The first five episodes of this series outlined some of the major themes in how trauma and theology intersect. Now that we know some basics, where do we go from here? In this episode I am joined by three friends who have spent 12 weeks talking about this material and exploring how we might conceive of healing in the aftermath of religious trauma.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground and we concluded that healing is messy! We explore the body, being honest, safety, and how to search for life. Finally, we disuss the concept of hope. Ecotheologians teach us that to heal a traumatized world we must think differently, so if bad theologies have gotten us here, what happens if we flip our ways of thinking? Ivone Gebara suggests new ways of thinking theologically should be more independent, process drive, mind/body bond, contextual, holistic, inclusive, and must make way for emotions.

Hungry and thirsty, we expect to see hope spring up once again in our own womb, in the womb of the earth, out of our entrail, out of the divine that lives with us and renews us. Like the deer, we move forward seeking what will bring us to life, what will enliven our Sacred body with its thousand and one lives. Like the deer, we have sensed the living waters from afar; and now we run towards them, but with no certitudes…barely allowing our goal to keep us alive, to keep us dreaming and to prepare us for the next step on the way. (Gebara)

All of my guest are students at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology

• Madison Drury pursuing a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology
• Emily Knorr pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology & Culture
• Wes Patterson pursuing a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology

• How do we move forward? (6:15)
• Why we MUST listen to our body (9:45)
• “My body is only ever trying to love me” (12:50)
• Naming the “death” that has occurred and holding complexity is crucial (15:30)
• What does it mean to attend to trauma as a wound that doesn’t heal? (19:00)
• Is it enough just to “sit with” trauma and pain? (24:45)
• “PTSD is woven into our culture. What action could be done if we were more intentional about sitting and holding people’s stories.” (33:15)
• “Being able to help people navigate bad theology is a type of care.” (38:38)
• Judith Herman suggests phases of 1. Safety 2. Remembrance/mourning and 3. Constructing a future (37:40)
• Healing is MESSY! (48:25)

• Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell, Marlene
• Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, by Shelly Rambo
• Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence by Judith Herman
• The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection Through Embodied Living by Hilary McBride

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Since leaving evangelicalism, I have been pondering some serious creative blocks, which has become a huge topic for me in my particular theology program. Last year I started asking around and realized I am not alone. Many people who have come out of fundamentalist/evangelical trauma struggle with what to do with their creative side, with many describing a kind of artistic brokenness.

Within the Christian bubbles, so many of us were not trained to listen well or look very deeply at the underside off life, which affected our ability to go very deep into our artistic endeavors.

In this episode, my guests and I talk about what happens to the creative/artistic impulse in white, fundamentalist spaces, and how we might do better at sitting with suffering. Our conversation hits on a number of topics including:

• Artistic brokenness (6:10)
• The church’s tendency to dismiss emotions makes it hard to be an artist (9:00)
• “The creative act requires that the creator is operating out of an authentic self with reference to inner states of being – inner thoughts, feelings, intuition, as opposed to conforming to external models of thought and behavior.” Gelberg (11:30)
• Art as a prophetic voice of what really is (17:00)
• Christian art as empty expression that isn’t driven by anything of substance (19:45)
• We are trained to use our artistic ability to uphold the status quo and not look at the hard things of life. We are not trained to understand or sit with melancholy (21:42)
• The role of melancholy: “A climate of melancholy is necessary in the work of deepening the imagination and creating the condition in which it is possible for our soul to be blessed.” Byrne (22: 56)
• The artist as therapist (31:30)
• Art as action as a companion to witness (38:00)

All of my guest are students at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology

• Alex Grodkiewicz pursuing a Master’s in Theology & Culture
• Carson Taylor pursuing a Master’s in Theology & Culture

• Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, by Shelly Rambo
• The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence by Judith Herman
• Gelberg, Steven. “Art and Authority: Foreclosing Creativity in Cultic Groups.” Cultic Studies Review, 9(1), 2010, 232-249.
• Wehle, Dana. “Just Joking: Psychoanalytic Treatment of the Suppression of Creativity in Cults.” in Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, (2010).
• Cameron, The Artist Way.
• Byrne, Libby. “Living Close to the Wound.” in Tikkun Olam -To Mend the World: A Confluence of Theology and the Arts, Jason ​​Goroncy, ed. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014.
• Levine, Steven K. “The Artist as Therapist.” in Poesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul.

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Welcome to the fourth episode of our series on trauma and theology and today we are expanding on the idea that as theology has been impotent to help individuals heal from trauma, it is also complicit in the collective trauma of marginalized groups, our nation and our planet.

My hope is that for the scores of Christians who have never considered how the trauma caused by religion is harming us collectively that this might spark curiosity to think deeper.

Philip Hayes, working towards of Theology an Culture

Holly Greenidge, working towards a Master’s of Divinity

5:45 Definition of collective & historic trauma

12:15 The theological roots that perpetuate collective trauma

15:00 Trauma is embedded in the Biblical narrative

22:00 “whiteness” as collective trauma

27:00 America is where cultures go to die

34:40 What do we do with the exceptionalism of the creation story?

44:20 What does it feel like to lose your culture?

51:00 Is there a solution

• A Different Mirror: A history of multicultural America by Ronald Takaki.

• Exclusion and Embrace, by Miraslav Volf

• Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner

• Holy Resilience by David Carr

• Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

• Longing for Running Water by Ivone Gebara

• My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem.

• The History of White People by Nell Painter

• Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah.

• Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining by Shelly Rambo

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