Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma Through Performing It by
The Gospel of John's account of doubting Thomas is often told as a lesson about the veracity and triumph of Christian faith. And yet it is a story about wounds. Interpretations of this Gospel narrative, by focusing on Christ's victory in the resurrection, reflect Christianity's unease with the wounds that remain on the body of the risen Jesus. By returning readers to this familiar passage, Resurrecting Wounds expands the scope of the Upper Room to the present world where wounds mark all of humanity. Shelly Rambo rereads the Thomas story and the history of its interpretation through the lens of trauma studies to reflect on the ways that the wounds of race, gender, and war persist. Wounds do not simply go away, even though a close reading of John Calvin reveals his theological investments in removing wounds. This erasure reflects a dominant mode of Christian thinking, but it is not the only Christian reading. By contrast, Macrina's scar, in Gregory of Nyssa's account of her life and death, displays how resurrection can be inscribed in wounds, particularly in the illumination of her body after her death. The scar, produced in and through a mother's touch, recalls a healing, linking resurrection to the work of tending wounds. Much like Christ's wounds and Macrina's scar, racial wounds can be found on the skin of America's collective life. The wounds of racial histories, unhealed, resurface again and again. The wounds of war persist as well, despite a cultural calculus that links the suffering of a soldier with that of Christ. Again, the visceral display of Jesus' wounds, when placed at the center of Thomas' encounter in the Upper Room, enacts a vision of resurrecting that addresses the real harm of the real wounds of war. The powerful Upper Room images of resurrectionâencounters with wounds, the invitation to touch, and the formation of a communityâpresent visions of truth-telling and of healing that grapple with the pressing questions of wounds surfacing in the midst of human encounters with violence, suffering, and trauma. While traditional accounts of resurrection in Christian theology have focused on the afterlife, this book forges a theology of resurrection wounds in the afterliving. By returning again and again to Christ's woundedness, we discover ways to live with our own.
A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas by
In this thought-provoking book, Luis Rivera argues that evangelical reasoning and symbolism were appropriated to justify the armed seizure of people and land in the New World and to validate the conversion, peaceful or forced, of the natives. He recaptures the sixteenth-century political debates--where priests and theologians are both voices of dissent against the Spanish military conquest and fervent defenders of it. Rivera contrasts "discovery" and conquest and examines the tragic outcome: demographic collapse--from the islands Columbus first sighted to the Inca empire in Peru.
The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity by
The topic of sexuality intersects directly with the most contested historical, theological, and ethical questions of our day. In this edgy yet profound volume, noted scholars and theologians assay the Christian tradition's classic and contemporary understandings of sex, sexuality, and sexual identity. The project unfolds in three phases: contemporary assessments of the Christian tradition, new thinking about eros and being human religiously, and new perspectives on classic mysteries in light of eros and embodiment.
Feminist Interpretations of Mary Daly by
This open-ended anthology is a journey into the very canon that Mary Daly has argued to be patriarchal and demeaning to women. This volume deauthorizes the official canon of Western philosophy and disrupts a related story told by some feminists who claim that Daly's work is unworthy of re-reading because it contains fatal errors. The editors and contributors attempt to prove that Mary Daly is located in the Western intellectual tradition. Daly may be highly critical of conventional Western epistemological and theological traditions, but she nevertheless appropriates themes "out-of-context" for the building of her own systematic philosophy. The following are just a few of the many themes explored in this volume: * the question of subjectivity understood as an ongoing process of be-coming * the ambiguity of the need for feminists of colonial nations to speak out about violence against women in other parts of the world while that speaking carries with it the stamp of a colonial location * the territoriality of lesbian and women's space * the theological dimensions of twentieth-century Western philosophy. Contributors are Wanda Warren Berry, Purushottama Bilimoria, Debra Campbell, Molly Dragiewicz, Frances Gray, Amber L. Katherine, AnaLouise Keating, Anne-Marie Korte, María Lugones, Geraldine Moane, Sheilagh A. Mogford, Laurel C. Schneider, Renuka Sharma, and Marja Suhonen.
Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror by
Lynched chronicles the history andaftermath of lynching in America. By rooting her work in oral histories, Angela D. Sims gives voice tothe memories of African American elders who remember lynching not only as individual acts but as a culture of violence, domination, and fear. Lynched preserves memory even while it provides an analysis of the meaning of those memories.Simsexamines the relationship between lynching and the interconnected realities of race, gender, class,and other social fragmentations that ultimately shape a person'sâand a community'sâreligiousself-understanding. Through this understanding,she explores how the narrators reconcile their personal and communalmemory of lynching with their livedChristian experience. Moreover, Simsunearths the community'struth that this is sometimes a story of words and at other times a story of silence. Revealing the bond between memory and moral formation, Simsdiscovers the courage and hope inherent in the power of recall.By tending to the words of these witnesses, Lynched exposes not only a culture of fear and violence but the practice of story and memory, as well as thenarrative ofhope within a renewed possibility for justice.
