Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion

and Societal Challenges

VIOLENT
TRAUMA,
CULTURE,
AND POWER
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY
EXPLORATION IN LIVED
RELIGION
Michelle Walsh
Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion
and Societal Challenges

Series Editors
Nancy Ammerman
Religious Research Association
Galva, IL, USA

R. Ruard Ganzevoort
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Srdjan Sremac
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges publishes mono-
graphs and edited volumes that describe and critically interpret pressing
societal issues from a lived religion perspective. Many contemporary
societal challenges regard religion, directly or indirectly, and usually religion
contributes to the problem as much as it fosters positive outcomes. Topics
to be addressed would range from conflicts and (in-)tolerance to building
inclusive societies; from urban development and policymaking to new
forms of social cohesion; from poverty and injustice to global ecological
challenges of the 21th century. While such issues are studied by several
disciplines, with different approaches and foci, this series aims to contribute
to this field by adding a particular focus on the everyday practices of
religious and spiritual actors. Contexts to be studied include, but are not
limited to faith communities, educational and health care settings,
media, and the public sphere at large. The series has a global scope and
is open to studies from all contexts and religious backgrounds. This
interdisciplinary series will showcase scholarship from sociology of religion
and cultural anthropology, religious studies and theology, history and
psychology, law and economy. The defining feature is that religion is
approached not as a stable system of official positions, traditions, creeds,
and structures but as a fluid and multi-layered practice of what people
actually do, experience, think, and share when they appropriate religious
repertoires and negotiate their religious performance vis a vis the religious
and cultural traditions they draw upon, specifically in the context of dealing
with societal challenges.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/15215
 Michelle Walsh

Violent Trauma,
Culture, and Power
An Interdisciplinary Exploration in Lived Religion
Michelle Walsh
School of Social Work
Boston University
Boston, MA
USA

Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges

ISBN 978-3-319-41771-4 ISBN 978-3-319-41772-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1

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Dedicated to the lives and memories of Moses, Kenny, LeVar,
Jaewon, and Evens—as well as all others lost to or impacted
by violence in our one precious shared world.

In our continuing moral bonds,

“The dead have a pact with the living.”

Lyric from Dr. Ysaÿe M. Barnwell’s song “Breaths”

(“Breaths” Lyrics By Birago Diop/Musical Setting By
Ysaÿe M. Barnwell, Barnwell’s Notes Publishing, Inc.)
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences

From where do any books arise, even “academic” books? Whether we

acknowledge it or not, our lived experiences in the world shape what we
study and what we write—and perhaps there is a larger academic “objec-
tive truth” and capacity for connection, even sacredness, in acknowledg-
ing and taking ownership of this very human reality. Perhaps we should
begin to demand a detailed preface of lived experiences—the social expe-
riences and identities from which we write—for every academic book
published as a matter of ethical accountability within institutional systems
of domination. My interest in the interdisciplinary exploration of violent
trauma evolves out of my own lived experiences with trauma and social
identity border crossings, as well as out of specific sociohistorical events.
I grew up as a fourth-generation mid-western American, racialized as
white and of Irish, French, German, and Welsh descent. Historical
trauma in my family system taught me how trauma leaves its marks,
even as the generations seek to resist transmitting it—painful marks as
well as marks of survival, resiliency, and strength. I was baptized Catholic,
but generally unchurched and without religious language and practices,
other than broad cultural and semi-secularized ones until my late young
adulthood. I also was the first in my family history to complete a college

vii
viii A Prelude of Lived Experiences

education through the generosity of financial aid at an elite women’s

college in the United States, Wellesley College, acquiring the experience
of being a “class cultural traveler” in this as well as through additional
higher education. My lifeworld journey of meaning-making eventually led
me to discovering a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation in Newton,
MA at age 28 in late 1989. This was my first exposure to being part of a
religious community and learning religious concepts and language that
were connected to religious practices we engaged in together. This time
period also began a different intersection of my life with history. In this
intersection with history, a need arose for deepened connection to reli-
gious practices that could assist me with the violent trauma to which I was
exposed vicariously for many years to come.
In April 1991, two young boys, Charles Copney, Jr., age 11, and Korey
Grant, age 15, were killed in a gang related incident in Roxbury,
MA. Charles was the youngest such victim during a period of heightened
violence in Boston.1 My particular suburban congregation already was
involved in racial and economic justice work,2 but in the aftermath of
Charles’ and Korey’s murders, my then minister, Reverend Gerry Krick,
spontaneously turned his pulpit over to an African-American community
activist. At the activist’s invitation, members of the First Unitarian Society
in Newton began to develop a youth program primarily for African-
American families and children in low-income Roxbury. This was the
beginning of what would become a weekend youth ministry I led as a lay
community minister3 for nearly 18 years, a youth ministry placed under
the UU Urban Ministry a year after its founding. Simultaneously, I
entered social work school and worked for many years in urban clinical
social work, including eventually as a clinic director and now university
educator in the field of social work. It was through a social work school
retreat and my initial encounters with stories of violent trauma that I
learned to practice as a clinical social worker/UU layperson in the Zen
Buddhist tradition of Thich Naht Hanh, particularly the practice of
mindfulness in the encounter with suffering.
In the journey of completing this book, I realized how deeply these life
identity border crossings and initial professional career choices enculturate
and frame the way I view the world and human being in it, such as the
interdisciplinary academic lens and language I bring as both an urban
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences ix

clinical social worker and urban minister, as well as a practical theologian

by later training. These lens include social work’s dual focus on the macro
(sociocultural) and micro (clinical) levels of social justice and human
ecological development, as well as social work’s emphasis on strengths
and resiliencies in human development.4 Ten years after becoming a
clinical social worker, I also chose to go to a Methodist seminary and
became ordained as a UU clergyperson and community minister, a
non-creedal liberal religious tradition with a heavy emphasis on ethical
relations and social justice. For contemporary UUs, a central unifying
theological role is played in this tradition through: (1) theological anthro-
pology, a belief in the finite and contextual nature of human knowledge
and capacities in relationship to knowing the divine, as well as an affir-
mation of several sources for knowing the divine, and (2) covenantal
theology, a practice of promising to be in relationship with and accountable
to each other according to certain ethical principles around shared expe-
riences of and public practices in relationship to the divine.5 These two
core beliefs and practices result in a professed public theological respect for
the ultimate transcending mystery6 that underlies all human faith or
spiritual quests, including secular quests for truth and justice, even if
private beliefs and spiritual practices are quite diverse.7
I brought to seminary, as well as to my later practical theological
doctoral studies, my eclectic, and perhaps eccentric or “queer,” lived
experiences of border crossing social identities, spiritual practices, and
intellectual disciplines—and still a relative ignorance of the breadth and
depth of the language and culture of the Christian tradition. This encul-
turation into a personally meaningful connection to the Christian tradi-
tion came later and continues to evolve as I hold it in tension with the
meaningfulness of a Buddhist tradition alongside the meaningfulness of a
humanist heritage, inclusive of the secular social sciences—a joyful and
“queer” hodgepodge best experienced as “meaning full” in the sacred path
of living tradition sources of revelation for a Unitarian Universalist.8 As I
have walked this sacred path, I also have grown more sensitized to the
practices through which this particular “queer” religious tradition has held
itself together, including through practices of play and experimentation
with language and metaphor.9
x A Prelude of Lived Experiences

In this sense, I remain truly a practical theologian, equally alongside my

social work and ministerial identities, in a “confessional” commitment
(understood in a broader metaphorical sense) to my lived religious and
spiritual tradition as a UU. If the root metaphoric meaning of “faith” is
that in which one grounds one’s trust and if the root metaphoric meaning
of “to confess” is simply to admit one’s adherence to and belief in a faith
tradition—a faith tradition that encompasses ethical promises and prac-
tices of how to be and act in relation with one another and our broader
world rather than being restricted to particular doctrinal beliefs—then
confessional is indeed what I am. I am confessional to this queer contem-
porary religion called Unitarian Universalism, forged as a consolidation of
two different centuries-long Christian traditions in the crucible of the
1960’s political upheavals of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and
war. If the term “queer” also is understood in its root metaphoric meaning
as “peculiar,” “off-center,” “strange or eccentric” as judged so by a
dominant culture normatively, then indeed Unitarian Universalism is
judged as a heretical and queer religion by a dominant Christian culture
and Christian institutions of power. Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that it
also embodies the larger potential for Christianity when queered—when
freed in its faith practices to encounter the depths of difference in lived
experiences, culture, language, and worldviews among peoples of faith.10
My formal and professional education in both fields—social work and
the Christian tradition—occurred during my time of praxis with this
inner-city youth ministry over nearly two decades with the UU Urban
Ministry. As a living praxis, this meant border crossing, translation, and
finding mutual relevance and meaning-making in creating connections,
both intellectual and pastoral, between graduate school, human service
agencies, suburban churches, and community immersions, as well as
across borders of race, class, gender, ability, sexual orientations, religion,
and exposure to violent trauma. The formative event for this book
occurred in the first semester of my doctoral studies when, in September
2006, my African American goddaughter’s 17-year-old nephew, Kenny
Hall, was shot and killed in Boston, a murder that remains unsolved as of
the writing of this book.
It was this tragic event that brought me into more direct contact with
the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, a subject of study in this book,
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences xi

though I had been well aware of their work for many years and had
previously experienced the murder of another young adult related to our
youth ministry in 1995, Moses Grant. In the month after Kenny’s
murder, October 2006, our UU urban youth ministries experienced
three additional murders within a week’s span, murders that impacted
on staff and youth, including another young adult related to several of the
youth in my ministry, LeVar Jackson. Once again, I referred families to
the Peace Institute. During this period, I also felt compelled to take
pictures of the spontaneous street memorials that sprang up in the
aftermath for both Kenny and LeVar, memorials that I noticed springing
up more frequently since the widely covered murder of ten-year-old Trina
Persad in 2002.11
In the spring of 2007, I was taking an anthropology course for my
doctoral program when I mentioned the phenomenon of the street
memorials I had been observing and was encouraged by my professor to
engage in a pilot study of these spontaneous shrines. My research intro-
duced me to cultural folklorist Jack Santino’s international studies of
spontaneous shrines and to UU ethicist Sharon Welch’s expanded met-
aphoric understanding of Johann Baptist Metz’ Christian use of the
phrase “dangerous memories.”12 Both helped me to consider the political
performative and prophetic (a Jewish-Christian-Islamic term) protest
function of such street memorials alongside their commemorative func-
tion. This initial pilot study led to a separate pilot study of the funerals
and specialized orders of funeral service developed by the Peace Institute.
Then as my prospectus for my dissertation was being written in
mid-2010, another young man who had grown up in my youth ministries
was shot and killed, Jaewon Martin. The summer after completion of my
dissertation, I lost one more from my youth ministry, Evens Archer. The
names I share here are not the only male and female young people
sacrificed to violence whose stories and lives I knew or came to know
and care about over my years in urban ministry and research.
This book thus is threaded with autoethnographic experiences and
perspectives and a deep sense of commitment to the families of Boston
whose lives have been so deeply intertwined with my own for well over
25 years now. My exposure to the impact of violent trauma has been up
close and personal, deepening my own need to lift up the voices of those
xii A Prelude of Lived Experiences

who have suffered the unspeakable, as well as the voices of those who
companion and serve them in the aftermath. This includes those in my
own UU denomination who discover that trauma and violence cut across
all the lines of race and class and gender, as well as power, privilege, and
other oppressions that may otherwise divide us in our sociocultural
imaginations and limited institutions and life experiences. There are no
neat “objective” lines here—trauma and violence show no respect for our
desires for tidiness and control, including the control perhaps that the
cultural lens and language of our respective intellectual disciplines might
seek to impose. If I can “rattle the self-imposed cages” of our disciplinary
boundaries as we seek to learn from and address violent trauma in our
larger world, including beyond a US context, then I will feel that I indeed
have provided a service to the voices of survivors, and those who serve
them, those from my particular studies as well as hopefully others beyond
these particular studies.

Boston, MA, USA Michelle Walsh

Notes
1. See a Frontline documentary, “A Kid Kills,” available at http://
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/info/1022.html (accessed
October 16, 2013).
2. Issues of race and class were brought to light for Boston area congre-
gations when a white suburban man accused a black man of murder-
ing his pregnant wife, but later admitted his own guilt and committed
suicide. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_(murderer)
(accessed October 16, 2013).
3. In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, community ministry is min-
istry that occurs beyond the walls of the parish—what some might
term the “missionary” ministry of Unitarian Universalism, whether
lay or ordained. An early nineteenth-century pioneer in community
ministry, Rev. Joseph Tuckerman, was recognized to be an ecumen-
ical pioneer in social work as well by a Catholic priest. See Daniel
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences xiii

T. McColgan, “Joseph Tuckerman: Pioneer in American Social

Work” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 1940).
4. A few foundational books and articles in the field of social work
illustrating these perspectives include: C. Wright Mills, The Sociolog-
ical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959); Urie
Bronfenbrenner, ed., Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological
Perspectives on Human Development (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
2005); and Dennis Saleeby, “Power in The People: Strengths and
Hope,” Advances in Social Work, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2000): 127–136.
5. The Unitarian Universalist Association was birthed when two histor-
ically Christian traditions, Unitarianism and Universalism, consoli-
dated in 1961, initially creating a shared statement of principles in its
bylaws and then later adding explicit theological language of “cove-
nant” in a re-covenanting process, first in 1985 and then lastly in
1995. Tracking specifics of these General Assembly processes repre-
sent practical theological studies yet to be done for Unitarian Univer-
salism. In the meantime, see Mark W. Harris, Historical Dictionary of
Unitarian Universalism (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004). The
newly formed association was tested in many ways by the social and
political turbulence of the 1960s through the various civil rights
movements; racism and what would be called “the black empower-
ment” period; the Vietnam War and the draft; and generally the
political empowerment of the voices of and actions by marginalized
peoples (youth, women, people of color, gays and lesbians, etc.). See
these additional sources for further historical perspectives and their
legacy for contemporary struggles of Unitarian Universalists: Warren
R. Ross, The Premise and the Promise: The Story of the Unitarian
Universalist Association (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2001); Leslie
Takahashi Morris, Chip Roush, and Leon Spencer, The Arc of the
Universe is Long: Unitarian Universalists, Anti-Racism and the Journey
from Calgary (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2009), as well as other
resources listed in the bibliography.
6. See a former UUA president, William F. Schulz, “Our Faith,” in The
Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, ed., William G. Sinkford, 4th
ed. (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993/1997/2004), 1–6, in which
xiv A Prelude of Lived Experiences

he writes that Unitarian Universalists “. . . respect the mystery more. We

believe . . . that no single religion . . . has a monopoly on wisdom; that
the answers to the great religious questions change from generation to
generation; and that the ultimate truth about God and Creation,
death, meaning, and the human spirit cannot be captured in a narrow
statement of faith. The mystery itself is always greater than its name
. . ..” This essay on “Our Faith” survived at least three editions since
1993 (until the publication of the most recent pocket guide) as a
written practice for explaining the Unitarian Universalist faith tradi-
tion to a newcomer. See also the Commission on Appraisal, Engaging
Our Theological Diversity (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association,
2005) and their Interdependence: Renewing Congregational Polity (Bos-
ton: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1997) for further history and
empirical data on contemporary Unitarian Universalism. There also is
a very strong ecological orientation within the Unitarian Universalist
tradition, beyond its mystical and ethical commitments and its focus
on the language of “love.” A recent dissertation by a UU scholar tracks
historical Transcendentalist contributions to evolving ecotheology
possibilities within liberal Christianity, as well as its complicity in
manifest destiny. See Sheri M. Prud’homme, “Gleam Of The Infinite
Majesty: The Interplay of Manifest Destiny and Ecotheology in
Thomas Starr King’s Construction of Yosemite as Sacred Text”
(PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2015). I also have argued
in other settings that contemporary Unitarian Universalist “God-
Talk” expands beyond the anthropomorphic through its seventh
principle: “the interdependent web of existence”—that this also
becomes the tradition’s metaphoric “God-Talk” in practice in addi-
tion to “mystery” “justice,” and “love” and which bears further
theological development in and analyses of practices within the
tradition.
7. When I bring the term “public theology” to bear on Unitarian
Universalism as a religious tradition, I am drawing on Bonnie
J. Miller-McLemore’s definition that public theology “attempts to
analyze and influence the wider social order . . . Different from civil
religion’s generic universal appeal, public theology attempts to make a
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences xv

recognizably valid and self-critical claim for the relevance of specific

religious beliefs and practices,” in Miller-McLemore, “Pastoral The-
ology as Public Theology: Revolutions in the ‘Fourth Area’,” 1370,
In Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, edited by Rodney
J. Hunter, 1370–1380 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990/
2005). For Unitarian Universalists, the term “public theology”
applies both to a congregation’s particular covenant and to the larger
associational covenant between congregations. Unitarian Universal-
ists distinguish in practice between the personal faith and practices of
individuals and the public faith and practices of a congregation and
the larger association or denomination. There is a unification of
diverse personal theologies and practices, within any particular con-
gregation, as well as between congregations in the larger association,
through profession to a public faith and ethical practices. This public
profession emphasizes respect for personal access to the divine and a
covenant to ethical principles of shared practice, which then creates an
umbrella under which a significant amount of public prophetic witness
and social justice work may occur. Thus, there is an underlying
theology at play from the stance of theological anthropology and
ecclesial organization that marks what results as a self-critical “public
theology” in shared beliefs and practices for Unitarian Universalists.
8. See www.uua.org (accessed March 2, 2016) for more information
generally on the tradition, as well as http://www.uua.org/beliefs
(accessed March 2, 2016) for information regarding the tradition’s
seven ethical principles and six living tradition sources to which its
congregations within the Unitarian Universalist Association are
bound by covenant.
9. See Unitarian ethicist, theologian, and minister James Luther Adams’
early work in this area, “Root Metaphors of Religious Social
Thought,” in An Examined Faith: Social Context and Religious Com-
mitment, 243–255 (1973/1988), edited by George K. Beach (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1991), as well as a later series of essays produced in
response to a controversy over religious language, Dean Grodzins, ed.,
A Language of Reverence (Chicago: Meadville Lombard Press, 2004).
See also Tom Owen-Towle, Freethinking Mystics With Hands:
xvi A Prelude of Lived Experiences

Exploring the Heart of Unitarian Universalism (Boston: Skinner

House Books, 1998) and Fredric John Muir, Heretics’ Faith: Vocab-
ulary for Religious Liberals (Unitarian Universalist Church of Annap-
olis, MD, 2001).
10. Kathryn Lofton ponders, “A church of the queer may or may not be
possible” (p. 203) in her chapter “Everything Queer?” in Queer
Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms (New York:
New York University Press, 2015). While she stays within a current
association of the term “queer” with homosexuality, she also opens a
door to a broader metaphoric interpretation in saying, “ . . . Chris-
tianity itself was also queer: a tradition simultaneously averse to
expressions of homosexuality while also offering multiple scriptural,
ritual, and social experiences of self-understanding, self-formation,
and revelation as a dissenting subject” (p. 199). See also Rev.
Elizabeth M. Edman, Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know
About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2016); Pamela Lightsey, Our Lives Matter: A Womanist
Queer Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015); and Ian
Barnard, Queer Race: Cultural Interventions in the Racial Polities of
Queer Theory (New York: Peter Lang, 2004/2008). However, I stress
that I am broadening the metaphoric use of the term “queer” beyond
solely its contemporary usage in the BGLTQI context, though it
remains inclusive of that context, particularly in attention to the
marking of bodies and visceral discomforts raised as well as institu-
tional oppression of bodies. See also Janet R. Jakobsen, “The Body
Politic vs. Lesbian Bodies: Publics, Counterpublics, and the Use of
Norms,” in Horizons in Feminist Theology: Identity, Tradition and
Norms, 116–136, edited by Rebecca S. Chopp and S.G. Davaney
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997) for hints of intersectionality
possibilities in queer theory as well.
11. See http://www.boston.com/yourtown/boston/roxbury/articles/2012/
06/01/conflict_of_interestsmemorial_park_is_targeted_for_housing/
(accessed October 16, 2013) and http://archive.boston.com/yourtown/
news/dorchester/2013/08/hold_in_dorchester_a_slaying_youth_is_
remembered_through_art.html (accessed May 4, 2016).
 A Prelude of Lived Experiences xvii

12. See Jack Santino, Signs of War and Peace: Social Conflict and the Uses of
Symbols in Public in Northern Ireland (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2001) and Jack Santino, ed., Spontaneous Shrines and the Public
Memorialization of Death (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006),
as well as Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a
Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. J. Matthew Ashley (New York:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1977/2007) and Sharon
D. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2000, 2nd edition).
 Acknowledgments

I am so very grateful for the support of many in the fits and starts labor of
love that has been the journey of this book. First, there are no words
adequately to thank my families of birth (mom, dad, Kathy, Mike, Judith,
Robbie, Harry, Kendra, and Elizabeth) as well as of adoption (Gena,
Azariah, Vaughnda Sr., and the entire clan) for all that they have shared
with me over the years and all that I have learned from them—their
practical support, their emotional support, their love, humor and
patience, their sheer grit and fierceness of survival, and their commitments
to and dreams of a more just world. Additionally, I have been gifted for
many years to know and serve families in Roxbury, Dorchester, and
Mattapan, as well as in Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations, par-
ticularly in Quincy and Newton, and to be part of a larger community of
professional love, care, and ministry. There also are no words to ade-
quately express all that I have learned and received from you, as well from
the survivors, members, staff, and supporters of the Louis D. Brown Peace
Institute, UU Trauma Response Ministry, Unitarian Universalist
Association (UUA), and Tennessee Valley UU Church who graciously
agreed to be part of the original research.

xix
xx Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the series editors for their interest in my research, and

particularly to Srdjan Sremac for his gentle encouragement and patience
along the way. In the shaping of my attention and sensitivity to method
and writing in my original research formation, I extend my enduring
gratitude to Shelly Rambo and Dale Andrews, who also lived patiently,
and hopefully with humor and at least some reward, through an interdis-
ciplinary writing and cross-cultural encounter in their supportive work
with me. Many other colleagues and scholars, senior and junior, across
disciplines have been foundational to my shaping and are too numerous to
mention, though you will find their work liberally referenced throughout
this book and its bibliography.
Opportunities to present at, gain feedback from, or network through a
variety of conferences and gatherings over several years helped me to hone
concepts and understandings of the significance of interdisciplinary explo-
rations for the societal challenge posed by violent trauma. These included
presentations at an international conference on Trauma and Spirituality
in Belfast in 2011 and a Trauma and Lived Religion conference in
Amsterdam in 2015, along with attendance at other 2015 conferences
such as the Council on Social Work Education, Jean Baker Miller
Summer Intensive Institute, and the Internal Family Systems annual
conference. Additional presentations over several years with the American
Academy of Religion, as well as with the UU Scholars and the Collegium
of Liberal Religious Scholars, were helpful in the early stages of my
original research. More recently, presentations at a 2016 transdisciplinary
conference on theopoetics and at the 2016 Biennial Association of Prac-
tical Theology, as well as at the 2016 Cultural Studies Association, shaped
some final thoughts and revisions. Research also needs institutional
funding, and I therefore am grateful for several years of financial support
received for the original research through Boston University’s School of
Theology and their Center for Practical Theology, as well as for the major
scholarship I received from the Fund for Nurturing UU Scholarship
under the Panel on Theological Education.
In all things, family and close friends are foundational to feeling
supported—you know who you are and my gratitude is so profoundly
heartfelt! Most of all, however, I want to thank my great love, soul mate,
and intellectual partner, my husband Rev. Clyde Grubbs, who
 Acknowledgments xxi

accompanied me patiently throughout this journey, cooking for me and

reassuring me and sharing his wisdom when asked as a person of indig-
enous heritage. Most particularly, his keen indigenous insight into the
challenges posed by a Western Enlightenment scientific heritage has been
deeply influential on my thinking. This includes a very recent sermon in
which he stated: “one of the weaknesses of the Enlightenment science was
to see phenomenon in isolation—breaking complexity down can be
helpful, if one doesn’t destroy the phenomenon in the process. Sometimes
phenomenon cannot be understood except in its relationship with its
surroundings.” He deepens my understanding of how our Western sci-
entific heritage of simplifying and categorizing can create normative and
visceral cultural barriers to a richer embodied and interdependent phe-
nomenological approach in lived religion studies. Through intimate liv-
ing, daily encounter with our shared love in and commitment to reaching
across our own lines of cultural difference, not without struggle and effort
but overall with a sense of humor, I have learned so much for which to be
grateful for a lifetime.
 Contents

