Abstract
During the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and the risk of infection with corona virus caused, for many people, a heightened degree of bodily affect, and, for some, emotional stress. The crisis seemed to call not only for medical advice and political action, but also for existential interpretation. This essay analyzes a sermon held in the Danish Lutheran-Evangelical Church during lockdown and shows how the speech, by speaking through, of and to the body, invited a change of emotions from unrest and anxiety towards hope and gratitude. Following a study of the affective-emotional dimensions of a eulogy by Landau and Keeler-Jonker and working from an understanding of trust as affective and embodied, the essay argues that the sermon manifested emotions of trust, through the rhetoric’s symbolicity as well as its materiality. The speech set an existential example to emulate – a trustful yet informed, embodied example that might relieve affect and help enable constructive action
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