Christian Bodies, Blood, and Feelings in America

In Emptiness: Feeling Christian in America, John Corrigan delivers a sweeping study of the dialectic between emptiness and fullness in American Christianities. He draws from an impressive breadth of sources both over time and within different forms of American Christianity to explore how Christians have integrated the feelings of emptiness and, in turn fullness, as central to their identities, beliefs and practices. At the outset of the book Corrigan explains, “The practice of Christianity that was grounded in the feeling of emptiness, however, was not ambiguous. Christians determinedly chased the feeling of emptiness, valorized it as a longing for God, and performed devotions to prompt and deepen it.” He unpacks this argument in five chapters devoted to feelings, bodies, spaces, times, and believers.