Affect Theory, Shame, and Christian Formation

Stephanie N. Arel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783319425924
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie de la religion

This book addresses the eclipse of shame in Christian theology by showing how shame emerges in Christian texts and practice in ways that can be neither assimilated into a discourses of guilt nor dissociated from embodiment. Stephanie N. Arel argues that the traditional focus on guilt obscures shame by perpetuating the image of the lonely sinner in guilt. Drawing on recent studies in affect and attachment theories to frame the theological analysis, the text examines the theological anthropological writings of Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr, the interpretation of empathy by Edith Stein, and moments of touch in Christian praxis. Bringing the affective dynamics of shame to the forefront enables theologians and religious leaders to identify where shame emerges in language and humanbehavior. The text expands work in trauma theory, providing a multi-layered theological lens for engaging shame and accompanying suffering.

© The Author(s) 2016

Stephanie N. ArelAffect Theory, Shame, and Christian Formation 10.1007/978-3-319-42592-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Stephanie N. Arel¹

(1)

Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

End Abstract

Christian rhetoric and practice shape not only minds but also bodies. ¹ The consequences of discourses, liturgies, and ceremonies intended for Christian formation are significant. Attending church to find solidarity, seek guidance, and connect with God, participants present themselves to be changed by worship. In the desire for spiritual growth, they expose their most vulnerable selves. Susceptible and open, they avail themselves to be modeled, and traces of the Christian tradition remain to emerge in their behavior, words, and deep-seated beliefs.

Christian adoration of God, no matter which denomination, includes a willingness, even a desire, to be shaped. Worship serves to offer a promise, alleviate pain, and offer hope. In the desire to connect with God and community is an entreaty to mitigate human suffering. Shame, one of the most ubiquitous and potentially damaging states, often plays a role in such suffering.

Complicated and painful, shame evinces human sensitivities and weaknesses. Yet, shame is a normal part of human life that shared and faced assimilates into the varieties of experience with little detrimental impact. However, not addressed, shame is interred, ² stored in the body to function maladaptively in the Christian self. In the process of interment, messages about shame internalized as beliefs, values, and norms, or externalized through projection onto others, emerge viscerally as affects in the self. Present experiences of shame reinforce memories of past shame—burying the affect deeper. Although interred shame is detrimental, the affect serves a very natural biological, neurological, and social purpose. Understanding the role of visceral, innate shame and its involvement in attachment phenomenon is critical for developing a responsible theological anthropology of shame.

The project of uncovering and highlighting where shame appears in Christian language and practice is a formidable one. Shame once recognized is often so painful it readily escapes our view. But envisioning shame as a part of the Christian self recognizes the whole self and lifts up the reality that theology both participates in and potentially disinters shame from the Christian self. ³

A theological dimension to research on shame’s role in self-understanding in the humanities and the social sciences fosters a recognition of how religion and culture together participate in shaping shamed bodies. Further, engaging affect theory and trauma studies with theological anthropology provides the analytic lens that lends itself to capturing the essence of shame carefully distinguished from guilt, deeply associated with embodiment, and closely related to attachment.

The affect of shame functions naturally in the body, relying on relationships of interest for its emergence, but also potentially interfering with secure relational bonds. ⁴ When a person meets with disapproval or disgust, shame innately motivates the turning of the head or the down casting of the eyes to reduce facial communication and prohibit exposure. ⁵ This behavior inhibits or restrains the affect of interest or enjoyment but does not completely eradicate it either. For example, a child shamed loses all muscle tonicity and drops to the floor, crying in pain, but also beseeching love from the caregiver in front of whom shame emerged in the first place. In toxic shame, an individual often seeks isolation, unable to tolerate high levels of others’ affect and therefore refuting connection. Subsequently, reclusiveness and detachment replace social engagement and intimacy. This reticence as a result of shame poses a challenge for a Christian tradition built on the concept of communion and empathic connection, where a person’s presence, even to touch, is a mundane expectation.

A reading of seminal texts well known within the Christian tradition demonstrates how shame persists thematically present in those texts in ways that cannot simply be assimilated into a discourse of guilt. Shame is not as easily recognized as guilt and has more pernicious effects, unless guilt itself goes unrecognized. ⁶ Moreover, in order to address the way in which shame functions in the formation of the Christian self, shame must be distinguished from guilt and engaged with differently. ⁷ In the Christian tradition, rhetoric, along with practice, explicitly and implicitly inters shame and forms “shamed” bodies while it establishes a Christian and/or Christianized self, bringing to the fore the different bodily expressions and distinctive impacts that shame and guilt have on the body. ⁸

Christian interpretations of shame and guilt have laid the foundation for how each is theologically interpreted today. References to the role of shame in Christian tradition support a robust theological analysis of the relationships between shame, pride, sin, and guilt. Further, distinguishing shame as an affect opens up a discourse between theological notions of shame and the biological, neurological understanding of shame in self-development, self-delimitation, and notions of attachment. The shame experience emerges in major theological anthropological literature and Christian practice and, although sometimes mentioned directly, is more often than not veiled by other terms. ⁹ While often obscured, shame surfaces within a field of exposure, often either severing or indicating attachment. In order to repair its toxicity, shame must be uncovered, faced, and addressed, not simply distinguished by positive affect or eradicated by treatment modalities. Shame displays the self at its most vulnerable—that is, socially in relationship to another person, and theologically to God.

