Abstract
Informed by the concept of the interior force of being, this chapter offers up a practical/public theology that calls for intentional public rituals of remembering and lament as a way to address personal and cultural trauma that remains entrenched in the intersubjective milieu due to the legacy of the slavocracy. As posited in this project, the practice of creating life-narratives has the potential to precipitate healing and strengthen personal (and group) subjectivity in those who have suffered in contexts of extremity and trauma. Coupled with a Eucharistic hermeneutic that intentionally commemorates and ritualizes the traumatic and the grotesque, this chapter imagines the ground work necessary for society, theological education, and faith communities to capitalize on indigenous therapeutic practices in marginalized and oppressed communities as a way of redeeming and healing the democracy experiment.
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Notes
- 1.
(Luke 8:42–47 ESV).
- 2.
My emphasis.
- 3.
(Mark 8:36–38 ESV).
- 4.
Luke 24 and John 20.
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Gibson, D.G. (2018). Remembering, Lament, and Public Ritual: Redeeming the Democratic Experiment. In: Frederick Douglass, a Psychobiography. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75229-7_7
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