What lies beyond the fragile walls of the casita—the “little house” of institutional faith? This paper argues that Ivan Illich’s “It/She” framework of bipartite ecclesiology, which distinguishes the institutional “It” from the mystical “She,” offers Stone-Campbell communities a path forward amid crisis. Drawing on Colombian ethnographic testimony, it shows how casita theology fosters spiritual confusion and loyalty to broken systems. Through poetic inquiry and decolonial critique, the paper proposes conspiratio—a relational praxis that enables movement from casita logic to casona abundance, critiquing corrupt institutions while cultivating life-giving community.
A Missiological Emergency
Christian Smith, in Why Religion Went Obsolete,1 along with others, documents the sharp decline in religious affiliation across the United States (USA). This shift is not merely data—it is a lived reality. People around me now ask, as Brian McLaren does, Do I Stay Christian?2 Such a decline is not merely a sociological phenomenon, but a missiological emergency that demands a theological response.
David Bosch reminds us that “mission is the mother of theology.” He observed that the New Testament writers did not theologize from a place of academic detachment but from within an “emergency situation,” compelled to think theologically as followers of Jesus confronting the realities of their contexts.3
A Third Way Beyond Casita Theology
In response to this crisis, when casita theology, short for teología de la casita (“theology of the little house”. The figures below illustrate the “little house” approach that locates salvation within tightly bounded institutional structures—equates salvation with institutional membership —and forces members who face institutional corruption to confront an impossible choice: defend the indefensible or abandon their faith. Ivan Illich’s “It/She” framework, based on bipartite ecclesiology—the understanding of the church as both institutional and mystical—provides theological grounding for a third way.4 The following analysis demonstrates how conspiratio, a relational practice of shared life and mutual discernment, allows communities to critique corrupt institutions while nurturing authentic faith that transcends institutional boundaries.
Through ethnographic evidence and poetic inquiry (reshaping interview data into poetic form), the present paper argues that Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology provides the theological framework necessary for the Stone-Campbell Movement communities to move beyond casita theology toward conspiratio, a relational practice of shared life and discernment that recognizes kingdom abundance both within and beyond institutional boundaries.
In Dussel’s terms, decoloniality is not merely critique but an ethical reorientation—a turning toward the voices and experiences of the marginalized as a primary locus for theological reflection. Inspired by a missiology of listening, I extend this framework through the concept of decolonial listening. In this study, I intentionally attend to the voices of grassroots members of the congregation, enacting a decolonial turn.5
Three movements guide the argument. First, it examines the crisis in Stone-Campbell Movement missiology through the lens of casita theology, which prioritizes institutional control over relational presence. Second, it engages Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology. Finally, it proposes a decolonial reorientation: a return to the Stone-Campbell Movement’s frontier radicalism through the mystical conspiratio—a practice of shared life and open tables. By inhabiting Illich’s ecclesial ambiguity, we may move beyond the restrictive walls of the “little house” and toward a faith that nourishes, resists, and surprises. What follows is not only a theoretical proposal but a reflection shaped by lived tension and sustained engagement with communities navigating institutional crisis.
Personal Stakes: Faith, Motherhood, and Missiological Tension
Raised in the Stone-Campbell Movement, I have long grappled with the tension between the institutional forms of faith and its lived reality. My critiques—developed over the course of a 300-page dissertation—emerge from this struggle. Yet, I continue to cherish the legacy of faith and love for God passed down through generations linked by the Church. Just as the Stone-Campbell theologians and Illich looked to early Christian communities as their reference point—groups formed not by birthright, but by shared belief and lived experience, marked by face-to-face relationships and practices such as conspiratio that embodied a collective spirit of the “She”—I likewise find that attending to the “She” fosters a resilient spirituality that transcends denominational boundaries. In the Colombian context, shaped by maternal thinking and table fellowship, I understand bienvenidos, siempre se puede echar más agua a la sopa (welcome—there is always room for more around the table) as an image that resonates with the Gospel narratives of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, in which shared hospitality becomes a site of unexpected abundance (found in all of the Gospels: Matthew 14:19-20; Mark 6:41-42; Luke 9: 16-17; John 6:11-13).
I have lived that truth—as both a scholar and a mother. My theology, like my parenting, has been forged in the crucible of love: love for my three adult children, each navigating their own journeys of faith, and love for the community in Colombia, my home church since 1992. Like the New Testament writers facing their own “emergency situation,” I, too, have been compelled to theologize—driven by maternal instinct to nurture faith beyond inherited dogmas and rigid walls. As I account in my dissertation, that experience became a near-conversion moment, leading to a deep reckoning with forgiveness and a reimagining of my missiological journey.
