Theologies of Retrieval

In July 2017 I attended a fascinating conference at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, where I gave a paper on the ecumenical uses of forgetting, a topic I have been thinking about for the past three years or so, not least in connection with books by David Rieff, Bradford Vivian, and others, some of them discussed here.

While at the conference, Darren Sarisky noted that a hardback edition of his collection had just been published. Now, this week, we have a more affordable paperback edition of Theologies of Retrieval: An Exploration and Appraisal (T&T Clark, 2019), 268pp.

About this book we are told the following:

One of the most significant trends in academic theology today, which emerges within Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox points of view, is the growing interest in theologies of retrieval. This mode of thinking puts a special stress upon subjecting classic theological texts to a close reading, with a view toward using the resources that they provide to understand and address contemporary theological issues.

This volume offers an understanding of what theologies of retrieval are, what their rationale is, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The contributions provided by a distinguished team of theologians answer the important questions that existing work has raised, expand on suggestions that have not yet been fully developed, summarize ideas to highlight themes that are relevant to the topics of this volume, and air new critiques that will spur further debate.

Remembering the Crusades

I just received in the mail a new and fascinating collection edited by Megan Cassidy-Welch, Remembering the Crusades and Crusading (Routledge, 2016), 266pp. I am greatly looking forward to reading this, coming as it does in a period of increased thought on the uses and abuses of historical memory of the Crusades, as noted in many posts on here over the past 18 months.

This book, the publisher tells us,

examines the diverse contexts in which crusading was memorialised and commemorated in the medieval world and beyond. The collection not only shows how the crusades were commemorated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also considers the longer-term remembrance of the crusades into the modern era.

This collection is divided into three sections, the first of which deals with the textual, material and visual sources used to remember. Each contributor introduces a particular body of source material and presents case studies using those sources in their own research. The second section contains four chapters examining specific communities active in commemorating the crusades, including religious communities, family groups and royal courts. Finally, the third section examines the cultural memory of crusading in the Byzantine, Iberian and Baltic regions beyond the early years, as well as the trajectory of crusading memory in the Muslim Middle East.

Remembering the Crusades and Crusading draws together and extends the current debates in the history of the crusades and the history of memory and in so doing offers a fresh synthesis of material in both fields. It will be essential reading for students of the crusades and memory.

Routledge also gives us the table of contents: 

Introduction
1. Remembering in the time of the crusades
Megan Cassidy-Welch

Sources of memory
2. Preaching and crusade memory
Jessalynn Bird
3. The liturgical memory of 15 July 1099: between history, memory and eschatology
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin
4. Crusades, Memory and Visual Culture: Representations of the Miracle of Intervention of Saints in Battle
Elizabeth Lapina
5. Remembrance of Things Past: Memory and Material Objects in the Time of the Crusades, 1095-1291
Anne E. Lester
6. Historical writing
Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński
7. "Perpetuel Memorye": Remembering History in the Crusading Romance
Lee Manion

Communities of memory
8. Monastic memories of the early crusading movement
Katherine Allen Smith
9. Royal memory
James Naus and Vincent Ryan
10. Jewish Memory and the Crusades: The Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and Protection from Christian violence
Rebecca Rist
11. Family memory and the crusades
Nicholas Paul and Jochen Schenk

Cultural memory
12. ‘A blow sent by God’: Changing Byzantine memories of the Crusades
Jonathan Harris
13. Living and remembering the crusades and the Reconquista: Iberia, 11th-13th Centuries
Ana Rodriguez
14. The Muslim Memory of the Crusades
Alex Mallett
15. Appropriating history: Remembering the crusades in Latvia and Estonia
Carsten Selch Jensen

Is Christianity Constitutionally Incapable of Forgetting?

I have noted on here several times previously my ongoing interest in the practices of remembering and forgetting, especially among Eastern Christians and Muslims with references to things like the Crusades, and the divisions between Orthodox and Catholics. I have found several recent books of use in thinking through some of these issues. None of these authors entertains any explicitly theological or "religious" interests or questions--apart from some mention of the Holocaust of course--but their works are nonetheless useful to those of us who try to grapple with theological problems such as long-standing "memories" of division and hurt at the hands of fellow Christians, or Muslims, or others.
As I continue to make my way through such books as Manuel Cruz's On the Difficulty of Living Together: Memory, Politics, and History as well as David Rieff's In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies (and several others I have mentioned previously) there emerges a central and properly theological question hinted at in my title: is Christianity capable, is it morally permitted, to forget when its central act, when the "source and summit of the Christian life" is precisely the act of grateful remembrance, of eucharistic anamnesis, of thankful memorialization? Given such powerful weight attached to "remembrance," have many of us derived therefrom some inchoate sense that forgetting is a morally reprehensible act?

I will explore more of the implications of both books once I have finished them. For those who are interested in such questions as remembering and forgetting, especially publicly and culturally, both Rieff and Cruz have written short but powerful essays very much worth your time, and I commend them to you.