A Prelude of Lived Experiences vii

Acknowledgments xix

List of Figures xxv

1 Introduction 1

2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 23

3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 51

4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 87

5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 141

xxiii
xxiv Contents

6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons

Learned 193

7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 247

A Queer Postlude of Intersections in the Aftermath 289

Bibliography 295

Index 317
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Scene from a Boston Street Protest 3

Fig. 3.1 Peace Institute’s Seven Principles of Peace 58
Fig. 3.2 TVUUC Partial Exterior Building View 68
Fig. 3.3 TVUUC Sample Exterior Panels 69
Fig. 3.4 Permanent Welcoming Congregation Plaque 70
Fig. 4.1 Spontaneous Street Memorial #1 101
Fig. 4.2 Spontaneous Street Memorial #2 102
Fig. 4.3 Spontaneous Street Memorial #3 103
Fig. 4.4 Public Artistic Memorial—Long Shot 106
Fig. 4.5 Public Artistic Memorial—Close Up 107
Fig. 4.6 Permanent Town Granite Memorial “Touchstone” Handprint 108
Fig. 5.1 Peace Institute survivor’s sandplay example 147
Fig. 5.2 Other art by Peace Institute survivors 149
Fig. 5.3 Home altar example 152
Fig. 5.4 Peace Institute funeral order of service, sample resource page 169
Fig. 5.5 Traveling memorial button project 170
Fig. 6.1 TVUUC Linda Lee Kraeger Library Memorial 205
Fig. 6.2 TVUUC Pellet-Marked and Memorialized Door 206
Fig. 6.3 Peace Institute Funeral Order of Service, Sample Pastoral Care
Advice Page 216

xxv
xxvi List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Intersecting issues at the Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace 278
Fig. 7.2 Intersecting issues at a climate change protest 279
Fig. 7.3 Intersecting issues through youth activism and new stories 280
 1
Introduction

Violent Trauma and the “Land of the Free, Home

of the Brave”
The people of the United States live in one of the most violent nations on
earth, according to studies by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC). As cited by Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard
Spivak from CDC reports,1 the US homicide rate is ten times as high as
Western Europe, seventy times as high as Japan, and five times as high as
Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Of 26 industrialized nations,
73 percent of all child homicides occur in the United States. According
to research by Adam Lankford presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of
the American Sociological Association, “Despite having only about 5 per-
cent of the world’s population, the United States was the attack site for a
disproportionate 31 percent of public mass shooters globally from
1966–2012.”2 The year 2012 ended with the extraordinary mass shooting
of 20 preschool children and eight adults in Newtown, CT (inclusive of
the shooter’s mother and his own subsequent suicide).3 Mass shootings
have continued and worsened on a regular basis in the United States,
including in school and religious settings.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_1
2 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Parallel to this rise in mass shootings is a rise in visible and documented

police violence against black persons in the United States. Observing the
international interest expressed by a UK newspaper, The Guardian, and
their “The Counted” database collection of US police shootings,
researchers from the Harvard University School of Public Health
expressed dismay that it is “startling that we, in the US, must rely on a
UK newspaper for systematic timely counts of the number of persons
killed by the police.”4 They further argued that such deaths at the hands of
the police, as well as killing of police officers, constitute a public health
issue for families and communities and require tracking and data collec-
tion as such:

Law-enforcement–related deaths, of both persons killed by law enforcement

agents and also law enforcement agents killed in the line of duty, are a public
health concern, not solely a criminal justice concern, since these events
involve mortality and affect the well-being of the families and communities
of the deceased; therefore, law-enforcement–related deaths are public health
data, not solely criminal justice data.

The United Nations (UN) also has taken note of the rise in American
public violence, including its racial dimensions. In 2014, the UN Com-
mittee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) condemned
US acts of police brutality and called for a review of the controversial
“Stand Your Ground” laws in 22 states,5 laws that permitted the killer of
17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin to be released on the
ground that he killed in self-defense. This pivotal violent trauma spawned
the national Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, founded by three
black female activists,6 in resistance to the larger systemic structures
oppressing black people in the United States. This was followed in
2015 by the African American Policy Forum’s launching of the social
media-based #SayHerName campaign,7 also as an act of resistance. BLM
has grown beyond the US context to make intersectional and interna-
tional links to the causes and resistances of peoples suffering from violent
trauma and colonial oppression, including black immigrants, black trans-
gender people, and Palestinians.8 While situating itself in the particular-
ities of black oppression, BLM also affirms its solidarity with and
 1 Introduction 3

Fig. 1.1 Scene from a Boston Street Protest. Marching on the streets of Bos-
ton in 2015 for increased funding for jobs for youth and against prioritizing
police funding at the expense of jobs, education, health, and housing. Flyer
handout states: “This hurts Black youth and youth of color: women, gender-
nonconforming, transgender, poor, and queer”

intersectional awareness of the unique cultural and institutional impact of

violent trauma on other marginalized and oppressed groups, such as
Native Americans and Muslims (Fig. 1.1).9
The dominant US’ cultural “stock”10 image of itself, often taught in its
public schools, is that it was founded on freedom from violent religious
persecution in Europe, with separation of church and state as the rule of
law and ample opportunities in the new land for all individuals to advance
equally. Yet the “concealed story”11 is that the United States also is rooted
in legally enforced colonial violence and religious oppression through the
genocide of indigenous peoples and the transport and enslavement of
persons from Africa, including the contemporary emergence of a “New
4 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Jim Crow” through mass incarceration that particularly impacts

“America’s poorest, brownest, and blackest neighborhoods.”12 Violent
trauma at the historical, religious, and institutional core of the United
States appears to be unraveling before much of the contemporary world’s
astonished media eyes. The idealistic stock story lifted up of the United
States as “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in a stanza of the
US national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” is laid bare to have yet
another concealed story.
The concealed story is of its author, Francis Scott Key, a man who
believed deeply in the racial myths of his day—in the genetic inferiority of
African slaves and the God-granted superiority of the American white race
to conquer the land.13 This same culturally and historically embedded
violent experience of white supremacy, including its intersectional reli-
gious and racial dimensions, plays out in contemporary US national
politics when a presidential candidate for election calls not only to build
a wall against Mexican migrants but also for a ban on Muslims and later is
allowed to banter about a violent apocryphal colonial story of murder of
Muslims with virtually no recrimination.14 With so many variables in the
mix of this rising tide of violence, the United States is uniquely situated
for lived religion case studies drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives.

The Need for Interdisciplinary Lived Religion

Studies of Violent Trauma
Violence experienced by individuals and communities begets trauma—a
rupturing of the experience of bodily safety, meaning-making, and com-
munal connections. Bodies, meaning-making systems, and communal
relationships are situated in historical, religious, and cultural contexts of
institutionalized power when violent trauma occurs, as seen in contem-
porary racial and religious conflicts in the United States. Such experiences
of violent trauma have both sociological and religious impact within
communities, disrupting faith beliefs and spiritual practices and resulting
in profound human brokenness at both personal and communal levels.
Creative meaning-making in the aftermath through new or innovative
 1 Introduction 5

religious and spiritual responses are structured along cultural and histor-
ical dimensions of institutionalized power in communities as well.
Despite the prevalence of violence both in the United States and
beyond, it is rare to find an organized institutional religious response to
trauma that correlates interdisciplinary social scientific understanding of
trauma with spiritual or religious practices and rituals for personal healing
as well as for public policy advocacy in the aftermath of such violence. It is
even rarer to find interdisciplinary scholarship on what such a religious
response might look like or how it might function when organized
institutionally.15 Such potential for disruption of and creative responses
by communities urgently calls for an interdisciplinary exploration of
clinical, health, educational, public policy, and pastoral prophetic reli-
gious and spiritual responses to violent trauma—practices that heal and
transform on an individual level as well as on interpersonal, institutional,
and sociocultural levels. The United States’ violent context is uniquely
positioned for such case studies, though, of course, it is not the only
potential context internationally for such studies—and lived religion
studies are uniquely interdisciplinary by their very nature.
The language of “lived religion” is used in multiple disciplinary con-
texts, from sociology to history to anthropology to practical theology.16
Violent trauma as a rupturing force in our world and communities also
commands our respective intellectual and professional disciplines, with
their respective tools and language, to find new, creative, and innovative
ways for speaking to and working with each other if researchers and our
different professions are to have practical meaning and responsive impact
in the world and for communities in the aftermath of trauma. Lived
religion thus is situated as an important field of study for cross-disciplinary
explorations of personal and communal embodied and material practices
central to the lived experience of rupturing and meaning-making in the
aftermath of trauma.
While situated thus, the use of lived religion methods for studying
violent trauma also need further mechanisms of translation and correla-
tion between the disciplines. Such methods also need to be sensitized to
and explicitly acknowledge the intertwining phenomena of culture and
power in their use, particularly if a researcher or profession seeks to
contribute to an in-depth and richer knowledge base for interdisciplinary
6 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

purposes. There is a need for a more diverse and larger number of lived
religion case studies in which the conceptual and linguistic capacity for
describing the culturally unique dimensions of the impact of violent
trauma is broadened. This includes the particularities of a community’s
emerging religious or spiritual practices in the aftermath. Such broadening
needs to be inclusive of factors of historical oppression and contemporary
power relationships as well. This is a need and ethical mandate regardless
of the stance of the lived religion researcher as secular, religious, or
theological in commitment, purpose, and professional discipline.
Through studies of this nature, we can begin to find the creative, new,
and innovative points of interdisciplinary connections that can speak and
work together in the ruptured spaces of violent trauma, perhaps even
pointing toward the transdisciplinary.17
The Louis D. Brown Peace Institute (LDBPI or Peace Institute) in
Boston and the Unitarian Universalist Trauma Response Ministry
(UUTRM) were two organized trauma ministries in the United States
context open for such study, one primarily lay, para-ecclesial,18 and
community based and the other ecclesial and national, at times interna-
tional, in scope.19 They each seek to bring together religious, spiritual,
and social scientific resources and practices in organized institutional form
to assist people experiencing trauma. This book addresses a gap in
empirical studies of organized religious or spiritual responses to violent
trauma by utilizing and expanding upon a lived religion approach. Case
studies of these two specific trauma ministries, and their clinical pastoral
and prophetic justice responses to violent trauma in the US context, were
examined through an interdisciplinary lens with ethnographic and phe-
nomenological approaches. The larger hope is that in offering these two
case studies from the United States as a beginning point—researched just
prior to the most intense period of rising mass shootings and the emer-
gence of BLM—interest in further interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary
lived religion studies of violent trauma across national and religious
contexts might be stimulated.
 1 Introduction 7

The Trauma Response Ministry Case Studies

As described in my prelude, the auto-ethnographic aspect of my historical
immersion in Boston urban ministry as a Unitarian Universalist (UU) for
nearly two decades, first as a layperson and clinical social worker and then
later as clergy, cannot be escaped in both my access to and the trust
extended for the two case studies from which I draw for this book. These
case studies encompassed an examination of the prophetic pastoral care
practices, themes, and vision of the LDBPI and the UUTRM, respec-
tively.20 My research at the time was limited in its capacity to engage in a
full evaluation of each organized ministry, including the entire scope of
survivors served by each ministry in either community or congregational
context. Given the relational auto-ethnographic21 nature of my access to
these organized ministries, and the sensitive nature of discussing traumatic
experiences, I relied on the leaders of each trauma ministry to refer me to
particular people the ministry had served in extending an invitation to be
interviewed, ensuring also that anyone interviewed was at least one year
away from the initial traumatic event. Thus my research was not evalua-
tive in scope but only a beginning step toward investigating what orga-
nized trauma response ministries might look like in practice. This
provided an opportunity to lift up the “prophetic pastoral care” practices
in which the ministries engaged, drawing on language from the Christian
tradition for analysis of the initial research, and the experiences of at least
some survivors with the effectiveness of those practices. The research also
allowed me to explore and draw upon a more extended range of interdis-
ciplinary conceptual tools for lived religion studies that correlated with the
lived experiences and language of the study participants.
The LDBPI serves families in the aftermath of homicide in the greater
Boston, Massachusetts region of the United States. I was aware of the
work of the LDBPI throughout most of the years of my ministry, though
the UU urban youth ministry I led as a layperson began in 1991, and the
tragedy leading to the founding of the LDBPI occurred in 1993. In the
fall of 2006, as I was beginning my doctoral studies, my personal life
intersected with their work more closely when my African American
goddaughter’s 17-year-old nephew, Kenneth Hall, was shot and killed
8 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

in what remains an unsolved murder in Boston. Then three more murders

related to the UU Urban Ministry’s staff and programs occurred in the
span of a week only one month later. By the spring of 2007, I was
initiating pilot studies of the spontaneous street memorials that were
created in the aftermath of Boston area homicides, as well as funeral
practices developed by the Peace Institute. This eventually led to a period
of formal ethnographic and phenomenological research during
2010–2012—not only with the Peace Institute but also with the
UUTRM.
The UUTRM responds to a broader range of traumatic incidents
related to UU congregations, and, like many other UUs, I first became
aware of their existence when they were given a denominational award in
2007 for their work with congregations impacted by Hurricane Katrina.22
Then in the summer of 2008, after completing pilot studies related to
Boston area violence and the work of the Peace Institute with survivors, I
found myself participating, now ordained as a UU clergyperson, in a peace
vigil with members of my own Newton, Massachusetts UU congregation.
This peace vigil was organized as a solidarity gesture for the Tennessee
Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (TVUUC) in Knoxville, TN, in the
aftermath of a violent shooting in their sanctuary. The second case study
was of the UUTRM’s work with this congregation, including aspects and
innovative practices of the congregation’s and larger Unitarian Universalist
Association (UUA)’s own responses to the violence—as reported through
the lens of a few key leaders, thus not a full congregational study.23
For both of these case studies, I drew upon ethnographic observations,
pictures, and field notes; the published materials and documents of the
two trauma ministries; and phenomenological interviews with ministry
leaders, survivors, and institutional supporters of each ministry for the
purpose of triangulation of data.24 Core demographic differences between
these two trauma ministries included that the majority of participants in
the LDBPI case study were African American and that survivors and
ministry leaders possessed a maximum of a bachelor’s degree, while the
majority of participants in the UUTRM case study were white and
educated to a master’s degree and often higher. I interviewed five ministry
leaders, five survivors, and five institutional supporters for each trauma
ministry—thus 30 interviews overall.
 1 Introduction 9

This project also was engaged as an oral history ethnographic and

phenomenological study. For each trauma ministry case study, the
board of the respective organization gave permission for research to be
conducted, and each study participant was given the opportunity to
review, add to, or correct their interview transcript and to retain a copy
of their transcript for further measures of accountability. To maximize
confidentiality due to the very public nature of each ministry, aggregate
demographic data was shared using the above three categories of inter-
viewees but was generally not attached to specific individuals. Exceptions
included the LDBPI founding ministry leader due to the centrality of her
public role in establishing mission and programs, as well as the TVUUC
minister and the former UUA president due to the centrality of their
public roles in the aftermath of the church shooting. As appropriate also
due to the content of material shared, the roles, race, and/or gender of
those interviewed were identified at different points in the case study,
which may make them more identifiable for those close to the ministries
and their lived situations.
Of particular note for the respective case studies, the LDBPI institu-
tional supporters included a mental health clinician, a public health
doctor, an anti-oppression consultant, an urban minister, and a city
councilor. All LDBPI survivors interviewed were mothers of murdered
youth and members of what was called the “Peace Warriors” group at the
Peace Institute at that time. (Four of the ministry leaders also were
survivors of child or sibling homicide while a fifth ministry leader had
experienced another form of traumatic loss of a friend, thus the ministry
itself was considered to be survivor-led at the time.) For the UUTRM case
study, I gathered data and interviews over the course of one year in 2011,
which included travel to the TVUUC for one immersion weekend of
interviews and observations as well.
Specifically of the five UU Trauma Response Ministry leaders
interviewed, four were direct founders of the UUTRM and all were
ordained as UU clergy. The five TVUUC leaders interviewed as survivors
included the minister, two former board presidents, a former church
administrator, and a former volunteer media coordinator, the latter four
being laity at the time of the shooting (though one would go on to become
clergy). Three were present in the sanctuary at the time of the shooting
10 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

while the minister and media coordinator arrived on site the same day in
the aftermath. The five institutional supporters at the time interviewed
included a former UUA president, a current UUA vice president, a former
UUA transitions director, and two current UUA district executives.25
Neither case study should be considered a complete case study of all
possible dimensions of a trauma ministry’s work in a community or with a
congregation. Instead, these case studies give glimpses only into the lives
of those particular individuals interviewed. These are their particular lived
experiences in their respective communities with practices that helped or
did not help in the aftermath of violent trauma. These included their self-
reports of the religious or spiritual dimensions of these practices and their
differences in cultural experiences with institutional power, as well as its
historical dimensions. Given disparities of race and class in social identities
among the study participants, the case studies also yielded opportunities
to explore interdisciplinary tools for the study of, and experiences with,
culture and power in lived religion. In sharing my findings from these
participants, I also share a larger hope for mutual creative and innovative
benefit to all academic disciplines drawn from for the case studies in their
encounters with each other. My hope is that such encounters witness to
the challenges and rewards of interdisciplinary exploratory talk and action
for a crucial social issue in our time—understanding and ameliorating
violent trauma and its impact. A beginning example of the possible lessons
from one such interdisciplinary encounter follows, with others spread
throughout this book.

Beginning Stories of Language and Visceral

Boundaries Between Disciplines
As a clinical social worker, urban minister, and later ethnographer, I
have been engaged in “border crossing” of one nature or another for
many decades. Engaging interdisciplinary work for social problems,
particularly for highly charged problems such as the impact of violent
trauma, entails crossing the lines of respective academic discipline
languages and narratives—in effect, the respective cultural worldviews
 1 Introduction 11

of the different disciplines. Cultural worldviews represent more than

surface differences in visible rituals and practices.26 Cultural worldviews
are constructed on lived experiences over time, lived experiences in
relationship to the world that are embodied, enlanguaged, and finite
in nature, including epistemologically.
Crossing such disciplinary lines of embodied and enlanguaged cultural
worldviews can provoke a range of visceral reactions, including explor-
atory openness, excitement, and curiosity—as well as confusion, anxiety,
or discomfort. Experiences of the latter can foster the creation of bound-
aries around particular phenomenon in a respective discipline’s capacity
to witness to or understand the phenomena through language, which can
be problematic for social issues that require multiple lens in approach for
effective problem-solving and amelioration. For example, public health
researchers who draw upon transdisciplinary approaches also report
experiencing this difficulty. Dr. Sarah Gehlert27 of the Washington
University Brown School of Social Work stated in an interview:

The hardest part of transdisciplinary work in general is that it literally

involves separate cultures . . . Disciplines are cultures, and they have their
own languages. My favorite example is a half-day meeting that just wasn’t
going well until we finally discovered that we each defined the term
sustainability in different ways. For neuroradiologists, sustainability means
two seconds, but for social scientists, it means months or years.

I also encountered examples of these translation challenges, particularly

between the humanities and the social sciences, in the course of interviews
for the studies illustrated in this book, as well as in the “Spirituality and
Social Work” course I have taught for several years on a graduate student
level with social workers—and in additional contexts beyond these two.
One particular example is the reaction of people trained solely in clinical
disciplines—whether as social workers, mental health counselors, or psy-
chiatrists—to the use of the word “prophet” in the title of my practical
theological dissertation research when they inquired about it. Associations
of this word by secularly trained clinicians have included a mentally
unstable or manic person, whether biblical or not, who hallucinates and
assumes that title, or a lack of any recognition of the word at all by
12 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

clinicians—as though it was completely from a foreign language, as indeed

it is in both respects. There is no association to a language of social justice,
or to challenging the power structures of a society, or to contemporary
images of someone such as Martin Luther King, Jr. for such secularly
trained clinicians, though this understanding and metaphoric imagery is
readily available to those trained in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theo-
logical and clerical traditions and language.
On the other hand, someone trained solely in the above religious
traditions might be surprised or shocked by such a secular association of
a clinician to the word “prophet.” The cultural worldviews and lived
experiences between such a clinician and a theologian or clergyperson
are radically different and not commensurate without further words of
translation. This entails introduction minimally to images with which
their respective different lived experiences in relation to the world might
be understood, drawing from the multivalent capacity of metaphors, a
point explored more deeply in the next chapter. Engaging in such
encounters and translations is the essence of trust building in cross-
disciplinary work, however, and such trust building manifests in and on
a plane of visceral reality.
This visceral plane lives in an academic discipline’s training in borders
and boundaries, borders and boundaries that limit what phenomena can
be seen or known and given language. For example, a mental health
counselor interviewed, who otherwise I knew to have worked closely
with the LDBPI, became very cautious in describing any material that
might hint of a religious nature in relation to the work of the Peace
Institute staff. She firmly stated, “I don’t think of their work as ministry,”
while she did spontaneously offer that there seemed to be “a component
of faith” in their work and “I certainly have heard references to prayer and
to God.” Since I was aware from my ethnographic immersion that the
core staff of the Peace Institute at that time were embedded deeply in their
respective lay Christian traditions and viewed their work as ministry, the
very firm desire of the mental health counselor to draw a clear boundary
between her work and their work in the mutual clients they served was
striking on a phenomenological basis: “I don’t refer people there . . .
because I think they are faith-based in the sense of religious affiliation
. . . I don’t know what they bring up in conversations about their own
 1 Introduction 13

views . . . I mean, I can tell you what we do here but I don’t know . . . what
they do.” Yet she did refer people to the Peace Institute and recognized,
supported, and praised their unique success with survivors in the after-
math of a family homicide. However, she did not delve into and preferred
not to reflect upon the religious dimensions of their work. Such boundary
drawing then loses human phenomenological data as possible experiential
truth that the religious dimensions of the Peace Institute’s work might
have a correlation to their cultural success with survivors from their
community.
This type of discomfort with, or even blindness to, the significance of
religious or spiritual material in the lives of clients by clinicians is not
uncommon in my personal experience as both a clinical supervisor and
social work educator in the US context. Some in public health are referring
to this academic blindness to religion as “the invisible social determinant,”
suggesting “religious literacy is a twenty-first-century skill.”28 Clinical
intakes rarely inquire about a client’s religious or spiritual beliefs or
practices, or do so only minimally, with few taking these experiences
seriously as rich material with which to engage positively for treatment
plans, the one exception often being clinical secular interest in mindful-
ness practices. Rarer still, in my experience, have I seen religious or
spiritual communities or leaders engaged by clinicians in the actual
treatment process for a client.
More often than not, a very strict and firm boundary is drawn around
this material by clinicians and their agencies, this despite the concern for
cultural competency across other dimensions of human experience. Yet
more is at stake than simple religious literacy. Our ability to build
authentic and empathic connections of relational trust as a foundation
for shared action is at stake. This entails being open in an embodied sense
to the lived experiences of different worldviews—and this sometimes is
risky for its transformative capacity of identity by all involved. This is a
risk that ethnographers, and the communities they come from or enter,
know only too well. To cross this particular divide between academic
disciplines, and the meaning-making phenomena studied by lived reli-
gion, means further training and opportunities for engagement—and
sitting with, learning from, and writing about the visceral reactions
generated.
14 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Engaging interdisciplinary work to study effective practices in the

aftermath of violent trauma means engaging fundamental assumptions
in our respective academic disciplines. It means being open not only to
learning language for different phenomena but also, on an experiential
level, to witnessing and allowing oneself to go through embodied reac-
tions to phenomena that may be significantly different from one’s lived
experiences in the world. Such cross-cultural engagement entails certain
risks of possible transformation in the process, including in one’s sense of
self and identity—risks that can prove fruitful and expansive or painful
and confusing. These risks are greatest when power differentials are at play
and a subdominant culture needs to learn the language of the dominant
culture in order to survive or thrive, sometimes losing entirely its own
language and lived experience of the phenomenon.29 How often do our
academic disciplines superimpose our own culturally dominant language
and mediated tools for research purposes, limiting thereby our fullest
capacity to understand a phenomenon on its own culturally understood
terms?
This means that power differentials in the actual act of crossing aca-
demic disciplines and engaging in shared research needs ethical attention.
The potential fruits of such interdisciplinary and cross-cultural engage-
ments can be an expanded pragmatic capacity for understanding the range
of possible meaning-making cultural practices, including spiritual or
religious practices, that assist in the aftermath of violent trauma. This
also can include a deepened respect for the uniqueness of context and
sensitivity for the effect of institutional power in that context. Perhaps in
doing so, we all may share more compassionately and empathically in
what different religious and spiritual traditions experience as “the some-
thing more” of meaning-making, as well as perseverance in the face of the
more tragic dimensions of human existence. In this sense, my larger hope
is for this book to speak not only to researchers of lived religion and
professional religious practitioners but also to any human service and
health practitioners, educators, or policy makers concerned to address
and ameliorate the impact of violent trauma as we work together toward a
world of human, ecological, and planetary well-being and flourishing.
 1 Introduction 15