This maternal pull extends beyond biology. It first drew me to Mexico and then to Colombia as a young missionary, sustained me through the congregation’s collapse and rebirth in Colombia, and motivated my return from Argentina amid the chaos of 2004. It also carried me through an insider/outsider doctoral case study on Iglesia ICI-Colombia (also known as Iglesia de Cristo International-Colombia), as I explored in a missiological evaluation after a crisis in 2004-2021.6 This insider–outsider research connects to Bosch’s “a view from the inside,” as he and Illich researched also from within their Christian tradition in a liminal, in-between space.7
I listened through hours of semi-structured interviews as participants shared their experiences of the congregation’s collapse. Poetic inquiry, as excerpts from their transcripts reshaped into poetry, offers a glimpse into the raw emotion of that study.8 The method of poetic inquiry—a practice that reshapes interview data into poetic form to surface affective and embodied insight. This method is central to the study, for, as Illich reminds us, “Preparation for the study of missiology therefore implies an increased receptivity for the poetic, the historical, and the social aspects of reality.”9
Maternal thinking has become the lens through which this understanding takes shape.10 The experience of motherhood—whether literal or metaphorical—reveals something essential about authentic faith: its capacity to be both nurturing and defiant, protective yet resistant.11 When rooted in the missio Dei—God’s sending and reconciling work in the world—”She” becomes both sanctuary for the vulnerable and resistance against oppressive forces, creating spaces where mystery and survival coexist even amid institutional collapse.12 This vision draws on the transforming mutuality of the Incarnation—the profound interrelationship between the Godhead, Mary, and Jesus.13 What emerges is not merely a personal theology, but a response to a broader missiological crisis: how can faith communities hold space for both transcendent mystery and embodied authenticity when institutional structures increasingly fail them?
Decolonial Framing and Theological Method
Mark Love calls for a postcolonial reimagining of mission.14 I push further—toward a decolonial shift, one that challenges inherited structures of power and centers marginalized ways of knowing. Decoloniality here refers to a critique of colonial epistemologies that shape how reality is interpreted, drawing on the work of Latin American thinkers such as Enrique Dussel. As Richard T. Hughes and Christina Littlefield argue through their notion of an “empire state of mind,” empire criticism must extend beyond theology and history into missiology.15 We must confront how Christian mission has too often reproduced systems of power, racialization, and control. It is a call to practice decolonial listening.16
Illich’s theology of bipartite ecclesiology is vital here. His “It/She” framework defines the church as both “It” (the institutional machinery of Christianity—its hierarchies, structures, and boundaries) and “She” (the mystical body of Christ: a living communion grounded in love and conspiratio).17
This paradox fascinated Illich, who saw the church as a site of creative tension between the “mystery of mutuality” and the “mystery of evil.” For him, the church embodied corruptio optimi pessima (“the corruption of the best is the worst”). He even described the church as a “nesting place for evil.”18 This paradox does not resolve; instead, it holds space—restless yet rooted—for faith to flourish in ambiguity. It is a posture that resists purity politics and welcomes human imperfection as sacred ground.
Bosch’s missio Dei—the idea that mission flows from God’s sending love—calls us to embrace this ambiguity.19 Yet, as Bosch warned, there is little hope for the quick “re-evangelization” of Western Christianity unless we confront the colonial logics embedded in our practices (neoliberalism, in my context). For Bosch, re-evangelization is not about recruitment but about humanization: a “new mutuality” in which, in his context, Black and White “discover one another and rediscover themselves.”20
Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology makes this possible. It resists the idolatry of institutional control of casita theology and creates space for the unpredictable, Spirit-led presence of “She.” This presence is found not in programs or ecclesial “purity,” but in shared meals, maternal defiance, and hospitality at the margins, and border-crossing. At its core, missiology is fundamentally about boundary-crossing, inspired by the example of Jesus and, especially, the Parable of the Samaritan. In the Lukan account (Luke 10:25–37), the Samaritan is portrayed, when read in the Greek, as being moved by an embodied force—splagchnon—”in his guts.” This understanding of the gospel as a gut-level movement that motivates boundary-crossing lies at the heart of Illich’s thought and practice.21
Re-Evangelizing Ourselves
My return to Colombia in 2004 marked the beginning of decolonial listening as I confronted my complicity in “whiteness” and USA-centric, neoliberal “managerial missiology”—an approach that prioritizes efficiency, metrics, and control over relational presence.22 Illich described such an approach as the attempt to make a mercy-producing machine. Draper’s framework—repentance, contextual learning, guesthood, submission to non-white leadership, and listening to unfamiliar cadences—provided a roadmap for this transformation.23 This process resonates with what Richard Hughes describes as “escaping the web of white supremacy,” which he identifies as the most urgent task in the work of character formation.24
The Stone-Campbell Movement, once a radical frontier powerhouse, now faces institutional decline and growing disillusionment with boundary-keeping. Re-evangelization requires dismantling casita control through Ivan Illich’s ecclesial ambiguity: theologizing at the margins, in conspiratio, and turning scarcity into feast.
Movement One: Diagnosing Casita Theology
Bosch rightly observes that one’s theology of salvation always shapes a theology of mission; how salvation is defined determines the scope of the missionary task.25 Illich draws on early Christian communities—formed through face-to-face relationships and shared life—as an embodiment of conspiratio. Within this framework, I argue that casita theology names a form of ecclesial imagination that prioritizes institutional boundaries over relational mutuality, often mirroring colonial logics.
