Author: Cynthia Sue Hess

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13:

This dissertation reexamines Christian nonviolence in conversation with trauma studies and feminist theory. Traditional Christian accounts of nonviolence focus on pacifism and the refusal to participate in physical aggression. As an example, I explore the work of twentieth-century theologian John Howard Yoder, who has written extensively on Christian nonviolence. While Yoder presents a powerful vision of nonviolence, it is my contention that he does not attend to the multifaceted ways in which violence marks our existence. Yoder explores how faith communities can respond to violence in the broader culture, but he does not consider what it means for communities to embody nonviolence when violence becomes part of their identity and the identities of the people who constitute them. Drawing on works by feminist theorists and trauma theorists, who examine the social character of violence and its role in the formation of the communal self, I consider the reality of traumatic violence as one particularly destructive kind of violence that can become internal to socially-constructed selves and communities as they are formed in history over time. Shifting the terms of traditional accounts of nonviolence in this way makes it possible to identify an often-overlooked dimension of religious nonviolence. Rather than discussing nonviolence in terms of pacifism, I explore how communities may enact nonviolence by providing a context in which traumatized persons can survive and flourish. I develop this reevaluation of nonviolence by first laying out three stages of healing from trauma identified by scholars and clinicians who study the reality of traumatic violence: creating supportive communities, narrating the trauma, and reconnecting with the present. I then offer a theological analysis of these stages that engages not only texts by trauma theorists and feminist theorists but also resources in Yoder's theology. Yoder's work thus both provides a vision of nonviolence that I contest and offers a useful theological framework for rethinking the meaning and practice of religious nonviolence in the context of trauma.--Author's abstract.