Organization of the Book

Throughout this book, I engage in auto-ethnographic sharing, including
beginning each chapter with a personal vignette. In doing so, I situate
myself among those in ethnography who experiment with different forms
for writing ethnographic research and their lived experiences, including
fictional ethnography for some.30 My beginning chapter vignettes, which
are drawn from my lived experiences, function as an invitation for the
reader to enter imaginatively into a short story of cultural border crossings,
including the crossing of academic and professional cultural disciplines—
a story which could be their own story if they too carried the particular
social identities and lived experiences of myself or any of the people in
these stories. It is thus an invitation for each reader to enter into the
characters of the story from their own social locations as possible.
Through this technique, I hope to expand the interdisciplinary and
cross-cultural lived and felt imagination for just a few moments in perhaps
a more visceral and embodied way.
The second chapter focuses on challenges and possibilities in interdis-
ciplinary encounters with a more philosophical vein, including its impact
within lived religion studies. Attention is drawn specifically to the body,
language, and imagination in different respects, including their role in the
social construction of academic truth claims in the context of historical
structures of oppression. I seek to preserve the integrity of each discipline’s
own language by beginning to introduce the power of embodied meta-
phorical correlation, particularly for lived religion approaches to studying
trauma. This chapter is meant to be a more lighthearted and less formal,
with a somewhat provocative tone, broad stroke introduction to some key
debates that will appeal to those readers in need of such an orientation as
ground for my deeper work. The third chapter then moves into a thicker
introduction to and description of the two case studies, both historically
and programmatically and in their philosophical influences as trauma
ministries.
The fourth chapter explores more deeply a lived religion approach to
studying trauma, including a wide variety of new or additional interdis-
ciplinary tools and language based on their fit with my experiences of
16 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ethnographic immersion in the communities I studied and phenomeno-

logical interviews with the participants of the two case studies. I expand
here upon the embodied metaphorical correlational method I introduced
in the second chapter, and in my previous research, for engaging or
bridging interdisciplinary connections, continuing also to point toward
transdisciplinary possibilities. In doing so, I also propose an alternative
metaphor to “worldview,” that of “world/sense” as a more richly embod-
ied metaphor. Finally, I also explore the poetics of material meaning-
making in survivor practices as well as theories that assist in illuminating
issues of culture and power in survivor practices, bridging in the end back
to correlational possibilities for religious and spiritual language in trauma
studies.
The fifth and sixth chapters then draw out specific lessons learned from
each case study as these bore on attending to survivors as the experts of
their own experiences and language, as well as attending to the
intercultural encounters between the two different sociocultural contexts
as these highlighted the differential impact of culture and power on
respective communal meaning-making practices. Finally, the seventh
chapter revisits the vision of peace cultivated by each case study ministry
and includes sociological recommendations for next steps in light of the
lessons learned as well. These recommendations specifically are made for
clinical, pastoral, health, and human service care providers; secular and
religious educators; social and religious institutions; and theological and
religious scholarship. I then situate my work in further emerging inter-
disciplinary and intersectional connections based on this research. Finally,
I end with a queer postlude pointing back to where I began with my
prelude and introduction for this US context so troubled by its violent
past and increasingly violent present. I turn now to the second chapter.

Notes
1. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard R. Spivak, Murder Is No Acci-
dent: Understanding and Preventing Youth Violence in America (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 39. Also as reported in 2011 by the
CDC: “During 1991-2007, homicide was ranked as one of the top
 1 Introduction 17

four leading causes of death each year for persons aged 1-40 years
living in the United States. . . Homicide rates for males are estimated
to be approximately 3-4 times higher than that for females . . . In
addition, minority racial/ethnic children and young adults in the
United States are disproportionately affected by homicide.” Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, “Homicides—United States,
1999—2007,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Supplements,
60(01), (January 14, 2011): 67.
2. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/asa-uh5081815.php
(accessed September 3, 2015).
3. I consciously include the shooter and his mother as they are often
excluded in public reports of statistics.
4. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id¼10.1371/journal.
pmed.1001915 (accessed February 19, 2016).
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/30/un-police-brutality-
stand-your-ground_n_5740734.html (accessed February 20, 2016).
6. http://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/ (accessed February 16, 2016)
and https://medium.com/@patrissemariecullorsbrignac/we-didn-t-
start-a-movement-we-started-a-network-90f9b5717668#.noozv8enn
(accessed February 23, 2016). See also http://gawker.com/unarmed-
people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349 (accessed
May 7, 2016).
7. http://www.aapf.org/sayhername/ (accessed February 20, 2016).
8. http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/between-blacklivesmatter-palestine/
(accessed February 20, 2016); http://inthesetimes.com/article/
18505/palestinian-lives-matter-too-blm-activists-draw-international-
connections (accessed February 20, 2016); http://www.
huffingtonpost.com/tia-oso/shared-past-shared-future_b_6622270.
html (accessed February 20, 2016); and http://www.dailydot.com/
politics/black-lives-matter-queer-trans-issues/ (accessed February
20, 2016).
9. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-a-love/brown-lives-matter-
muslim_b_6757280.html (accessed February 22, 2016) and http://
www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32896-our-history-and-our-dreams-
building-black-and-native-solidarity (accessed February 16, 2016).
18 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

10. Language such as “stock story” and “concealed story,” as well as

“resistance story” and “emerging/transforming story,” comes from
the narrative work of critical race theorist Lee Anne Bell, Storytelling
for Racial Justice: Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist
Teaching (New York: Routledge, 2010).
11. Ibid.
12. For quoted phrase, see Heather Ann Thompson, “Inner-City Violence
in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” http://www.theatlantic.com/
national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-
incarceration/382154/ (accessed June 3, 2016). See also Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2014); Michael Omi and Howard Winant,
Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2014,
3rd edition); and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Revised Edition
(New York: The New Press, 2012).
13. http://www.theglobalist.com/the-land-of-the-free-and-the-home-of-
the-brave/ (accessed February 16, 2016). See also Jefferson Morley,
Snow-Storm in August: The Struggle for American Freedom and
Washington’s Race Riot of 1835 (New York: First Anchor
Books, 2013).
14. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/politics/donald-trump-south-
carolina-john-pershing/index.html?eref¼rss_politics (accessed February
20, 2016).
15. One significant pastoral care resource contribution, specifically for
congregations impacted by trauma, is Jill M. Hudson’s Congrega-
tional Trauma: Caring, Coping, & Learning (The Alban Institute,
1998). Another resource of note for congregational impact in the
aftermath of clergy misconduct, including traumatic impact, is Beth
Ann Gaede, ed., When a Congregation is Betrayed: Responding to Clergy
Misconduct (The Alban Institute, 2006).
16. For a few examples of lived religion studies from diverse methodolo-
gies, see the works of David D. Hall, ed. Lived Religion in America:
Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997); Robert A. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious
 1 Introduction 19

Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005); Nancy T. Ammerman, ed., Every-
day Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2007); Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and
Practice in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008);
and R.Ruard Ganzevoort, “Forks in the Road when Tracing the
Sacred: Practical Theology as Hermeneutics of Lived Religion” (Pres-
idential Address to the Ninth Conference of the International Asso-
ciation of Practical Theology, Chicago, 2009).
17. The holistic and ecological approach emphasized in the field of social
work is taking root within public health through the emphasis on a
need for transdisciplinary approaches to major public health concerns.
See Debra Haire-Joshu and Timothy D. McBride, editors, Transdis-
ciplinary Public Health: Research, Education, and Practice (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013). Transdisciplinary research also is seen
as a means for fostering a deeper level of social justice. See Patricia
Leavy, Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research: Using Problem-Centered
Methodologies (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2011).
18. I use the term “para-ecclesial communities” to denote intentional
gatherings of groups of people, whether lay or ordained, who are
shaped by faith perspectives, but who may not choose to call them-
selves a “church” and/or who function outside the boundaries of any
formal denomination or across denominations or religious faith
groups. Ecclesial in this sense also is broadened to any formal religious
community beyond the Christian tradition.
19. See the main website of the LDBPI at http://www.ldbpeaceinstitute.
org (accessed November 29, 2013) and the main website of the
UUTRM at http://www.traumaministry.org (accessed November
29, 2013).
20. For a complete examination of these two case studies, see Michelle
A. Walsh, “Prophetic Pastoral Care in the Aftermath of Trauma:
Forging a Constructive Practical Theology of Organized Trauma
Response Ministries” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2014, ProQuest
AAT 3610856).
20 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

21. In the particular case of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, it

continues to be important to note that I approached my relationship
with the Peace Institute from the perspective of being a survivor of my
goddaughter’s nephew’s murder and as having utilized their services
initially with my goddaughter’s family at the time of his murder in
September of 2006—as well as having led a youth ministry that
suffered from several homicides. I also was involved in an ethno-
graphic immersion as a volunteer prior to the beginning of formal
research, providing some assistance with the formation of the Peace
Institute’s interfaith committee, as well as providing volunteer super-
vision for two master’s level social work interns over a nine-month
period in 2009–2010. In the case of the UU Trauma Response
Ministry, it should continue to be noted that I am an ordained UU
minister and hence have some natural immersion in and knowledge of
UU communities, though my prior interactions with each person
interviewed had been minimal to nonexistent. As I found during my
pilot studies, it also was impossible to completely separate the role of
researcher from my role of minister when I engaged participants in
questions that at times provoked painful memories and tears or anger.
This was a struggle for both case studies, regardless of the level of my
involvement. As Mary Clark Moschella has noted, pastoral care and
ethnographic research can be intertwined for the minister of a con-
gregation, and I found the same was true for myself as a participant-
observer engaging in research on trauma. See her text Ethnography as a
Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2008).
See also Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography, 2nd Edition (Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2015), particularly her discussion
of “embodiment” and “emplacement” for ethnographers, 27–28.
22. See http://www.uua.org/giving/awardsscholarships/presidentsannual/
31417.shtml (accessed September 13, 2015).
23. Beyond the fact that the original case study did not seek to be a full
congregational study of the TVUUC, there also was another congre-
gation impacted by the shooting that morning to which the UUTRM
responded, and this posed an additional limitation for the breadth of
capacity for this particular study. I was unaware that the Westside UU
 1 Introduction 21

church also had one congregant killed and several injured who were in
attendance that morning. In some ways, this particular case study
replicated the heartfelt neglect experienced by the Westside congre-
gation, by TVUUC leader reports, of attention to their losses as well
as their struggles in the aftermath. For this replication, I am particu-
larly regretful that the economic limitations and study restrictions did
not permit an expansion to include Westside at the time that this
became known to me upon my site visit to Knoxville. It is hoped that
future researchers will correct this neglect and also expand congrega-
tional studies of these particular congregations.
24. Michael Quinn Patton, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods,
3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002), 247–248.
25. A transitions director assists with ministerial placements and transi-
tions, while a district executive is an employee of the UUA who
manages congregational support in one of multiple national district
or regional offices.
26. In my use and understanding of “cultural worldview,” I am indebted
to the grassroots work and training of indigenous activist Robette
Dias and the work of Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training
http://crossroadsantiracism.org (accessed March 2, 2016). In
Chap. 4, I begin to suggest and develop alternative language to
“worldview,” that of “world/sense.”
27. Judy H. Watts, “Building a New Paradigm: Transdisciplinary
Research Comes to the Forefront.” Social Impact, Fall 2009,
16 (Brown School of Social Work, Washington University,
St. Louis, MO). I thank a social work colleague, Betty J. Ruth, for
initially calling my attention to the significance of the transdisciplin-
ary approach in public health through this particular article.
28. Ellen L. Idler, ed., Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
29. One of the most painful examples of this I have witnessed is the loss
by indigenous cultures of their languages, symbolized most poi-
gnantly in a documentary where Windy Boy recounts, with trauma-
induced embodied flashbacks visually recorded, how his abuse in
Indian boarding schools caused him to lose his native tongue so
22 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

that he could no longer talk to his spirits because “Our Spirits Don’t
Speak English.” The documentary is available through http://www.
richheape.com/boarding-school.htm (accessed March 12, 2016).
For a fascinating example of an indigenous group’s reclamation of
their language and spiritual experience, see the documentary of the
Wampanoag people of Cape Cod, MA, USA here http://www.
makepeaceproductions.com/wampfilm.html (accessed March
12, 2016).
30. See Caroline B. Brettell, Anthropological Conversations: Talking Cul-
ture Across Disciplines (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015),
chapter three in particular.
 2
Challenges and Possibilities
in Interdisciplinary Encounters

Tales from Cross-Cultural Encounters Between

Academic Disciplines
In the sense that as we grow older, we may come to see that our lives are
like different chapters from a book—once upon a time, I was a US clinical
social worker trained in assessment for violent trauma and sexual abuse,
and I also went to seminary after ten years in the field of urban social work
and lay community ministry. I wanted to be ordained as a Unitarian
Universalist (UU) clergyperson and was quite comfortable with my Bud-
dhist mindfulness practices, as many clinical social workers are in their
secular trainings. I found my Buddhist practices enormously and person-
ally helpful to me for processing and living compassionately with my
ongoing exposure to violent trauma, in both my professional clinical work
and my lay ministry with urban youth. Indeed, my first exposure to
Buddhist practices came on a spirituality retreat sponsored by my school
of social work—the timing of which followed an experience of listening to
an urban mother describe the violence that occurred regularly on her
street—and the felt experience of breathing pain in and breathing com-
passion out was powerful for me at the time.

© The Author(s) 2017 23

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_2
24 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

The vast majority of seminaries were Christian in orientation and

structure, however, including those nearest to my home. I was rather
unfamiliar with the historical Christian tradition, and certainly had never
read the bible in any great detail. I discovered that I needed to take at least
four classes in the bible while in my Christian seminary, two in the
Hebrew Scriptures and two in the New Testament—and I found it
helpful to know that scholars at this seminary respected the Hebrew
Scriptures on their own cultural terms rather than calling them “the
Old Testament,” as I understood them to be called in the larger US
dominant popular culture.
I was eager to learn historical approaches to understanding the bible
and its formation and found it very interesting overall. At orientation, one
of the associate deans stressed that seminary could be an anxiety-
provoking process of losing one’s faith. The associate dean made a light-
hearted analogy to temporarily “losing one’s mittens,” but not to worry,
that each of the students would “find your mittens again before you
finish.” Since my faith tradition was open to many spiritual paths,
including the social sciences as tools of revelation, I could not quite relate
to this concern and lacked empathic grounding for it. However, I indeed
witnessed some students becoming quite distressed in my first semester as
they were exposed to this historical approach to the bible, including a
young person who ended up dropping out that first semester when she
experienced shock that Moses actually did not write Exodus in the bible,
among other things.
As a clinician with some background in cognitive developmental psy-
chology, I realized the enormity of what was happening for these students
in the cross-cultural encounter between their living religious traditions
and an academic discipline’s tool for historical analysis of the bible. I
began to read these particular students as experiencing a form of psychic
trauma to their cultural worldviews under the pressure also of meeting
academic standards. Their inner tools for translating their lived experi-
ences within the power structure of the academy could not bridge the gap,
and at least some “mittens” were temporarily, if not permanently, lost in
the process, unable to be held fully for the finding in compassionate
community between students, staff, and faculty.
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 25

In my second semester of seminary, I decided to take a course in the

anthropology of religion, as well as my second Hebrew Scriptures course
in the biblical text Ezekiel. I found myself marveling at how alien this text
was to me in the bizarreness of the imagery and story, and I grappled with
finding an inner tool to help me understand the text. As I did so, I found
myself drawn to thinking about the lived experiences of the people from
whom the writer Ezekiel came and their endurance of the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile as a form of cultural trauma. I began
reading and relating to essayists who drew from anthropology and psy-
chology to understand the text of Ezekiel. As a therapist, I imagined the
horrific lived experiences of a people exposed to violent trauma and how
the writer of Ezekiel might be engaging in these extraordinary images to
express the aftermath of this living reality and the impact of it on the
connection of his people to their God.
As I initially began to explain in a midterm and a book review my
reactions to the text drawing me in as a reader through this empathic and
embodied form of imaginative meaning-making, my professor in turn
struggled to understand what I, as her student, was saying—pointing out
that there was no evidence in the textual language itself for some of these
reactions. Gradually, both the professor and I came to realize that the
cultural worldviews and practices of academic disciplines were being
crossed, that together we were no longer in an area solely of textual and
literary criticism. For this “social work clinician forming as clergy,”
reading with the lens of trauma called forth an embodied hermeneutic
of the text attached to the lived experiences of a people, and this required a
deep and empathic imagination for their particular historical and cultural
experiences, including as lived through their bodies.

The Philosophical Significance of Lived Religion

for Studies of Violent Trauma
Often I am asked by those in nonacademic contexts, including cross-
disciplinary professional contexts, something along the lines of, “What the
heck is lived religion and why should I care?” In highly simplified terms
26 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

that some will contest, I define “lived religion” as a field of study of the
beliefs and imaginative, embodied, and material practices of sacred
meaning-making, whether these are of formal religion or in popular folk
religious or secular spiritual form. On a personal level for some of us
academic types, consciously seeking out opportunities for living encounter
with these differences in meaning-making can be a form of religious or
spiritual practice in and of itself, transformative and contributing to our
own constant sense of sacred meaning-making in and of the world.1
However, when cross-cultural encounters of difference in the context of
power relations sometime lead to violent rather than sacred ends, as the
people of Ezekiel’s time found, as well as so many people of our time find,
an ethical and sociological mandate begins to arise for each of us to pay
attention to lived religion studies of violent trauma, culture, and power.
Such seeking out and paying attention goes beyond reading a religious or
spiritual text, however, and begins to embrace other tools in lived religion
studies, such as phenomenological and ethnographic interviews and direct
experiences with what a person/people consider as sacred. What is termed
“hermeneutics,” or a method of textual interpretation in religion, including
of a religion’s source documents or traditions, cannot be separated from
meaning-making through the culturally embodied and enlanguaged partic-
ular person/people that shape that text and the tradition. An early effort to
recognize this was made by a pastoral theologian named Anton Boisen, who
argued that human beings are “living human documents.”2 It is significant
that Boisen had to bridge metaphorically “living human” beings even with
the language of “documents,” the dominant Protestant academic worldview
for understanding religion at the time. It prompts me to ask from where the
drive comes to strip the living body on its own terms from our understand-
ing of religion? Hermeneutics as a method cannot be separated from the
impact of power relations embedded in that person/people’s historical,
cultural, embodied, emplaced, and material communal life—including in
our use of particular academic disciplinary lens. This especially is true for
the study of violent trauma.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a leading international researcher in trauma,
studies human beings impacted by different forms of trauma, including
war violence. He has discovered that trauma constrains human imagina-
tion and results in a worldview shaped by the lingering embodied impact
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 27

of trauma on the body’s capacity to feel fully alive, a core underpinning to

meaning-making through imagination and language. Van der Kolk writes,
“Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives . . . Without
imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no
place to go, no goal to reach.”3 When the body is impacted, individuals
and communities can become caught in cycles of expecting further trauma
and seeing the world through a more limited vision and range of possi-
bilities for action. Creative and flexible connections and responses can be
muted, dampened, or lost entirely. Yet it also is the case, under certain
circumstances, that human creativity in the aftermath of trauma can thrive
and grow in unexpected and unique ways. Studies drawing from lived
religion interdisciplinary approaches can aid in documenting these cir-
cumstances. Given the magnitude of violence through action and speech
in our larger world, this uniquely positions lived religion studies of violent
trauma to make significant contributions to understanding human resil-
iency through religious or spiritual meaning-making practices. It can do so
by drawing different disciplines into relationship for the ethical purpose of
studying embodied and material practices of imagination that address and
ameliorate violence at its contextual roots. This book seeks to make one
contribution to these efforts by highlighting the strengths, resiliencies,
and creativity of practices, including practices of resistance and transfor-
mation, in two culturally and socioeconomically diverse communities
affected by ongoing and/or sudden violent trauma.

Between Body, Philosophy, Theology,

and Experiences of Worlds
Culture and power in the academy have a lot to do with how the academy
is structured in relating to and talking about particular bodies that are
impacted, or subject to being impacted, by violent trauma. The ongoing
and unaddressed historical legacies of colonialism and slavery in our
contemporary shared world also shape, through various power structures,
who has access even to talk or write about this impact—who has the
ability to share their concealed stories to a larger public. Through this
28 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

book, I have been granted privilege to convey aspects of my own lived

experiences and story and the lived experiences and stories of those I
interviewed. There is an ethical mandate also to consider the meaning of
who has access to tell their story and who does not, as well as the reasons
why this is the case.
For example, postmodern philosophy and theology both have made a
turn toward highlighting the significance of the body and material life in
the past two decades, including the embodiment of the mind and influ-
ence of embodied experiences in shaping language and other expressive
modalities of meaning-making. Both of these disciplines, philosophy and
theology, also provide a larger context for some of the tensions experi-
enced within lived religion studies and between academic disciplines
today, tensions that sometimes constrain developing the fullest possibilities
for lived religion to contribute to studies of violent trauma. Philosopher
Mark Johnson has written, “Without imagination, nothing in the world
could be meaningful. Without imagination, we could never make sense of
our experience. Without imagination, we could never reason toward
knowledge of reality.”4 Imagination itself is embodied, Johnson goes on
to argue, as imagination comes from the “novel connections that arise out
of our experience . . . Creativity occurs at all levels of our experiential
organization.”5 In partnership with linguist George Lakoff, Johnson has
argued that the discovery of metaphoric connections, rooted in bodily
experiences, is the source of both ordinary daily creativity and extraordi-
nary creativity—it is the ongoing creative movement of “philosophy in the
flesh.”6
Within postmodern theology, some also have noted the human capac-
ity for language and textuality as a common denominator enabling human
community and meaning-making. R. Ruard Ganzevoort, a Protestant
practical theologian, finds value in describing practical theology as “her-
meneutics of lived religion.” In defining hermeneutics, Ganzevoort
deemphasizes “the classic focus on the relation between the text and
reader,” preferring to describe it more broadly as a narrative “approach
that stresses the process of human interpretation” with all due respect for
the “intrinsic normativity” of each religion studied on its own terms.7
According to Ganzevoort, lived religion as hermeneutics thus entails
“attending to the most fundamental processes of interpreting life through
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 29

endless conversations in which we construct meaning.”8 Yet as Catholic

theologian Michael J. Scanlon9 ironically noted a few years earlier:

conversation requires tongues, and tongues come with bodies . . . Through

the emphasis on the linguisticality of human existence the human body is
rediscovered as a basic symbol . . . Body is the basic human sacrament
through which the human person effects itself in freedom in interdependence
with the embodied selves of other human beings in their common commerce
with the material world.