The Stone-Campbell Movement, particularly within the a cappella Church of Christ and its offshoot, the International Church of Christ (ICOC), has embodied what I am calling casita theology. The metaphor names an ecclesiology in which salvation and spiritual legitimacy are located within a tightly bounded, often insular community.26 Those within the “walls” or “high boundaries” are considered saved, while those outside become the objects of mission. Leaders function as gatekeepers, regulating access and enforcing boundaries. This logic echoes the Roman Catholic doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church, no salvation”) and, in practice, can reduce mission to a form of recruitment, a reduction sharply critiqued by Illich.27
The data visualizations below, adapted from my dissertation, are diagnostic. They are developed from a Bible study series used in Iglesia ICI-Colombia beginning in the 1992 church planting.28 Figure 1 depicts the tension between the hospitality of God’s kingdom—Jesus’ movement, the spiritual family, and God’s church—and its confinement within a “little house.” Entry into this house is mediated through a defined “door”, which represents the five steps to salvation: hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized. While each of these elements reflects biblical themes, the problem emerges when they are reduced to a fixed formula that functions as a boundary marker for belonging. As Bosch cautions, evangelism cannot be defined “too sharply, too precisely, and too confidently.” We cannot package the gospel into a set of principles or a definitive list of truths that people must master to be saved. Such reduction risks equating entry into a particular ecclesial structure with participation in the kingdom of God.”29
Figure 1. Visualization of the internal logic of casita theology, including how authority, belonging, and boundary enforcement function within it.30
Below, Figure 2 highlights the theological implications of casita logic: life is located exclusively within the structure, while those outside are positioned as lost. The result is a binary imagination that collapses mission into recruitment and constrains God’s activity to institutional boundaries.
Figure 2. Visualization of the binary imagination of casita theology.31
In daily practice, this internal logic takes concrete form in how belonging is named and recognized. Within the International Church of Christ, a member is identified as a “disciple.” At the same time, in the a cappella Church of Christ, similar belonging is expressed through the designation “member of the church.” Though linguistically distinct, both function as markers of inclusion—signaling who is considered “inside” the community. As reflected in the figures, supported by participant accounts, and reinforced in a cappella Church of Christ literature, these designations carry implicit theological weight: to belong to the community is to be understood as within God’s kingdom and family, while those outside are often perceived as beyond its bounds.
To understand how this binary logic took shape and gained such enduring authority, it is necessary to examine its historical and philosophical roots.
Historical Roots of Casita Theology
To understand the persistence of casita theology, it is necessary to trace its historical formation within the Stone-Campbell Movement’s intellectual inheritance. Emerging from an empirical philosophical tradition shaped by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Reid, the movement developed a form of theological rationalism that privileged clarity, systematization, and procedural certainty. Within this framework, faith was increasingly organized around observable steps and definable outcomes, producing a missional imagination that mirrored the mechanistic logics of the modern Enlightenment. Casita theology, in this sense, is not an accidental development but a historically situated outcome—shaped both by Enlightenment ways of thinking and by a reaction against perceived theological ambiguity. It represents a desire for doctrinal precision that gradually solidified into bounded ecclesial form.32
Walter Scott’s “Five-Finger Exercise” epitomizes this rationalist missiology: a clear and concise conversion tool outlining the steps to salvation. The model was taught to children, who then shared it with their parents, contributing to the movement’s rapid expansion. As the Stone-Campbell Movement grew to be the third-largest Christian group in the USA, this method enabled the movement to gain traction on the American frontier.33
By the post-World War II era, these patterns became institutionalized through Stone-Campbell Movement missions at Harding University under George Benson, whose alignment with emerging neoliberal frameworks shaped a movement that became one of the USA’s most prolific missionary-sending bodies.34
Contemporary Consequences
Defined broadly, missiology for Illich entails the study of mission through theology, ecclesiology, social imagination, and poetry. In modern contexts, this necessarily includes attention to power relations, colonial legacies, and global economic structures. My research indicates that engagement with perspectives from the Global South—particularly grassroots communities not financially dependent on the USA—remains limited within the Stone-Campbell Movement. This disconnection raises critical questions about the theological and economic assumptions shaping contemporary mission. As Illich argues, modern missionary work operates within a global system of development that often reproduces colonial patterns.35
Illich traces Christianity’s institutional shift as face-to-face conspiratio gave way to bureaucratic structures. This shift sharpens his critique of what I term Religious Branded Organizations (RBOs)—modern ecclesial forms shaped by free-market, seeker-oriented logics that mirror neoliberal structures. In this light, casita theology is not only a theological construct but also a system reinforced by global and economic forces that privilege control, scalability, and institutional expansion.36
Illich’s critique also resonates with the early Stone-Campbell Movement’s resistance to ecclesial hierarchy. As Leão et al. observe, the movement affirmed the conviction that being “Christians only, not the only Christian” resisted reducing mission to institutional self-preservation. In its formative period, laypeople—often unordained—moved beyond established boundaries into frontier contexts. Yet this same rationalist, nondenominational impulse, which Noll critiques for leaving little room for divine mystery, also created conditions for highly systematized and, at times, restrictive ecclesial forms.37
Religious Branded Organizations, rather than embodying gospel-rooted responses to lived realities, often function as growth strategies shaped by managerial missiology. As Flanders, drawing on Illich, reminds us, “The mission of the Church is the social continuation of the Incarnation,” and that “Church innovations must never be merely a growth strategy or reaction to ‘consumer demands’.”38 Wuthnow similarly traces the shift in global mission from Spirit-led communities to Western-managed strategies, often framed as benevolent development. Despite the rhetoric of “from everyone to everywhere,” mission funding remains heavily concentrated in the USA.39 As my case study concluded, “funds [from the USA] ran the system.”40
Colombian Evidence of Casita Effects
The theoretical consequences of casita theology become starkly evident when examined through the lived experiences of the Colombian participants during the 2003 institutional collapse of the International Church of Christ. Through poetic inquiry, their voices reveal how institutional boundary-keeping fosters systemic control, spiritual confusion, and misplaced loyalties, reducing the church to what all participants called “The System.”
