🔥 Substack Conversations Launch on Pentecost
with Ryan Cagle: On Activist Theology as DIY Punk—What is the work right now?
This Sunday, Pentecost, we’re lighting a new fire.
In the Christian tradition, Pentecost is the day breath becomes language, and language becomes liberation. The Spirit doesn’t descend with dogma—it arrives with unruly tongues, sacred chaos, and wild possibility. It births a movement.
So it’s only right that we launch Substack Conversations on this day—with a guest who knows something about movement, mystery, and making meaning on the edge.
In our debut episode, I sit down with Ryan Cagle, a longtime co-conspirator in justice work, who once described my work as “Activist Theology is DIY Punk.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about that phrase.
Because that’s what this is.
It’s not clean.
It’s not credentialed.
It’s raw, real, and refuses the rules of empire.
We talk about:
the sacredness of being unruly,
what it means to deconstruct without disappearing,
how punk and theology both scream another world is possible,
and the cost—and joy—of building sanctuary beyond the institution.
🎙️ Listen in. Watch with your body.
This isn’t content.
It’s communion across the crackling airwaves.
Let this conversation be your Pentecost wind—
a breath that stirs your spirit and says:
You don’t have to do this the way they told you to.
You can make your own altar.
You can speak your own tongue.
You can DIY your theology into something that liberates.
With fierce joy and unruly hope,
Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza (RCE+)
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