Roberto Che
Espinoza

Details

Biography
Topics
Biracial, Multiracial Identity
Civil Rights Movement
Human Rights
Latinxs
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer
Multiculturalism
Pride Reimagined
Programs for High School Students
Racism/Racial Justice
Religion/Theology/Spirituality
Resiliency/Healing
Storytelling
White Privilege

Roberto Che Espinoza, PhD, is a non-binary Transgender and queer Latinx activist scholar. His dynamic and inspiring presentations explore the Intersections of queer justice and anti-racism, working to dismantle supremacy cultures and displace the toxic culture of whiteness. He is passionate about gender justice as human rights work, and bridging differences within our communities, campuses, and churches.

Whether speaking to universities, communities, writing for HuffPost, Sojourners, or Religion Dispatches, Dr. Roberto uses tools learned in both the academy and activism to stand in the hybrid space of higher education, communities, and movements for justice, curating activist scholarship with deep intention of bridging with difference. When we bridge with our deepest differences and lean into new folds of relationality, we learn better how to build the kind of world we long to inhabit.

Dr. Roberto is the author of Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation which takes a critical look at which bodies count in this country and offers a vision for an embodied, inclusive democracy. Mixing memoir and faith, somatics theory and body practice, Dr. Roberto reveals embodiment as the primary place of deep wisdom, where culture shifts originate and materialize—and a better world becomes, as we too become.

His previous book, Activist Theology, bridges the gap between academia and activism, bringing the wisdom of the streets to the work of scholarship, all for the sake of political liberation and social change for marginalized communities.

Dr. Roberto takes seriously his call as an activist scholar, theologian, and ethicist to bridge together theories and practices that result in communities responding to pressing social concerns. He sees this work as a life-orienting vocation, deeply committed to translating theory to practice, and work that is embedded in re-imagining our moral horizon to one which privileges a politics of radical difference.

Knowing intimately that the borderlands are a place of learning and growth, Dr. Roberto draws on their identity and heritage in everything that they do. From doubt to divine and everywhere in between, his call as an activist scholar demands the vision to disrupt hegemony and colonialist structures of multi-layered oppressions. This work is important to Dr. Roberto because his own life has been lived with the ongoing challenge to be grounded in the center of their own difference as a non-binary Trans mixed-raced Latinx. This has required the thoughtful intention of bridging with his white ancestors and Mexican ancestors and with those in the queer community. As a result, his life’s vocation is one that is committed to the deep relationality of bridging with difference to help launch a new vision for humanity.

Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Roberto is the founder of the Activist Theology Project, a collaborative project based in Nashville, TN, working to incubate sustainable change for social healing. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Visiting Professor at Duke University Divinity School. Dr. Roberto was named one of 10 Faith Leaders to Watch in 2018 by the Center for American Progress.

 
Testimonials
“Dr. Robyn’s deeply contextual, embodied work as an activist theologian brought necessary depth to our conference. As a panelist for “Bridging Communities: Faith-Based Leadership,” Dr. Robyn’s engaging humor and rigorous imagination expanded the conversation, calling the audience to “hold curiosity for borderlands as places to sit rather than bridges to be crossed.” Dr. Robyn’s attention to intersectional liberation and thoughtful engagement across faith traditions was instrumental, and the panel was consistently ranked a conference highlight in our post-conference survey.”
- Andrew An Westover, Programming Chair, Pan-Harvard LGBTQ Conference 2018

"Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza brings insight, compassion, and a remarkable ability to connect with students.  Dr. Henderson-Espinoza engages the audience with keen intelligence and a candid, compassionate dialogue that challenges concepts of social justice and human rights work."
- Mark Rasdorf, Associate Director, LGBT Resource Office, East Carolina University, Greenville NC

“Robyn brings dynamic, prophetic possibilities to life, whether in an academic lecture, a blog post, or from a protest megaphone. They bring a unique blend: grounded, activist-informed, and community-engaged human, who is deeply philosophical and theological. They weave humor, story-telling, passion, and personal vulnerabilities with analytical critique and lived practice to imagine new ways of being and becoming in the world that dismantle white supremacy and liberate those most oppressed.”
- Lyndsey Godwin Assistant Director, Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, Vanderbilt Divinity School
“As this year's Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium unfolded the emerging meaning of "Trans,"  we enjoyed as featured guest Robyn Henderson-Espinoza.  Their contribution of opening keynote address one day, and public interview the next was a dazzling gift of intellectual depth and imaginative creativity, and generous conversational engagement. Dr. Robyn left us not just aglow with edgy insight but provoked to fresh action.”
- Catherine Keller, George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology,  Drew University, Graduate Division of Religion
“As a scholar, writer, and speaker, Robyn is laying the foundation for an Activist Theology that must accompany today’s movements for justice, if we’re to sustain ourselves and each other long enough to realize a world in which individual and collective liberation are possible. With wit and charm and a laser-like capacity to name bullshit, Robyn rejects the simple narratives that would have us turn “community” into a mere buzzword and spiritual practice into another consumerist fad. They possess that rare capacity to name complexity without being paralyzed by it, attacking white supremacy and its effects with a ferocious intelligence while continuing to expand who’s at the table and to work across difference, and rejecting bad theology while lifting up the radical principles that underpin history’s most powerful wisdom teachings and religious texts. For anyone interested in liberation theology and deep community building, their teachings are mandatory listening.”
- Lennon Flowers, founder of The Dinner Party
"The work of Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is important not just to theologians or clergy, but to anyone who desires to understand the overlapping strands between theology, activism, and intersectional liberation. In a moment when Americans urgently need to consider not just what we believe, but what belief looks like when it’s out on the streets and in our communities, Dr. Robyn is a prophetic voice." 
- Kaya Oakes, College Writing Programs, UC Berkeley
"Wow, Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza's presentations deeply expanded my thinking, theological vocabulary, and understanding of theory-practice connections, and energized my spirit in ways I could not have imagined would be possible at an academic conference. In question and answer sessions, Dr. Robyn brought a model combination of candor, graciousness, attentiveness, and an invitation to think and dialogue with them in politicized, honest, theoretically generative exchanges."
- Rev. Traci West, PhD, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School