Juan, Manuel, Sara, and Esteban, participants in the study, provide poetic testimonies of an institutional crisis that, as analyzed in Hughes’ work, reveal the lived tension between institutional loyalty and authentic discipleship while illustrating how claims of exclusive ecclesial legitimacy can confine perceptions of God’s activity within human institutional structures. Their words, transformed into poetry, convey what statistical analysis cannot: the gut-level experience of this tension.
Juan eloquently expressed the lived tension, and Appendix A provides the full transcript section, offering readers direct access to the underlying data and enabling engagement with the depth and complexity of the participant’s voice. I summarise his thoughts in a prayer format:
God,
People are in a system.
In church it is difficult to change one’s way of thinking.
Dangers and Danger…
Jesus… it is hard to learn to be a Christian.
The relationship with God they know
is born in this church,
the system.
And there are lots of dangers
that we can find in the church.
Amen.41
(Juan)
At another point in the interview process, Juan described his “sin”, as he had felt he had betrayed God by “misplaced loyalty” to what all identify as “The System”:
Poem: Misplaced Loyalty
Misplaced Loyalty
Absorbing, controlling.
Wasn’t loyal to Jesus.
I was loyal to. . .
(I can’t believe it)
A System.42
(Juan)
Juan’s testimony illustrates how casita theology conflates divine sovereignty with institutional systems. When the “It” mediates faith, questioning the system risks questioning God himself. Such entrapment creates a false choice between defending the institution and abandoning faith.
Across interviews, participants repeatedly described what they called “The System”, best illustrated by the following poem from an interview with Sara and Manuel.
Poem: What can I tell you about The System?
It is results-oriented.
“Baptize a lot so that it looks good.”
That is The System.
It has high boundaries.
Unspoken texts.
“Whether it was verbalized or not, it was the case.”
That is The System.
It creates favoritism.
It has its own leadership.
It has rules for dating.
That is The System.
It is control.
It is dependence.
Its strategy? Campus ministry.
That is The System.
A specific issue?
Cultish practices?
Yes. That, too, is The System.
(Sara and Manuel)
Sara and Manuel’s strong and specific critique reveals the mechanisms of control embedded in “The System.” Their emphasis on “dependence” shows how institutional machinery can supplant Christ-centered faith.
Through decolonial listening, I concluded that “The System” was beyond repair. I identified it as a failed religious innovation and described it with maternal metaphors, “But the 2003 collapse showed it for what it was, a faceless, bodiless, wombless, and motherless system.”43 Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology, however, provides a third way.
Movement Two: Illich’s Bipartite Ecclesiology
Illich: A Missiological Outsider
If casita theology reveals an ecclesial imagination structured by enclosure, boundary, and control, then Ivan Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology offers a necessary disruption. Where the casita confines, Illich reintroduces tension—refusing to collapse the church into a single, unified form. This “It/She” distinction does not resolve the problem of institutional failure; rather, it reframes it. By holding together what casita theology separates or conflates, Illich makes space for discerning God’s presence beyond the limits of institutional belonging without abandoning the church altogether. In this way, his thought does not reject the institution but destabilizes its claim to exclusivity, opening a path toward a more relational, dynamic, and participatory vision of faith grounded in conspiratio.
Although Illich’s work appears only sporadically in missiological literature, his early engagement in Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Mexico—including the founding of the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC), where he helped train over 2,000 missionaries—was deeply concerned with forming missionaries through cultural respect and genuine face-to-face friendship. This decolonial praxis, or should I say, decolonial listening, is most clearly articulated in his 1968 lecture “To Hell with Good Intentions,” where he challenges American volunteers to renounce their benevolent power and to come instead as learners rather than helpers:
I am here to challenge you
to recognize your inability,
your powerlessness
and your incapacity
to do the ‘good’
which you intended to do. …
Come to look,
come to climb our mountains,
to enjoy our flowers.
Come to study.
But do not come to help.44
For Illich, friendship was not an addition to theology—it was theology embodied. He spoke of “kindling friendship in the course of intellectual work,” redefining mission as philia: a mutual, relational presence rather than participation in an institutional system. Reflecting on the parable of the Samaritan in Luke’s account, Cayley suggests, “‘Who is my neighbor?’ [Illich] answers, ‘He to whom you as a free human being establish your personal proportionality by turning to him in love and inviting him to the mutuality of love which is usually called friendship”.45 In this way, Illich begins to gesture toward a distinction that will become central to his ecclesiology.
