Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us

An extraordinary personal and theological examination of what’s wrong with the crucifixion In an emotionally gripping and intellectually rich combination of memoir and theology, Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker show how emphasizing Christ’s obedience to God and sacrifice on the cross sanctions violence, exacerbates its effects, blesses silence about the abuse of human beings, and hinders the process of recovery—giving the fullest and most powerful critique to date of the theology of atonement.“Poignant and provocative. . . . Brock and Parker have written a book of both sorrow and hope, and a blueprint for deeper thinking about the things that matter most. . . . I will be reflecting on Proverbs of Ashes for many months to come.” —Rosemary Bray McNatt, UU World“This book will anger some Christians and make others feel vindicated. . . . Parker and Brock unveil their own deep pain and suffering to build the book’s backbone. They blend selfdisclosure with serious theology to underscore their outlook.” —Cecil S. Holmes, Cleveland Plain Dealer“Provocative. . . . The authors weave theological reflections with deeply moving personal accounts of abuse and trauma, including their own experiences.” —The Other Side“(Readers] cannot help but be swayed by the book’s searing passion and profoundly literary style (a remarkable achievement in a coauthored work). Brock and Parker have thrown down a gauntlet that cannot be ignored.” —Publishers WeeklyRita Nakashima Brock is a research associate at the Harvard Divinity School, and author of Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power. Rebecca Ann Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry at Graduate Theological Union, is an ordained United Methodist minister in dual fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Rebecca Parker was a young minister in Seattle when a woman walked into her church and asked if God really wanted her to accept her husband's beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross. Parker knew, at that moment, that if she were to answer the woman's question truthfully she would have to rethink her theology. And she would have to think hard about some of the choices she was making in her own life. When Rita Nakashima Brock was a young child growing up in Kansas, kids taunted her viciously, calling her names like "Chink" or "Jap." She learned to pretend that she did not feel the sting of scorn and the humiliation of contempt. The solitude and silence of her suffering-decreed by both her mother's Japanese culture and her father's Christian heritage-kept the wound alive. It was the gap between knowledge born of personal experience and traditional theology that led Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker to write this emotionally gripping and intellectually rich exploration of the doctrine of the atonement. Using an unusual combination of memoir and theology in the tradition of Augustine's Confessions, they lament the inadequacy of how Christian tradition has interpreted the violence that happened to Jesus. Ultimately, they argue, the idea that the death of Jesus on the cross saves us reveals a sanctioning of violence at the heart of Christianity. Brock and Parker draw on a wide array of intimate stories about family violence, the sexual abuse of children, racism, homophobia, and war to reveal how they came to understand the widespread damage being done by this theology. But the authors also undertake their own arduous and unexpected journeys to recover from violence and to assist others to do so. On these journeys they discover communities that begin to give them the strength to question the destructive ideas they have internalized, and the strength to seek out an alternative vision of Christianity, one based on healing and love. Proverbs of Ashes is both a condemnation of bad theology and a passionate search for what truly saves us.