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CL Nash

Dr. CL Nash, Ph.D., is an independent womanist theologian, ethicist, and researcher specializing in religious nationalism and the “politics of unknowing.” She is the Founder and Director of the global Misogynoir to Mishpat Research Network (M2M), which advances Black women’s epistemic contributions to theology and ethics via social justice across more than 100 countries, and has lectured on ethics at Oxford University and King’s College London. Her current research initiative, The Transatlantic Axis of Extraction, investigates the historical, religious, and material structures underlying the exploitation of Black women’s bodily and intellectual agency. Her forthcoming book, Reclaiming Our Bones: Womanist Scriptural Wisdom and the Political Theology of Black Women’s Lives, is under contract with SCM Press (spring 2027).

Essays

Before I’ll Be a Slave: Isaiah’s Vineyard and the Politics of Counterfeit Righteousness

Isaiah 5:1–7 opens as a love song and closes as a verdict, judging a vineyard not by its structural industry but by its ethical fruit. Reading Isaiah’s brilliant wordplay through a womanist hermeneutic and the Civil Rights freedom song tradition, this essay names the counterfeit fruit of a contemporary Christian nationalism that calls violence just, elevates a flawed man to the status of savior, and labels empathy a sin—and asks who is still listening for the desperate cry (tse’aqah) beneath the nationalistic noise.

When Prophets Grow Weary

After the triumph of Mount Carmel, Elijah collapses under a broom tree and asks to die — not from failure, but from the deeper disappointment of a victory that never moved the throne. Reading 1 Kings 19 against today’s Christian nationalism, this essay argues that authentic prophetic faith is found not in wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the silence, rest, and companionship that sustain the weary for the long work of justice.