Theological Foundations: It and She
At the heart of Illich’s ecclesiology lies his “It/She” distinction, or ecclesia bipertita. This framework enables critique of corrupt institutions without abandoning faith itself, offering a way beyond casita theology’s paralyzing binary of in or out. This tension between institutional machinery and Spirit-led community resonates with contemporary voices from the Global South, who have faced comparable ecclesial struggles. Brazilian sociologist Neto Leão, whose work bridges Illich’s thought with Stone-Campbell Movement theology, captured this paradox during our recorded conversation (Dec. 15, 2021). Leão’s recognition of the same ecclesial tension emerged:
Poem: Paradox
A Spirit in a paradox
within the Church.
The Power of the Spirit.
Power.
The Spirit should be Guide.
To give more space
to the Spirit
to guide the Church.
Trust in the Power
instead of the bureaucratic apparatus.
It can be a mechanism
for evil.
We are the new Pharisees.
To give more space.
Open space.
An outside solution.
For he who continues to believe.
For she who continues to believe.
This theological vision bridges Illich and the Stone-Campbell Movement in practical terms. Leão’s insight that “we are the new Pharisees” when we trust “bureaucratic apparatus” instead of the “Power of the Spirit” directly echoes Illich’s warning about the institutional “It” eclipsing “She.” What follows traces how this tension between “It” and “She” is expressed across contemporary, historical, and lived contexts.
Historical Precedent: Tyconius and the Bipartite Church
Leão recommended I read Agamben, who links Illich with Tyconius (c. 330–390 CE), the North African theologian who coined the term ecclesia bipertita. This notion is not dualistic thinking but rather a theological complementarity. Tyconius saw the church as both sanctified and corrupt, as two sides of the same coin. In contrast to his Donatist peers, who pursued institutional purity through rigid boundaries, he understood the presence of evil within the church as inherent rather than aberrant.46
The Wheat and the Tares: Ecclesial Ambiguity
The parable of the tares (the wheat and the weeds) in Matthew 13:24–43 crystallizes this tension for both Illich and Tyconius. The church is a “bipartite body” in which holiness and corruption coexist. Rather than pursuing premature purification, the parable calls for patience within the ambiguity—to wait, to witness, and to nurture relational integrity amid tension. For Illich, the church’s bipartite nature calls for nonviolent resistance: cultivating spaces of mutuality where face-to-face friendships embody grace in the very midst of evil. Such ambiguity is not failure but mystery, echoing Tyconius’s ecclesia bipertita. The following section examines how a bipartite vision of the church illuminates historical tensions within the Stone-Campbell Movement.
Stone-Campbell Tensions Through Illich’s Lens
Illich’s “It/She” distinction provides a valuable lens for interpreting historical tensions within the Stone-Campbell Movement. Hughes identifies a fundamental conflict in the early nineteenth-century merger of Stone’s apocalyptic vision with Campbell’s rationalist, confrontational stance. Although their union was shaped by shared marginalization, the deeper tension between mysticism and systematization continued to persist.47 Seen through Illich’s framework, this conflict reflects an ongoing negotiation between institutional form and Spirit-led life.
Colombian Case Study Evidence
This theological tension—between corruption and grace, structure and mystery—was strongly echoed in a single participant’s testimony. Esteban, reflecting on the congregational collapse, moved between lament and trust in divine providence within the same conversational flow. His words thus embody Illich’s vision of a church that is both broken and beautiful, revealing ecclesial ambiguity from within lived experience.
In one moment, he names the intensity of spiritual conflict he experienced within the congregation before and during the crisis:
Poem: “The Enemy, SATAN”
SATAN dominated.
Prey of SATAN.
Let SATAN accuse him…
SATAN seeks in every way
to dominate us…
SATAN makes us think
there is no solution…
(Esteban)
This litany of despair names evil directly. The church, in this poem, is not merely a safe haven but a contested battlefield. Yet this is not where the story ends.
In the same conversation, Esteban shifts to a second reflection:
Poem: “Just a Little Piece of Nothing”
He was passing by Jupiter,
getting him turned around.
So, they turned it around and took a picture of the land.
And by turning it over and taking the picture of the earth inside one of the rings,
You came to see a seal of Jupiter.
You see a tiny blue dot.
And that’s the Earth.
The link, yes on YouTube, you can find it
and you can watch it.
I was impressed by that because
it says that
Everything that has happened on Earth—
all our mistakes,
all our weaknesses,
everything is there.
Everything happened on that place,
all the wars,
all the loves,
all the poetry,
Seen from that planet,
we are just a little piece of nothing,
and God loves us
and kept that gigantic gas for comets from crashing into it and has protected the earth.
Oh! That’s it, that’s it.
It is something that surpasses me,
my ability to understand how much he has loved us.
God loves us and how little we are!
And yet—He has control
over it.
So, it seems to me
what we need to do
is love God,
love our families,
and live.
And trust Him.48
(Esteban)
Read together, these two poems arise from the same speaker and the same moment of reflection, revealing a striking movement between spiritual warfare and cosmic humility. Esteban’s testimony thus holds together what might otherwise appear to be a contradiction: an intense awareness of evil within the church alongside profound trust in divine sovereignty.
In this sense, his words vividly enact Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology, portraying the church as both spiritual battlefield and space of grace. His simultaneous recognition of suffering and divine providence models the ambiguity of the “It” and the “She,” where corruption and grace coexist without resolution. The financial dependency that “ran the system” shaped the very structures he attributes to a “nesting place for evil”. This tension sets the stage for Movement Three, where conspiratio will be explored as a constructive response.
