A woman with glasses, dreadlocks, and tattoos, smiling and sitting on a black sofa in front of a colorful abstract mural, wearing a red cap, a teal shirt, yellow work boots, and jewelry.

MEET DR. TAMICE SPENCER-HELMS

As the Creative Director of Black Modern Mystic, Dr. Tamice Spencer-Helms brings substantial academic rigor and theoretical sophistication to the platform’s vision. Their work integrates Black studies, religious ethics, cultural theory, and decolonial theology into a comprehensive intellectual framework that grounds the organization’s public scholarship and spiritual offerings.

Spencer-Helms’ academic prowess is evident in the precision with which they synthesize interdisciplinary sources—ranging from Black feminist thought and queer theory to mystical traditions, performance studies, and liberation ethics. Their theological method is deeply informed by their proximity to Black Students and Black expressive culture, allowing them to develop frameworks that are both analytically sharp, culturally relevant, and spiritually resonant.

As a cultural critic and theoactivist, Spencer-Helms does more than interpret the world—they generate new epistemic possibilities for understanding it. Their scholarship functions as a rigorous interrogation of the forces that constrain spiritual and ethical imagination, particularly within Christian contexts shaped by whiteness and coloniality. At the same time, their work constructs liberative alternatives, offering models of meaning-making that affirm Black life, queer embodiment, and communal freedom.

In this role, Spencer-Helms curates the intellectual spine of Black Modern Mystic. Their ability to remix cultural texts, lived experiences, and sacred traditions—much like a DJ sequencing a mixtape—allows them to transform complexity into coherence, theory into practice, and analysis into pathways for transformation.

Through their leadership, Black Modern Mystic stands as a site where scholarship, social transformation, and spirituality meet: a place where intellectual rigor fuels radical imagination, and where academic inquiry becomes a tool for social, ethical, and spiritual liberation.

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WRITING AS A BLACK MODERN MYSTIC

  • SUBSTACK

    Here, I speak directly to spiritual fugitives—those on the run from small gods, restrictive theologies, and limiting narratives. This writing is intimate, clear, and rooted in my desire to make complex ideas not only understandable but enjoyable.

    Substack is where I offer companionship, language, and resonance for anyone navigating a nonlinear spiritual journey.

  • ACADEMIC

    My academic work challenges dominant theological frameworks while tethering spirituality to Black cultural life, relational knowledge, and ethical responsibility. I write for journals, conferences, and scholars interested in new pathways for spiritual formation outside colonial, anti-Black structures.

    My dissertation was a theological construction and tested two new models of paraontological ministry formation and praxis.

  • PUBLICATION

    In addition to my editorial and public scholarship, I write for published books within the fields of post- and progressive-Christian theology and memoir. My publications are typically geared toward helping people heal from harmful religious frameworks while reclaiming a sacred, embodied spirituality.

    I am the author of Faith Unleavened, a spiritual memoir that explores my process of liberation from antiblack theology, and my second book, Light These Roots on Fire, explores my experience of white supremacy in the black church.