Bodies constrained in freedom, however, by trauma or structural forces

of oppression have tongues that often are sensitive to the creative expres-
sive struggle for language in the aftermath, as literary scholar Elaine Scarry
documents in her studies of pain, war, torture, and meaning-making.10
Perhaps this also is why I find a deeper awareness of the body in the
writings, or other corporeal/material performative expressions, of those
who are colonized, raced, gendered, disabled, sexual, or religious survivors
of violent abuse, as well as those who live with the embodied knowledge of
their ever-present capacity to be such survivors. Long before Lakoff and
Johnson, two white males in the US context, wrote the words “philosophy
in the flesh,” a radical collective of women of color organized a section of
their writings with the words “theory in the flesh.”11 “Bodies” is the first
category listed in the “Lexicon of Debates” for a textbook reader covering
centuries of development of feminist theory across disciplines and cul-
tures, and it has remained so through four editions.12 While not drawn
out as a category for special focus except in two essays, “the body” is a
substantial category of index across many essays in a recent volume on
feminist theology and globalization as well.13
While Christian practical pastoral and public theologians continue
to elaborate on the metaphor of “living human documents”14 within a
“living human web,”15 the sensorial and visceral concreteness of “the
body” more often goes missing as a specific and separate category of
reference or metaphorical exploration, with further implications for
assuming white normativity in power and culture in relation to the
body.16 Kelly Brown Douglas, a Protestant womanist black scholar of
religion, is among those calling contemporary attention to the body,
30 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

sexuality, and race. She points particularly to the philosophical legacy of

mind/body dualism, with a denigration of the body left by Christianity’s
exposure to Greek Hellenistic philosophical influences, that was then
carried forward as a justification for transnational and US slavery.17
M. Shawn Copeland, an African American Catholic theologian, argues,
“The body provokes theology,” recognizing that freedom is always
“enfleshed.”18 Thandeka, an African American UU minister and scholar,
influenced by the psychoanalytic intersubjectivity tradition, also points to
the theological turn to the body as “the magisterium of human knowledge”
for common mystical experiences and enlivenment of worship and other
practices of ecclesial coherence across diversity, a type of “neurotheology”
she terms “affect theology,”19 drawing on Schleiermacher’s work in the
creation of this term.
Human beings thus are embodied and enfleshed, enlanguaged and
encultured, emplaced 20 and embedded in spatial, material, historical,
and geographic power relations, and also en-neuroned and enhormoned
when we add that the mind is enfleshed physiologically in a particular
brain impacted by all of these life experiences, including trauma. Yet for
all of this turn to the living body in both philosophy and theology, it
remains important not to reduce the complexity of human lived experi-
ence to the body and its visceral realities alone, sometimes a danger in
purely an affect theology or neurological approach and a risk factor in
interdisciplinary explorations, on which I will say more in Chap. 4.21
Likewise, there is a similar danger in attending to textuality, narrative, and
story without acknowledging and representing (not necessarily through
the spoken word alone) the underpinning of a full range of embodied
sources of experience. As meaning-making creatures, our worlds come
alive or die to us through our embodied relational connections to other
human beings and through our embodied and material expressive prac-
tices. Such practices are inclusive of art and of our storytelling bonds of
communal heritage over time as well as the lived realities of our experi-
ences under power structures of privilege or oppression.
A recent living and poignant example of this embodied narrative
meaning-making in the face of such centuries of violent oppression, and
current US police violence against black men, is Ta-Nehisi Coates’
expressive letter as an American black male father to his son. In a spiritual
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 31

practice of resistance worthy of the notice of lived religion studies of

violent trauma, and despite Coates’ own explicit disavowal of religious
belief or practice in the letter, he writes:

There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment.

The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country,
correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. It is hard to face this. But all
our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling,
white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a
visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle,
extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from
this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the eco-
nomics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence,
upon the body ....22

This was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go
free . . . What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this
is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must
find some way to live within all of it . . . The greatest reward of this constant
interrogation, of confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it
has freed me from ghosts and girded me against the sheer terror of
disembodiment.23

In these two short passages, Coates simultaneously rejects metaphors

that mute and disembody the lived reality of racial oppression on the
black body, while also imparting his living practice of meaning-making
in the aftermath to his teenage son. I consciously call this public
performance of a letter in writing to his son both a spiritual practice
and a work of art and claim it as a phenomenon worth of study in lived
religion interdisciplinary explorations of violent trauma, culture, and
power. I also argue that there are a vast range of other stories worthy of
lived religion studies that have yet to be told or may never be told simply
because these particular storytellers lack power and access to a mediator
and an audience—or because their stories and lives are not deemed
worthy or are actively repressed as dangerous by those in power or
with power to do so.
32 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

For example, without explicit textual or ideological references to formal

religious practices and doctrines, some might challenge that this act of
meaning-making by Coates as an avowed atheist falls under lived religion
and thus exclude it from interdisciplinary consideration or focus. Part of
this stems from an “unfortunate family quarrel”24 that has developed and
existed for centuries in the dominant Western philosophical and theolog-
ical tradition, with its consequent legacy of colonialism and slavery, that
originates in the very mind/body dualism to which Kelly Brown Douglas
points. This has resulted in gaping chasms between the academic guilds
and the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, science, social sci-
ences, as well as the humanities overall—and more importantly to my
ethical sensibilities, between the aforementioned and the “common”
people. Finding shared ground for conversation and embodied experi-
ences of encounter in border crossing these chasms is challenging, to say
the least, yet ethically necessary in our contemporary shared world at risk
and on the brink from the impact of significant trauma, let alone the
hovering catastrophe that is climate change.

The Tragic Impact of a Centuries-Long

“Unfortunate Family Quarrel”
An example of this tension within lived religion itself is the struggle to
defend spiritual practices of popular culture as an object of study, which
bears on the case studies of this particular book. Depending on the
cultural context, some people might find it odd that a practical theologian
would need to construct an argument that gardening is a spiritual practice
worthy of study within lived religion. For example, a “spiritual but not
religious” (SBNR) person in the US cultural context might take it for
granted that gardening can be a spiritual practice—certainly students in
my “Spirituality and Social Work” course have never questioned that
automatic assumption, though they have certainly experienced visceral
discomfort with, and a tendency to reject, other cross-cultural spiritual or
religious practices.
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 33

Yet this is the dilemma R. Ruard Ganzevoort needs to address for a

cross-cultural international academic audience.25 To do so, Ganzevoort
must transcend the academic limitations imposed by a definition of
religion often restricted in the international context to formal authorized
institutional practice and doctrinal Christian narrative. His goal is to
broaden an international understanding of religion, rather than abandon
it to a dichotomy fostered by the SBNR movement.26 In doing so, he
finds common ground with the work of a US scholar and sociologist of
lived religion, Nancy Ammerman, who studies the everyday religious and
spiritual practices and finds significance to “sacred stories” held by “spir-
itual tribes” that go beyond narrower understandings of definitions in
religious studies.27 I share common ground with both Ammerman and
Ganzevoort in a larger ethical commitment to lifting up the voice and
stories of those some dismiss as bearing normative weight in religious
studies. I also share some common ground with the work of Jeff Astley in
his empirical lived religion studies as well, though his metaphoric turn to a
language of “ordinary theology” is complicated by embracing a philo-
sophical and hierarchical divide I explicitly do not.28
In many ways, I see this divide as representative of the classic mind/
body dualism in the Western tradition, with mind, reason, cognition/
narrative, and science being given more political and institutional status or
weight than that which is associated with the body, affect, or nature,
which also can include the feminine, as anthropologist Sherry Ortner long
ago noted.29 In truth, as I tell my sometimes secular social work students,
the very language of “spirit” and “spirituality” comes from a lengthy
heritage in the Jewish and Christian traditions. There is no escape from
culturally embodied and enlanguaged communal heritage, even if terms
change over time in metaphoric meaning to express shifting cultural
worldviews. The definition Ganzevoort constructs is, in essence, more
spiritual and relational, expanding the realm of meaning-making and
sense of the sacred studied to practices that fall outside of those recognized
within formal religion: “we propose to define religion as the transcending
patterns of action and meaning, emerging from and contributing to the
relation with the sacred. This definition accepts that there can be a variety
of what counts as sacred in the lives of people, from institutionalized
traditions to idiosyncratic experiences.”30
34 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

“This clinician formed as social justice minister” finds the energy

expended on such debates a bit distracting, given the ethical weight of
societal challenges, yet also strives to enter empathically into the academic
culture of intellectual debate. The Hebrew scriptural tale of Ezekiel
remains my back pocket biblical story of human wisdom for interdisci-
plinary reflection. God asks Ezekiel (37:1–14), “O, mortal, can these
bones live again?” as they look together over the valley of the dry bones,
a visually traumatic scene of great carnage and long dead slain. Reflecting
on the analogy to trauma studies, “this clinician formed as minister,
shaping as academic” asks if or when the study of lived religion can live
in all of its popular and formal embodied fullness without need of ongoing
defense, even intellectual war between academic positions? Paralleling the
slow and painstaking process of Ezekiel’s God making the “vast multi-
tude” of dead come to life, sinew by sinew, can interdisciplinary explora-
tions enflesh and embody the breath of spirit, the breath of life, into the
life bones of lived religion studies through the lens of trauma for both
their experientially transcendent and immanent dimensions and expres-
sions? Historical culture and power relations between the academic disci-
plines become an additional sociological factor, if not societal challenge, to
address in doing so.
Sociologist Randall Collins writes, “Conflict over attention space is a
fundamental social fact about intellectuals. It follows that intellectuals
produce multiple competing views of reality. And this disagreement will
go on in the future, as long as intellectual networks exist.”31 Having access
to “attention space” is a factor of relational access to institutional power,
however. Ever broadening access can have the paradoxical impact of
democratizing attention space for ideas and practices as well as consoli-
dating fiefdoms or citadels of truth claims that then struggle to be in
relationship with one another, let alone cooperate on a substantial societal
problem for our time such as violent trauma. This has been the long and
glorious path of humanity since we emerged from local agrarian villages
and societies into the complex governmental, religious, economic, educa-
tional, and media-driven interdependent networks of today.
Like some divided human families, we may protect our fiefdoms,
citadels, and academic guild territories with claims to higher status—
and have access to power to do so—but it does not mean we are any
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 35

less dependent on one another for our survival, nor that we are unaffected
when we shut ourselves off to the fullest possibilities and dimensions of
the human experience. As Archie Smith, Jr., an African American clinical
and pastoral psychologist writes, “You cannot lead where you have not
been,”32 and we cannot lead together in addressing shared societal chal-
lenges, such as violent trauma or climate change, if we have not been able
to enter into each other’s disciplinary cultural worldviews, lived experi-
ences, and language for common ethical cause. As any experienced ther-
apist knows, however, sometimes in crisis lies new opportunities and
motivation for change. The magnitude of the impact of the societal
challenge of violent trauma is one such contemporary crisis—and perhaps
the one pressing most deeply in on humanity as a motivator finally to
work through our divides and conflicts will be the looming of climate
change and its potential for traumatic impact.
In contemplation, this “clinician now formed as social justice minister
and forming as academic” also might see human metaphoric wisdom for
our interdisciplinary explorations through the Hebrew biblical story and
images of the building of the Tower of Babel and the later Christian story
of the coming of Pentecost. In the former (Genesis 11:1–9), God sees that
the people “had the same language and the same word” as they worked to
build a glorious tower together. Concerned that “then nothing that they
may propose to do will be out of their reach,” God decides to “confound
their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s
speech,” scattering them then all “over the face of the whole earth” so
that they could no longer build their tower to the sky, a vain project
indeed. In the latter Christian story (Acts 2:1–4), the Spirit of God
descends from heaven on the gathered community. “Divided tongues,
as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All
of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other
languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” In this story, it is interesting to
realize that the people are not restored to one language but learn to speak
in the language of others as given the ability. Perhaps this is the crux of the
matter for interdisciplinary studies as well, pointing also toward the
eventual possibility of richer transdisciplinary studies.
36 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

A Brief Note on Social Construction, Sociological

Realism, Truth Claims, and Power
Interestingly, sociologist Randall Collins also will say, “Truths do not arise
in isolated brains or disembodied minds . . . Thought is always linked in a
flow of verbal gesture from human body to body, among mutually focused
nervous systems, reverberating with shared rhythms of attention . . . Truth
arises in social networks; it could not possibly arise anywhere else.”33 I find
usefulness in partnering Collins’ work with that of Mark Johnson in
pointing to fruitful ways to solve the dichotomies that pit suggested relativ-
ism from socially constructed truth claims against what Johnson terms
illusory “Objectivism” from “God’s Eye” when risking interdisciplinary
conversations or encounters. To have any type of knowledge requires form
for that knowledge, which for Johnson means embodied form, or “embod-
ied understanding,” through the human body, which is “real” knowledge—
our realism in this sense is a form of “internal realism.”34 This is the
immanent rather than the transcendent dimension of truth claims, which
can become transcendent in community. Through structures of imagination
and metaphoric play derived from bodily experiences, we come to create
shared understandings of what is real. Johnson writes:

Truth-as-correspondence is still a workable notion only if it is not under-

stood in the Objectivist fashion, as requiring a God’s-Eye-View of an
external relation between words and the world . . . we can see the world
through shared, public eyes that are given to us by our embodiment, our
history, our culture, our language, our institutions, etc. . . . Thus we can still
preserve a notion of truth-as-correspondence, as long as it is contextually
situated.35

Yet the key issue here is that truth as contextually situated must be
considered in relationship to sociological structures of power, as Collins
would recognize:

The social constructivist theory of intellectual life, far from being anti-
realist, gives us an abundance of realities. Social networks exist; so do
their material bases, the churches and schools and the audiences and patrons
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 37

who have fed and clothed them; so do the economic, political, and geopo-
litical processes which constituted the outer sphere of causality. These
successive layers of contest for the minds of philosophers display no sharp
borders. There is no criterion for arbitrarily stopping, for declaring that “I
concede that social reality exists; but the world of material nature does not.”
It is all of a piece, all on the continuum in media res.36

And, of course, long before two white males were enabled to make
these valuable claims known in print and offer them for the essential
philosophical and sociological truths that they are to a larger public,
people living under circumstances of significantly less privilege or direct
oppression also were living the reality of their truths in embodied and
material meaning-making contexts with less institutional access to “atten-
tion space,” if any at all. They are known by different names in the
academy—such as the marginalized, the oppressed, the colonized, or the
subaltern—yet less often by the names they would claim for themselves.
Even less often do they have access in direct cross-cultural personal
encounter to an equal playing field of power, with mutuality of influence
and transformation in cultural worldviews at stake for possibilities in the
aftermath through living encounters with these differences.

The Interdisciplinary Context of Lived Religion

Studies of Violent Trauma
Hans-Günter Heimbrock, a process theology-oriented practical theolo-
gian, consistently has argued that current practical theology methodolo-
gies need to be expanded to capture the full range of possible
phenomenology in lived religion, that there is a need to develop additional
conceptual tools for the analysis of “lived experience.”37 By implication,
this includes the varieties of lived experience of violent trauma and its
aftermath. In his essay, “Reconstructing Lived Religion,” Heimbrock
issues a call “to design concrete methods appropriate to the particular
phenomenon”38 to be studied, including phenomena “which at first
glance are not labeled religious in a traditional sense.”39 Heimbrock’s
intent, similar to Ganzevoort’s, is to enlarge empirical research and the
38 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ability to reconstruct lived religion in connection to formal religion as well

as to popular culture, inclusive of material culture, while also understand-
ing that this is an “approach [to] that which can never be reached
completely.”40 It is only “a finger pointing” to that which is larger and
beyond complete capture by words alone, the “something more” of lived
experience. “Theology . . . claims truth . . . in metaphoric and poetic descrip-
tion of reality,” he writes (emphasis added).41
In connecting theology—or the religious or spiritual truth claims of
different communities—to metaphor and poetry, Heimbrock implicitly is
emphasizing the mediating, as well as playful and creative, role of lan-
guage, narrative, and story in conveying lived experiences of “truth” or
“reality” for the reconstruction of lived religious studies. Crossing disci-
plines into psychology, Ryan Lamothe, a psychoanalytic pastoral coun-
selor writes, “bodily aliveness is visceral validation,”42 and trauma
psychiatrist, Bessel van der Kolk writes, albeit in a noninclusive gendered
fashion, on the work of Donald Winnicott and attunement, “The way a
mother holds her child underlies ‘the ability to feel the body as the place
where the psyche lives.’ This visceral and kinesthetic sensation of how our
bodies are met lays the foundation for what we experience as ‘real.’”43
Between these respective disciplines, a theologian’s emphasis on lived
experience and metaphor in communally shared stories of transcendence
and psychology’s emphasis on the visceral of the body in expressing or
making stories come alive in their immanence, I see interdisciplinary
connections to previous discussions from philosophical and sociological
perspectives. What is experienced as “true” or “real” is connected holisti-
cally to both narrative and the body—to transcendence and to imma-
nence. When trauma severs this connection, including through the
interruption of structures of power and oppression, the result can be a
“less than real” state of being—the essence of disassociation. Lived religion
studies can contribute to understanding practices that bring people and
communities back to a state of vitality and sense of “realness” again.
Crossing disciplines once again, a sociologist and anthropologist of
religion, Meredith B. McGuire,44 also argues for the linkages between
lived religion, popular practices, and the storytelling nature of human
beings across cultures. Embracing openness to the varieties of human
meaning-making as a practical theologian or social science researcher
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 39

entails a need to study practices beyond institutionally authorized forms of

religions:

Lived religion is constituted by the practices by which people remember,

share, enact, adapt, and create the “stories out of which they live.” And it is
constituted through the practices by which people turn these “stories” into
everyday action. Ordinary material existence—especially the human
body—is the very stuff of these meaningful practices . . . Understanding
religions-as-lived requires, then, that we take seriously the full range of
human religious practice, not only as we find it in religious institutions
but equally as we find it in everyday embodied practices.45

This type of storied, embodied, and material interdisciplinary “lived

religion” approach again is uniquely suited to the study of trauma’s
disruptive bodily impact and survivor practices of meaning-making in
its aftermath.46 This includes their language for and personal narratives of
those spiritual practices they find effective for their own healing and
empowerment—their particular language for their particular lived bodily
experiences as truth claims of their experience of reality. Therefore, if
survivors claim that “God’s spirit,” or the divine or sacred as named by
different religious, spiritual, social, or cultural communities, is assumed to
move through, or be present in, material reality and human embodied
existence, then both materiality and human experience are important
normative theological and social scientific empirical sources of witness
to the divine or sacred in human experience. Such sources need to be
attended to through practical theological and social scientific research,
with the results of such research providing the capacity to “speak back” to
existing normative theoretical constructions, including religious or theo-
logical ones, as well as to the religious or human service theories and
practices of different social and cultural communities, inclusive of aca-
demic disciplines. This is the inherent power and significance of lived
religion studies, particularly for the study of sociological challenges such as
violent trauma.
Lived religion methodologies thus have a capacity to support liberative
and decolonizing47 goals in social science and practical theological
research by testing, challenging, expanding, and reconstructing theories
40 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

and theologies of trauma, as well as religious and human service theories of

and practices for trauma. This capacity is fulfilled when normativity is tied
to accountable relationship with the actual embodied and material prac-
tices, language, and narratives used by survivors—honoring their lived
experiences and wisdom as “primary theologians,”48 beyond “ordinary
theology” in theological or religious studies terms, or as “survivor as
experts” in sociological terms as well, in the words of interviewees from
the Peace Institute case study. This is inclusive of studying survivors from
different communal and demographic contexts and their popular religious
or spiritual practices. Lived religion can entail a variety of interdisciplinary
approaches, including sociology, history, psychology, phenomenology,
anthropology, and ethnography, among others. In my lived religion
approach to these two case studies, I emphasize oral history, phenome-
nology, and ethnography and draw in psychology through trauma studies
as an additional conceptual tool.49
In doing so in this book, I continue to be influenced by a zeitgeist of
philosophical and religious interest in the power of metaphor. Within this
zeitgeist, I specifically argue for renewed attention to the role of metaphor,
alongside the body, in interdisciplinary and correlational approaches for
lived religion studies of trauma. Throughout my interdisciplinary explora-
tion of the case studies from which I draw, I give equal mutual critical
correlational and ethical weight to the study participants’ own stated faith
traditions, experiences, and language and to the research and language of
the social sciences. As previously discussed, Heimbrock writes: “Theology
. . . claims truth . . . in metaphoric and poetic description of reality.”50
Practical theologians James N. Poling and Donald E. Miller note that all
language “is less a mirror of reality than a series of metaphors about reality,
and no particular linguistic expression corresponds exactly with any expe-
rience.”51 If, as philosopher linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
argue, all language is metaphorical and embodied in origin, this includes the
languages of science as well. If science itself is grounded in linguistic
metaphors, it too is subject to an ethical call for granting normative
equality, alongside other academic disciplines such as the social sciences
and humanities, in the study of lived religion. Each academic discipline
stands as its own cultural linguistic embodied metaphoric world, including
the sciences, with its own ethical sphere of phenomenological concern.
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 41

For example, and dovetailing well with Lakoff and Johnson’s work,
Daniel Tiffany,52 a specialist in comparative literature, writes of the
reliance of science on poetry, images, and metaphors:

Certain plausible correspondences between science and poetry can therefore

be traced to shared forms of material and imaginative practice, but also the
basic inclination of materialism: to make the intangible tangible. Both
science and poetry proceed, in part, by making pictures of what we cannot
see (or what merely escapes our notice), by attributing corporeal qualities to
inscrutable events.53

This points to the capacity to mutually correlate religious and scientific

metaphors, generally through the realm of bodily or sensory experi-
ences—the corporeal and material realms—in the interdisciplinary study
of lived religion.54
Theology, religion, and the social sciences thus are seen as separate
metaphorical spheres of experiential description and truth claims about
reality—as cultural worldviews in my argument—but also ones that can
be correlated through the multivalent capacity of metaphor to mutually
support, critique, or challenge each other. This includes embodied met-
aphorical correlational approaches to trauma—leveling some of the aca-
demic playing field of power when survivor experiences are prioritized in
their own language. Granting such normative priority to the lived expe-
riences and language of the oppressed also may address the cautionary
note raised by feminists that even scientific metaphors have been used by
elites to reinforce power, privilege, and oppression.55 An embodied meta-
phorical and mutual critical correlational approach will be further illustrated
in Chap. 4 while exploring specific interdisciplinary bridge tools for the
lived religion study of trauma.
The lens of trauma in lived religion studies helps to keep a holistic
perspective on human being. One cannot ignore the visceral and physi-
ological bodily impact of trauma, the limitations or innovations of
embodied and material practices of story and imagination in the after-
math, or the larger destructive forces of historical and social oppression in
creating truth contexts. There is an organicity of relationship between all of
these, holistically and ecologically, which is better suited to the metaphor
42 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

of “kaleidoscope,” as one participant in my studies drew upon for descrip-

tion of practices of “healing” in the aftermath of trauma. Interdisciplinary
and transdisciplinary explorations likewise call us to appreciate the beauty
and complexity of shifting our lens for three-dimensional viewing—
perhaps even to four-dimensional viewing (such as a metaphor of a
“holographic kaleidoscope”)—beyond simple mutual correlational
models. This ultimately needs further philosophical, ethical, and practical
development—for which my varied readership may be grateful lies
beyond the further scope of this particular book and case studies. I merely
point to the larger task left for others, while I turn now to an orientation
to the two particular case studies on which this book is based.

