Author Karen O’Donnell & Katie Cross (eds)
Publisher SCM £30
Format pbk
ISBN 9780334058724
These scholarly papers from the UK and the Americas are building up a new theology – trauma theology – with its roots in practical and constructive theologies. Here is trauma that women have suffered from men throughout history….. the four Marys in the gospels, Gomer, the OT prostitute, Christian women martyrs in Rome, women today, held responsible for and deserving of brutal attacks by their partners, daughters taught roles of subservience when their brothers go free, beaten-up wives who shun church lest they be urged to return to the perpetrator. One paper analyses the difference between Freud’s seduction and Oedipal theories. (Should we automatically believe what every victim says?) Others show how trauma is ‘not just an event in the past but leaves an imprint on the mind, body and brain’ – even when the victim has apparently ‘recovered’. One victim said, as she pulled herself free from the perpetrator, ‘I breathe him in with every breath’. Then the issue began to feel like the passion story- wounds on Good Friday, new life on Easter day with Holy Saturday between, when deep, transformative change is effected, until she can escape colonization and subjugation by her abuser. Each chapter has annotated footnotes and lengthy bibliography, and there are explorations into many case studies and theologies. And I learned a new word – ‘autoethnography’!
CHRISTINE MCMULLEN
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