Paul Shockley

In the Schutzian tradition, Berger and Luckmann expand upon the concept of the stranger and discuss the social reality of ritual purification as a coping strategy for reality-maintaining procedures and mental hygiene whereby individuals reconcile their encounter with a foreigner or stranger and their official reality. Using examples from the trans, gender non-conforming community (TGNC), the central question of this paper is: What about those considered a stranger in their home community? Given the hardships that TGNC people have encountered and continue to face, “unsuccessful socialization” does not offer the best account of their challenges, obstacles, and sufferings when marginalized by others. Advancing Schutzian research, we offer two terms that can be applied to the idea of the stranger: ritual desecration and reverse ritual purification. Using a dialectical framework, a social and interpersonal conflict occurs between ritual purification and ritual desecration. Consequently, two personal iterations emerge: those who experience ritual desecration by remaining in their home environment and those who migrate to another community for the possibility of acceptance and belonging, hence, reverse ritual purification. The iterations between ritual purification, ritual desecration, and reverse ritual purification lead to incremental changes and hardships, potentially creating a new social reality.

Paul Shockley's Worship as Experience: An Inquiry into John Dewey's Aesthetics, the Community and the Local Church serves as an exploration into how aesthetics affects a church and its community. Using the aesthetic principles of John Dewey, Shockley gives insight into what aesthetic deficiencies churches face, and how these churches can engage with people to provide a richer, deeper, and more fulfilling worship experience. This work offers a description of local church types, and what challenges these particular church communities face. Worship as Experience goes beyond merely offering acute insights into the aesthetic lives of the local church, and gives prescriptive measures to ensure the fullness of a meaningful worship experience. By examining with philosophic rigor the accounts of religious leaders and aestheticians, Shockley offers us a rational evaluation of aesthetic experience, an eye opening account of the challenges a church faces, and a powerful message for overcoming these challenges.