Sunken place theology is a theology that separates the key matters of the soul from the matters of the body. Any theology that is about a person’s soul but could leave their bodies trafficked and sold is a sunken place theology. In other words, or in relation to America and religion, any theology that remains silent as black people’s bodies are overpoliced, over-incarcerated, brutalised and murdered is also a sunken place theology. As we know, Christians in America have a history of kidnapping and selling black bodies. In this part of my argument, I draw on multiple sources, including formal slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to capture kidnapping and religiously tied slaveholding theology. In the film, one of the members of the Armitage family is a “therapist”, and her job in their murderous efforts is to bring Chris to the “Sunken place”. In this place, he falls and is screaming from what appears to be the bottom of a vast abyss. She achieves this through hypnotizing him by clicking a spoon against a teacup. In the Sunken place, their soul is trapped. 

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What formal slave and abolitionist Douglass, as well as Jordan Peele in his film "Get Out" want us to understand is that the sunken place is very real. What it means, revealed in Peele's own tweet to the right is that black people are marginalized, and we as a society tend to put them in a sunken place where they are in the depths of their marginalization. No matter how hard they scream for better, no one can hear them because they are so deep in the sunken place, or so deep into marginalization. The physical sunken place, then, is actually symbolic of the system. In the movie, when Chris is screaming at the bottom of the sunken place, nobody can hear him. In reality, when black people express their concerns for their wellbeing, their safety, and their lives as black folks in America, they aren't heard and often nothing changes, because the system is making sure of it. 

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We can think of this in relation to religion as well. Christianity and the Christian church, as we have seen, stays entirely silent on problems black people are facing today. Police brutality, over-incarceration, higher rates of poverty, and more. By doing so, they are keeping silent as black bodies are taken advantage of. Therefore, they are helping foster the sunken place, the marginalization that black people in America are stuck in.