Notes
1. In this, I agree with practical theologian R. Ruard Ganzevoort that
“theology is tracing the sacred” (broadly metaphorically conceived
interreligiously) and with his citation of Tom Beaudoin that such
tracing can be considered a spiritual practice in and of itself. See
Ganzevoort, “Forks in the Road when Tracing the Sacred: Practical
Theology as Hermeneutics of Lived Religion,” 5–6.
2. Charles V. Gerkin, The Living Human Document: Re-visioning Pas-
toral Counseling in a Hermeneutical Mode. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1984.
3. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body
in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 17.
4. Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning,
Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1987), ix. See also Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of
Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993) for his extension of this into ethical theory.
5. Ibid., pp. 169–170.
6. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The
Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York:
Basic Books, 1999).
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 43

7. R.Ruard Ganzevoort, “Forks in the Road when Tracing the Sacred:

Practical Theology as Hermeneutics of Lived Religion,” 4–5.
8. Ibid., 5. For a very useful brief summary of the postmodern and
postcolonial turn to narrative theory and approaches, including a
summary of critiques, see also R.Ruard Ganzevoort, “Narrative
Approaches” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theol-
ogy, edited by Bonnie Miller-McLemore, 214–223 (Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). The narrative approach is crucial as a theo-
retical approach to the case studies, and I also seek to expand the
narrative approach more deeply in embodied and material ways of
poetic or metaphorical and artistic expression.
9. Michael J. Scanlon, O.S.A., “The Postmodern Debate” in The Twen-
tieth Century: A Theological Overview, ed. By Gregory Baum
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 230. See also Paul F. Knitter,
Introducing Theologies of Religions. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002.
Knitter also points out that the Catholic tradition, through a preem-
inent theologian Karl Rahner, “has always taken seriously what con-
temporary anthropology and psychology insist on—that human
beings are embodied and social beings. Everything that we are and
know and believe and commit ourselves to has to come to us through
our bodies and through other people . . . It has to be the way God or
the Spirit will deal with us—through our bodies and through other
people. Therefore, Rahner’s conclusion—grace must be embodied.
God’s presence has to take some kind of material shape (70).”
Through such recognition, the Catholic tradition has less discomfort
finding correlations to the social sciences.
10. See Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the
World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
11. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Analdúa, eds. This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color, Fourth Edition (New York: Suny
Press, 1981/2015), 19. See also Jerry H. Gill, The Tacit Mode:
Michael Polanyi’s Postmodern Philosophy (New York: State University
of New York Press, 2000). Polanyi has influenced many feminists and
other writers from the margins to affirm the importance of lifting up
the personal as a way of breaking through dominant paradigms. This
44 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

includes in science through Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scien-

tific Revolutions, 2nd edition, enlarged (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1962, 1970).
12. Wendy K. Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski, eds., Feminist Theory: A
Reader, 4th Edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2013).
13. Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Sheila Briggs, eds., The Oxford
Handbook of Feminist Theology (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
14. “The living human document” is a term initially used by Anton
Boisen and reclaimed by Charles V. Gerkin in The Living Human
Document.
15. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “Pastoral Theology as Public Theology:
Revolutions in the ‘Fourth Area.’”
16. Recent encyclopedia style essays on practical theology may focus on
religious or spiritual practices that involve the body, such as categories
of eating, consuming, suffering, and playing, yet beyond language
such as “embodied knowing,” or a brief attention to disability theol-
ogies, they do not center on the visceral dimensions of the body as a
separate category of theological reflection. More often, one finds
recognition of visceral dimensions in queer theology. See two differ-
ent practical theology volumes, one from the Protestant tradition and
one from the Catholic tradition, both edited by white female practical
theologians: Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, ed., The Wiley-Blackwell
Companion to Practical Theology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2014) and Claire E. Wolfteich, ed., Invitation to Practical Theology:
Catholic Voices and Visions (New York: Paulist Press, 2014). See then
a classic of queer theology as well—Marcella Althaus-Reid, From
Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology: Readings on Poetry, Sexual
Identity, and God (London: SCM Press, 2004). Queer studies and
queer theology, as well as a fuller attention to disability theology and
challenges to dominant cultural normative conceptions of “the body,”
await a fuller integration into both practical theology and interdisci-
plinary or transdisciplinary studies as well.
17. Kelly Brown Douglas, What’s Faith Got To Do With It? Black Bodies/
Christian Souls (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005).
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 45

18. M. Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 7.
19. Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony,
& Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2006), 452–455. Also see Thandeka, The Embodied Self:
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Solution to Kant’s Problem of the Empirical
Self (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995).
20. In her work, Doing Sensory Ethnography, Sarah Pink draws on the
work of sociologist Amanda Coffey in her recognition of the impor-
tance of spatial emplacement in ethnographic participant fieldwork. I
expand the use of the term “emplaced” here in connection with
ecological perspectives from the field of social work to recognize
that each person and community is emplaced in time, history, cul-
ture, power structures, and geography. Another useful work for
understanding power, privilege, and geography in this sense is Geog-
raphies of Privilege, edited by France Winddance Twine and Bradley
Gardener (New York: Routledge, 2013).
21. Affect theology continues to be a new and promising field of devel-
opment for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies. For a
recent interesting interdisciplinary theological dissertation in this
area that draws on queer and feminist theories and affect, disability,
and political theologies, see Karen Bray, “Unredeemed: A Political
Theology of Affect, Time, and Worth” (PhD diss., Drew
University, 2016).
22. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between The World and Me (New York: Spiegel &
Grau, 2015) 10.
23. Ibid., 11–12.
24. Initially, a humorous reference I heard made by the Reverend Ralph
Mero, a UU community minister, who was referring to “the unfor-
tunate family quarrel in the 19th century” that led to a split then
between Unitarian and Trinitarian Congregationalists in what would
today be called the UUA and the United Church of Christ.
25. R.Ruard Ganzevoort and Johan H. Roeland, “Lived Religion: The
Practice of Practical Theology,” International Journal of Practical
Theology 18(1), 2014, 91–101.
46 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

26. For three different perspectives on the SBNR movement, see

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/us/examining-the-growth-of-
the-spiritual-but-not-religious.html?&_r¼1 (accessed September
14, 2015). Polarization at times of spirituality and religion is noted
in studies of spirituality and social work as well. See Margaret
Holloway and Bernard Moss, Spirituality and Social Work
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 24.
27. Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding
Religion in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
28. See Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in
Theology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002). I
appreciate Astley’s attention to the significance of popular practices,
including an appreciation of the affective dimensions, while I grant
more normativity to these voices and experiences than I believe at
present Astley does.
29. Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” in
Woman, Culture & Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and
Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 67–87.
30. Ibid., 96.
31. Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of
Intellectual Change (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 876.
32. Archie Smith, Jr., “You Cannot Teach What You Do Not Know: You
Cannot Lead Where You Have Not Been,” in Eleazar S. Fernandez,
ed., Teaching for a Culturally Diverse and Racially Just World (Eugene,
OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 88–108.
33. Collins, p. 877.
34. Johnson, 205.
35. Ibid., 210–211.
36. Collins, 861.
37. Hans-Günter Heimbrock, “Reconstructing Lived Religion” in Reli-
gion: Immediate Experience and the Mediacy of Research—Interdisci-
plinary Studies, Concepts and Methodology of Empirical Research in
Religion, ed. Hans-Günter Heimbrock and Christopher P. Scholtz
(Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007b), 149.
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 47

38. Ibid., 152.

39. Ibid., 150.
40. Ibid., 152.
41. Ibid., 154.
42. Ryan Lamothe, Becoming Alive: Psychoanalysis and Vitality
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 40.
43. Van der Kolk, 115.
44. Meredith B. McGuire, “Embodied Practices: Negotiation and Resis-
tance,” in Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives,
ed. Nancy T. Ammerman (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007), 187–200.
45. Ibid., 197–198.
46. Embodied knowing is deeply intertwined with Heimbrock’s under-
standing of theological anthropology. See “Practical Theology as
Empirical Theology,” International Journal of Practical Theology
14 (2011): 153–170 as well as “Reconstructing Lived Religion.”
47. See Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples, 2nd Edition (New York: Zed Books, 2012); Chela
Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000); and Soyini Madison, D. Critical Ethnogra-
phy: Method, Ethics, and Performance, 2nd Edition (New York: Sage
Publications, Inc., 2012).
48. Mary Clark Moschella, “Ethnography,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Com-
panion to Practical Theology, ed. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Mal-
den, MA: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2012), 224–233, again as
distinguished from ordinary theology as discussed in the introduc-
tion. For another example of the difference in this type of approach to
lived religion ethnographic studies, see a recent dissertation by María
Cristina Vlassidis Burgoa, “Sobre la Marcha: The Fiesta of Santiago
Apóstol in Loíza, Puerto Rico” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016)
in which she discusses “ethnographies of the particular” and her
indigenous methodological approach to studying a Puerto Rican
religious festival under threat of tourist oppression.
48 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

49. See again Patton, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, as well
as James P. Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Group, 1979).
50. Heimbrock, “Reconstructing Lived Religion,” 154. The power of
metaphorical approaches to theology was initially outlined in Sallie
McFague’s classic work Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in
Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982). McFague
writes: “Most simply, a metaphor is seeing one thing as something
else, pretending ‘this’ is ‘that’ because we do not know how to think
or talk about ‘this,’ so we use ‘that’ as a way of saying something
about it . . . metaphorical thinking constitutes the basis of human
thought and language” (15). Pastoral psychotherapists who approach
their work through narrative therapy also draw heavily on the power
of metaphor for spiritual direction, as illustrated by James L. Griffith
and Melissa Elliott Griffith, Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy:
How to Talk with People about Their Spiritual Lives (New York: The
Guilford Press, 2002). “Metaphor plays a critical role in most forms of
spirituality by posing abstract concepts in terms of images and events
drawn from daily life. A metaphor is a way of conceiving one thing in
terms of another” (64).
51. James N. Poling and Donald E. Miller, Foundations for a Practical
Theology of Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 24. Poling
and Miller also reference critical correlational approaches to practical
theology drawn from the works of Don Browning and David Tracy
(82–86). My approach is more consistent with Tracy’s mutual critical
correlational approach, particularly as Tracy has more recently
highlighted the importance of an aesthetic correlation within practical
theology. See Tracy, “A Correlational Model of Practical Theology—
Revisited,” in Religion, Diversity and Conflict, edited by Edward Foley
(New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 49–61, reprinted
also in Invitation to Practical Theology: Catholic Voices and Visions,
edited by Claire E. Wolfteich (New York: Paulist Press, 2014),
70–86.
52. Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000).
 2 Challenges and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Encounters 49

53. Ibid., 5.
54. In Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1980/2003), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson also have argued that
all language is metaphorical with embodied roots: “ . . . we typically
conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the physical” (59). As
narrative pastoral therapists, Griffith and Griffith, Encountering the
Sacred in Psychotherapy, draw heavily from Lakoff and
Johnson’s work.
55. See in particular Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
 3
Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living
Between Worlds

Desire, Access, and Projection in Navigating

Between Cultural Worlds
As a US clinical social worker “shaping as clergy,” I initially shaped as a lay
urban minister alongside my social work identity. While my roots were
working class, and this gave me a certain comfort level in the urban
context, my suburban congregation was predominantly white and middle
class and far removed from the challenges facing the children and families
to whom I served as a bridge person for the youth ministry in my lay
capacity. Over the years, as a clinical social worker/lay community min-
ister, I worked hard at relationship building between these diverse cultural
worlds, while holding the tension of the multiple gaps in the bridge
between profound desires for connection, abundant moments of real joy
and authentic mutuality, and still the monumental realities of different
lived experiences in power and privilege, including my own. In my
predominantly white suburban lay ministry world, I began to hear, with
great discomfort, myself described by my fellow lay people as “our saint,”
while clergy during my formation as one among them made expectant
and, to me mysterious and rather unnerving, comments such as, “It will

© The Author(s) 2017 51

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_3
52 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

be very interesting to see what you do.” In my predominantly African

American urban lay ministry world, I heard, with some humor, myself
described as “the little white girl” who didn’t seem afraid to be out in their
neighborhoods late at night, though they were concerned for me in doing
so. Over time, this urban world also claimed me as a lay minister and then
clergy through our shared experiences of life and death.
As I arrived on the doorstep of the academy for a doctoral program, I
brought all of these lived experiences with me. I discovered myself once
again thrust into the role of bridge person between cultural worlds—this
time for an academy that longed for access to the urban world of my
relationships, as well as for an urban world that often felt disconnected
from or used by the predominantly white academy. As a “clinical social
worker and clergyperson now shaping as academic researcher,” I also
heard, again with a bit of detached wonderment and discomfort, some
urgency in the tone of questions, desires, and even fierce demands of me,
usually by white academic mentors: “I would like to know more about
these street memorials—they are not studied so often.” “I want to know
about the memorial buttons—tell me about the buttons!”
Simultaneously, I heard, with poignant empathy, the suspicion from
my urban world: “Researchers come and go. We get requests all the time
for access to our work—what’s in it for us? We won’t do it unless you can
guarantee we’re going to benefit in some way.” To deny the academic
research gaze without comparable guarantee of mutual benefit seemed to
be the one power left to the communal urban gatekeepers, a demand of
equity for their stakeholders—those whom privileged academics might
call the marginalized, colonized, or subalterns and without voice of their
own in the world of the academy. How to navigate the expectations and
desires between these cultural worlds with authenticity and respect
became my clinical social work and ministerial call as a researcher. This
call stood alongside a need to attend to the human queerness of living
between both worlds, one that made me a survivor of violence and of the
costs of residing in the borderlands as well.
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 53

A Founding Story for an Urban Ministry: Case

Study One

One day, Louis was in his bedroom playing with his cousin Antonio and his
friend Anthony. They were talking about what they wanted to be when they
grew up. Louis said to them: “I am going to be the first black president of
the United States when I am thirty-five years old.” Antonio was so happy to
hear that, he jumped off the bed where he was sitting. “Wow!” he said.
“That means you will also be the youngest president ever. Fantastic, then I
will be your vice president.” “Good,” said Louis. “I want you guys and all
my friends to be with me in the White House.”

One night, Louis was watching the news on television. The news anchor
reported that earlier that day two young men had been arguing about drugs,
and one had shot the other and killed him. Louis got very sad. He looked at
his father with tears in his eyes. “Too many kids are dying on the streets,” he
said to his father. “Why are there so many guns around? Why do people
have to use drugs? That stuff can hurt you, and it can kill you.” Louis sat
silently for a moment. Then he shook his head and said to his father: “If
things don’t change by the time I become president, I will be alone in the
White House – none of my friends will be around. They will all be in jail, all
addicted to drugs, or all dead.”1

History and Organization of the Louis D. Brown

Peace Institute
History of Formation

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boston was struggling with a rash of
homicides and street violence, reaching a peak of 152 murders in 1990.2
Amid this context, on December 20, 1993, Louis David Brown, age
15, was on his way to a Christmas party being given by the organization
Teens Against Gang Violence when he was shot and killed, caught in a cross
fire between two rival gangs though he himself had never been involved in
a gang. His mother and co-founding ministry leader of the Peace Institute
54 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

recalls that Louis wanted to be the first African American president, and
he is quoted in Peace Institute in-house pamphlet literature as saying: “If
true peace is to be achieved it will be up to my generation, regardless of
which side of the streets we come from.” Current ministry leaders of the
Peace Institute, who had never met this young man, cited the legacy of his
life and story as foundational to their work and guiding mission. One
stated: “[The Peace Institute] became a safe place in the community for
people who lost somebody to violence—because of Louis’ story.”
The initial years of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute (LDBPI or
Peace Institute) took two directions, directions that continue to inform
their work and ministry: (1) creating peace curriculums and education
based in large part on Louis’ life story for use in the Boston public schools
and (2) providing outreach and advocacy education to family survivors of
homicide. A third direction today is the coordination and training of other
providers who serve families of homicide victims. The Peace Institute’s
peace curriculums are deeply intertwined with their overall mission and
became nationally recognized during the Clinton administration in the
1990s for assisting in the reduction of juvenile crime in Boston.3 How-
ever, their survivor outreach services, including their Leadership Acad-
emy, and work coordinating Boston area human service providers remain
their primary source of recognition locally. These latter services were the
main focus of this particular case study, drawing lessons from the Peace
Institute’s practices for “transforming pain and anger” after homicide,
practices that educate and empower families to become peacemakers and
advocates for justice in their larger communities.4

Mission

As found in its current formal mission statement, the Peace Institute

“serves as a center of healing, teaching and learning for families and
communities dealing with murder, trauma, grief and loss,” with an
emphasis on restorative justice theories in their process.5 They further
state on their website that the focal point of their programming includes
schools, families, and the broader community. The overarching tagline
throughout their literature and website is: “transforming pain and anger
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 55

into power and action,” as well as an emphasis on their seven Principles of

Peace: “love, unity, faith, hope, courage, justice, and forgiveness.” While
some study participants spoke to more or fewer dimensions of this
mission, depending on their experiences, none contradicted this percep-
tion of the Peace Institute’s mission. Sample survivor comments included:
“The model is . . . take your pain anger and turn it into power and action
. . . [as well as] . . . the mission is to help empower the family to find the
strength . . . to cope with . . . this journey, this life change, this life-altering
experience . . . to . . . help us create that peace environment . . . to help
stop the cycle of violence . . . like a wrap-around or comprehensive place
for that specific goal . . ..”
For the founding ministry leader, this mission is linked to larger
oppressive historical forces and a country founded on violence: “Again
this country was founded on violence and . . . in the name of peace, we go
to war and we think it’s okay, so . . . what’s our role in all of this, you
know? We’re quick to blame people [but] where do we go and how are we
accountable? . . . [H]ow are we leading by example?” In the philosophy of
the Peace Institute, each person first must learn how to foster peace
within, so that one then can foster peace out in the larger community.
Several institutional supporters also would use language such as “compre-
hensive” and “wraparound services” to describe the mission of the Peace
Institute. They stated that the Peace Institute’s overarching mission is not
only to support survivors in the aftermath of violence but also to prevent
violence by “support[ing the survivors] in making this link between
personal healing and policy . . . to educate survivors in policy and systems
change” and to foster “safer and healthier communities.” This
intertwining of a micro pastoral and clinical focus on internal peace
with the need to engage in the macro prophetic and social justice work
of system change lends itself to ecological interdisciplinary and transdisci-
plinary perspectives from fields as diverse as social work, education, public
health, and pastoral care.
The motto threaded throughout the Leadership Academy literature
remains striking in this regard: “transforming pain and anger into power
and action.” This philosophy of “healing through action” comes from the
Honduran culture and lived experiences of the founding ministry leader,
an immigrant to this country as a child with her family. She spoke of her
56 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

culture teaching her to believe that there is an inner wisdom and capacity
for “healing” anger and grief through one’s personal capacity for trans-
formative and embodied action. She explicitly attributed her experiences
and beliefs to racial, class, and cultural differences:

I don’t know . . . as whether it’s white people that you have the luxury of
going to a counselor and sitting, and in my country as a poor person, that’s
not a luxury you have, so you find your way of not denying but of dealing
with your issues whether it’s sewing, cooking, cleaning but different
methods of dealing with grief . . . [you don’t] have this luxury of grievin’,
of a safe space, you’ve got to go, go, go because you have other children and
that’s just the way the world is, you don’t have luxury of goin’ to a support
group because that’s not what we believe in . . ..

Though not an explicit component of their public mission statement,

leaders of the Peace Institute also clearly experienced and identified their
work as ministry, and some survivors and institutional supporters did as
well. Ministry in this sense centered on meeting people where they were at
and serving immediate needs, but doing so with a deep and connected
sense of compassion and love. This sense of ministry was grounded in each
leader’s Christian faith tradition or background as lay people and a
common belief in “servitude” rather than a specific religious form of
Christianity. Ministry leaders interviewed at the time of the initial study
most often experienced the work as a calling or mission from God to help
with providing love and healing and opportunities for the transformation
of pain and anger into power and action. In the grassroots nature of the
Peace Institute at the time of the study, formal degrees were not consid-
ered necessary for this work so much as a strong base in love and humility
as well as personal experience with survivor needs.6
As mentioned in their mission statement above, and threaded through-
out all of the programs and services of the Peace Institute, are the seven
Principles of Peace: Love, Unity, Faith, Hope, Courage, Justice, and
Forgiveness. All ministry leaders interviewed agreed that the principles
had biblical roots as they understood them. The founding ministry leader
specifically described them as coming to her as a message from God in
2002 after she and her husband separated and she became the sole director
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 57

of the Peace Institute. She explained emphatically (pounding on the desk

during the interview) that these principles were divinely revealed to be the
core of her peace work. For the founding ministry leader interviewed, a
sense of connection to and calling by God also was part of the narrative
that turned her outward, pushing her to grow in her own self-confidence
and transform her own pain and anger. She experienced her work as a
God-given mission to impart the seven Principles of Peace not only to
survivors but also to the larger community as well, in her language to work
toward “the fullness of God’s peace.”
While ministry leaders at the time of the interviews identified as
coming from lay Christian backgrounds, a newer dimension of the
turning outward of their ministry was their engagement in interfaith
work through the use of these seven Principles of Peace. They reported
discovering that these peace principles could be seen as universal aspects of
human experience. This allowed them to operate equally well across
cultures in secular public school, health, and clinical settings as in inter-
faith settings, enhancing the Peace Institute’s overall “missionary” capac-
ity and drive to end suffering and create lasting peace in a broader
community. The founding ministry leader pulled out and recited a
quote to me by the Cambodian Buddhist monk, Maha Ghosananda, in
a research interview: “We must find the courage to leave our temples and
enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with
suffering. If we listen to the Buddha, Christ, Mohammad or Gandhi,
we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prison, the ghettos, and
the battlefields will then become our temples. We have so much work to
do.” Thus she and other ministry leaders learned from different religious
traditions, looking for points of connection with their values, language,
and practices, while also remaining firmly grounded in their own Chris-
tian values and narrative (Fig. 3.1).

Philosophical Influences

Two models and philosophies of anti-violence intervention, a public

health model and an anti-oppression analysis, both would help to shape
the mission of the Peace Institute in its founding years and also be
58 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 3.1 Peace Institute’s Seven Principles of Peace. The Peace Institute’s
seven Principles of Peace illustrated with quotes. An example of their efforts
to make some interfaith connections can be seen in the quote by Buddha
(Artwork by Janet Connors)
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 59

recognized in the grassroots work the Peace Institute already was engag-
ing. The respective models were introduced to the founding ministry
leader by fellow black female leaders and institutional supporters, both of
whom she experienced as important relational mentors in her life. The
public health model of violence prevention is most deeply associated with
the work of Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, whom the co-founders met in
the early 1990s and who assisted in writing the Peace Institute’s Peacezone
curriculum for grades K-5.7 A ministry leader spoke of the public health
model giving “language” to the work in which they were already engaged.
The public health model consists first of recognizing that violence is a
systemic public health problem, not solely a criminal justice problem, and
that as a public health problem it is preventable through a wide range of
services, programs, and approaches. Before meeting the founders of the
Peace Institute, Prothrow-Stith wrote that, as a public health doctor, she
rejected “that the medical community was powerless to prevent young
black males or members of any group from hurting one another.”8 In her
view, all social institutions have a role to play in preventing violence by
providing diverse and integrated educational programs to address anger
management as a realizable goal:

My own view is a pragmatic one. To me a problem that destroys health by

causing so much injury and death is a health problem . . . I am convinced we
can change public attitudes toward violence and that we can change violent
behavior. What is required is a broad array of strategies; strategies that teach
new ways of coping with anger and aggressive feelings. I believe we can and
we must mobilize schools, the media, industry, government, churches,
community organizations, and every organized unit within our society to
deliver the message that anger can be managed and aggressive impulses
controlled.9

The second model and philosophy of anti-violence intervention that

both helped to shape Peace Institute services and was an intuitive match
with work they had already engaged was a model of anti-oppression
analysis.10 This model also gave the staff language and tools for deepening
their understanding of their work, language and tools that were seen to
match with the public health violence prevention model with which they
60 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

were already familiar, particularly in gun violence prevention. The anti-

oppression institutional supporter interviewed affirmed that it was a
natural match with the Peace Institute’s focus on internal insight work
as the grounding for effectively engaging in peace and social justice work
in the community (correlating disciplinary cultural worlds and language,
it was a match with both the Peace Institute’s Christian prophetic pastoral
care approach and their implicit secular ecological systems social work and
public health approach). The anti-oppression institutional supporter
stated:

. . . our approach to community engagement and to community change is

based on the assumption that we have to look personally inside—interper-
sonally—and then at the systems around, as well as at the culture that we're
all swimming in . . . survivors need to do personal healing, and they also
need to develop advocacy skills . . . ‘Cause we can heal every individual, and
then if we don’t do something about the policies and practices that create
this condition, then we’re still stuck.

