Stories of the well: recovering her story

Abstract

ness to the gods and to piety overrides the authority of the ruler. Matthes’ comment upon this is that, ‘Legitimate power requires dissent, necessitates listening to others, and does more than impose its authority; it is responsive to the demands of the ruled’. (16) Where does the reconciliation between ‘divine mandate and political authority’ reside? Mourning must be given its place. Likewise, mourners, their place. She concludes, ‘A democratic and just the United States is one in which Americans remember and mourn’. (17) Preaching and preachers, following the crises she has documented and in the midst of confused mourning as to who, how, and when that mourning should take place, have failed in those sermons have surrendered their scriptural mandate to the state; into the hands of King Creon.