[The following is an excerpt from The Christian Century‘s recent review of Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers.]
“This profound, timely, humbling, but ultimately empowering study is exemplary in every way, offering a path through thickets of intense debate and hope amid cacophonies of denial and anger. The fruit of Elaine Enns’s ten-year quest for an Anabaptist discipleship of decolonization and Ched Myers’s lifetime of soaking scriptural exegesis in practices of restorative solidarity, this sequel to the pair’s impressive two-volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation is a landmark statement on how a people paralyzed by facing the horrors of its own history can go on. For every contemporary quandary of the penitent church, Enns and Myers offer true solidarity (in place of sentimental compassion), riveting analysis (in place of lazy generalization), and practical steps (in place of depressed inertia). It’s an emotionally intelligent, culturally aware, refreshingly prescient gift to a confused, dispirited church.“
Read the full review at The Christian Century‘s website.
About the contributors
Elaine Enns has worked across the restorative justice field since 1989, from facilitating victim-offender dialogue in the Criminal Justice System to addressing historical violations and intergenerational trauma. With a DMin from St. Andrews College Saskatoon, she trains and teaches throughout North America, and with her partner Ched published the two-volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation: A New Testament Theology and Diverse Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking (Orbis, 2009). They codirect Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (www.bcm-net.org).
Ched Myers is an activist theologian and New Testament expositor working with peace and justice issues. He is a popular educator, animating scripture and literacy in historic and current social change movements. Myers has published over a hundred articles and eight books, including Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Orbis, 1988). He and Elaine are ecumenical Mennonites based in the Ventura River Watershed of southern California in traditional Chumash territory.