Generational Joy: Affections, Epigenetics, and Trauma

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Notes

1 Almeda Wright uses this phrase in reference specifically to religious education. I am citing her words in reference to one aspect of religious education: the performance of Christian liturgy. Almeda M. Wright, The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017), 211.

2 Shannon Craigo-Snell, The Empty Church: Theater, Theology, and Bodily Hope (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 46.

3 Don A. Saliers, The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 8 and 11. Saliers’ interpretation of “affections” does not explicitly include embodiment.

4 Saliers, 57.

5 G. Simon Harak, Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Character (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 113.

6 Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 59.

7 Van der Kolk, 56.

8 Van der Kolk, 58–59.

9 Van der Kolk, 83.

10 Van der Kolk, 69–70.

11 Van der Kolk, 70.

12 Van der Kolk, 86.

13 Van der Kolk, 85.

14 See https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/index.html.

15 Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 44.

16 Menakem, 10.

17 Menakem, 38.

18 Menakem, 10.

19 Menakem, 38.

20 Menakem, 10.

21 Richard C. Francis, Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011), 19.

22 Francis, xi.

23 Francis, 43.

24 Francis, 4.

25 Francis, 89.

26 Francis, 2.

27 Menakem, 40 (see n. 15).

28 Van der Kolk, 43 (see n. 6).

29 Van der Kolk, 43.

30 Van der Kolk, 47.

31 Van der Kolk, 63.

32 Van der Kolk, 80.

33 Van der Kolk, 335.

34 See Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010).

35 See Shelly Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017).

36 See Cynthia Hess, Sites of Violence, Sites of Grace: Christian Nonviolence and the Traumatized Self (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009).

37 Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Exorcising Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 38.

38 Kirk-Duggan, 47.

39 Kirk-Duggan, 46.

40 Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, “African-American Spirituals: Confronting and Exorcising Evil through Song,” in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll: Orbis books, 1993), 166.

41 Susan Brison, a feminist philosopher who does not identify as Christian, describes singing spirituals herself as a part of her own healing from trauma. Brison recounts being unable to speak fluently—unable to string words into sentences—after a traumatic experience. After about six months, Brison’s speech was still fractured but she was able to sing. Every week, driving home from a rape survivor’s support group, she sang “every spiritual [she’d] ever heard.” I find this a compelling testimony to the power of the spirituals and to the theological brilliance of Kirk-Duggan. Susan Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 114.

42 Wright, 220 (see n. 1).

43 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmmTMg3e5Uo.

44 Van der Kolk mentions theatre in ways that call out for further exploration in relation to Christian liturgy. However, that is for another essay. See Van der Kolk, 332–348.

45 Francis, 19 (see n. 21).

46 I am grateful to Mindy McGarrah Sharp for this insight.

47 This essay focuses on the possibility that joy could be cultivated as an affection that could, in turn, have epigenetic effects. I am using the word “joy” in a non-technical sense, referring to a type of experience that I assume readers will recognize. Pastoral theologian Mary Clark Moschella has given joy significant theological consideration and offered strong arguments for the value of recognizing, attending to, and cultivating joy. She defines joy as both “an emotional experience” and “spiritual path,” “way of perceiving,” or “disposition.” Mary Clark Moschella, Caring for Joy: Narrative, Theology, and Practice (Boston: Brill, 2016), 4 and 6.

48 Eddie Izzard, writer and performer, Dress to Kill (San Francisco: Vision Video, 1999), digital recording.

49 Frank Thomas, They Like to Never Quit Praisin’ God: The Role of Celebration in Preaching (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997), 18.

50 Thomas, 18. Emphasis his.

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Notes on contributors

Shannon Craigo-Snell

Shannon Craigo-Snell is professor of theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including The Empty Church: Theater, Theology, and Bodily Hope (Oxford, 2014).