Enfleshed Counter-Memory: A Christian Social Ethic of Trauma

Enfleshed Counter-Memory reckons with shared stories of trauma from the approach of Christian social ethics. Recognizing both deeply personal tragedies and the massive, systemic, global traumas that intertwine them, Edwards writes that "this communal, visceral trauma...ripples through our corporate body again and again," creating a body that cries out for healing amidst the scabs, scars, and sears on our changed flesh. Yet a practical vision of and for the environments, communities, religious structures, and social spaces in which persons live is most often missing from clinical responses to trauma and ethical inquiries into clinical trauma treatments. Instead of a systematic, constructive, or pastoral theology of trauma, then, Enfleshed Counter-Memory offers a powerful Christian social ethic that advocates emergent, creative forms of healing as the necessary Gospel response to our shared pain.