Biography
Laura Kelly received her BA in Christian Studies from Anderson University (SC), and is currently a 2nd year MTS student at Duke Divinity School also pursuing a Certificate in Theology in the Arts. She is interested in the theological imaginations of late medieval contemplatives and listening for resonances of those landscapes in the "ordinary" theologies of contemporary Christianity. This pursuit has most recently prompted fieldwork with Old Order Amish communities in central Pennsylvania. Laura loves embroidery and cooking, and seeks after divine wonder in the shimmers of a trout stream as well as Margery Kempe's endless tears.
Paper Abstract
The land of the biblical text "mourns," will "produce" for Adam and "will no longer yield" to Cain, came to the "help" the woman in Revelation, and "shook" after the death of Jesus (Zech. 12:12; Gen. 1:24; Gen. 4:12; Rev. 12:16; Matthew 27:51). I argue that a close reading of Genesis 1-4 through a new materialist lens (in which nonhuman matter has the potential for agency) reveals the land as a distinct agent in God's created order while often acting as God in the world, nourishing and correcting the rest of the created community. To carry this vision of the land into the twenty-first century requires one who sees the land bearing life, who hears the land's mourning. Interviews and publications from contemporary Old Order Amish suggest that Old Order theology contains two theological threads which can help Christians re-imagine humanity's disposition to the earth. The first is gelassenheit (yielding). Gelassenheit is the Old Order way of imaging Christ on earth: as a humble servant of God (internal disposition) in God's community (external participation). The second thread is creation as proper to God's cosmos rather than humanity's. Though Old Order agrarian and environmental application of these threads varies in beautiful and problematic ways, attention to the imagination itself can help contemporary Christians re-orient their disposition toward the earth, a crucial first step in addressing humanity's relationship to the land. The Bible features the land as one participating in community with God and humanity; attention to this Old Order imagination may help humanity re- imagine themselves as humble servants in God's community, co- participating alongside the earth. If we embody Christ as humble servants, extending endless love to the earth as a participant in God's community, we can nourish and mourn with the one who nourishes and mourns us.