Grief Reminders when #BlackLivesMatter

This paper examines grief within white Christian discourse about antiblack violence in the United States. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective economies, the paper tracks how grief—or an absence of grief—surfaces and conceptualizes “grief reminders” as a pastoral practice of affective conditioning and realignment. I argue that “grief reminders” occur when a faith leader identifies grief as both a necessary response to loss and as a theological and ethical imperative for the proper practice of faith. The paper interrogates how grief reminders work as affective scripts and relate to white Christian understandings of human personhood and grievable life. Methodologically, the analysis of digital artifacts undergirding this paper raises questions about how digital media is implicated in the circulation of religious affect and how religious scholars, and theologians in particular, can engage digital archives in their study of lived religion.