ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the challenge of transforming the dominance of this amnesia and explores what theology can contribute to it. Urbanization and the dynamics of "synekism" should also be approached as essentially religious processes. "Religious process" combines elements from Clifford Geertz's pragmatism and Theo Sundermeier's phenomenological understanding of primary and secondary religion. While Geertz strengthens the integration of ethos and worldview in "religious" practices, Sundermeier goes beyond a simple functionalism. The Christological foundation of such a hermeneutics of suffering is believer’s remembrance of Christ's sufferings. It is the Holy Spirit that makes this remembrance possible in the first place. Dismantling buildings as artifacts of a population's sociocultural memory and violating remembrance of the suffering of foregoing generations appear as characteristics of late modern urban space. When looking at the map of a city, an easy test for the quality of the spiritual, historical, and environmental significance of memory is the location and design of the urban cemetery.
