (a book of poetry)