ABSTRACT
Spiritual activism is spirituality for social change, spirituality that posits a relational worldview and uses this holistic worldview to transform one’s self and one’s worlds. Anzaldua’s theory of spiritual activism is designed to meet twenty-first-century needs; it offers valuable lessons for feminists and other social justice activists. Anzaldua’s spiritual activism intertwines “inner works” with “public acts,” private concerns social issues. Spiritual activism begins within the individual but moves outward as these individuals (or what Anzaldua calls “spiritual activists”) expose, challenge, and work to transform unjust social structures. Anzaldua’s spiritual activism offers a different approach, one bypassing this exclusionary logic. Positing radical interconnectedness, Anzaldua dismantles these walls by building bridges. Anzaldua’s practice and theory of El Mundo Zurdo, or “The Left-Handed World,” indicates one form her complex commonalities can take. Anzaldua’s spiritual activism compels to author question whether the binary-oppositional energies so crucial to many social justice theories are as useful today as they were in the past.
