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Episode 1

In this episode

[00:00] Open & welcome — the show's chant, the premise, and today's theme: body, resistance, love. Introductions from Immanuel (India, calling in from Chicago), Lis (Puerto Rico, calling in from Louisville), Chrisida (India/Chicago), and Seo (Seoul/Chicago).

[01:19] "What comes to mind when I say body?" — flesh, movement, materiality: the body isn't abstract, it's present with us right now.

[04:15] Why we need bodies — the body's needs (food, breath, water, shelter), clothing as shelter rather than shame, and nakedness as freedom.

[09:05] Beauty standards & colorism — the standards we internalize, "why was I born dark?", the childhood name "Crow," skin tone in a "homogeneous" Korea, and how colorism lives inside the church, not just outside it.

[12:33] Your body is the image of God — "when you were born like this, you look like God"; the imago Dei as bodily; the resurrection of the body, not just the soul; and a rejection of "soul-winning" that neglects real bodies.

[17:12] How much do you love your body? — measuring self-love ("enough not to be hurt"), loving God with heart, soul, and body, a poem about gender, and the small cruelties of being mocked as a child.

[22:25] Neighbor, enemy, and the danger of love — loving your neighbor as yourself, bodies of color cast as "enmity" in the U.S., the hard call to love the enemy, and how "love" turns to abuse when you're pressured to love others more than yourself.

[27:30] Embodied practice & close — hug yourself, pat your own cheek, feel it. Jazz hands, and out.

Scripture & theological threads
• Genesis 1:27 — humanity created in the image of God, read here as bodily image
• Genesis 2–3 — Eden: naked without shame, before the fall
• 1 Corinthians 12 & 15 — the body of Christ, and the resurrection of the body
• The great commandments — love God with all your heart, soul, and body (Deuteronomy 6:5 / Matthew 22:37–39); love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18); love your enemy (Matthew 5:44)

Can a lullaby be an act of protest? A funeral wail a demand for justice? In the debut episode of Theological Perversions, Dr. Chrisida Anandan, Lis Valle-Ruiz, and Emmanuel Karunakaran explore the songs that carry their communities' memory, grief, and hope — from Tamil Dalit tradition to Puerto Rican folklore — and find the same defiant hope in the songs of the Bible. Theology from the margins, sung out loud.