A white man in a black hat and gray shirt smiles.

James W. Perkinson

James W. Perkinson has lived for 35 years as a settler on Three Fires land in inner city Detroit, currently teaching as Professor of Social Ethics at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago, is the author of five books including Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars: The Angel of the Jordan Meets the Trickster of Detroit; Shamanism, Racism, and Hip-Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion; and White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity. He is an artist on the spoken-word poetry scene and an activist in the struggle against water shutoffs.  Preferred pronouns are he, him.

Upcoming Programs by James W. Perkinson

A circle of mossy standing stones in a circle on a green field.

Spirituality of Stone: Palestinian, Celtic, and Lenape Voices

April 25 - 27, 2025

It is obvious as we face climate-chaos, empire-collapse, techno-conundrums of all kinds (drones as the new soldiers, pagers as bombs, “should we geo-engineer the sky, the ocean . . . ?”) that we need ancestral wisdom.  So yes, we turn to “elders”—especially among our humankind kin, and even our plant-sisters and animal-brothers. But what if […]