Transgressive Devotion: Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

Our guest Natalie Wigg-Stevenson is seeking new vocabularies and structures to understand theology. Her work explores the rich and unsettling depths of performance art as a means to bring us into communication with the divine mystery.

In her recent book, Transgressive Devotion , Dr. Wigg-Stevenson suggests that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and instead works to make God appear. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.

Some of the imagery used by Wigg-Stevenson is unsettling, but, as she reminds us, so is the central image of Christian faith in the cross and crucifixion. As tradition has re-imagined that symbol into new theological realms, Wigg-Stevenson seeks to reimagine theology itself into new and liberatory forms.

Natalie Wigg-Stevenson teaches Theology and directs the Contextual Education Program at Emmanuel College, Toronto. Her research focus is on how ethnographic methods help create theological conversations across church, academy and everyday life. She is the author of Ethnographic Theology: An Inquiry Into the Production of Theological Knowledge. She is the co-chair of the 'ecclesial practices' group at AAR.