Lament as Transformation: Geographies of Grief and Ideological Change

Keywords: Geography of Religion, Lament, Grief, Biodiversity Loss, Environmental Degradation, Climate Change
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 11

Abstract

Biodiversity loss, climate change, and growing social injustices inspire laments of deep grief, anguish, and loss in cultures worldwide. Distraught authors are working through pain, sorrow and suffering manifested in the environment due to anthropogenic processes and ideologies of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and denial. The scale of global suffering and the extent to which it is realized in local contexts is considerable. Nonetheless, many contemporary religious congregations have lost what Christopher Wright describes as the willingness, the vocabulary, and even the capacity to engage in authentic lament. Writing primarily about oppressed peoples, Soong-Chan Rah describes this loss of capacity to lament in terms of a culture of celebration among globally elite religious communities who seek constancy and stability of the current social order rather than deliverance. Thus the language of celebration and praise dominates religious liturgy. Walter Brueggemann further expounds how ideologies supported by denial can be broken by reality associated with grief and disorientation, opening a way for a new orientation as hope overrides despair. Ideology provides a false consciousness, and grief-stricken lament can become a powerful tool to expose ideological disconnects between environmental facts on the ground and false consciousness. This paper speculates how lament can draw observers to pain, sorrow and suffering and thus evoke facts on the ground realism into contemporary orientations of celebratory denial.