Distinguishing where shame appears in theological discourse, for instance, by pointing to where language concerning guilt eclipses shame, establishes an important step in unveiling how shame has unintended deleterious effects. Unveiling this shame to impede its pernicious impact is, thus, the aim of this book. To achieve this aim, a rich analytical engagement between discourses of shame as they relate to the body in the Christian tradition, grounded in both the psychological and philosophical conceptions of affect theory, facilitates the discerning and disentangling of guilt and other affects from the often accompanying but distinct affect of shame, entrenched but generally ignored in Christian rhetoric.

In addition, considering the intimate communication of touch inherent in Christian practice draws the body further into the discussion of shame. Tracing the relationship between shame and touch, especially focusing on touch of the face where affect initially emerges, draws out the potential of touch to disinter shame. Further disinterment evolves as the Christian self finds himself or herself intimately engaged with the other in an empathetic exchange. Yet, as is evidenced throughout, shame both emerges in the encounter with the other and can be modified by such an encounter. Ultimately, examining how the affect of shame functions embedded but eclipsed in Christian texts and praxis demonstrates the potential power that theology has both to shame bodies and to address that shame, contributing to still growing areas of theological discourse, affect theory, trauma studies, and literary studies.

Dominance of Guilt in Christian Anthropologies

The Christian tradition and the Western world in general routinely focus on guilt as a response to wrongdoing. Guilt relates theologically to sin, remorse, penance, and forgiveness. ¹⁰ But shame is often subsumed under or concealed by these terms in theological language. Thus, theological discourse, widely accepted or renowned traditional Christian texts, and Christian practice fold shame into rhetoric about guilt, thereby obscuring the impact of shame, concealing its effects, and so forming the “shamed” Christian self. Religious discourse about sin, guilt, and reparation—that the Christian gains his/her greatest fulfillment in being empathetic while he/she is also sinful—produces a paradoxical character. ¹¹ The most apparent impetus of this character appears to be guilt; however, guilt in this situation eclipses unconsciously interred shame.

Confusing shame with guilt in language and practices around sin compounds the paradoxical character, while exclusive focus on guilt ignores the experience of shame and prohibits healing from shame’s detrimental effects. ¹² The continual eclipsing of shame, buried by language about guilt and sin, leads in effect to the perpetuation of shame itself and its damaging evolution into withdrawal and/or violence since shame inhabits the self yet is generally disregarded. ¹³ Shame and guilt intertwine, persisting undistinguished in different types of theological language. Revealing how this occurs, while also showing how other terms conceal shame, not only exposes where shame operates as maladaptive but also discloses how shame figures in attachment and bonding. This duality in shame, that it both impedes and fosters attachment, along with its propensity to operate deleteriously in the self, illustrates the need for a more distinct theology of shame.

The recent developments in affect theory prompt a consideration of how Christian language confuses and conflates shame, guilt, and other affective experiences configuring “shamed” bodies, thereby interfering with human connection. After establishing shame’s powerful role as an affect, examples from two theological texts known for their defense of the Christian faith and influence on the development of theological anthropology demonstrate the embeddedness of shame—named or unnamed—in Christian beliefs. The first passage, by Saint Augustine (354–430), historically precedes and influences the second passage, by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). Then, turning to the moment in the Christian liturgy where touch and shame intertwine in the Ash Wednesday practice of imposing ashes on the forehead draws attention to shame more distinctly on the body. Last, this body becomes an avenue of shame’s mollification. The final chapter examines the interplay of empathy, shame, and attachment, arguing that shame impedes emapthy, but reciprocally empathy attenuates shame. Thus, through empathic connection with another, as interpreted by the theological philosophical project of Edith Stein On the Problem of Empathy, we come to a greater “givenness” of ourselves.

In Christian theology, Augustine and Niebuhr assume roles as master diagnosticians of the human condition, and their widely known works on Christian ethics, composed at two pivotal moments in Christian history, are significant for this study. Both talk about sin, guilt, and shame, criticizing what shame theorists identify as unhealthy pride. Their theological platforms offer rich ways to think about how shame is consciously or unconsciously interred in the body, often functioning to sever connections. The study of shame in and through their highly significant and influential works is important for rethinking the theological meaning of shame in the current context.

The trajectory into shame in theological anthropology begins with Augustine. His idea of congenital sinfulness has become normative for Catholic and Protestant theologies. In one interpretation of Augustine, human nature has been so distorted by the biblical Fall that humans are born both sinful and incapable of anything but sin. In Augustine’s view, evil is a product of sin, and sin’s root is pride. Augustine claims that pride represents the desire to elevate oneself to the place of God and the inclination to deny one’s status as a creature under God. In this view, at the center of...