EucontaminationDisgust Theology and the Christian Life
Review posted November 28, 2025.
Cascade Books, 2025. 221 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from my own copy ordered via Amazon.com.
Starred Review
When I heard about this book, I preordered it eagerly because I've long followed Billie Hoard on Twitter. She's a transgender Christian, and everything she posts is uplifting and encouraging.
Billie's brother Paul is a psychology professor, and the book ends up being academic, philosophical, psychological, and a little hard to absorb. (Am I losing my ability to read academic stuff in my old age?) I will try to explain the main point of the book, and I am still trying to absorb these ideas in my life.
The first paragraph of the Introduction is provocative:
This is a book about disgust and contamination. And Jesus. We would dare to assert that few if any other texts on theology and the Way of Jesus spend as much time talking about poop as the one you are reading. However, if you are willing to move towards your disgust, we hope you just may find Jesus in the last place you expect, but the very place he said he would be.
It turns out that a big part of polarization - of dividing people into us and them - is about disgust.
We aren't so much afraid of one another as disgusted - a much harder truth to face. We don't resist the foreigner, orphan, and widow out of fear for our lives and well-being so much as out of a fear that they will contaminate us - change us into something we do not want to become. It's a very human and very normal reaction but not one that Jesus seemed to follow. The Way of Jesus runs in the opposite direction of the exclusion that disgust instigates: it welcomes instead of rejecting, integrates instead of segregating, and loves instead of fearing. . . . We needed a term, a concept, to represent this anti-disgust way of engaging the other that Jesus modeled.
The term they landed on is eucontamination, contamination for good. The initial chapters explore the concepts of disgust and eucontamination, and then look at the life and teaching of Jesus from the framework of John 14:6.
How might each of these: way, truth, and life, be vectors of eucontamination - contaminants to or self-understanding and social realities that lure us back to Christ?
So that's the main thread of the book. The "Way" is intentionally covered last of the three, so that thought will precede action. But the whole book is a powerful teaching against us-versus-them thinking and purity codes that look down on people. I love the teaching that God is not disgusted with us, and Jesus became a human because God was not disgusted.
A core vocation of the church is to stand in solidarity with the stigmatized and disgusting - remembering that it is not the people who are disgusting, but society who is disgusted. Like our Lord, we should be "reckoned with the lawless" (Luke 22:37) such that at every stage of the disgust cycle, the church is standing with the stigmatized and is leveraging any power, privilege, or influence it has on their behalf, fully knowing that this means casting our lot with a targeted and scapegoated community.
An overarching message of this book is that getting to know the "others" - the people in groups we feel alienated from - will indeed contaminate us - and that's a good thing. It's also about being open to listening and learning.
And they aren't blind to boundaries.
By highlighting the beauty of eucontamination, we are not advocating the abandonment of boundaries. Recognizing the problems of disgust does not mean that threats no longer exist. Instead, we hope that recognition allows one to hold effective and humane boundaries. We are inviting you to resist the lure of dehumanization that comes from disgust, not asking you to ignore all boundaries. Dangers exist in the world. Not all people can be trusted. Power dynamics are real and must be taken into consideration. As you do though, notice how disgust may sometimes be used to make holding those boundaries easier. Jesus continually calls us back to see the image of God in everyone, even while holding them accountable.
So those are some of the beautiful and challenging ideas you'll find in this book. Lots to think about as we attempt to follow the way of Jesus.
Added on the day I'm posting this: I'm currently reading a fourth book by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with gang members in Los Angeles, Cherished Belonging. Fr. Boyle models eucontamination. He sees the gang members he works with - indeed every human being - as unshakably good. That's the opposite of disgust, and working with gang members has indeed contaminated him into a more loving and compassionate human.