Third Movement: Conspiratio as Decolonial Reorientation
If Movement One names the problem and Movement Two reframes it theologically, Movement Three turns to practice—what it might look like to inhabit conspiratio within real communities, through shared practices of trust, listening, and mutuality.
Illich disrupts the casita logic. Rather than relying on ecclesial power or institutional salvation, he commends mission as mutuality, friendship, and presence. As Cayley observes, Illich imagined a church without walls—one where believers gather face-to-face around dining room tables rather than formal altars: “Celebration will sanctify the dining room,” a vision that reflects his understanding of mission as rooted in shared life among families and friends rather than institutional ritual.49
This image resonates with Bosch’s theology of table fellowship and Love’s theology of hospitality. This insight also connects to my own metaphor, échale agua a la sopa—an invitation to widen the table rather than reinforce the walls, to move from casita to casona (a large house with room for everyone).50
The Stone-Campbell Movement’s frontier origins and non-creedal practices—such as weekly communion and adult baptism, which require neither clergy nor consecrated space—are examples of how conspiratio might already be latent within the tradition. These may be precisely the gifts needed in this season of institutional uncertainty. Our ancestors’ capacity to meet their cultural moment with radical faith suggests that we, too, might sustain faith beyond current institutional forms. A practical aid to study this in groups is Together Towards Life.51
Illich’s framework provides theological grounding; conspiratio provides the practice. It takes shape in the creation of spaces of trust beyond institutional walls. My own journey, marked by ecclesial disillusionment, revealed the darkness of the “It.” Yet Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology led me toward a lived experience of re-evangelization, where I learned to live within that tension—to critique the “It” while nurturing the “She.” What emerged were not endless meetings and conferences on discussing how to “fix the system”, but gathering together for decolonial listening.
The following poem, drawn from participants’ reflections, captures this collective movement toward trust:
Poem: Creating Spaces of Trust
Connect.
To explain.
A place
for forgiveness.
And to discuss.
Discussing
contributes
to connecting.
Discussion
is trying
to understand.
Explanation,
in a space,
allowed to flourish.
An open space
must be evaluated.
We are
creating spaces.
Spaces for…
To give more space.
To create,
finally,
spaces of trust.
What do these “spaces of trust” look like in practice? In one gathering following the financial collapse, a small group met around a kitchen table in a modest Colombian home. Coffee was poured. Someone began—not with doctrine, but with a story of hurt. No one interrupted. There was no immediate correction, no appeal to authority. Instead, there was listening—slow, attentive, embodied. Another responded, not with answers, but with recognition: “yo también.” A simple meal was shared. In that space, confession did not lead to exclusion but to connection. Authority shifted from hierarchy to presence. Trust was not assumed; it was built through mutual vulnerability as participants agreed that friendship was their reason for staying.
This vision of “spaces of trust” embodies what Illich meant by conspiratio—breathing together in mutual vulnerability rather than defending institutional boundaries. In these spaces, participants listen without immediate correction, share meals and stories, and practice forms of presence that resist the urgency to fix or control, echoing the maternal table embodied in the metaphor of échale agua a la sopa.
My research sought to understand where spaces were created after the financial collapse. Although a rented facility remained in use for public services for several years, interviewees consistently pointed to other, more relational spaces that emerged in its wake. These spaces arose precisely because institutional structures no longer held trust, requiring new forms of gathering and conversation. Future research could further examine how mothers and grandmothers created such spaces in their homes—a vital yet underexplored dimension of the community’s resilience and growth in Iglesia ICI-Colombia.
But both the congregation and the Colombian mothers revealed another way—echarle más agua a la sopa—stretching scarcity into abundance through mutuality. In practice, this meant one more chair pulled up, one more plate extended, one more voice welcomed without interrogation. Their wisdom echoes Illich’s vision: creating space for the “She” to flourish even as the “It” falters.
The Stone-Campbell Movement now faces two urgent missiological fronts in which these insights must be applied. First, many congregations are shrinking as younger generations increasingly disengage from institutional religion, including within the Stone-Campbell tradition. Second, Global South congregations remain structurally linked through financial dependency, which often translates into external ecclesial authority. These fronts are not separate but interconnected: as membership declines in the United States, so too does the flow of resources that sustains these global relationships, further entrenching asymmetries of power.
In this context, decolonial listening is not optional; it is essential. But what does this mean in practice? It requires sustained, attentive engagement with those whose voices are often marginalized: younger generations disillusioned with institutional forms of faith, and grassroots members in the Global South whose lived realities are frequently mediated through external structures of control. As my research demonstrates, these voices do not merely offer critique—they carry vital theological insight.
To take decolonial listening seriously is to risk reordering our priorities. It may require radical shifts in how authority, resources, and space are held—reconsidering ownership of church buildings, educational institutions, and established programs. Such a reorientation calls the movement back to its origins. The question is whether we are willing to do so again, reclaiming the radical legacy of the Stone-Campbell Movement, which once prioritized the “She” over the “It” at great cost.
