Karen O’Donnell and Katie Cross (editors), Bearing Witness: Intersectional Perspectives on Trauma Theology. London: SCM, 2022.

This fervid and relevant book, a timely sequel to Feminist Trauma Theology (2020), also edited by O’Donnell and Cross, endeavours to focus upon the lacunae in the earlier volume by foregrounding the intersectionality of trauma—the ties that bind the exploitation of race, sex, gender, and physical difference to economic, political, familial, and religious oppression in a seamless network of ideologically supported “normality.” In four sections, Bearing Witness extends a persistent interrogative to the obdurate dominant narratives that declassify human persons owing to their skin colour or gender options, their psycho-somatic challenges or social status.

Anthony Reddie opens by questioning English Christian adherence, certainly to the Established Church, as well as to other mainstream denominations as they hurriedly “window-dress” their images, but attitudinal changes remain little in evidence. It is this transformative obduracy that engenders micro-aggressive abusive othering which escalates into trauma—visitations that shatter the identity of, and render mute, those whose lifestyles, impairments, identity choices, and social status contest, whether willingly or not, the dominant traditions and conventions. Amongst those affected are gay black men (Robinson-Brown), migrants for whom hybridity is destabilising rather than empowering (Hatzaw), the afflicted poor (Shannahan), those affected by reproduction loss, (Kamitsuka), and the physically challenged and ailing (Williams and Cooper Minister). Highlights amongst specific studies include Adriaan Van Klinken’s fieldwork with refugees of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Law of 2014, and a powerfully argued contribution from Brandy Daniels and Micah Cronin that draws on Kent Brintnall’s Ecce Homo (2011), and asks: “What do we make of a raped trans man?”

A comprehensive book; but, as the editors admit in the conclusion, it is “not the final word.” Indeed, not only does the scope require widening once again to include indigenous scholars who reside (exclusively) outside the UK, because trauma ever demands revisiting and refining its definitions; but also it may be time tentatively to raise some difficult and awkward questions about what the Christian calling may entail when following a person who walks on the via dolorosa on the way to crucifixion.

Frank England, University of Cape Town