Abstract
This chapter explores anamnesis—expansive memory across generations—as a way to weave life experiences into a theology of love adequate to embracing tragedy, ambiguity, and moral failure while supporting human flourishing and the struggle for justice. In exploring a peripatetic childhood affected by war and dislocation that led the author to a life of activism, she shows how her theological critiques of atonement theology were informed by work with youth carrying trauma, especially as postmemory so that their parents’ trauma overruns their lives. She argues that atonement theologies inflict a collective postmemory of trauma in Western Christianity that transmits pain across generations and sanctifies punishment and suffering as love. In defining love as mutuality and human flourishing, she discusses how the new term “moral injury” offers embodied knowledge of suffering and trauma and points beyond atonement theology to recovery through the collective work of love, grounded in mutuality and justice for the sake of human flourishing and hope.
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Notes
- 1.
“Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952,” Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. State Department Report, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction.
- 2.
Hugh Hart, “Items Made in Occupied Japan Have a Number of Fans Because They Are Identifiable and Affordable,” Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1997, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-06-22-9706220247-story.html.
- 3.
Ed. Waggoner, Religion in Uniform: Chaplaincy and U.S. Religion (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2019).
- 4.
Details about this early part of my life are found in Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).
- 5.
David C. Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up among Worlds (Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001). Happa means half-Japanese and Issei-han, literally one-and-a-half, refers to children born in Japan who emigrate as children to the U.S.
- 6.
Rita Nakashima Brock, “When I Get to Heaven,” in My Neighbor’s Faith: Studies of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation, ed. Jennifer Howe Peace, Or N. Rose, and Gregory Mobley (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012), 51–55.
- 7.
“James Meredith American Civil Rights Activist and Author,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Meredith.
- 8.
Among such works were Sheila D. Collins, A Different Heaven and Earth: A Feminist Perspective on Religion (New York, NY: Judson Press, 1974); Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1974); Letty M. Russell, Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1974).
- 9.
The story of my friendship with her is told in “Oh Honey, No!” in Kitchen Talk: Sharing our Stories of Faith, ed. Jane Ellen McAvoy (Atlanta, GA: Chalice Press, 2003), 9–19.
- 10.
They have since changed their name to the National Coalition for Community and Justice (NCCJ).
- 11.
See D. G. Dutton and S. L. Painter, “Emotional Attachments in Abusive Relationships: A Test of Traumatic Bonding Theory,” Violence and Victims 8, no. 2 (1993): 105–20; Bessel van der Kolk, “The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism,” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12, no. 2 (June 1989): 389–411.
- 12.
See my essay, “And a Little Child Will Lead Us: Christology and Child Abuse,” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, ed. Carole Bohn and Joanne Brown (New York, NY: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 42–61. For an analysis of the historical origin of the moral influence theory of the atonement, see Rita Nakashima Brock, “Peter Abelard,” in Beyond the Pale: Reading Theology from the Margins, ed. Miguel A. De La Torre and Stacy M. Floyd-Thomas (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 45–54, and the positive alternative in my essay, “Paradise and Desire: Deconstructing the Eros of Suffering,” in Saving Desire: The Seduction of Christian Theology, ed. F. LeRon Shults and Jan-Olav Henriksen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 55–72.
- 13.
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 107, http://historiaeaudiovisual.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/7/4/17746215/hirsch_postmemory.pdf. Hirsch developed the concept from writers who were children of Holocaust survivors.
- 14.
Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983) and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984); and Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York, NY: Routledge, 1982).
- 15.
Audre Lorde, Uses of Erotic: The Erotic as Power (Tucson, AZ: Kore Press, 2000); and Haunani-Kay Trask, Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986). See also the critique of atonement theology in my essay, “Peter Abelard,” in Beyond the Pale, ed. De La Torrie and Floyd-Thomas.
- 16.
Nancy J. Berneking and Pamela C. Joern, eds., Re-Membering and Re-Imagining (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1995).
- 17.
Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).
- 18.
Thomas Matthews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1999).
