Prophetic Economics: When Publishing Becomes Ministry for Voices at the Margins

Over twenty years ago, I knelt before my congregation, surrounded by the massive paintings and liturgical dancers distinctive of an artist’s ordination, affirming a call to ministry that felt as undeniable as breath. Like many progressive clergy, I believed deeply in the prophetic tradition—speaking truth to power, advocating for the marginalized, imagining a more just world.

I never considered how prophets are sustained. As seminary students and professors, we studied their words but rarely discussed who fed Jeremiah, who housed Amos, or how Miriam maintained her strength.

This question of prophetic sustainability eventually led me to an unexpected revelation: Economic justice for marginalized voices isn’t separate from spiritual work—it’s essential to it. The path to that revelation began with a crisis.

The Economics of Exclusion

After fifteen years serving as a pastor and professor, the toxic combination of protests from Westboro Baptist Church, stacks of hate mail, and death threats made it clear: as a queer woman, the institutions I’d devoted my life to had become unsafe harbors. These institutions didn’t just reject my voice—they threatened my livelihood and well-being.

So, eleven years ago, I made the wrenching decision to leave my pastoral position, surrendering not just a spiritual community but also my income, benefits, and professional identity. Many in the Good Faith community understand this painful calculus. Standing in your truth comes with financial penalties, and speaking prophetically means risking not just criticism but your very economic survival.

Unemployed but still called to do meaningful work, I took a radical step. My wife, toddler and I moved into a pop-up camper named Freya, traversing America while I researched revolutionary queer women of color.

Living on faith, this journey—chronicled in my book Queering the American Dream—transformed my understanding of vocation. It also led me to publish eight more books with four different publishing companies, creating a new economic path forward when traditional institutions failed me.

Each book was a spiritual affirmation, but an economic struggle. Publishing companies rarely understood the nuances of feminist or queer writing, and their marketing efforts reflected this gap.

I had escaped toxic institutions only to discover another system working against marginalized voices—not by outright rejection, but through economic structures that ensured our voices remained peripheral, underfunded and unsustainable. This is evidenced by the fact that only 16% of all published books are written by LGBTQIA+ authors.

The Hidden Economics of Prophetic Voices

Around this time, I witnessed two colleagues—smart, savvy, marginalized women and priests—spend over $40,000 each with hybrid publishing companies that promised to leverage their books into million-dollar businesses. Their businesses collapsed before covering their initial investments. This is what I’ve come to call “predatory prophetic economics”—systems that claim to amplify marginalized voices while actually extracting resources from them, leaving prophets poorer for having spoken.

In Greek, the root word for “preach” and “publish” is the same: kerusso. To preach. To proclaim. Publish. 

But what good is proclamation if the prophets cannot sustain themselves? If speaking truth leads to economic precarity?

Gloria Anzaldúa, the queer Chicana feminist who shapes so much of my vocation as a spiritual activist, wrote: “The world I create in my writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.” What if we took this not just as metaphorical compensation but as literal sustenance? What if marginalized voices could create economic abundance through their prophetic words?

A New Model: Prophetic Economics in Practice

This realization led me to create Tehom Center Publishing, a nonprofit press that publishes feminist and queer authors, with a commitment to elevate BIPOC writers–not as charity, but as prophetic economics, a system where marginalized voices generate spiritual and material sustenance.

In honor of my 20th ordination anniversary, we launched Ministry from the Margins Books, a quarterly cohort that gathers marginalized clergy—queer, BIPOC, women, and ministers with disabilities—for group coaching in book writing, marketing, and “authorpreneurship.” The results transformed my understanding of ministry, creating a beloved “third space” of community activism, mutual support, and radical imagination.

Upon publishing her book, one queer author proclaimed, “I’m living the life small child me dreamed about.”

One of our trans participants quipped, “In any other group, we’d be tokens. Here, we’re community.”

Yet another queer author leveraged her book as an off-ramp from a toxic position as a professor, maintaining financial security in the process. Book after book, author after author, marginalized minister after marginalized minister experienced transformation, affirmation, community, and even abundance.

Before I knew it, more than 50 marginalized ministers had completed the program in less than a year. Their stories needed to be told, their prophetic voices needed to be amplified, and most importantly, they needed what all prophets need—a way to sustain themselves while doing the work of proclamation.

The Authorpreneur Handbook: A Manual for Prophetic Economics

This is where The Authorpreneur Handbook was born. When I first clasped a clergy collar around my neck decades ago, the idea of being an authorpreneur would have prompted an eye roll from my anti-capitalist activist self.

But I’ve come to understand that terms such as “marketing,” “business,” and “entrepreneurship” are not inherently righteous or sinful. They are tools that can either oppress or liberate. 

Prophets were often supported by communities who believed in their message. Today, marginalized voices need new economic models that allow them to speak truth without sacrificing their security.

The handbook distills everything we’ve learned through Ministry from the Margins into a pathway toward prophetic sustainability. It rejects the scarcity mindset imposed on marginalized communities and the predatory promises of get-rich-quick publishing schemes. Instead, it offers practical guidance for creating economic foundations that make long-term prophetic work possible.

Reclaiming the Collar: Meeting the Material Needs of Radical Voices

Recently, I put on my clergy collar again for the first time in over a decade. Not to preach, preside, or even protest, but for the launch of “The Authorpreneur Handbook.” 

It felt right. In fact, it felt like the deepest manifestation of my calling in over two decades of ministry. Because even the most radical, prophetic voices have material needs—rent must be paid, food must be on the table, healthcare must be accessible.

This fundamental reality is often overlooked in progressive faith spaces. We celebrate prophetic voices while ignoring the material conditions that make their work (im)possible. 

We admire those who speak truth to power without acknowledging that economic precarity is one of the most effective ways to silence dissent. Radical thinkers need radical support systems. That’s what authorpreneurship is all about.

The harsh truth is that even the most powerful prophetic message cannot feed a family. The most beautifully written manifesto won’t pay medical bills. The most righteous cause won’t cover the mortgage.

Yet somehow, in modern progressive faith communities, we’ve separated these concerns, as if talking about money somehow taints the purity of prophetic work. This separation has left too many marginalized voices silenced by economic unsustainability.

The Authorpreneur Handbook is my attempt to address this fundamental gap—to acknowledge that material needs and prophetic work are inseparable. To ensure that voices from he margins can speak not just boldly but sustainably. To build what I call “prophetic economics”—systems where marginalized voices generate abundance rather than scarcity.

In times like these, with prophetic voices under intensifying attack from politicians and pundits, sustainability isn’t secondary to the work—it is the work. Because a prophet without bread cannot proclaim for long. And in a world desperate for words of justice and inclusion, we need our prophets now more than ever.