My research shows that the way forward is not easy. But both the congregation and the Colombian mothers revealed another way—echarle más agua a la sopa—stretching scarcity into abundance through mutuality. In practice, this meant one more chair pulled up, one more plate extended, one more voice welcomed without interrogation. Their wisdom echoes Illich’s vision: creating space for the “She” to flourish even as the “It” falters. This practice is not abstract; it is embodied in shared meals, extended hospitality, and a willingness to make room for one more voice at the table. This is the re-evangelization we need—not a fix, but a feast…a feast made possible through shared life, mutual trust, and the slow work of conspiratio.
Conclusion: Breaking the Casita Logic
The path beyond the walls of the “little house” lies not in abandoning institutional structures but in learning to discern within them. Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology offers Stone-Campbell Movement communities a way to break free from the casita logic that traps us in false choices—between defending institutional failures and abandoning faith altogether. By distinguishing the institutional “It” from the mystical “She,” we gain the freedom to critique systemic corruption while nurturing conspiratio, confirming that there is a spiritual life beyond the high boundaries or walls of the “little house.”
Through poetic inquiry, participants demonstrate that even when institutions fail, the possibility of mutuality endures beyond institutional forms. Juan’s awareness of the “lots of dangers… in the church” need not lead to despair when we recognize that these dangers arise primarily from the “It” rather than the “She.” José’s journey—from naming “The Enemy, SATAN” to choosing radical trust—embodies this tension, holding corruption and grace together without collapsing into either cynicism or denial. These dynamics recur throughout the poetic data set.
The future of Stone-Campbell faith in this age of religious obsolescence may depend less on institutional survival and more on our willingness to cultivate spaces of trust where genuine relationships can flourish. Practicing decolonial listening is essential—not as method alone, but as posture and practice.
Illich’s bipartite ecclesiology reminds us that the “She” can flourish even when the “It” falters. The mystical body of Christ persists through conspiratio: breathing together in vulnerable community that transcends denominational boundaries. This movement toward conspiratio is expressed in a final poetic synthesis emerging from participant data:
Mutuality is…
Mutuality
is
creating spaces
while
walking together
through
a system broken beyond repair.52
This is the conspiratio Illich envisioned—not a solution to institutional crisis, but a way of being together that transcends it. Whether the Stone-Campbell Movement endures institutionally matters less than whether its people learn to live this mutuality—breathing together, sharing tables, crossing boundaries, and trusting God’s love even as our casitas crumble.
This reorientation returns the movement to its origins. The question is whether we are willing to do so again, reclaiming the radical legacy of the Stone-Campbell Movement, which once prioritized the “She” over the “It” at great cost. In the end, faith is not a house but a journey, not a system but a relationship—not a casita but a casona, where scarcity is transformed into feast.
1 Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (Oxford University Press, 2025).
2 Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2022).
3 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Orbis Books, 1991), 15–16.
4 Illich is rarely cited in mainstream missiological discourses, although he was a missiologist in his early career. Bosch cites him in Transforming Mission, 436, 493; Samuel E. Ewell, Faith Seeking Conviviality: Reflections on Ivan Illich, Christian Mission, and the Promise of Life Together (Wipf and Stock, 2019).
5 Enrique Dussel, “Epistemological Decolonization of Theology,” in R. Barreto and R. Sirvent (eds.), Decolonial Christianities, pp. 25–42 (Springer International, 2019); Mogens Mogensen, “A Missiology of Listening for a Folk Church in a Postmodern Context.” In Foundations for Mission, eds. E. Wild-Wood and P. Rajkumar (Regnum Books International, 2012), 190–204; Francis Sosta, “Decolonizing Listening to Decolonize Memory,” From the European South 11 (2022): 10–23.
6 Renee Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality in a Theology of Mission” (PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2023), which provides the primary ethnographic and theological framework for this study.
7 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 26; I describe this experience in Renee Rheinbolt-Uribe, “‘Let Us Return’: Enacting Transforming Mutuality Through Duoethnography,” Journal of Religion and Public Life, (Forthcoming, Spring 2026).
8 A recognized method within Poetic Inquiry involves transforming interview transcripts into poetic form to enhance interpretive depth and emotional nuance. Sandra L. Faulkner, Poetic Inquiry: Craft, Method, and Practice (Routledge, 2019).
9 Ivan Illich, The Church, Change and Development (Chicago: Urban Training Center Press, 1970), 87.
10 Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace, 2nd ed. (Beacon Press, 1995).
11 Renee Uribe, “Beyond the ‘It’: Mutuality, Maternal-Thinking, and the ‘She’ in Illich’s Thought,” Conspiratio 6 (2024): 46.
12 Renee Rheinbolt-Uribe, “I Was Trained to Be a Man: Reclaiming the Motherline, the Maternal Gift Economy, and the Missio Dei.” Missio Dei Journal, no. MD 15 (2025).
13 Renee Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality, The Jesus-Mary Relationship as a Model for Theology and Public Life,” Journal of Religion and Public Life 1, no. 2 (2024): 5-20.
14 Mark Love, “Missio Dei, Trinitarian Theology, and the Quest for a Post-Colonial Missiology,” Missio Dei Journal 1, no. 2 (2010).
15 Richard T. Hughes and Christina Littlefield, Christian America and the Kingdom of God: White Christian Nationalism from the Puritans Through January 6, 2021 (Eerdmans, 2025).
