Liturgy · Laughter · Camaraderie · Contemplation
When most people hear the phrase “religious trauma” or “spiritual abuse,” they immediately jump to the conclusion that it denotes some form of sexual molestation. It may, but that doesn’t mean it must. Spiritual abuse certainly (and unfortunately) can take the form of sexual violence or assault. Whether it’s a pastor, priest, Sunday school teacher, […]
Various definitions have been suggested for the concept of religious trauma; I’ll offer my own: Religious trauma involves the lingering ill-effects of any type of spiritual abuse, whether physical or emotional. This may sound too broad, but that’s exactly the challenge that faces the sufferers of religious trauma, namely, that the abuse can be subtle […]
I concluded my last post by asking some questions that I’d like to unpack here: So given this overarching rubric of Exile and Empire, what familiar terms belong where? Where does church belong? What about kingdom? Into which category should we place ideas like dogma, heresy, canon, and essentials/non-essentials? And what about grace, weakness, and the folly of the cross? Where do they fit? And […]
Now that I have whetted your appetite by hinting at various applications of the theme of exile, I’d like to take a step back and consider the idea more broadly. What do I mean by exile? As I pointed out in my first post in this series, “exile” is used in the Hebrew scriptures literally […]
I’d be willing to wager that most Millennials and Gen-Xers have seen the film Raiders of the Lost Ark (well the guys anyway). Perhaps the most memorable scene in the movie is when the Nazis, who had discovered and taken possession of the Ark of the Covenant, decided to open it. But first, some background…. […]
In western culture we have not only grown accustomed to dualisms of various kinds, but we seem to assume they are unavoidable. Whether we’re talking about the sacred and the secular, divinity and humanity, or the natural and the spiritual, we live in a society more characterized by either/ors than by both/ands. A Theology of […]