Jason Sexton

Theologian | Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Jason Sexton is a formerly-incarcerated theologian, social theorist, and cultural historian currently based in UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and UCLA’s Sociology Department. He serves as co-PI with Stephanie Pincetl of the Luce-funded project, “Mapping the Conversation on Faith, Flourishing, and the Environment,” and his recent book is Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California (Routledge, 2024). With research interests in theology, carcerality, and the environment, he studies internal structural commitments of communities and their members and how these relate to assumed cultural and theological norms that show up in social and ethical action. He is currently working to complete a book tentatively titled, The Irredeemable: Religion, Eugenics, and the Prison, uncovering the linkage between eugenic perspectives and today’s carceral logics that persist not only in U.S. penal policy, government practices, and religion/theology, but also in the computational and biological sciences with relevance for future conversations pertaining to religion, carcerality, and the environment.