Trauma survivors are in your congregation. How will you help them heal?
Christy Gunter Sim, a trauma expert and domestic violence survivor, offers case studies for church leaders.
trauma
When illness undoes us
Deanna Thompson's book about cancer takes us where we don't want to go but must.
As religious leaders, we cannot ignore what the events surrounding the confirmation hearings are doing, especially to our bodies.
In the wake of violence, pastors have to lead people out of hell. Jesus has been there.
At home in exile
In a time of American inhospitality, Jan Holton offers a compelling vision.
As CC books editor, I get to peruse a lot of books. Too bad I can’t review them all.
What soldiers come home to
Can Christians display a life together that’s as compelling as war?
“White privilege is your history being taught as a core class and mine being taught as an elective,” wrote a tumblr user in February of 2014. This claim illustrates how education sins in its ignorance. Latin American liberation theologians taught that sin consists not only of personal misdeeds—it is also embedded in social structures that promote harm and inequity.
There are so many horrific events in the news. What do we do with the tumult of feelings that rushes through us when we hear about them? How do we navigate this world of lightning-fast news and online echo chambers where we can block particular perspectives and opinions? In these charged, gut-wrenching times, how do we process information and determine what course of action might align with our values? In seminary a professor assigned “reaction/response papers.”
Fear and trauma in immigration policy
U.S. immigration policy has long used the imposition of trauma and the dynamics of fear as weapons.
The current issue of the Century features a remembrance by my mother of my grandfather’s terrifying war experience and its unfolding consequences. Tomorrow the world marks the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, when the world-shaping trauma of the war halted in Europe. My grandfather’s story is only a tiny fragment of the war, his decades of agony only a ripple in its billowing aftershocks. But it is the kind of story that is easily lost as the war recedes from living memory.
God Help the Child, by Toni Morrison
In her 11th novel Toni Morrison returns to the foundation of most of her fiction: childhood and its traumatic effects.
I’ve only seen three dead bodies in my life. The first was when I was 12 years old and my grandfather died at age 69. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. At the funeral home, my sister was brave enough to reach out and touch my grandfather’s hand as it rested on his torso. Back in our seats, I asked her what his skin felt like. “Plastic,” she said.
The books I've read repeatedly are the ones that have probed my heart and expanded my vision.