share your spiritual biography in 10 words, or less:

curious, changing, star-dust, human, freedom-fighter, friend, lover

where are you turning for soul nourishment / joy / aliveness?

music (currently Stevie Wonder and Mary J. Blige), leftist reading circles, conversations with friends, and integrating life with my best friend. 

what is a text you hold sacred?

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

what is a spiritual practice currently sustaining you?

Cheng Man-Ching Taichi 37-step form and silence

how would you describe the work you feel called to do in this world (even if it is not the work you get paid for)?

I am a freedom fighter by action and an abolitionist scholar by trade. I work in academia, a system I describe as the head of the beast of America’s death dealing culture. My teaching and scholarship explore issues that hinder communities from building multi-cultural coalitions. I long to resource my freedom fighting comrades, who do most of their work in the belly of the beast. As an abolitionist, I seek freedom as communal self-determination. My understanding of freedom opposes the global capitalist system that generates wealth through exploitation, extraction, and thrives on destroying life on planet Earth. 

knowing that none of us “has it all together,” what is one question you are wrestling with, or bit of wisdom you are struggling to enflesh in your daily life?

I am struggling to believe, as more than a rumor, that we are all connected. I want to know this in reality, in my flesh and bones. The incredible capacity I have in relationships to hurt others and to be hurt by others has fractured so many beautiful friendships that I am frequently tempted to isolate myself and bathe in guilt and self-blame for the ways that I fail the people I love. Reminding myself to make phone calls, send text messages, and to receive care from those people who have committed to restoration and repair empowers me to persist in this struggle. I cannot do this work alone. Thanks to my family and friends, I don’t have to. 

who is one elder / ancestor / mentor whose guidance you draw from? what is one piece of wisdom they have offered?

James Baldwin, “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.”

what’s one oppressive untruth you are practicing unlearning / divesting from?

Never trust anyone. 

what is one thing you wish were required listening / viewing? (please link to the song, poem, art piece, podcast, etc.)

Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life 

any of your website and/or social media handles you’d like us to include / highlight?

https://www.facebook.com/drdevans;
https://bsky.app/profile/forthepoor.bsky.social;
https://emu.edu/now/news/2025/seminary-professor-introduces-forthcoming-book-at-convocation;
https://utpdistribution.com/9781469691473/damned-whiteness

Pre-order David Evans’ book

In Damned Whiteness, David F. Evans reveals how religious white progressives inherited strategies that remain disconnected from the ideas and actions of Black communities. These disconnects have often been cloaked as disagreements over religious doctrine and practice, but Evans reveals how they stem from refusals to acknowledge Black leaders’ philosophies and freedom dreams. Though these patterns persist, Evans offers a way out of this legacy of white allyship and into a future where freedom is possible.