A decolonial and decological calling to survive: When endocrine disruption challenges our theological ethics and spiritual frameworks

This paper argues that autoimmune and non-communicable diseases must be understood as forms of slow violence generated by environmental coloniality, requiring an integrated analysis that brings together environmental justice, necropolitics, embodied testimony, and decolonial spiritual praxis. Methodologically, the essay employs a decological approach that situates the researcher’s own embodied experience of endocrine disruption as an epistemic lens, in dialogue with ecofeminist theology, indigenous research paradigms, and environmental health sciences. Drawing on sources including Rob Nixon, Achille Mbembe, Elaine Nogueira-Godsey, Ivone Gebara, and interdisciplinary biomedical research, the paper analyzes the Lake Apopka case to show how racial capitalism produces ecological and physiological harm while erasing the spiritual and communal dimensions of suffering. The contribution advances a theopoetic and ecopeotic framework for reimagining ecorelationality, calling for spiritual-political praxis that honors embodied knowledge as a site of resistance and collective survival.