Black Lives Matter and Gospel Hermeneutics: Political Life and Social Death in the Gospel of Luke

Abstract

Contemporary social and political movements like Black Lives Matter emphasize the political dimension of occupying public spaces, the fragility of racialized bodies in the political domain, and the importance of inter-relationality in subject formation. In this essay, the author uses the notion of social death to explore these topics in some healing stories in the Gospel of Luke (7:1–10; 11–17; 8:26–39). The author suggests that Luke conceives of the political sphere as a condition of possibility for salvation itself.