03 May 2023

Religion, Race and the Microbe

Theological Analysis of Public Health Resistance in the Pandemicene

In this engaging presentation, Dr. Bradford explores the complex interplay between religion, race, and microbiology within the context of public health resistance during the pandemic. Drawing from her interdisciplinary research, she examines how historical entanglements of disease theories, colonialism, and Christian thought have shaped public health strategies and disproportionately affected Black and Brown communities.

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Dr. Bradford is a research scholar in NC State’s Public Science Lab for Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity of Humans and Food where she draws together interdisciplinary engagement of microbes, exploring fermentation, probiotic health and pathogens. Dr. Bradford is also a college Chaplain at Salem Women’s College, and Director of the Center for Contemporary Practice and Wellbeing. Working at the intersections of religion, microbiology, ecology and race, Dr. Bradford’s research investigates the historical entanglement of disease theories, public health strategy, Christian thought, and coloniality to cultivate ecological wisdom, scientific engagement and the pursuit of environmental justice in religious contexts. She asks questions like, how have the historical entanglement of epidemiology, coloniality and Christian teaching contributed to the disease of both body and planet, the disproportionate effects of which are born by black and brown communities? How has demonizing the microbe paved the way for oppression of those deemed sub-human? And how might microbiome science reform Christian thought that often disrupts engagement of science and is complicit in exploitative and exclusionary ways of being?