As a consultant to the Peace Institute’s Survivor Leadership Academy,

this institutional supporter developed educational programs to enable
survivors to be effective in engaging in social justice and policy advocacy.
These programs made explicit the links between the personal and the
public at four levels—the personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cul-
tural—and provided language for anti-oppression concepts as well as
education in history and policy (e.g. modern racism, classism, sexism,
heterosexism, religious oppression). This approach also integrated well
with the public health model’s focus on primary preventive care through
teaching personal and interpersonal skills of conflict, grief, and trauma
resolution. A focus on emotional and cognitive literacy was tied to the
ability to engage in effective public policy advocacy for both models. The
Peace Institute’s ministry leaders recognized that personal pastoral and
clinical awareness enhanced the skills of systemic prophetic social justice
action, and this was foundational to the shape of their ministry.
This institutional supporter also stressed that the theories introduced
were a match with what the Peace Institute already was doing on a
grassroots level, but that the provision of theory and language enabled
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 61

the ministry leaders to engage their work more explicitly. It helped them
to understand their own need to heal and communicate with each other,
as well as to educate the survivors they were serving on this more explicit
level:

[I]t’s kind of given them a language . . . how do you communicate . . . with

awareness of power differentials, which be they race or gender or status or
age or whatever, and how do those impact how well we do our work? . . . It's
a language . . . and giving them some more tools for how to understand their
feelings, how to talk about it with each other, and then also, I don't think
that they had explicitly made the link between racism, oppression, and the
institutionalization of gun violence . . . I mean, it wasn't like it wasn't there,
but I don't think they had been focused on how do you teach people about
that, and I think they're beginning to do more of that.

While both of these particular institutional supporters interviewed

stressed that the Peace Institute already was engaged in work reflecting a
public health violence prevention model, as well as an anti-oppression
stance, ministry leaders affirmed that trainings by these institutional
supporters gave them language and theory for sharpening their under-
standing of the healing and advocacy work in which they were engaged.
Language and theory gave them tools of analysis that not only enabled
growth in the aftermath of lived experiences of violent trauma but also
improved their ability to become more effective imaginaries and teachers of
community peacemaking.
In bell hooks’ essay, “Theory as Liberatory Practice,”11 she affirms the
importance of theory as a liberative means of interpreting and healing
personal pain by linking the pain to its source from systemic oppression
and beginning to imagine a different world. She writes:

Living in childhood without a sense of home, I found a place of sanctuary in

“theorizing,” in making sense out of what was happening. I found a place
where I could imagine possible futures, a place where life could be lived
differently. This “lived” experience of critical thinking, of reflection and
analysis, became a place where I worked at explaining the hurt and making
it go away. Fundamentally, I learned from this experience that theory could
be a healing place . . . When our lived experience of theorizing is
62 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation,

no gap exists between theory and practice.12

LDBPI ministry leaders and survivors consistently reported they came to

understand the power of theory and language in this way, as both a source
of personal “healing” and a source of collective liberation and more
effective shared action through deepened understanding.

Programs and Infrastructure

At the time of the interviews, the Peace Institute consisted of four paid
staff and a large number of volunteers managing the vast majority of
referrals for families whose lives had been impacted by homicide in and
around the greater Boston area. There were two main departments which
reflected their early origins: (1) Peace Education, under which their
ongoing work with their various peace curriculums in Boston public
schools fell and (2) Survivor Outreach Services, under which they pro-
vided a variety of healing, educational, and empowerment programs for
survivor families. While these departments were separated to prioritize
staff responsibilities, there often was an intertwining of program influ-
ences and developments.
For example, sibling and teen groups offered to survivors through
outreach services also were seen as related to peace education work
being done in schools. The public health institutional supporter
interviewed stated: “[It] became clear that helping children deal with
fear and anger and pain and loss was an absent part of the typical violence
prevention education activity. That people were going in, teaching char-
acter, teaching conflict resolution, teaching skills, but not at all addressing
that emotional trauma.” One Peace Institute ministry leader spoke of the
Survivor Outreach sibling program as arising from the use of their peace
curriculums in the public schools and the desire “to literally teach peace to
children,” particularly since many children already had been exposed to
violent traumatic losses in Boston. This was seen to be particularly crucial
as the public health doctor interviewed estimated “that something like
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 63

10 percent of the children [in Boston] had witnessed a significant episode

of violence by the age of 6.”
Ministry leaders saw the work of sibling groups as crucial to the
prevention of further generational violence. Such groups affirmed that
these youth were “peculiar people” who could be stigmatized, isolated,
and otherwise at-risk for striking back in pain and anger.13 Per a ministry
leader, such youth needed opportunities to connect with their fellow peers
and to learn different vehicles, including artistic ones, for expressing pain
and loss:

[W]e like to use the slogan “hurt people hurt people” . . . predisposed
possibly, potentially, to violence themselves. They feel the sense or the
need to retaliate often, and many times that takes place very subconsciously,
if you will . . . So recognizing that, [the] Peace Institute sought to develop a
siblings program where we could provide . . . an atmosphere where these
young children could come and could recognize that there are other folks or
other children like them. They are not the same people that they were prior
to that experience of murder and bereavement and funerals and that whole
picture. They are a peculiar people, if you will . . . imagine a young kid who
is asked about his brother’s murder in school or in the playground or
wherever. You can only imagine the trauma that he goes through having
to try to answer . . . “What happened to your brother? Was your brother in a
gang? Was your brother a gangbanger? Was he on drugs?” . . . So in an effort
to address that, the Peace Institute sought to have this group, and it helps
these young kids express themselves through arts, express themselves
through writing, through poetry, through song . . . through different pos-
itive avenues of expression, then that sort of takes the place of expressing
themselves in negative ways . . ..

Today, the Peace Institute is best known for its crisis management
services under Survivor Outreach, providing support services to families in
the immediate aftermath of a homicide. These services include the use of
the Peace Institute’s Burial and Resource Guide: What to Do After Leaving
the Hospital, A Step-by-Step Workbook,14 as well as the creation of special-
ized orders of funeral services and memorial buttons. From her personal
experience of violent loss, the founding ministry leader spoke of the
confusion and sense of being overwhelmed with feelings and logistical
64 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

tasks in the face of a family homicide—from experiencing the emotional

trauma itself, to where to start with funeral arrangements, to suddenly
having to cope with police and media presence as well as the judicial
system in one’s life, to needing to find immediate and significant financial
resources for the burial and notify as well as coordinate family and friends,
to being bombarded with service providers or abandoned by service pro-
viders, etc. These experiences motivated her creation of the burial guide
over several years. Each of the Peace Institute ministry leaders also was
available when a homicide occurred to provide pastoral care, no matter
their official paid role. Such care involved immediate, supportive crisis
counseling services and walking the family through practical logistical
details to find or advocate for the resources they needed.
Once a family moves through the initial crisis management with
clinical and pastoral care, other types of programs are available to them
through Survivor Outreach Services. At the time of the initial case study,
these included the Peace Institute’s Holistic Healing Center activities
(inclusive of various art activities and body healing practices) and many
programs of the Leadership Academy, including educational and empow-
erment workshops (such as court preparation, understanding police pro-
cesses, networking with human service providers, public policy advocacy);
“By Men for Men” (an individualized program for male survivors led by
the male ministry leader); and “Tuesday Talks” (a weekly evening support
group for adult survivors, which would come to be named the “Peace
Warriors” during the initial case study period and from whom survivors
interviewed were drawn).
These “Tuesday Talks” became an early organizing basis for giving
public testimony about the needs of survivors and advocacy for public
policy changes. Their current and growing outreach to the broader
community includes ongoing training for providers; legislative policy
advocacy; a peace fellows program with various local universities; an
intergenerational justice program with a restorative justice focus; and a
wide variety of public events during their Survivors of Homicide Aware-
ness Month (November 20–December 20 annually by proclamation of
the Massachusetts governor); as well as their annual Mothers’ Day Walk
for Peace (their major fundraiser and community event on the streets of
Boston, which at the time of writing of this book was entering its 20th
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 65

year and marching from their local community in Dorchester to Boston

City Hall for the first time).

Violent Intrusion, Chaos, and a Call for Help:

Case Study Two

A Scene from July 27, 2008 in Knoxville, TN: I was the church administrator
and I was going to see the children’s play [the musical “Annie”] to show
some support for the music director . . . I usually go to the left and I
decided I would go to the right . . . And later I thought boy, that had a
lot of impact, that little decision . . . So I was on the bad side for the
shooting . . . And then as it happened it was a very scary moment in the
play where little orphan Annie’s backing away with her flashlight
through the woods thinkin’ people were gonna get her. And then all
of a sudden, just this enormous loud sound. And my first thought was, as
an administrator . . . somebody really screwed up because we’re gonna
get a lot of complaints about this, whatever it was . . . And I was jokin’; I
was sitting next to a person here. I said, “I bet we look like meerkats if
you could see us.” Because we both looked up to see [the] cause
[of] what happened and you couldn’t tell. We thought a sound thing
had blown up. And then we both looked around this way and then saw
the man. And then hit the ground, but it was just that sort of figuring
out moment. So we hit the ground and, um, he was about 15 feet away,
and I’ve just never seen such hostility on a face before . . . it felt like, um,
sort of a supernatural force of destruction. It really did.

. . . the other thing that was kind of funny, but not funny was when I was
down on the floor I was thinking, did I get the catastrophic violence
insurance? As the administrator. And I thought they are going to kill me
if I didn’t pay that bill or whatever it was, you know? It’s funny cause here I
am worried about losing my life, but I’m also like I’m in so much trouble if
that insurance isn’t paid up, you know? And so I had a lot of stress just
about my role, you know, afterwards like what’s the administrator supposed
to do now? ... And I also realized . . . later that I’d been trying to cram my
head into a space where it wouldn’t fit, just very animalistic, you know? And
I went like, “What was I doing there? That’s not gonna fit. Why didn’t I go
66 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

this way?” Anyway, so—it’s just that kind of waiting and just thinking this
is so wrong. And then when somebody figured out that we could get out,
which was probably like three seconds later, I don’t know. Seeing the light
from the curtain being open and then going, “Run, run, run, run, run.” So
we’re all like scrambling like Marines on our bellies and stuff and getting’
scratched up. Later you’re like, “Gee, I really got scratched up.” And then
later wondering if you hurt somebody or . . . “Did I crush you?”. . . And
then we went out on the hillside there and—there was a lot of quiet. Seemed
very quiet to me at that time. Everyone was just processing . . .. So then . . . I
just went to the office and called [the minister] who . . . was on break and
left him a scary message. And this was sort of in a daze. And in retrospect I
think it’s odd that I didn’t . . . have the wherewithal to go see what was
goin’ on. Like my first instinct was to get on my cell phone and call
everybody and tell them I’m okay . . . mostly I just was in a daze really
and not super functional.

Setting the Context of the Knoxville, TN, Church

Shooting and Response
Prior to the shock and tragedy of this day, and prior to the minister’s
response in calling for help to the UUTRM, the TVUUC had long
testified and witnessed to the prophetic social justice power of their
faith tradition. This history and context is important for understanding
the shape of religious and spiritual practices in the aftermath of the
shooting. The UUTRM arrived on site and entered into a cultural
world of strength, resiliency, risk-taking, and points of vulnerability
already long-standing for this vibrant Southern suburban congregation.
The Tennessee Valley UU Church (TVUUC) proclaims proudly that
they have been “a beacon of liberal religious faith in Eastern Tennessee for
more than 60 years.” This is a prominent statement in their PowerPoint
introduction for newcomers, a narrative put together during a time of
church growth after the 2008 shooting and from which the below history
is drawn. One TVUUC leader, who was the designated initial informant
for this study by the minister and the TVUUC board, stated that the
church has always had an “evangelical” bent, having spun off three
additional UU congregations in the area. He also shared that he was
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 67

“nominated for church president because I was president of a group I

started here called the Society of Unitarian Universalist Evangelists.” This
particular TVUUC leader also played a significant role in the creation of
the PowerPoint narrative, an artifact that both shapes and expresses
through images and narrative the religious identity of this particular
congregation.
There had been failed attempts to start Unitarian churches in Knoxville,
but finally on February 6, 1949, 122 members signed a charter and began
renting space at a local school. They would advertise themselves in local
newspapers and radio sermons as “The church with the open mind and
optimistic program.” According to the church narrative, in the segregated
US South of 1950 a retired African American railroad worker named Jim
Person (pictured in their newcomer PowerPoint) came to the church,
pointed to their “Everyone is Welcome” sign, and asked “Does that mean
me?” When the usher said yes, the church began a process of embracing
integration during the US civil rights era as part of its prophetic social justice
mission. The church also suffered the consequence of this when the school
system chose not to renew their rental agreement, beginning what the
PowerPoint described as their “wandering in the wilderness phase,” meeting
in different locations until a house eventually was purchased.
The PowerPoint narrative goes on to state that the TVUUC became a
“leader in integrating Knoxville,” offering housing to traveling integrated
groups, participating in lunch counter and other sit-ins, and running
integrated summer day camps for children. Again, there were consequences,
such as being accused of communism and, according to a former minister
who spoke during their sanctuary rededication ceremony, also having to
move their integrated summer camps from place to place in an effort to
avoid harassment by the local Klu Klux Klan, who had exploded or riddled
with shotgun their mailboxes. In the 1970s, when the church hosted the
area’s first openly gay congregation, the front windows of their home-based
church were shot out at the end of that congregation’s service.15
Eventually the TVUUC was able to purchase land for a formal church
building. This new building was not designed for church growth, however,
according to the power point narrative, since the architect did not believe
there would ever be more than 200 Unitarians in the city of Knoxville. The
church did continue to grow, however, and spin off congregations,
68 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

including the Westside UU Church (members of whom were present in the

TVUUC sanctuary and also impacted on the day of the shooting). In the
1980s, the church continued its social justice work and participated in the
interfaith sanctuary movement by hosting a refugee family from Guatemala.
Then, in 1989, a new church building was completed upon the same
property, designed to follow the “natural contours of the land to integrate
with the earth” and to emphasize “natural light.” Also noteworthy in the
architecture of the new building was the prophetic inscription of 18 values
associated with UU theology.16 These included values expressed in the
TVUUC affirmation of faith, “Love,” “Service,” and “Peace.” This affir-
mation originally was written by the Unitarian minister and poet James Vila
Blake, and this version (or a different but similar one by a Universalist
author) can be found in many UU congregations around the country:
“Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. To dwell together

Fig. 3.2 TVUUC Partial Exterior Building View. The arc of the building as it
curves with the landscape can be seen, along with long shots of the exterior
panels with UU values inscribed
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 69

Fig. 3.3 TVUUC Sample Exterior Panels. Two sample panels of 18 from the
exterior of the church testifying to UU values

in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another, this is our great
covenant (Figs. 3.2 and 3.3).”17
In 1993, the TVUUC was recognized formally as a “Welcoming
Congregation” within the UUA, a designation meaning that they had
completed a formal educational process to welcome gays and lesbians.18
Though the congregation completed the formal welcoming and educa-
tional process at that time, there were ongoing disputes within the
congregation about making a visible sign of this commitment on the
church’s main entrance. A former board president would write: “ . . .
there was sentiment that if we put a symbol up for one group, we could be
led into a tacky décor characterized by an array of symbols for every
disenfranchised group.”19 Finally, early in July 2008 and just prior to the
traumatic events of July 27, a task force decided on a temporary solution
that would become a form of material testimony to their prophetic social
justice history and values (Fig. 3.4):
70 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 3.4 Permanent Welcoming Congregation Plaque. This was installed after
the church shooting. Interview participants remarked a permanent plaque had
been a particular focus of Greg McKendry to see accomplished

We made up a simple 8-1/2 x 1100 sign that read “Everyone Welcome” and
had the rainbow flag underneath it. The text on the back of the sign
explained that this sign harkened back to the church’s history when a
simple “Everyone Welcome” sign in 1950 had welcomed a black man
named Jim Person to our doors. The new laminated paper sign was
minimalist in design but drew on our church history of welcoming all
persons while being able to incorporate the rainbow flag and be specifically
welcoming to the GLBT community . . ..20

There are multiple news accounts available through the internet, as well
as the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA’s) website, as to the
traumatic events of July 27, 2008 and into the following year, thus I
briefly will outline some of these events only, with no intent of capturing
the vividness of emotions and responses conveyed by those interviewed.
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 71

For their summer service that day, the children of some of the local UU
congregations, including Westside, were performing the musical “Annie”
at TVUUC. Around 10:15AM, a gunman entered the church carrying a
shotgun in a guitar case and opened fire in the crowded sanctuary. He
killed an usher in his path, Greg McKendry, age 60, a very active member
of TVUUC, as well as Linda Lee Kraeger, age 61, a member of the
Westside congregation, and physically injured several others (all were
adults, no children were physically injured, all children having successfully
fled out a rear door, with some taking shelter at the Presbyterian church
further up the hill). Ultimately, the gunman was subdued by members of
the congregation. It was learned later, through a letter he wrote as well as
through his conversations with police, that the gunman had deliberately
targeted the church for its liberal religious teachings and values.21
A Bill Moyers Journal episode22 reported on the police news conference
that described the white gunman, age 58, as an “unemployed truck driver”
who was motivated by his “lack of employment” and “frustration” and
“stated hatred for the liberal movement.” The police reported that the
gunman said: “ . . . that all liberals should be killed because they were . . .
ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his
country’s hands in the war on terror and ruined every institution in
America.” He specifically targeted the UU church because of “its liberal
teachings” and “ . . . because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal
movement . . . he would target those that had voted them into office.”
In the direct aftermath of the shooting, the TVUCC minister requested
that a colleague contact the UU Trauma Response Ministry (UUTRM),
who arrived on site and began to provide assistance immediately and
remained connected over the next year(s). Despite this traumatic and
violent incident, the church continued to grow in membership through-
out the next year and experienced many renewing moments according to
TVUUC leader reports, including their annual Christmas pageant and the
celebration of their 60th anniversary with the installation of permanent
memorial plaques in the church. They also underwent stresses and strains,
particularly around governance as well as renewed publicity with the trial
of the shooter, hitting a crisis point about nine months after the initial
traumatic event. Stresses and strains took the form of multiple congregant
health issues emerging, further personal tragedies, exhaustion for staff and
72 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

church leaders with leadership departures, tense budget negotiations, and

an eruption on their email list serve when a transgender woman experi-
enced herself as excluded from a nonofficial church event.23
The combination of these events, particularly some occurring on the
minister’s sabbatical again, required the congregational leadership to
request the intervention of the District Executive, who recommended a
closer examination of church governance and organizational weak points,
as well as some behavioral changes by the membership. These stresses and
strains on the church leadership became significant for the recommenda-
tions offered by the TVUUC leaders back to the UUTRM leaders in the
course of this particular case study. I turn now to examining the larger
context of formation of a trauma response team in a denominational
setting and the UUTRM’s particular involvement in the aftermath of
the TVUUC shooting.

History and Organization of the Unitarian

Universalist Trauma Response Ministry
History of Formation

Personal experiences with providing chaplaincy services at Ground Zero

after 9/11 was the starting place for all UUTRM leader stories of recog-
nizing the need for creating an institutionally based trauma response
ministry within the UUA. One UUTRM leader was formally dispatched
to Ground Zero as a member and founder of her state’s Corps of Fire
Chaplains, and another persistently and creatively battled her way into
access to Ground Zero when she lacked formal recognition for her
chaplaincy role. While working at Ground Zero, these eventual
UUTRM leaders came to the conclusion that a UU liberal religious
voice and interfaith perspective was needed to bring “a sense of hope”
rather than a message of “punishment” or “God’s wrath” to survivors of
traumatic situations, including large-scale social disasters. As previously
discussed, the UU tradition is grounded in a liberal religious tradition of
ethical principles and shared practices, drawing from a wide variety of
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 73

sources for religious wisdom, rather than being based in particular doc-
trines or creeds. One UUTRM leader argued:

I think when Unitarian Universalists are there . . . we bring a spiritual

perspective that’s not tied to any particular creed . . . we knew that we
wanted to be available for all people at all times and we wanted to have that
sense of hope that Unitarian Universalism brings, that, in the midst of
chaos, hope does arise, and that it’s not about punishment or not about
God’s wrath, it’s about walking with people through whatever the circum-
stances [are] . . ..

The UUTRM leader who had to find creative linkages to get into and
stay at Ground Zero would share, in sharp terms, specific concerns of
conversations or behaviors she witnessed by other chaplains at Ground
Zero that were antithetical to UU values:

I encountered all kinds of evangelical people who were talking about how
either this was God’s will, or they were witnessing to people and basically
proselytizing. And I met one guy [and all] I remember is that he said he had
really felt like he had had a good day because he witnessed to someone and
believed he had relieved them of their lesbianism . . . I was just enraged. And
I kept thinking to myself, “There’s gotta be a liberal religious response to
this, other than, ‘This was God’s will,’ or, ‘This is God’s punishment’”. . .
And so I started thinking about it and looking around online and I realized
almost every other denomination had a disaster response team. You know,
the Baptist men have just taken over the Earth in terms of cleaning stuff and
getting people back into their houses. The Mennonites do kids. The
Episcopalians do food. Almost everybody does something, here we sit,
you know, twiddling our thumbs. So I started calling all the people that I
knew who had been like police chaplains or fire chaplains and just kinda
bitchin’ and moanin’, talking to people about it . . ..

Within a year, these experiences and conversations would lead to a

gathering of various UUs with backgrounds in trauma response and
interest in, as well as a passionate commitment to, forming a UUTRM,
supported also by an initial grant from a UU congregation of $15,000.
74 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Mission

The UUTRM was founded in 2002, and, according to its current mission
statement the UUTRM focuses upon the provision of “culturally sensitive
spiritual care to survivors of mass disasters and other significant trauma.”24
This includes a focus on education, provision of resources, deploying
response teams, and networking with other trauma organizations. In the
establishment of their original mission, however, there were occasional
differences among UUTRM leaders as to the hoped for scope of their
vision. The clear majority of those interviewed, including their UUA
institutional supporters, viewed the UUTRM’s role to be intra-associa-
tional/intra-denominational in focus, due both to their limited capacity and
to a perceived unique value in having such a focus. One UUTRM leader
argued: “where we had the most potential to impact . . . was to train and
educate, and inform and work with district entities, and work with indi-
vidual congregational teams and ministers to prepare congregations to
respond to these kinds of things effectively.” Another UUTRM leader
would express strong opinions on the need to limit the prophetic pastoral
care scope of the mission and any possibility of “mission creep.” “I have no
desire to organize . . . for the rest of the world ’cause there are other
organizations that are doing it well and better.”
However, the African American UUTRM leader interviewed passion-
ately expressed a much more expansive vision of the UUTRM mission,
citing her experiences in growing up with a “black church ethos” as a
rationale and the value placed on responding to the needs expressed
regardless of official certification or perceived limitations:

[M]y whole thing is that if we’re gonna do this work for Unitarian
Universalists, then we need to do whatever they need us to do. It’s not
about whether or not it’s in our purview. Disaster’s not in anybody’s
purview, really. And I think a lot of that comes from, even though I
didn’t grow up in the black church, I kinda grew up with the black church
ethos, undergirding cultural life. And ministry in that context is whatever
you need to do by whatever means necessary. So if your people can’t get
loans, you start a bank. If your folks can’t read, you start a literacy program.
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 75

It’s not like, “Okay. Well, I’m not certified as a community minister or I’m
not a banker, so I can’t do this.” So?