“Weeks later, students at Hollins are still talking about Dr. Robyn’s lecture, describing it as: “balm for our weary souls.”  Seamlessly weaving personal story together with theory and theology, Dr. Robyn spoke about strategies for surviving and resisting supremacist ideologies and institutions.  They suggested we start by answering two basic questions: “Who am I?” and “Who are my people?”  I have rarely witnessed such an elegant blending of theory, practice, and personal narrative.  Dr. Robyn’s lecture was so much more than an academic presentation; it was a gift of spiritual activism at work.”
— Darla Schumm, PhD, John P. Wheeler Professor of Religious Studies, Chair, Global Politics and Societies Department, Hollins University, Roanoke VA

Speeches
Decolonizing Pedagogies; Transforming Teaching: Creating Expanded Capacity for our Classrooms
Historically, our current educational system relies on passive learning, instead of a more collaborative and collective approach. We are all subjects of a colonial system and conscripted into that system, and we can be decolonial agents when we re-imagine the classroom as a third space. When we re-imagine the classroom as a space and place to decolonize our pedagogies, we also participate in the transformation of teaching. This results in accelerating the ongoing building of an expanded capacity for those who make up our classroom spaces. Teaching is more than a data dump; it is a process of tending to all the threads of instructional design and when we leave room for embodied awareness and expanding our capacity through a somatic lens, we not only connect the dots and deepen our shared, collective analysis, but we also become aware of our embodied capacity. When we intentionally bring these two together, we effectively participate in decolonizing practices that helps us all make a hard pivot out of hierarchies that accelerate harm and diminish transformative learning.
 
The Intersections of Queer Justice & Anti-Racism
This topic addresses the overwhelming logic of whiteness in our LGBTQ movements and helps us imagine a way to do queer justice work that amplifies those at the margins of the margins & displaces the logic of dominance.
 
Constellations of Difference: Rethinking Intersectionality
How do make sense with difference in today’s world? How do we bridge with the radical differences that we encounter in our schools, communities, or churches? How do we explore our call to serve our communities when the world around us discourages us from bridging with the radical differences that we encounter on a daily basis? By coming to a better understanding of the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and other differences that we encounter, we can better be equipped to imagine a call to serve our communities from the place of bridging with radical difference. This workshop uses theories and methods of the philosophy of difference to rethink intersectionality.
 

Building Networks of Trust within White Serving Institutions 

While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are all important, we must also recognize that DEI work is not enough. The work of composting supremacy culture is a marathon and necessitates Networks of Trust, but these networks have rapidly declined due to the machinations of supremacy culture.  We must work to build Networks of Trust within our institutions and systems, so that we can implement DEI into our communities, and so that we can see the material consequence of our DEI efforts. When we rehabilitate Networks of Trust, we are better able to live into an ethos that can expand to include DEI efforts. Without Networks of Trust, we run the risk of tokenizing our diversity hires and subjecting BIPOC folks to a system where they are unable to flourish.
 
Displacing Whiteness
This can be a 101, 201, 301 or more advanced workshop that helps folks begin talking about whiteness and the need to displace whiteness to helping, campuses, faith communities, and organizations to imagine restructuring their organizational frames by using anti-oppression methodologies and power analysis.
 
Gender Justice as Human Rights Work
Important to gender justice is the need to examine the ways our religious discourse (theologies and ethics) stabilize gender into an antiquated gender binary. I help campuses and communities rethink our gender justice through story telling and helping folks use their imagination to connect our stories of gender and our expressions to a larger human rights framework.
 
Constellations of Difference: Rethinking Intersectionality
How do make sense with difference in today’s world? How do we bridge with the radical differences that we encounter in our schools, communities, or churches? How do we explore our call to serve our communities when the world around us discourages us from bridging with the radical differences that we encounter on a daily basis? By coming to a better understanding of the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and other differences that we encounter, we can better be equipped to imagine a call to serve our communities from the place of bridging with radical difference. This workshop uses theories and methods of the philosophy of difference to rethink intersectionality.
 
Bridging with Difference
Using story-telling, how can we learn to bridge with the center of our own difference in an effort to build bridging with difference around us? How can bridging with difference be a catalyst for us to be unified in our deepest differences?
 
Dismantling the Parasitic Relationship Between Christian Supremacy and White Supremacy
Christian supremacy is the entanglement of multi-system oppressions that are most expressed through violence and domination and that appropriate the language, themes, social capital, and power of Christianity. White supremacy is the ideology that creates a cultural norm suggesting that whiteness is the dominant lens through which culture and society should engage. What has transpired throughout the past few centuries is a growing relationship between race and religion, culminating in a parasitic relationship that is shared between Christian Supremacy and White Supremacy. In order to imagine a world where we are all engaged in collective liberation, we must dismantle this relationship and help give birth to racial equity, class equity, and religious harmony.
Media
Activist Theology Trailer