- 19.
This early form of Christianity is explained in chapters 1–4 of Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: Why Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008). Our research benefited from the work of feminist, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and Intersex (LGBTQI), and art history scholars who examine Christian antiquity without being apologists for a later form of Western Christianity, as well as Eastern Orthodox scholars and texts. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity A.D. 200–1000, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), who invented the study of “late antiquity,” asserts that this life-affirming quality in Christianity’s first millennium made it a this-worldly, life-affirming, optimistic religion.
- 20.
Steven T. Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008).
- 21.
Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994).
- 22.
William P. Nash, MD, a leading researcher of moral injury and international expert on combat stress who served thirty years as a Navy psychiatrist, including deploying with Marines to Iraq, notes two ways moral injury changes thinking: (1) it is requiring an expansion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) beyond a fear-defined disorder to include grief and moral emotions, and (2) it challenges the idea that all mental health problems originate in childhood trauma. Information from author’s extensive conversations with Drs. Shay and Nash from September 2015 to February 2019. See also Jonathan Shay, “Moral Injury,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 31, no. 2 (2014): 182–91.
Bibliography
Berneking, Nancy J., and Pamela C. Joern, eds. Re-membering and Re-imagining. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1995.
Brock, Rita Nakashima. “And a Little Child Will Lead Us: Christology and Child Abuse.” In Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, edited by Carole Bohn and Joanne Brown, 42–61. New York, NY: Pilgrim Press, 1989.
———. “Oh Honey, No!” In Kitchen Talk: Sharing our Stories of Faith, edited by Jane Ellen McAvoy, 9–19. Atlanta, GA: Chalice Press, 2003.
———. “Paradise and Desire: Deconstructing the Eros of Suffering.” In Saving Desire: The Seduction of Christian Theology, edited by F. LeRon Shults and Jan-Olav Henriksen, 55–72. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011a.
———. “Peter Abelard.” In Beyond the Pale: Reading Theology from the Margins, edited by Miguel A. De La Torre and Stacy M. Floyd-Thomas, 45–54. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011b.
———. “When I Get to Heaven.” In My Neighbor’s Faith: Studies of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation, edited by Jennifer Howe Peace, Or N. Rose, and Gregory Mobley, 51–55. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.
Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker. Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.
———. Saving Paradise: Why Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008.
Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity A.D. 200–1000. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.
Collins, Sheila D. A Different Heaven and Earth: A Feminist Perspective on Religion. New York, NY: Judson Press, 1974.
Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1974.
Dutton, D. G., and Painter, S. L. “Emotional Attachments in Abusive Relationships: A Test of Traumatic Bonding Theory.” Violence and Victims 8, no. 2 (1993): 105–20.
Hart, Hugh. “Items Made in Occupied Japan Have a Number of Fans Because They Are Identifiable and Affordable.” Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1997. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-06-22-9706220247-story.html.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 103–28.
“James Meredith American Civil Rights Activist and Author.” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Meredith.
Lorde, Audre. Uses of the Erotic and the Erotic as Power. Tucson, AZ: Kore Press, 2000.
Matthews, Thomas. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Miller, Alice. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.
———. Thou Shalt Not be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Newcomb, Steven T. Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008.
Pollock, David C., and Ruth Van Reken. Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001.
Russell, Letty M. Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1974.
Shaughnessy, Brenda. “Gift Planet.” New Yorker, February 4, 2019, 38–39.
Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
———. “Moral Injury.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 31, no. 2 (2014): 182–91.
Trask, Haunani-Kay. Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
U.S. Department of State. “Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952.” Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction.
van der Kolk, Bessel. “The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism.” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12, no. 2 (June 1989): 389–411.
Waggoner, Ed. Religion in Uniform: Chaplaincy and U.S. Religion. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2019.
Winnicott, Donald. Playing and Reality. New York, NY: Routledge, 1982.
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Brock, R.N. (2020). Anamnesis as a Source of Love. In: Kwok, Pl. (eds) Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion. Asian Christianity in the Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36818-0_3
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