16 Francis Sosta, “Decolonizing Listening to Decolonize Memory,” From the European South 11 (2022): 10–23.
17 Ivan Illich, The Powerless Church and Other Selected Writings, 1955-1985 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019).
18 Illich, Rivers North, 61.
19 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 390.
20 David J. Bosch, “Re-evangelisation: Reflecting on the Contributions of J N J Kritzinger and S Mkhatshwa,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 76 (1991): 122–31.
21 Cayley, An Intellectual Journey, 351–59; Neto Leão, “Vernacular Forms-of-living: Thinking After Ivan Illich” (PhD diss., Universidad Estatal De Campinas, 2022), 33.
22 Samuel Escobar, “A Movement Divided: Three Approaches to World Evangelization Stand in Tension with One Another.” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 8, no. 4 (1991): 11, provides a definition, “As a typical school of thought coming from the modern [USA], the quantitative approach is predominant and the pragmatic orientation well defined. . . the evangelistic task is reduced to a process that can be carried out in accordance with standard marketing principles.”
23 Andrew T. Draper, “The End of ‘Mission’: Christian Witness and the Decentering of White Identity.” In Can ‘White’ People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission, eds. L. L. Sechrest, J. Ramirez-Johnson, and A. Yong (InterVarsity Press, 2018), 177-205, 181.
24 Richard T. Hughes, “Escaping the Web of White Supremacy: Our Most Urgent Task in the Work of Character Formation,” The Cresset 83, no. 2 (2019): 4–8; Richard T. Hughes. Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning (University of Illinois Press, 2018).
25 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 393.
26 Kathleen E. Jenkins, “Intimate Diversity: The Presentation of Multiculturalism and Multiracialism in High-Boundary Religious Movements,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42, no. 3 (2003): 393–409.
27 Cayley, Intellectual Journey, 223-234.
28 Felipe Lamb and Donna Lamb, El Movimiento de Jesus: El Mensaje Vivo para un Mundo Moderno (Jose Manuel Garza Mier y Teran, 1991).
29 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 420.
30 Adapted from Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 372.
31 Adapted from Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 372.
32 J. Caleb Clanton, Restoration and Philosophy: New Philosophical Engagements with the Stone-Campbell Tradition (University of Tennessee Press, 2019); Jeanie Shaw, Re-Examining Our Lenses: The Relationship Between Restoration Movement Hermeneutics and Spiritual Formation (Illumination Publishers International, 2024).
33 Thomas H. Olbricht, “Walter Scott as Biblical Interpreter.” In Walter Scott: A Nineteenth Century Evangelical, ed. M. G. Toulouse (Chalice Press, 1999), 79–107.
34 Edward Hicks, “Sometimes in the Wrong, But Never in Doubt”: George S. Benson and the Education of the New Religious Right (University of Tennessee Press, 1994); Bob Waldron, “A Portrait of US Church of Christ Missionaries,” Missio Dei 8, no. 1 (2017).
35 Beyond my own PhD dissertation, I located only one book focused on the International Church of Christ: Neto Leão et al., Jornada de Fé: Uma Breve História da Igreja de Cristo Internacional do Brasil – 30 Anos de História (1987–2017) (Self-published, 2017). In contrast, there is a growing body of research on the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe. One example is Gift Masengwe, “The Church of Christ in Zimbabwe: Identity and Mission Continuity (in Diversity)” (PhD diss., University of South Africa, 2020). Also see Stone-Campbell African scholar, Paul S. Chimhungwe, “The Conversion Process in Southern Africa (1914-1927): An Historical Analysis,” in Missional Life in Practice and Theory: Essays in Honor of Gailyn Van Rheenen, ed. Christopher L. Flanders and Greg McKinzie (Pickwick Publications, 2024).
36 For neoliberalism as one of the relational causal influences described by Smith in explaining the obsolescence of religion in the USA, see Smith, Religion Went Obsolete.
37 Leão et al., Jornada de Fé, 93; Mark A. Noll, Christianity in America: A Handbook (Lion Publishing, 1983), 184.
38 Chris Flanders, “Kainos Koinonias: How Innovative Faith Communities Embody the Missio Dei,” Mission Alive, January 17, 2024, https://missionalive.substack.com/p/kainos-koinonias.
39 Robert Wuthnow, Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches (University of California Press, 2010).
40 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 195.
41 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 213-14.
42 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 205.
43 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 214. Still, it destabilizes.
44 Illich, The Powerless Church, 139.
45 Cayley, Intellectual Journey, 383.
46 Giorgio Agamben, The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days, trans. Adam Kotsko (Polity Press, 2017).
47 Richard T. Hughes, “The Apocalyptic Origins of Churches of Christ and the Triumph of Modernism,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 2, no. 2 (1992): 181–214.
48 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality”, 31-32.
49 Cayley, Intellectual Journey, 66.
50 Love, “Missio Dei.”; Bosch, Transforming Mission, 41–46, 107, 167, 199; Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 234.
51 Jooseop Keum, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes: with a Practical Guide, ed. (World Council of Churches, 2013).
52 Rheinbolt-Uribe, “Transforming Mutuality,” 250; Uribe, “Beyond the ‘It’,” 52.
