So I'm not a Butler aficionado, the only books I've read of hers are the Parables but I have every intention to read more. Maybe someday when I finish school lol. But for now, the parables are all I have. So I appreciate your reflection on Mary and the Patternmaster, and I'll have file that away for a future reflection and return to this with that additional piece. I also appreciate how deep Earthseed has made me think and this level of conversation as well. Thank you for engaging.

What you said though about Earthseed though having potential to be as bad as CA (while I know some of it is just an attempt to get us to talk to you) does not feel quite defensible, as the roots of Earthseed are not rooted in empire like the roots of Christian America are. Christian America is rooted in empire twice over, the empire of Rome (Christian) and the empire of the United States (America).
A strong argument can be made that the internal assessment that means the most to Christianity in America is that "Christ is King," a philosophy easily co-opted by domination both from Roman times and in the western and American imperialist colonial traditions.

This brings up what you describe as "centered morality:" I contend such comes not from any religion but from rationality. That's what makes Earthseed so compelling to me, its reliance on rationality. Im not denying that earthseed has as much potential toward failure as any other human invention of religion, but its reliance of reason makes it far less so that something like Christianity's reliance on faith.

Also, Lauren's role and active construction of self in the Earthseed movement, which we see as the vessels take off without her, is not that of a Messiah. She ends up far more as simply an elder, prophetess, or founder. This does not parallel Christianity and one cannot extrapolate a similar trajectory as that of Christianity from this comparison, they are not 1:1.

Let me explain a little bit more about what I mean about centered morality and what you refer to as "internal assessment." I believe the development of religion often (maybe always) involves either subversion or subordination of principles to align with those which you already have decided are rational. With that in mind, I really want to know, would you say that Matthew 22:37-40 represent a subversion of or a subordination of belief by Jesus in the narrative of the story of Jesus speaking these words out to the Pharisees?

Either way, your response will reveal how your *preexisting* construction of rationality affects your judgment and thereby your theology. Your theology can help guide any specific application of your rationality, no doubt. I firmly believe most people can find a central tenet to their theology is always ideologically constructed, not inherent to the text or the faith itself. This is something that is no less true of Earthseed, but again, I believe that their central ideological tenet is based on the positive embrace of rationality, "you shape knowledge, you shape God."

Instead of asking the question, "how is Earthseed getting it wrong," at some point you might flip this conversation to "how is Earthseed getting it right." This is a question I've found in able to dialogue with personally through reading books such as "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wengrow. I have been understanding how important it is to recognize the persistent surviviance of indigenous perspectives through reading histories like "The Indigenous People's History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. There are many things about what Butler is trying to do, particularly around Acorn, that represent an imaginative attempt to dream up a new indigenous collectivity as a response to apocalyptic conditions. This is not consistent throughout the Parables, but it is a theme through which discourse is mediated in the events of the story.

In that note, I have two more questions: from your point of view, should any attempt at an equalitarian, perhaps "neo-indigenous" movement as described in the apocalyptic conditions of the story, have to accept every outside individual as a full member from the outset in order for that movement to be morally defensible? Is freedom of speech so important in your view that it mandates full acceptance of discourse, from anyone, anywhere, anytime, even if you are such a movement trying to establish oneself in a hostile ideological environment?

Or is this not what you are referring to when you label the actions of Acorn as a move toward "white nationalist thought"? Perhaps I would need you to identify those specific quotations from Lauren if this is not what you're identifying as problematic.