Most of us were taught that faith lives in the mind.
Belief. Doctrine. Theology.
But long before Christianity told you what to think, it told you how to move.
How to dress.
How to sit.
How to desire.
How to discipline your body into obedience.
This piece isn’t about taking anyone’s faith away.
It’s about telling the truth of how faith was used, and what it cost our bodies.
I didn’t realize how much faith lived in my body until I left home…
Growing up Irish Catholic, my body learned reverence before it learned choice.
Knees on hard pews.
Hands folded just so.
Eyes lowered.
Silence as virtue.
Church wasn’t loud. It wasn’t expressive. It wasn’t joyful.
It was controlled.
Years later, I walked into a Black church in the South and felt the shock hit my nervous system first.
Movement.
Music.
Bodies alive with spirit.
My first thought wasn’t curiosity.
It was judgment.
That moment cracked something open for me, not because one expression was “right” and the other “wrong,” but because I realized how thoroughly my body had been trained to equate control with holiness.
That’s when it clicked: (years later)
Christianity didn’t just shape belief. It trained bodies.
Why This Piece, Why Now
This essay lives in the Season of Self, the winter work of slowing down, taking inventory, and tracing what lives in us that we didn’t consciously choose.
It also continues my ongoing arc through Decolonizing Faith, a series that asks hard questions about what we inherited, what we internalized, and what we were never told.
This is not an anti-faith essay.
It is an anti-propaganda one.
Because propaganda works by flattening history, stripping context, and severing body from story.
And Christianity (as it was weaponized through empire) did exactly that.
This work is about unflattening.
Returning faith to its political, material, and embodied realities.
And letting people decide freely what they want to carry forward.
Before We Go Any Further…
I want to pause.
During the live recording of Let’s Have the Conversation, Ariana shared that she had written a poem that mirrored our conversation and I asked for her permission to share it here because it captures (better than any analysis) the lived experience of what it means to have your body trained, surveilled, and disciplined long before you ever had language for it.
This episode ran longer than some of the others, intentionally. The Season of Self asks us not to rush. It asks us to let what needs to surface… surface. And sometimes that looks like silence, tears, poetry, and truth arriving sideways instead of neatly on time.
What follows is Ariana’s poem.
Please read it slowly.
Let it land where it lands.
Family Resemblance
Mirrors have always
haunted me.
Your voice
has become my own
as I look at my
reflection.
I have always avoided
them when possible,
but I can’t help but
glance as I rid myself
of traveling germs.
“Stand up straighter.
You look like a
humpback whale,”
we tell me.
I comply to this demand
as I always have.
“Comb your rat’s nest
this instant,”
I hear as I rearrange
my wild curls.
We continue to pick
me apart as I stand
at the airport restroom mirror,
a layer of fingerprints,
softening the tears
that well up
in the corners of my eyes
fine lines creeping in,
making me look
more like you each day.
“Those shorts are
very unbecoming on your
soft thighs,”
we remind me.
I notice the fleshy flap
that moves as I grab
for a paper towel.
I know we don’t like it.
I should have worn
long sleeves.
I turn back,
determined to find
one quality we would
like in my reflection.
My smile is
warm and inviting,
I can camouflage
pain entirely.
My teeth are straight
and a human shade of white.
There’s something
we don’t hate.
Before I turn,
I hear our voice
remind me to
never wear this shirt again.
It always catches on the
little roll just above my waist.
I quickly glance away
before it overwhelms.
On my therapists advice,
where we talk
about you often,
I try to find one more
thing we don’t hate.
I have grown strong and sturdy,
just as you commanded.
I “stay under control
in all circumstance,”
just as you demanded.
I am turning to leave
when I glimpse you
in the mirror.
I imagine it is your ghost
back for one last punch
to my confidence.
And that’s when I realize
it wasn’t a spirit
but a family resemblance.
I know now why you
tore me apart.
Perhaps you saw You
in me too.
Somatic Pause — Letting the Body Catch Up
Before we move on, take a moment.
You don’t need to analyze what you just read.
You don’t need to make meaning yet.If it feels accessible, notice your body right now.
Where did that poem land?
Was there a tightening, a softening, a holding of breath?
Did your shoulders rise, your jaw clench, your chest grow heavy?
If you’re able, place one hand somewhere that feels grounding—your chest, your belly, your thighs.
Let your body know you are here with it, not to correct it.Nothing needs to be fixed.
Nothing needs to be explained.This is what it sounds like when supremacy culture moves through generations—when discipline, shame, and survival get mistaken for love. And it’s also what it sounds like when awareness begins to interrupt the pattern.
Take one slow breath in.
And a longer breath out.When you’re ready, we’ll continue.
🔒 Paywall Break
The next section moves from witnessing into analysis—from personal inheritance into the system that made this inheritance feel inevitable. We’ll name how Christianity, once aligned with empire, became a technology for bodily control—and how supremacy culture learned to live inside us.
Paid subscribers receive the full essay, including:
a historical and embodied unpacking of Christianity as bodily governance
the specific supremacy culture pillars at work
reframes that return dignity to the body
and practices for reclaiming agency in the Season of Self
If there is a financial barrier, equity scholarships are always available at
Scholarships@DesireeBStephens.com
When you’re ready, you’re invited to cross the threshold.