Poetics of the Flesh by
In Poetics of the Flesh Mayra Rivera offers poetic reflections on how we understand our carnal relationship to the world, at once spiritual, organic, and social. She connects conversations about corporeality in theology, political theory, and continental philosophy to show the relationship between the ways ancient Christian thinkers and modern Western philosophers conceive of the "body" and "flesh." Her readings of the biblical writings of John and Paul as well as the work of Tertullian illustrate how Christian ideas of flesh influenced the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, and inform her readings of Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, and others. Rivera also furthers developments in new materialism by exploring the intersections among bodies, material elements, social arrangements, and discourses through body and flesh. By painting a complex picture of bodies, and by developing an account of how the social materializes in flesh, Rivera provides a new way to understand gender and race.
Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation by
Religious pluralism, the collapse of traditional religious institutions, and the growing impact of religious studies on believers have prompted widespread rethinking of what religion is. Polydoxy offers a brilliant and original theological response to this intellectual crisis by suggesting that there are multiple forms of right belief. Reacting against reductive or nostalgic theological tendencies, the chapters in this book by an impressive array of scholars take an exciting and creative approach to theology in the twenty-first century.
Re-Imagining the Divine: Confronting the Backlash Against Feminist Theology by
Religious feminism is at an impasse. On the one hand, its demands for theological inclusivity find little support in the traditional Christian doctrines. On the other hand, feminist worshipers claim ever more robust experiences of divinity that give substance to their new language and images for the divine. Meanwhile, a backlash has arisen against feminist theologians and leaders of feminist spiritual movements. Contending that the plethora of divine images cannot all be disclosures of God, those leading the charge have made accusations of heresy, idolatry, and self-aggrandizement.
Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood by
Winner, Book of the Year 2019, Hispanic Theological InitiativeWhen the screams of innocents dying engulf you, how do you hear God's voice? Will God and God's people call you to life when your breath is being strangled out of you? For people of color living each day surrounded by violence, for whom survival is not a given, vocational discernment is more than "finding your purpose" - it's a matter of life and death. Patrick Reyes shares his story of how the community around him - his grandmother, robed clergy, educators, friends, and neighbors - saved him from gang life, abuse, and the economic and racial oppression that threatened to kill him before he ever reached adulthood. A story balancing the tension between pain and healing, Nobody Cries When We Die takes you to the places that make American society flinch, redefines what you are called to do with your life, and gives you strength to save lives and lead in your own community.Part of the FTE (Forum for Theological Exploration) Series
American Lynching by
A history of lynching in America over the course of three centuries, from colonial Virginia to twentieth-century Texas After observing the varying reactions to the 1998 death of James Byrd Jr. in Texas, called a lynching by some, denied by others, Ashraf Rushdy determined that to comprehend this event he needed to understand the long history of lynching in the United States. In thismeticulously researched and accessibly written interpretive history, Rushdy shows how lynching in America has endured, evolved, and changed in meaning over the course of three centuries, from its origins in early Virginia to the present day. Rushdy argues that we can understand what lynching means in American history by examining its evolution--that is, by seeing how the practice changes in both form and meaning over the course of three centuries, by analyzing the rationales its advocates have made in its defense, and, finally, by explicating its origins. The best way of understanding what lynching has meant in different times, and for different populations, during the course of American history is by seeing both the continuities in the practice over time and the specific features in different forms of lynching in different eras.
Awake to the Moment: An Introduction to Theology by
Most introductory textbooks in theology see their primary task as explaining Christian doctrines that no one quite understands anymore. While this is one of theology's jobs, it is by no means the only, nor even the most important, one. Theology has also been called to change the world, to help people connect deeply rooted beliefs about the world's source and goal to questions of personal meaning and communal thriving. Theology is here to help us make sense of the complex, flawed world into which we've been thrust and to assist us in our attempt to love our neighbors and live toward the common good. For more than forty years, the Workgroup on Constructive Theology has brought the liberal and liberationist theological traditions into creative encounter with lived human experience. In this introduction to the methods and tasks of theology, they invite a new generation of readers, many who will have little or no exposure to Christian doctrine, to see theology as a partner in the struggle for a better world. They demonstrate how theological ideas have "legs," playing themselves out not only in religious communities but in the public square as well. Theology, the authors tell us, is constructive when it joins in God's work of building human lives and human societies. Readers will learn to think about all of life in light of their religious commitments and to see theology as an essential tool for a life well lived.
Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity by
Laurel Schneider takes the reader on a vivid journey from the origins of "the logic of the One" - only recently dubbed monotheism - through to the modern day, where monotheism has increasingly failed to adequately address spiritual, scientific, and ethical experiences in the changing world. In Part I, Schneider traces a trajectory from the ancient history of monotheism and multiplicity in Greece, Israel, and Africa through the Constantinian valorization of the logic of the One, to medieval and modern challenges to that logic in poetry and science. She pursues an alternative and constructive approach in Part II: a "logic of multiplicity" already resident in Christian traditions in which the complexity of life and the presence of God may be better articulated. Part III takes up the open-ended question of ethics from within that multiplicity, exploring the implications of this radical and realistic new theology for the questions that lie underneath theological construction: questions of belonging and nationalism, of the possibility of love, and of unity. In this groundbreaking work of contemporary theology, Schneider shows that the One is not lost in divine multiplicity, and that in spite of its abstractions, divine multiplicity is realistic and worldly, impossible ultimately to abstract.
The Intruders: Illegal Residents of the Cherokeen Nation, 1866-1907 by
A history of the overwhelming invasion of Cherokee land by thousands of white & black citizens of the United States, one of the most critical problems faced by the Indians in the last third of the 19th century. "There is much information in this book to appeal to the serious scholar--the history of the sequential erosion of Cherokee sovereignty, information about the commissions, courts, & decrees that tried to deal with this loss of tribal sovereignty, & a scathing condemnation of the 'contrived doctrine of discovery' & the so-called 'right of pre-emption' which were euphemisms for the rape of Native American lands."--Tulsa World. "Encroachment on Indian lands resulted partly from greed & partly from the federal government's failure to honor its treaty stipulations to keep intruders out. Federal interference complicated decades of effort by the Cherokee Nation to oust illegal residents. The depth of the information...reflects Sober's firm knowledge of Cherokee history."--Tulsa Tribune. Some invaders were evicted; others were paid for their improvements & departed. Some were paid & remained until after Oklahoma statehood.
Our Spirits Don't Speak English : Indian Boarding School by
Our Spirits Don't Speak English (2008) is a documentary film about Native American boarding schools attended by young people mostly from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It was filmed by the Rich Heape company and directed by Chip Richie. Native American storyteller Gayle Ross narrated the film. Ross is a descendant of John Ross, chief of the Cherokee Nation in the Trail of Tears period.
The film deals with both the schools run by Christian missionaries and those run by the United States' Bureau of Indian Affairs. It addresses the schools' role in forcing cultural assimilation of the resident children into the ways of the majority culture of European Americans.
Elephant Rocks by
Elephant Rocks, Kay Ryan's third book of verse, shows a virtuoso practitioner at the top of her form. Engaging and secretive, provocative and profound, Ryan's poems have generated growing excitement with their appearances in The New Yorker and other leading periodicals. Sometimes gaudily ornamental, sometimes Shaker-plain, here is verse that is compact on the page and expansive in the mind.
Theorizing Native Studies by
This important collection makes a compelling argument for the importance of theory in Native studies. Within the field, there has been understandable suspicion of theory stemming both from concerns about urgent political issues needing to take precedence over theoretical speculations and from hostility toward theory as an inherently Western, imperialist epistemology. The editors of Theorizing Native Studies take these concerns as the ground for recasting theoretical endeavors as attempts to identify the larger institutional and political structures that enable racism, inequities, and the displacement of indigenous peoples. They emphasize the need for Native people to be recognized as legitimate theorists and for the theoretical work happening outside the academy, in Native activist groups and communities, to be acknowledged. Many of the essays demonstrate how Native studies can productively engage with others seeking to dismantle and decolonize the settler state, including scholars putting theory to use in critical ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and postcolonial studies. Taken together, the essays demonstrate how theory can serve as a decolonizing practice. Contributors. Christopher Bracken, Glen Coulthard, Mishuana Goeman, Dian Million, Scott Morgensen, Robert Nichols, Vera Palmer, Mark Rifkin, Audra Simpson, Andrea Smith, Teresia Teaiwa
American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by
For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During thattime the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in thehistory of the world.Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finallyout across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of theirpopulations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for thecenturies-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the sameideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.
