A Queer and Trauma-Informed Theology of Hope

This paper rethinks the Christian virtue of hope in conversation with trauma studies, queer theory, and critical geography. In the first part of the paper, I argue that hope is a vexed subject for trauma studies and queer theory, because thinkers within these disciplines tend to conceptualize hope in terms of temporality and affectivity. But what if hope is neither an affective nor a temporal relation? What if it is, say, a practical and spatial one? To put the question in terms of Christian theology: What if the basic difference between the world as we know it and the eschaton is a spatial rather than a temporal difference? In the second half of this paper, I experiment constructively with this possibility, close-reading Romans 8:18-26 and Kathryn Tanner’s eschatology in *Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity* in conversation with critical geography’s conception of hope as a place-making activity.