Overview
“In Enfleshed Counter-Memory, theological ethicist Stephanie Edwards engages the complex field of trauma studies, womanist and feminist constructions of embodied personhood along with Johann Baptist Metz’s notion of “dangerous memory” and formulates a vital practical theology that challenges Christian communities to live out and to live out of a revolutionary social ethic––enfleshed counter-memory. Edwards aims to equip Christians with appropriate grounding to create communities of hope and faith in the face of traumatic loss, communities that will build the physical, spiritual, and relational conditions for fruitful living.” –M. Shawn Copeland, professor emerita, theology, Boston College
“In her creative and compelling theological analysis of trauma, Stephanie Edwards offers readers a valuable ethic of lament, social healing, and active resistance. Enfleshed Counter-Memory provides balm and hope for communities in our troubled times.” –Kristin E. Heyer, Joseph Professor in Theology, Boston College
“Reminding us that “Jesus’s lived ethic was an optics—it matters who we see, to whom we give our attention, who and what we remember,” Edwards focuses readers’ gaze on the traumatic wounds that mar our individual and collective bodies. Enfleshed Counter-Memory provides a social ethic for action in response to the traumas we perceive. This incarnational ethic takes embodied pain and resistance seriously as it casts an inspiring vision for enacting hope and healing.” –Jessica Coblentz, author, Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression
“Enfleshed Counter-Memory is both urgent and timeless. Stephanie Edwards weaves together theology, ethics, contemporary events, and practice in ways that empower the reader to take action.” –Annie Selak, director, Women’s Center, Georgetown University
“Stephanie Edwards’s Enfleshed Counter-Memory is the best treatment of trauma, its impacts, and the ways of responding to these impacts justly on offer in Christian social ethics. By giving us the tools to cultivate “dangerous memories” that enable resilience and resistance Edwards has given us a gift that can empower all of us to journey together in the shared work of healing ourselves, our communities, and our world.” –James W. McCarty, PhD, Tom Porter Religion and Conflict Transformation Program, Boston University School of Theology
This powerful work by a social worker and ethicist charts a compelling path of solidarity and healing.
In a world saturated with trauma, where do we turn for healing and hope? Neither downplaying trauma’s devastation nor rushing toward easy redemption, Stephanie Edwards crafts a “Christian ethic of “enfleshed counter-memory” as a framework for grappling with the complexities of personal and collective suffering.
Drawing insights from womanist theology, trauma studies, and the work of Johann Baptist Metz, Edwards constructs an ethic that embraces the incarnational reality of our embodied lives. Enfleshed counter-memory disrupts cultural narratives that demand forgetting, instead calling us to resist oppressive powers by remembering rightly.
For scholars, ministers, students, and all those seeking an embodied Christian response to our wounded world, this book offers a vital resource for the journey ahead.
Stephanie C. Edwards is executive director of the Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium (BTI). She holds a PhD in Theological Ethics from Boston College, where her interdisciplinary research focused on the ties between Christian theology and trauma, particularly in the case of pharmaceutical memory modification for PTSD. Stephanie's interest in this work is rooted in her "other" career as a social worker, wherein she has practiced diverse service delivery, grant writing, and non-profit management for over a decade.
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