Shameless Theology S1:10 Embracing Identity & Rejecting Racial Binaries w/ CasSandra Calin

Rev. Alba welcomes CasSandra Calin, a Queer, feminist, Black-Cuban healer, who is passionate about spirit work, identity, divinity and pleasure. Together, they explore what it means to claim shamelessness as a spiritual, political, and embodied practice, especially for Black, Queer, and diasporic people whose lives have been shaped by religion, race, gender, and colonial identity rubrics.CasSandra reflects on growing up with multilayered shame coded as holiness, humility, and goodness—stories reinforced by Christianity and white Christian Supremacy that fractured connection to body, desire, culture, and self. From reclaiming Cuban identity without fluency or permission, to navigating Afro-Latinidad, anti-Blackness, exoticization, and erasure, this episode traces a powerful arc from performance and respectability toward belonging in one’s own body. CasSandra and Rev. Alba talk about diaspora, the queer and trans church in Cuba, ancestral recognition, and the profound healing that happens in community.The conversation moves into spiritual violence—how God-language is weaponized to justify harm—and the slow, liberatory work of shedding those narratives. Rev. Alba shares how queerness, therapy, prayer, food, fire, poetry, and nature have become sites of resistance, healing, and pleasure. We discuss the difference between being “gay” and being queer, agency as a spiritual muscle, therapy as ministry, and the questions that can ground us in an overwhelming political moment. We close by honoring ancestors—blood, chosen, intellectual, poetic—and the feminine, magnetic, expansive lineages that make survival, joy, and freedom possible.CasSandra Calin (she/her/hers) is a queer, feminist, Black-Cuban healer, who is passionate about spirit work, identity, divinity and pleasure. She has recently returned to school to obtain her Doctorate of Social Work. Her intention is to study the mental and spiritual wellness of LGBTQ+ activists. CasSandra is overjoyed to have been a part of Soulforce’s work to sabotage white Christian Supremacy since she first joined the 2015-16 Soulforce Southeast House Fellowship.Hosted by Rev. Sex (Rev. Alba Onofrio - Executive Director of Soulforce), this podcast channel offers connection, reflection, and community for anyone feeling spiritually marginalized or exiled but still resiliently faithful while centering dialogue on Queer, trans, and feminist theology.TSV seeks to decolonize faith, mixing theological education with real-life experiences to support human rights and liberation. Initially launched in Spanish, TSV addresses the monopolization of religious discourse by the far right. The platform gathers people of diverse Christian denominations, pastors, activists, and scholars to discuss gender identity, sex, and pleasure in the context of faith, aiming to heal the wounds of colonizing religion and create a welcoming space for topics often considered taboo in religious spaces. For the first time, Teología Sin Vergüenza is now in English.Join in our community of Sinvergüenzas by visiting our Teología Sin Vergüenza homepage or our Spanish WhatsApp Lista de Difusión. If you’d like to support this cutting-edge movement of ferocious Latinx power building, please make a donation.https://soulforce.org/donate/Find episode transcripts at https://soulforce.org/podcast/