Search

Howard Thurman is attuned to bodies under threat. In this article, I argue that his use of vignettes offers a distinctive rhetorical strategy for addressing collective trauma. Through closely examining "The Third Component," a sermon preached in 1958, I display his distinctive contribution to working with traumatic memories. In relying on a third memory--a memory of communing in the Presence of total regard--he connects religious experience to the somatic efforts to heal bodies from trauma. I make the case that, for Thurman, the work of racial justice depends on spiritual practices to hone attention and enable the awareness necessary for the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing research in trauma focuses on working trauma out of the body. This 'somatic turn' can minimise the role that narrative plays in healing. This piece imagines a coordination between writing, words, and the senses that is in line with the wisdom of longstanding religious traditions. It proposes that theopoetics positions us to release the negative grip of words while creating, through words, new paths of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life following an overwhelming event of violence is fundamentally changed. Survivors struggle to reconcile their present experience of life—reconfigured through trauma—with their experience of faith. When individuals and religious communities try to put the events behind them and proclaim the good news before its time, they fail to attend to the ongoing realities of a death that do not go away. This essay explores a theology that witnesses to what remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following is a panel discussion between four theologians about their recent theological work at the intersection of trauma and Christian theology. This conversation highlights the ways in which current (or recent) studies in trauma have impacted and reshaped the classic questions of Christian faith: Where is God in the suffering? Does God will suffering? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]