Trauma survivors are in your congregation. How will you help them heal?

When I told my 89-year-old mother that the book I was reading of­fered guidelines for when a parishioner is a victim of domestic violence, she was confused. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “There’s no domestic violence in churches.”

My saintly mother had fallen prey to a common faulty assumption. While it’s painful to imagine that a fellow worshiper might go home to verbal or physical abuse—or that a person we greet during the passing of the peace might be an abuser—statistics tell us that this is probable. If churches are to be places of healing, people of faith must bring gender-based violence out of the shadows. As a trauma expert who is also a Christian and a survivor of domestic violence, Christy Sim offers wisdom that equips church leaders to do just that.

Sim’s starting point is human biology. It is essential to understand the ways our bodies respond to threats of violence, as well as to actual physical violence. For trauma survivors, these normal biological responses can cause long-lasting effects that bleed into the inner life, causing shame, self-doubt, confusion, isolation, objectification, and the loss of power and control.