Shandon C. Klein is a Ph.D. Candidate at Southern Methodist University studying Religious Ethics in the Graduate Program for Religious Studies and a commissioned Elder serving as Senior Pastor at Fairmount United Methodist Church in Fairmount, ND and Breckenridge UMC in Breckenridge, MN. In addition to having served as a lay delegate to 2020 General Conference in 2024 for the North Texas Annual Conference, she currently serves as student representative for the Board of the Society of Christian Ethics. Her research involves studying how lived theology may shape the conception of resistance and control for those who self-identify as political activists, alongside the ethical frameworks that surround those conceptions. As a womanist theological ethicist, she has a passion for bridging the gap between the “ivory towers” of academia and the living out of faith in Christian communities, a passion she continues to nurture in her doctoral studies.