When One’s Secret Inwardness Becomes a Commodity: Kierkegaardian and Marxist Critical Perspectives on Religious Trauma

This paper seeks to bring Kierkegaardian and Marxist critical perspectives into conversation with contemporary scholarship on religious trauma, especially as it can occur within coercive American Evangelical communities. As part of Protestant tradition, these religious groups put great emphasis on the fact that every individual possesses an inwardness: an inner space in which the self relates to oneself, to the external world, and to God. One’s inwardness contains, whether consciously or unconsciously, one’s most painful wounds and proudest achievements, one’s deepest hopes and desires, and the entirety of one’s personal history and choices. I argue that within coercive religious communities, there is an implicit commandment to expose one’s inwardness to others. Peoples' inwardnesses get transformed into commodities, objects that have a value, both emotional and intimate, that can be governed, exchanged, and appraised within the group. Through practices such as testimony, confession of sin, communal prayer, or even judgmental gossip, objectified inwardness is made public, becoming the source of collective emotional gratification. What individuals perceive as moments of intimate vulnerability before God become, in reality, performances before other human beings. Their inner lives, now commodified, fall under the control of others who exploit them. These dynamics, I believe, create religious trauma.