On the metanoia of eschatological injustice: powerful is the giving-up of power: a theological and ethnographic case study of <i>The Southwark Mysteries</i> and Crossbones Graveyard’s in-casts

Abstract This paper examines how it is that theological poetry has helped to lead to a powerful institution to ritualistically recognize a historic abuse of power—this is an all too infrequent occurrence. In Southwark’s Crossbones Graveyard, the local Anglican Cathedral Church now processes each Mary Magdalene Day to commit a liturgical Act of Regret, Remembrance and Restoration for wrongdoings committed by the Church. Such practical theology both memorializes the mistreatment of sex workers while irruptively venerating the traumatized Outcasts on whose shoulders we are all seen to stand. Here is a theological poetry with the power to move bodies, motivate institutions, and transform the way in which history is told, how God is felt. How can the experience of marginalization interject and meld with public ecclesiological expression? It was local Abram-Pagans helped to realize this possibility through their Christic goddess-theology of “The Goose,” a medieval sex worker associated with Mary Magdalene. Firstly, we look to the historical events which led to soteriological scandal; secondly, we examine both the text and the group which mobilized around the place to engage in a form of eschatological empowerment. Practical and feminist theological methods of trauma theology unite historic, literary, and ethnographic analysis. Here, eschatological injustice and soteriological scandal experience metanoia when sensing, expressing and ritualizing the repression and integration the animal who strains inside human life.