What Lucifer Taught Me About How to Be a Christian: Towards an Apophatic Ethnography

Abstract

This article aims to crack open the structure of ethnographic theology. It challenges our Christian faith to nurture our love for the world, Christian and otherwise. This article is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork with young adults experiencing homelessness in Seattle who claim to be Luciferians and hate Christianity. I query what difference an ethnographic theologian’s personal faith makes from field to text and then back to field. What really matters about ethnographic theology, I propose, is participation in the transformative power of divine love through contemplative action that necessitates apophatic practice. I demonstrate how my own apophatic ethnographic practice(s) helped me understand what is at stake with Luciferians on the streets of Seattle and take contemplative action. I also disclose a fruit of my apophatic practice: a transformed perspective on Luciferianism where I came to experience Christ in Lucifer’s wounds and the Luciferian rejection of and disgust for Christianity.