Worth noting is the emphasis and debate in much of the above on the
need for effectiveness of scope, training, and authority versus, at least in
small part, a “make do” philosophy and willingness to take some risks in
operating beyond perceived boundaries or limitations under certain
extreme circumstances. There was a heavy emphasis among all
UUTRM leaders interviewed, as well as their UUA institutional sup-
porters, on the need for trauma-specific training and clear lines of author-
ity, with mission focus regarding their limited capacity. There also was a
passionate wish expressed by at least one UUTRM leader for a greater
vision of their capacity and a willingness to push against aspects of those
perceived constraints at times when needs were presented in the provision
of care. UUTRM leaders generally expressed empathy for the larger vision
but more often felt constrained by resources and capacity. The particular
UUTRM leader who expressed these opinions on mission and vision also
did agree with the need for hierarchy and authority during crises, however,
as well as an overall need for trauma-specific training.
An understanding of the larger overall UUTRM mission was signifi-
cantly more limited, however, by TVUUC congregational leaders
interviewed. In most cases, the UUTRM mission was seen by these
leaders as primarily to support and advise the senior minister in his
recovery and in his ministry to the congregation (though the minister
himself had a deeper awareness of the overall work of the UUTRM from
exposure to a UUTRM-led workshop at the UUA national General
Assembly). Most TVUUC leaders interviewed had no awareness of the
existence of the UUTRM prior to their encounter with their services in
the aftermath of the shooting. This lack of perceived clarity as to the
UUTRM mission, and its role and authority in relationship to the larger
congregational leadership, was seen as a particular challenge by some
TVUUC leaders in this case study.
76 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Philosophical Influences

Within the UUTRM mission statement, one can see the emphasis on and
philosophical influence of a particular type of training, Critical Incident
Stress Management (CISM) modalities,25 though other training modali-
ties were added as the UUTRM grew with experience over time. These
included the National Organization of Victims Assistance (NOVA) train-
ing,26 deemed more suitable for working with crime victims and homicide
traumas by UUTRM leaders interviewed. UUTRM leaders frequently
stressed that the specific kind of training needed for trauma response was
significantly different from the forms of pastoral care training clergy might
receive through Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and that these partic-
ular trainings gave them these added skills. In responding to 9/11,
however, some level of at least CPE training was a form of legitimizing
one’s credentials as a chaplain, this according to the UUTRM leader for
whom that became a crucial point of credibility in gaining access to
Ground Zero (many other denominational chaplains on the ground
apparently had not had CPE or any other formal training by her report).
One UUTRM leader spoke in strong terms to the failure of CPE
training to prepare ministers fully in the specific skill sets needed as
trauma responders:

I’m doing a CPE residency now, and I’m more and more convinced CPE
. . . doesn’t train you to do crisis and trauma work . . .. it’s a cult . . . I mean,
CPE can be helpful if you’ve done your own work on it . . . that’s certainly
gonna be an asset. But the idea that hospital chaplaincy trains you with the
skill sets you need to do trauma work is a complete falsehood and just
propaganda that they say that they do. So that’s my opinion, on the record.

The institutional supporter who was the former UUA president at the
time of the UUTRM’s formation also believed that the response to
trauma requires an additional level of training and skills beyond providing
merely a pastoral listening presence:

Trauma, particularly large-scale societal trauma, in my experience and in my

judgment, actually has some dynamics that need to be understood if you're
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 77

gonna be helpful and . . . the simple act of presence is good but it's not all
that's necessary, and that's why I was delighted that [the UUTRM] had
searched out some additional education for themselves . . . so that they
could show up in situations of trauma, not merely with . . . a pastoral
presence, but with a pastoral presence that understood some of the dynam-
ics of trauma over time and could interact with the people who were going
through those various stages of response . . . with some information and
knowledge about what resources are appropriate at the various stages. So
they show up doing a better job of ministry is the short version.

Regarding the need for trauma-specific training combined with clear

lines of authority and accountability, all UUTRM leaders agreed that this
was a profound human need due to the chaotic nature of traumatic
impact. The at times frequent militaristic language and hierarchical pro-
tocol in their descriptions (such as “deploy,” “chain of command,” “com-
mand structures,” “proper channels”) often was striking to me given their
UU ministerial and pastoral context. This can be seen when one UUTRM
leader stressed the need for accountability to minimize chaos, particularly
in the aftermath of traumatic disasters:

I think the worst possible thing that can happen in disaster scenarios, where
chaos reigns supreme and people are trying to put structures in place, is to
have groups of people that arrive without any particular authority or
direction, and so we're very clear that . . . we do not deploy unless we are
invited to do so by the proper channels . . . And that's really about being
accountable and making certain we don't simply add to chaos in an already
chaotic situation . . . I think people don't understand that it's not just about
showing up. It's about being able to show up and function to bring the
necessary resources to bear in a particular situation . . ..

My sense became that this might be the way military chaplains are
trained and that there are parallels perhaps between large-scale disaster
training responses and military training responses. I found myself struck
by the difference in tone, language, and cultural response between the two
case studies in this sense, given their different cultural contexts of oper-
ation often as well. A question in my mind became: When does a
traumatic incident reach a scale requiring a more hierarchical or
78 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

military-style response? One perhaps might see this need in situations of

mass shootings as well as natural disasters, but what about the more
gradual, chronic, and accumulated traumas of violent loss for particular
communities that reflect multiple rather than single incidents?27 Another
UUTRM leader also spoke to the importance of this hierarchical form of
response in the aftermath of violent trauma, but of the challenge this
posed to a religiously liberal UU movement culturally wedded to demo-
cratic governance:

Because it’s order in the middle of chaos. Everything’s nuts. Somebody has
to be in charge . . . I think one of the biggest problems we have with trauma
response in our movement is that it is hierarchical in a way that is not
familiar ... to us unless we have people who have served in the Army. You
don’t get to just do whatever you feel like doing. Somebody has to be in
charge . . . you still have to follow a chain of command. That’s antithetical
to the open democratic process.

UUA institutional supporters also agreed that authorization, training,

accountability, and legitimacy are acute needs for care in traumatic crises,
and that having these enable a deeper layer of trust and effectiveness to be
brought to bear, as one would state:

. . . a strong motive for organizing the UUTRM came as a result of the need
to kind of legitimate our ministers who would so serve, so that not every cat
and dog could come in and make a mess of things, but to make sure that
there was membership, that there were qualifications, and so on. That was
an administrative but it was also a quality control issue.

In a situation of large-scale group or social trauma, the reestablishment

of order amid chaos, and a sense of control and safety, conveyed by
UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional supporters, dovetails with
much of the existing literature on human needs in trauma recovery. As
Judith Herman writes, “Traumatic events call into question basic human
relationships . . . Traumatic events destroy the victim’s fundamental
assumptions about the safety of the world, the positive value of the self,
and the meaningful order of creation . . ..”28 This leads to the question of
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 79

specific religious and secular care strategies for reestablishing order amid
the chaos, particularly in large-scale versus smaller-scale traumatic situa-
tions—or as Carolyn Yoder writes, “What degree of safety? What kind of
safety?”29 Is it also possible that the reestablishment of safety can come at
some other emotional or spiritual cost to survivors depending on context?
For example, clearly UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional sup-
porters interviewed placed a heavy emphasis on trauma-specific training
and certification of legitimacy, as well as on clear lines of authority and
accountability within a clearly defined and limited scope of action. This
entailed comfort with structured, hierarchical approaches consistent with
those of government and military agencies during large-scale socially
traumatic events. What happens when such approaches clash with
established cultures or “ways of relational being?” for smaller-scale con-
texts and events, such as in culturally different communities or religious
settings? Can such clashes in and of themselves actually create more
anxiety and less safety in certain contexts, or, at a minimum, a failure of
expectations that then can deepen a loss of trust on certain levels? How are
groups, religious communities, and society educated on or prepared for
this potential clash of cultures in large-scale trauma responses as well?
There is a significant difference between cultural expectations of “doing
whatever is necessary” to meet emergent needs in care based on whoever
might volunteer to step forward in a moment to offer a skill versus
following very specific “chains of command” to discriminate which
needs should be met and which not based on perceived limited capacity
and resources in a major social emergency. Such differences in cultural
expectations and access to power do have implications for the ecclesial or
religious context when congregations or religious communities that are
accustomed to more “democratic” and time-consuming ways of function-
ing encounter a traumatic situation and need to make rapid and multiple
decisions. Their normal democratic processes and/or culturally expected
roles may not be available or possible. There are even greater implications
for impact if an organization external to the normal ecclesial or religious
context is added to this mix in the provision of care. If the experience of
trauma is cognitively as well as emotionally destabilizing, as Ronnie Janoff-
Bulman has argued,30 then such a clash of cultures or worldviews in the
clinical or pastoral response, as well as in the guiding relational images or
80 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

cultural narratives expected or offered, may certainly compound the

experience of the trauma and lack of control. Indeed, some of these
tension points emerged in this particular case study of the UUTRM and
the TVUUC—and beyond this particular case study, there are implica-
tions in such culture and power clashes for different types of communities
as well.

Outline of Programs and Infrastructure

It is important to know that the UUTRM is not an official institutional

arm of the UUA, which is organized as a voluntary association of congre-
gations through a congregational polity form of governance. This lack of a
formal institutional affiliation for the UUTRM is inclusive of a lack of
formal institutionalized affiliation with the UUA’s district or regional
offices and the financing of those offices by the UUA and district congre-
gations. Within this governance structure, the UUTRM is a voluntary
and separate nonprofit organization that seeks to maintain a Memoran-
dum of Understanding with the UUA for the services that it provides to
its member congregations. At the time of the original interviews, this
memorandum had no formal automatic mechanism for review or renewal
with each new UUA administration. Hence, the UUTRM was heavily
reliant on general fundraising and volunteer efforts and coordination for
its operations, as well as on internal accountability mechanisms and a high
level of trust with UUA staff members.31 This form of organization posed
a certain level of structural challenges and limitations. However, it also
offered the possibility of greater operational freedom for the UUTRM,
both dimensions of which will be discussed later. UUTRM leaders stated
that there was an ongoing discussion as to the best form of infrastructure
to support their mission and ultimate vision.
Corresponding to their mission statement, the UUTRM seeks to
provide education on trauma and preparedness training and also to
provide resources in the event of a traumatic situation impacting on the
life of a UU congregation, including the deployment of a UUTRM team
as requested. The provision of resources may occur as simply as through a
telephone call, including ongoing coaching and consultation by phone, or
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 81

more fully in the deployment of UUTRM volunteer team members

within 24 hours via a response coordinator who assesses and coordinates
the meeting of needs. There is an 800 number carried by an on-call
Management Team representative that is often the first mechanism of
contact with the UUTRM. Additional resources might include assistance
with pulpit supply for ministers who need to leave their congregations to
help with a trauma event, as well as the provision of assistance in locating
respite care for trauma victims.
Developing educational programs and being able to respond with such
resources listed above appeared to be the primary capacity of the existing
infrastructure of the UUTRM, per its current leadership and institutional
supporters at the time of the original interviews. Affiliating with other
trauma organizations (apart from participating in trainings), or deploying
teams beyond local disaster situations involving UU congregations, were
not as frequently mentioned in interviews. It is clear that the UUTRM
does coordinate with other organizations, however, such as the Red Cross,
when possible and needed, including in this particular case study.
The UUTRM also provides trainings and workshops to UU clergy and
laity in the context of the UUA national General Assembly, at minister
convocations and district assemblies, in one-on-one settings, and through
website information. UUTRM leaders report that they continue to
expand their capacity and accomplishments in these areas. Some of the
types of workshops they have provided, per one UUTRM leader, include:
“introduction to trauma ministry; workshops on the lifecycle of a disaster
in faith-based communities; emergency preparedness for congregations,
faith-based institutions; the pastoral crisis intervention for professional
religious leaders”; etc. Traumatic situations to which they have responded
include not only the more well-known ones such as the TVUUC shooting
and Hurricane Katrina but also church-related traumas inclusive of fires,
floods or tornados, auto accidents, suicide, criminal acts impacting on
congregants, sexual misconduct, etc. Each volunteer team member is
required to participate in a minimum of 40 hours of crisis response
team training, including a variety of other requirements as documented
in a formal application, and to comply with a UUTRM Code of Ethics.32
A quarterly newsletter was reported to be a means of maintaining regular
contact with UUTRM volunteer team members across the country.
82 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

In working with both of the case studies, I bring the strengths and
challenges of being immersed within their respective cultures through
lived experiences and being simultaneously outside of their respective
cultures through social identity or location. As I move into a more specific
exploration of interdisciplinary tools for application in the next chapter, I
bring my lived experiences of these cultural border crossings to my
selection and suggestion of particular tools that seem to correlate with
my observations and interviews. The “truth” of the correlations, as
previously suggested in Chap. 2, lies in resonance found in body and
narrative by my collective readership, but most particularly, for me also, in
and by the communities I studied and to whom I experience myself most
accountable as a researcher.

Notes
1. Joseph M. Chery, “The Story of Louis D. Brown,” section titled
“Dream High” found in Peacezone: A Program for Teaching Social
Literacy, Grades 4-5 Teacher’s Guide by Deborah Prothrow-Stith,
et al., 24.
2. For more detailed information on this period of Boston’s history and
the organizing efforts to reduce homicides, including an unprece-
dented cooperation between clergy and police represented by the Ten
Point Coalition, see “Religion and the Boston Miracle: The Effect of
Black Ministry on Youth Violence” by Jenny Berrien, Omar Roberts,
and Christopher Winship in Who Will Provide? The Changing Role of
Religion in American Social Welfare, edited by Mary Jo Bane, Brent
Coffin, and Ronald Thiemann (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000).
266–285.
3. See US Attorney General Janet Reno’s remarks in “Youth Violence: A
Community-Based Response, One City’s Success Story,” 1996. See
https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/boston.txt (accessed April 20, 2013).
4. It is important to note that the Peace Institute is currently moving in
the direction of a greater focus on training providers in the method-
ology of their work and ministry in the hopes of replicating it and
decreasing their focus on direct service outreach. This is due to their
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 83

own recognized limited capacity in staffing and funding to enable

their vision and mission to have the type of reach they desire.
5. See the Peace Institute’s website in particular: http://www.
ldbpeaceinstitute.org/mission.html (accessed April 1, 2016) for the
mission statement and quotes that follow above.
6. Since the initial study from which the book draws, the Peace Institute
has continued to grow and to incorporate more professional staffing,
while also seeking to remain true to its overall culture and origins.
7. While the Peace Institute is known best for its Peacezone curriculum
currently, the founders had also developed other nationally recog-
nized peace curriculums based on literature and community service
learning prior to the Peacezone curriculum. There are multiple
Peacezone curriculums for different grades, but one sample is Debo-
rah Prothrow-Stith, et al., Peacezone: A Program for Teaching Social
Literacy, Grades 4-5, Teacher’s Guide.
8. Prothrow-Stith, Deadly Consequences, 132.
9. Ibid., 28.
10. Further information on this form of approach to antiracism/anti-
oppression/multicultural education can be found in Valerie Batts,
“Is Reconciliation Possible? Lessons from Combatting ‘Modern Rac-
ism’,” in Waging Reconciliation: God’s Mission in a Time of Globali-
zation and Crisis, ed., Douglas, I.T. (New York: Church Publishing,
Inc., 2002), 35–69.
11. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
(New York: Routledge, 1994), 59–75.
12. Ibid., 61.
13. I found the spontaneous use of the term “peculiar people” by this
ministry leader rather striking as it immediately recalled for me how
Southern slaveholders had called slavery “the peculiar institution” out
of their own embarrassment and shame, hence associations to stig-
matized institutions and people. See Kenneth M. Stampp’s classic
study, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South
(New York: Vintage Books, 1956/1989). The work of James Gilligan
on the role of shame and honor in the creation and perpetuation of
violence, particularly for men, is useful in understanding the
84 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

importance of peer groups for adults and youth, as well as the

importance of providing alternative vehicles for expressing emotions
and reducing stigma and shame. See his work Violence: Reflection on a
National Epidemic (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). Other writers
who speak specifically to the African American male experience
include Geoffrey Canada, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1996) as well as his Reaching Up For Manhood: Transforming
the Lives of Boys in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), and also
John A. Rich, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the
Lives of Young Black Men (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2009). A final interesting historical and cultural perspective on
the impact of slavery, violence, honor, and shame that bears on
contemporary struggles is a classic work by Bertram Wyatt-Brown,
Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986).
14. Internal ongoing publication of the LDBPI.
15. The bulk of this extra anecdotal material was shared by a former
minister, which I observed when watching the archived videotaped
rededication service.
16. The inscribed values included: Diversity, Justice, Freedom, Peace,
Experience, Grace, Question, Struggle, Dignity, Hope, Service, Love,
Mystery, Sorrow, Humility, Reason, Growth, Joy.
17. See the Commission on Appraisal, Engaging Our Theological Diver-
sity, 102–104, for more information on these covenants.
18. Later UUA educational programs would include information on
welcoming bisexual and transgender persons as well. More informa-
tion on the current process for becoming an officially designated
“Welcoming Congregation” within the UUA can be found at this
link: http://www.uua.org/lgbtq/welcoming/program/57699.shtml
(accessed on February 11, 2013).
19. See Ted Jones, Straightening Up: The Recovery of the Tennessee Valley
Unitarian Universalist Church From an Attack (Unpublished manu-
script, 2010), 9. There are parallels in the church’s struggle in this
area to other challenges articulated in becoming a “Welcoming Con-
gregation,” including comments such as “We are already welcoming,
 3 Two Case Studies by a Researcher Living Between Worlds 85

why should we single out a particular group?” as found in another

practical theological study I conducted during my master of divinity
program. See Michelle Walsh, “Theological Analysis Project: The
Welcoming Congregation Program as a Successful Model for Engag-
ing Unitarian Universalists on Behalf of Social Justice” (Unpublished
manuscript, 2004).
20. Jones, Straightening Up, 9.
21. The shooter’s former wife also had been a member of the church
several years ago and apparently experienced domestic violence from
the shooter, though this was not known during the time of her
membership according to the TVUUC minister.
22. See “Shock Jock: Rage on the Radio,” Bill Moyers Journal, available at
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html (accessed
January 31, 2013).
23. Jones, Straightening Up, 54–57.
24. See the UUTRM website at http://www.traumaministry.org
(accessed February 11, 2013).
25. More information can be found on CISM trainings, approaches, and
definitions through the International Critical Incident Stress Foun-
dation at https://www.icisf.org (accessed April 1, 2016). Also men-
tioned in the course of this research was that every state participates in
the National VOAD—the National Voluntary Organizations Active
in Disaster, and more information regarding this organization can be
found at http://www.nvoad.org (accessed February 11, 2013).
26. More information regarding NOVA—the National Organization for
Victims Assistance—may be found at http://www.trynova.org
(accessed on February 11, 2013).
27. In this era of domestic police militarization and BLM in the US
context, this is actually not a small question in terms of appropriate
levels and cultural forms of response during times of community
unrest or protest, particularly for communities long suffering under
institutional and cultural forms of oppression. See Radley Balko, Rise
of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
(New York: Public Affairs, 2014).
86 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

28. Judith L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: BasicBooks,

1992), 51–51.
29. Carolyn Yoder, Carolyn, The Little Book of Trauma Healing: When
Violence Strikes and Community Security is Threatened (Intercourse,
PA: The Good Books, 2005), 51.
30. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psy-
chology of Trauma (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
31. An example of such trust is that one UUA institutional supporter
provided a UUTRM member with his personal credit card number
late one weekend night so that she could get an immediate flight to
“respond quickly and easily without a lot of bureaucracy or silliness.”
He said this does not happen a lot but has happened more than once
when there was a need to respond with informality and speed in
certain situations. This required a high level of personal trust and
“credibility,” as this institutional supporter would say, in their
relationship.
32. More information can be found in a UUTRM internal document,
their “Standard Operating Procedures” manual, a copy of which was
provided to me during the research process.
 4
Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective

The Eyes as Windows to a World of Pain

I will never forget the first time I met a parent who lost her child to
homicide. This memory lays tucked into a viscerally experienced wordless
area of my brain—a world of fierce pain communicated only through her
eyes, eyes that were tearless and awake yet inward and radically broken in
human connection, surreal in their disassociation from this particular
reality. I realized how powerful the eyes could be in communicating a
vastness beyond words, even communicating when one is living in or near
the land of death—and I realized also my own powerlessness to connect
with, let alone heal, those eyes, leaving guilt and a gaping sorrow in the
wake. While serving as a “lay community minister/social work clinician,”
I’d seen similar yet different eyes in the young men who came to the gang
outreach program in my early years with the different urban youth
ministries. Their eyes seemed never to have experienced childhood—
they too were eyes disassociated from the fullness of life, possibilities,
and hope, presenting instead with emptiness and guarded cynicism. By
their very choice to come to their youth program, however, the eyes also

© The Author(s) 2017 87

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_4
88 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

presented with just a hint of desire for something more, something that
would renew and restore their bodies with meaning and joy and safety.
With a certain poignancy, I also remember seeing one such young man
transforming overnight into a delighted and free young boy, with laughter
in his eyes, when taken on a nature outing to an island in another state for
the weekend—only then to stand as helpless witness once again while
watching the guard come down slowly over his eyes and body as he shifted
back into a state of preparedness for re-entering another world different
from that of the outing. A different but equally gaping and sorrow-filled
chasm seemed to exist between this yearning and desire witnessed and the
reality of felt possibility for safety, renewal, and restoration in these
particular boys—and in myself as well. All these images and many more
I witnessed with my eyes and with my body in the treacherous border-
lands between cultural worlds set apart in life giving and life taking. These
images leave their marks, “scratches” on the mind, body, heart, and soul,
morally and permanently bonding me in their aftermath to all members.1

Interdisciplinary Trauma Studies and

Meaning-Making
The disruption of personal meaning-making narrative and connection to
community under the impact of severe suffering is well recognized and
supported by the social scientific literature on trauma. For example,
Judith Herman’s text, Trauma and Recovery, is an early social science
classic in the field of trauma studies, and an implied interdisciplinary
relationship between trauma and religion and spirituality can be discerned
readily in her formulations, including hints of questions of theodicy and
meaning-making and the need for personal healing spiritual practices as
well as communal healing rituals2:

Traumatic events call into question basic human relationships . . . They

undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They
violate the victim’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into
a state of existential crisis . . . Traumatic events destroy the victim’s funda-
mental assumptions about the safety of the world, the positive value of the
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 89

self, and the meaningful order of creation . . . Basic trust is the foundation of
belief in the continuity of life, the order of nature, and the transcendent
order of the divine . . ..

Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, in her classic text, Shattered Assumptions: Towards

a New Psychology of Trauma, also would write, “The personal insights that
are gained from one’s traumatic experience have important parallels in
religious teachings. Common religious themes emphasize the redemptive
and strengthening role of suffering.”3
More recent social scientific literature on trauma continues to make
reference to “disrupted spirituality”4 in cases of trauma, even impacting
the “helper” of the victim (which could include religious helpers as well as
first responders, human service providers, or educators). Other social
scientific literature calls attention to the possibility of “posttraumatic
growth”5 for survivors, such as spiritual growth. This includes possible
“vicarious growth”6 for their therapists (and by implication, all other
helping professionals as well).7 For instance, what does it mean as exam-
ples of post-traumatic growth and/or vicarious growth that individuals or
families impacted by violent trauma, whether through personal loss or
providing services to survivors, become motivated to found institutional
trauma service ministries, such as the Peace Institute and the UUTRM?
Are there linkages between the processing of the trauma and a type of
religious or spiritual meaning-making and growth through creation of
institutions in the aftermath? Could such community institutions consti-
tute, drawing on Nancy Ammerman’s work,8 a type of “spiritual tribe”
centered in the “sacred story” of a murdered loved one? Spiritual tribes can
shape around this type of sacred story in the aftermath of trauma.
Some correlation to the psychosocial literature on “post-traumatic
growth”9 is possible here given that each of the Peace Institute min-
istry leaders were themselves survivors of trauma. As these leaders
“struggle[d] with loss” and being a “catalyst for change,”10 they experi-
enced “posttraumatic growth” as survivors themselves, as well as “vicar-
ious growth”11 when in the role of caring for other survivors as ministry
leaders. They used their personal survivor experiences as a relational
basis for empathy in their ongoing learning.12 These experiences in turn
nurtured practices at the Peace institute that were designed, through
90 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

their Christian narrative, to foster a sense of inward control and peace

on the personal level, as well as an outward capacity for public action
and impact in challenging the larger society (“transforming pain and
anger into power and action”)—or “leading by example” as the
founding ministry leader stated. In these correlations, the case studies
also point to how religious or spiritual communities have the potential
to achieve a deeper level of healing by giving attention to survivor social
justice practices in light of the various socially induced oppressions that
lead to violence and trauma.13 The Peace Institute case study proves to be
particularly useful in highlighting the functioning of a “spiritual tribe”
through such religiously and spiritually narrated Christian practices in a
community suffering under various historical and contemporary struc-
tures of oppression.
Healing from trauma, such as the murder of a loved one or exposure to
violence, is a lifelong process of reestablishing and maintaining a new
social support system that in effect becomes a new life—a radical break
with one’s former world of meaning-making into a new world of ongoing
meaning-making in the aftermath:

Trauma survivors do not simply get over their experience. It is permanently

encoded in their assumptive world; the legacy of traumatic life events is
some degree of disillusionment. From the perspective of their inner worlds,
victims recover not when they return to their prior assumptive world but
when they reestablish an integrated, comfortable assumptive world that
incorporates their traumatic experience.14

Such reintegration of assumptions and meaning-making in the aftermath

of trauma require supportive communal structures, which again could
include a religious or spiritual “tribe” or community—this can be through
small-group ministry format as well, such as the Peace Institute’s
“Tuesday Talks” or “Peace Warriors.” Such reintegration also necessitates
fostering a culture of safety through political, educational, and health
institutions, among other social institutions, in addition to individual
clinical therapy—an understanding the Peace Institute specifically culti-
vates through their Leadership Academy.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 91

Interdisciplinary Trauma Studies: Body Talk

in Metaphors and Images
The largest body of secondary literature upon which I draw for correla-
tions, based on lived experiences with and observations and interviews in
the case studies, is from neuroaffective trauma studies. I also draw upon
attachment and bereavement studies and relational-cultural, narrative,
and internal family systems (IFS) theories. I argue that these theories
metaphorically can be integrated with and correlated to a richer under-
standing of meaning-making and human nature within lived religion
studies of trauma ministries—an understanding that is more truly embod-
ied and enfleshed, enlanguaged and encultured, en-neuroned and
enhormoned, and emplaced and embedded in sociohistorical and material
dimensions of power, as discussed in Chap. 2. Memory, time, and bodily
connection are key elements in neuroaffective studies of the impact of
trauma on the felt sense of self, understanding of reality, and connection
to others.15 Experiences of powerlessness and being overwhelmed by the
threatening experience also can be part of the experience of trauma. Such
experiences can be generational in nature due to societal oppressions over
time as well and have been labeled “historical trauma” by some, including
in the public health context.16
Exposure to a traumatic and violent event means one’s sense of safety
can be disrupted and memories can become inaccessible or repressed
because they are encoded differently by the brain, or even damage the
brain’s functioning, when associated with highly charged affective situa-
tions and flooded with chemical brain reactions.17 Healing components
reestablish a sense of safety and control as well as connection to others,
foster commonality (a shared understanding of reality), and create possi-
bilities to reintegrate the trauma into one’s narrative sense of self and
identity so that new meaning-making can occur. Meaning-making and
the creation of a new world/view occurs on one level through narrative
and story and also on yet another level through the body.
One “sees” or views one’s world through oral or textual story but also
experiences the world through all of one’s bodily senses—hence world/
view may require an alternative metaphor of “world sense”18 or world/sense
92 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

as more richly encompassing of this need for meaning-making.19 In fact,

stories are richly experienced in ways beyond the text, oral transmission of
story, or sight. They also can be transmitted through additional sounds,
touch, smell, and taste, particularly in dramatic or material reenactment or
expressions. It is intriguing to me, even in writing this book, how
constrained I felt by the general availability of visual metaphors alone—
such as vision, lens, or horizon of meaning, etc.—even though the eyes are
powerful in garnering and conveying worlds of meaning, as shared in the
opening vignette. I noticed my yearning for other metaphors, however, to
enliven and deepen more embodied experiences of my world imagination.
Religious and spiritual communities often serve this purpose of world
imagination through particular forms of embodied spiritual or liturgical
practices. Lived religion studies of “spiritual tribes” from different socio-
cultural backgrounds also may highlight different metaphors and language
and help to stretch our existing metaphors and language in practices.
For example, and paralleling Mark Johnson’s work on metaphor and
embodied imagination, Sandra Schneiders20 writes,

. . . a metaphor is a proposition that, if taken literally, is absurd . . . By the

very fact that it obviously intends meaning (because its propositional
structure is intact) but is literally absurd, it forces the mind into action to
find meaning at another level . . . It is a different kind of meaning, an
opening on a realm of significance that cannot be expressed literally but
engages the imagination in a cognitive and affective [emphasis added]
exploration of the subject in and through relationships that seem strange
but, in fact, are more illuminating than literal predication.

Schneiders argues that a metaphor becomes an instrument of new mean-

ing precisely because the tension created by juxtaposition of the literal and
the absurd is inherently unstable—it “struggles to emerge into clarity at
another level . . . The metaphor only stays alive and healthy, enriching the
imagination with meaning by its simultaneous engagement of cognitive
and affective energy, if the tension can be maintained between the ‘is’ and
‘is not’ [of the propositional structure].”21 Embrace, rejection, or juxta-
position of different culturally embedded metaphors through correlation
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 93

at their embodied cognitive and affective roots, from within or across

cultures, can be a source of enrichment across academic disciplines
through lived religion studies, when open to visceral experiences fostered
by these correlations, as these case studies seek to demonstrate. Through
this type of cognitive and affective engagement at a different level than
purely analogy in correlations, a deeper interdisciplinary or even transdis-
ciplinary approach might be fostered.
In drawing upon this secondary literature of neuroaffective trauma
studies, I thus suggest that the turn back to the physiological body (in all
of its dimensions) as the site of embodied relational knowing and
meaning-making and its correlation to the metaphoric and analytic capac-
ities of relational-cultural and narrative theories, in addition to IFS theory,
provide strong interdisciplinary tools for the study of trauma and service
provision, including pastoral care through ministries. These conceptual
tools also assist in the radical reconstruction of an embodied and social
understanding of self and human being, including for a theological
anthropology22 compatible with the multivalent uses of metaphorical
theologies of trauma and “spirit.”
For example, across the Jewish and Christian faith traditions, “Spirit”
has been translated from Hebrew to mean “breath” and has been associ-
ated in biblical terms with numerous ecological images, including “wind,”
and with having characteristics of physical movement, vibration, and
energy, as well as wisdom, knowledge, and liberation. Such characteristics
have an embodied and ecological tone with metaphoric implications and
applicability for interfaith dialogues, as well as correlation to the sciences,
when allowed to breathe and dance with life and spirit, finding their
points of embodied connection within the “interplay” of their respective
“emplacements.”23 Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist, upon hearing that
the Holy Spirit could be interpreted metaphorically as the energy of God,
would say regarding cross-cultural interfaith dialogue: “It confirmed my
feeling that the safest way to approach the Trinity is through the door of
the Holy Spirit.”24 I point out that Nhat Hanh stated specifically “it
confirmed my feeling,” which reflects the ethical organicity of a process of
individual interfaith encounters in which narrative and body meet on the
94 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ground of equal and affirmational felt possibilities in communicating

experiential truth or reality to each other, as I suggested in Chap. 2.
I will return to the interdisciplinary focus on trauma, religion, and
metaphoric approaches to correlating language at the end of this chapter.
To illustrate this further in relationship to the social sciences, however,
if all of our knowing is truly embodied knowing, both in verbal and
nonverbal expression, particularly as trauma survivors experience, then
our theories and their metaphorical formulations need to be reexamined at
their bodily roots. Jaak Panksepp argues that cognitive psychology has yet
“to deal effectively with the proximal neural causes”25 of behavior
patterns:

In other words, something is lacking. I would suggest that a missing piece

that can bring all these disciplines together is a neurological understanding
of the basic emotional operating systems of the mammalian brain and the
various conscious and unconscious internal states they generate . . . I have
chosen to call [this new perspective] affective neuroscience . . . I look forward
to the day when neurophilosophy . . . will become an experimental discipline
that may shed new light on the highest capacities of the human brain—
yielding new and scientific ways to talk about the human mind.

Designing new “scientific ways to talk about the human mind” to address
the “something lacking” actually may mean finding new metaphoric ways
of talking about human psychology. Such metaphors would be more
embodied, relational, and enculturated and would enhance lived religion
studies of trauma in correlation to a more embodied social understanding
of human nature. This also would entail testing the new metaphors
through a lived religion method that allowed for the critique of academic
discipline metaphors and dominant cultural worldviews and emergence of
new metaphors and language from those studied. This is necessary not
only as a matter of ethical respect in leveling the academic/community
power field but also for mutual learning and growth as we jointly face
societal challenges such as violent trauma.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 95

Trauma Studies: Embodied Relationship Talk

in Metaphor and Images
As emerged in my work with the case studies, attachment and bereave-
ment literature provided two such avenues into new metaphoric ways of
talking about human psychology for lived religion studies, supporting
both the traumatic physiological impact of the loss of a key attachment
figure, such as an immediate family member, and correlating well with the
task of developing a more socially attuned understanding of human being,
including for use with religious studies and theological anthropology.
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon provide a useful sum-
mary of some of this literature, inclusive of integrating the history of
neuroaffective and attachment studies. They argue that human beings
need “limbic regulation to give coherence to neurodevelopment.”26
Pointing to a wide variety of studies on humans and other mammals
that demonstrate, through observable physiological data, the negative
impact of failure to attach in childhood (whether by neglect or abuse)—
impact that ranges from protest to despair to actual death—Lewis, et al.27
conclude,

. . . even after a peak parenting experience, children never transition to a full

self-tuning physiology. Adults remain social animals: they continue to
require a source of stabilization outside themselves . . . Stability means
finding people who regulate you well and staying near them . . . This
necessary intermingling of physiologies makes relatedness and communal
living the center of human life.

Lewis, et al. also have created new metaphorical language based par-
tially in musical language, “limbic resonance,” to describe the regulating
and contagious role of emotions between mammals, including human
beings. We are not bounded, separate, autonomous, and entirely rational
individuals, as much of Western philosophy often has viewed human
nature as well as “the body.” Instead, the past 50–80 years of science has
demonstrated our physiological interdependence and permeability of
“bodies” through our limbic systems. “Emotionality is the social sense
organ of limbic creatures . . . A mammal can detect the internal state of
96 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

another mammal and adjust its own physiology to match the situation . . .
a capacity we call limbic resonance—a symphony of mutual exchange and
internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each
other’s inner state.”28
A researcher trained in public health and social work/welfare policy,
Phyllis R. Silverman, studies loss and grief and also supports a more
embodied and socially oriented understanding of human being across
cultures. Her research with colleagues challenged classic psychoanalytic
paradigms and metaphors29 that tend to regard “continuing bonds” with
the dead as pathological. Silverman and Dennis Klass30 argue instead that
these “continuing bonds” can be, or are in fact, living, growing, and
shaping bonds in the ongoing life of the grieving person; they are process
and action oriented rather than stable or complete:

“Internalization” as used by the psychoanalytic school of thought does not

accurately describe the process occurring in the experiences reported on in
this book. What we observe is more colorful, dynamic and interactive than
the word “internalization” suggests . . . Memorializing, remembering,
knowing the person who has died, and allowing them to influence the
present are active processes that seem to continue throughout the survivor’s
entire life.

Both case studies, in fact, demonstrated that death did not end the
relationship with or moral commitment to the dead, particularly in the
loss of their life to violence. Peace Institute families and TVUUC con-
gregants remained connected in active and evolving ways with the dead
through various practices. Silverman and Klass31 continue by proposing
the need for new rituals as well as new language for these forms of
connection, ones that are countercultural to classical Western
conceptions:

The idea of meaning-making as a continuous process requires that we

develop a more adequate language for talking about and to the deceased
. . . Most other cultures in the history seem to have supported the notion
that the deceased continue to live in some form after death, and they
provide mourners with rituals to sustain an appropriate relationship . . . In
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 97

the model of grief we propose, we would find a new language [emphasis

added] to talk not only about loss and the person who is gone, but about
connections in general.

A neurophysiological and narrative link also is made for this phenom-

enon of “continuing bonds” in bereavement literature by Edward
Rynearson and Alison Salloum, drawing upon an analogy to the phenom-
enon of “phantom limbs” in the case of amputees. “After death, the living
representation of an attachment figure (a part of self ‘dismembered’ rather
than a part of body amputated) is predictably ‘remembered’ and experi-
enced as a ‘phantom’ presence.”32 Similar to the felt ongoing presence of
an amputated limb, the dead can have a continued felt presence neuro-
physiologically with the living. There is a need to language and ritualize
these lived experiences in the Western context or to document the cultural
communities that do so—which, again, I see these case studies as making
a small contribution toward in the US context.
Additionally, Marci Hertz, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, and Clementina
Chery note that there is a particular impact for survivors of homicide that
goes beyond both grief and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and
which needs more theoretical attention: “Homicide survivorship is qual-
itatively different from survivorship of other violent crimes . . . There is no
real ‘post’ in their compilation of symptoms.”33 Thus these studies and
Klass and Silverman, et al.’s work, as well as others in the fields of grief,
complicated grief, and traumatic grief,34 support that there is a crucial
need for new metaphorical language and studies of cross-cultural com-
munal rituals, including religious or spiritual rituals, which promote
healing from traumatic loss and normalize the ongoing power of ritual
embodiment and attachment in human life. Again, this is a purpose that
religious communities can serve if prepared for and trained in, and further
empirical studies in lived religion, such as these case studies, can make
contributions toward meeting some of these needs.
Along with a language of “continuing bonds,” I also explore relational-
cultural theory and IFS theory as other forms of “new language to talk . . .
about connections in general,” more “colorful, dynamic, and interactive,”
per Silverman and Klass above. Rather than metaphoric language rooted
in psychoanalytic terms such as “objects” or “selfobjects” (terms that
98 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

metaphorically connote solidity, separation, and stability and can be

fruitful for certain contexts of analysis), relational-cultural theorists (for-
merly known as self-in-relation therapy)35 speak metaphorically of “rela-
tional images,”36 which are embodied “pictures” that are not necessarily
frozen or static but can shift, move, and change over time in the fluid
encounter with new relationships. Relational images are defined as,

[i]nner pictures of what has happened to us in relationships, formed in

important early relationships. As we develop these images, we are also
creating a set of beliefs about why relationships are the way they are.
Relational images thus determine expectations not only about what will
occur in relationships but about a person’s whole sense of herself or himself.
They often become the unconscious frameworks by which we determine
who we are, what we can do, and how worthwhile we are.37

This language again may have metaphoric usefulness for “connection

talk” and trauma studies across disciplines and cultures, including lived
religion. World/views and world/sense are shaped by the nature and
quality of relationships growing up in communities—world/views and
world/sense become grounded in relational images of expectations,
including expectations of being exposed to ongoing trauma or not,
inclusive of trauma from structural oppression or protection through
access to structural power and privilege. This bears on the different
socioeconomic and cultural contexts of the two case studies and the
different struggles with meaning-making after violent trauma
documented in the following chapters.
One final theory I explore, developed by Richard C. Schwartz, is
Internal Family System theory,38 which draws on multiplicity and systems
theories in psychology and a metaphorical language of “parts” within a self
system, as well as a cultural system, to illustrate connections and move-
ment within self and between self and others. This language was seen later
to have resonance with language some interviewed in each of the case
studies spontaneously utilized to describe their experiences. Schwartz also
has partially developed this theory for larger sociocultural analysis in
relationship to historical trauma and oppressions through his use of the
term “legacy burden”—the part of the self that carries the
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 99

intergenerational weight of cultural burdens across time and which is

transmitted through families as well as larger social institutions, thus
replicating over time. “Some families have passed burdens from genera-
tion to generation—burdens that were first instilled hundreds of years
earlier.”39 Schwartz goes on to enlarge this application to the transmission
of structural institutional oppressions over time:

To apply the IFS principles to a society, we have to see it as a large human

organism composed of smaller groups (parts) that interact . . . all the parts of
a society (the component cultural groups) carry burdens from the traumas
of their histories. For example, the early American settlers (the British and
other Europeans), whose values have evolved into those of what I am calling
the dominant, managerial coalition, were generally persecuted or troubled
in their own countries and faced what they considered a very hostile and
dangerous environment in the New World. In addition, they carried a
legacy burden of racism. European racism was in existence long before the
settlers arrived, as exemplified by the “doctrine of discovery” . . . These
burdens of fear, anger, and racism account for the generally barbaric and
exploitive ways in which European invaders treated Native Americans, and,
later, for their embracing the inhuman institution of slavery for 300 years
. . . Centuries later, mainstream U.S. culture remains burdened by this same
aggressive, individualistic, striving, righteous, and racist mentality, which
fuels and is fueled by the extreme present-day versions of capitalism and
materialism it espouses.40

When IFS theory and relational-cultural theory are combined with

narrative theory concepts, they prove useful as additional theoretical
frames with rich and flexible metaphor systems within interdisciplinary
approaches to lived religion studies of trauma. This includes a remarkable
level of attention to sociocultural factors and the expansion of such
imagery for expressing the ecological relationship of the micro dimensions
of human being with the macro dimensions of society. This ecological
relationship of micro and macro encompasses spirituality and religion
within cultural world/views and world/sense, as will be seen in further in a
section below as well as in analysis of the case studies in the next chapters.
100 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Trauma Studies: Poetic Meaning-Making

in Material Form
In smaller pilot research prior to the case studies, and also observed in my
ongoing ethnographic immersion with the Louis D. Brown Peace Insti-
tute, I became aware of the prominence of artistic and embodied ritualized
expressions of traumatic grief as a practice by survivors in the aftermath.
These included spontaneous street memorials,41 as well as displays of
pictures of, letters to, and poetry about the lost loved one in the Peace
Institute’s redesign of orders of funeral services. They also included
buttons with the picture of the lost loved one and later the Peace
Institute’s embrace and use of sandplay with miniature objects for spiri-
tual movement and growth. I realized that such ritualized, albeit popular
cultural expressions, could be considered examples of “material religion”42
within a lived religion approach to trauma studies. Yet there was “some-
thing more” that captured and stirred my imagination on an affective
level. Various offerings to the dead were made that signaled ongoing
connection to and communication with the body of the deceased.
These included but were not limited to offerings of the childhood comfort
of bodily contact with stuffed animals or favorite foods or other special
items connected with the body. These material expressions also often were
associated with specific religious and/or spiritual written or material
content, including biblical quotes and religious imagery such as the
cross, prayers, and wishes for victims to rest in peace or hopes for
communal peace. There was a sacred quality of “testimony” in these
public expressions (Fig. 4.1).
Material religion is an anthropological theoretical frame that, while
growing in significance in contemporary religious studies, is less often
applied in practical or public theology or thought of specifically in
relationship to the psychosocial study of trauma.43 Yet the case studies
illustrate that it is particularly useful for a lived religion approach to study
trauma and survivor practices. Material religion encompasses four specific
categories of material culture: “artifacts, landscape, architecture, and art.”44
Use of images and material objects reflect our embodied nature, rela-
tionships, and extended sense of self in multisensory contact, as
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 101

Fig. 4.1 Spontaneous Street Memorial #1: A typical street memorial at the
site of the murder with stuffed animals and flowers wrapped around a street
lamp pole at the top. Street memorials are known to remain up often for a
year or more and rarely are disturbed in any way unless taken down by officials
for various reasons

E. Frances King points out (Fig. 4.2). When linked to media, “the
power of the image is almost limitless”45 as a form of poetic and
performative testimony to spiritual and religious ways of being:

Focusing on the material, rather than the aesthetic or symbolic quality of

objects, means that we take into account the haptic (touching) interactions
that are . . . a significant element in the human response to, and engagement
with, material goods. No mater what their aesthetic criteria, images and
pictures and statues are there to be touched, smelled, and sometimes tasted
102 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 4.2 Spontaneous Street Memorial #2: This bottom view of a portion of a
different, more elaborate street memorial depicts food, a hairbrush, liquor
bottles, and candles as offerings

as well as looked at: along with other artifacts they are materialized in
physical form.46

Writing specifically about material Christianity, and dovetailing with

Meredith McGuire’s understanding of lived religion, Colleen McDannell
argues that it is through the “physical dimensions of religion” that human
beings both internalize and express their theologies and religious identities
(Fig. 4.3)47:

Throughout American history, Christians have explored the meaning of

the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the experience of
the body by interacting with a created world of images and shapes . . . The
symbol systems of a particular religious language are not merely handed
down, they must be learned through doing, seeing, and touching . . .
Experiencing the physical dimensions of religion helps bring about reli-
gious values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes. Practicing religion sets into
play ways of thinking. It is the continual interation with objects and
images that makes one religious in a particular manner.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 103

Fig. 4.3 Spontaneous Street Memorial #3: This is a closeup of a different

street memorial with a basket containing different items, including scriptural
quotes

Pastoral and clinical care with victims of trauma requires attention to

the somatic rupturing of self and body, and counter-practices of meaning-
making may include reconnection to material objects, physical spaces, and
one’s surroundings. As I became more deeply aware of the various
practices of the Peace Institute in both pilot studies, conjoined with the
spontaneous street memorials from my first pilot study, I realized that
such practices seemed to be empowering when performed publicly as
prophetic testimony and/or social justice protest by survivor families and
youth—but also that “something more” was happening beyond a political
performance. Survivors were speaking of these practices as sacred, as
expressing an ongoing sacred connection that also was vibrant and living.
I realized that greater exploration of such material and embodied practices
could yield explicit or implicit religious content regarding “the meaning of
the divine, the nature of death, [and] the power of healing . . ..”48
Specifically, I realized there was potential methodological fruit for lived
religion studies in regarding such material practices as a form of artistic
poetic testimony. In my original research, I combined analytic
104 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

perspectives from “material religion” with the literature of a “theopoetics”

of testimony and reimagining, as initially developed by Rebecca Chopp,
and with a nod also now to broadening Paul Ricoeur’s conception of
“testimony.”49 Placing the role of testimony in the metaphorical context
of a public trial and with the testifier being seen as a “personally devoted”
and “faithful witness,” Ricoeur writes, “ . . . the witness seals his bond to
the cause he defends by a public profession of his conviction . . . The
witness is capable of suffering and dying for his belief.”50 Ricouer con-
tinues, “ . . . the theme of confession-profession is . . . the major mark of
the prophetic concept of testimony,” a confession of historical events that
becomes tied to a narrative of larger meaning-making, “binding
confession-testimony to narration-testimony.”51 Within the Christian
tradition, confession-testimony is bound to the narration-testimony of
the story of Jesus as Christ. However, just as Sharon Welch metaphori-
cally broadened the concept of “dangerous memories” beyond solely a
Christian narrative and context,52 Paul Ricouer’s concept of “testimony”
can be broadened to other religious contexts or social circumstances yet
retain its prophetic edge and challenge in root metaphoric meaning by
linking confession, profession, testimony, and narration.
This combination of literatures seemed uniquely suited to exploring the
implicit and explicit religious and spiritual dimensions of embodied and
material artistic practices of pastoral and clinical care in the aftermath of
trauma. A “material theopoetics” thus became one interdisciplinary bridge
tool between a lived religion incorporation of material religion (purely as
anthropology) and practical and constructive theologies of prophetic
pastoral care in my original research.53 I find poetics to be the broader
term overall across disciplines, however, in light of the metaphoric base of
language in various academic disciplines. Hence, my preferred writing
style would be “material theo/poetics” as my thinking has evolved more
deeply in the desire to foster, with ethical respect, interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary studies in the area of trauma, particularly for the very
large global and societal challenge of violent trauma.54 Each academic
discipline has its own poetics and metaphors in its particular cultural
world/views or world/sense as previously discussed. Thus we could discuss
socio/poetics, psych/poetics, anthro/poetics, philo/poetics, religio/poetics,
science/poetics, etc., with the metaphors multivalent in possibilities for
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 105

connection, yet the integrity of the embodied experiences underlying each

discipline respected in that connection. The example of this in religio/
poetics would be Thich Naht Hanh’s desire to find a connective way into
the Trinity in his Buddhist practice, as previously discussed, and doing so
through the language of “spirit.”
Regarding the power of a poetic approach, Rebecca S. Chopp writes,
“As compared to rhetoric, poetics seeks not so much to argue as to
refigure, to reimagine and refashion the world.”55 Through metaphor,
poetics can “reimagine” the world, bringing new images and possibilities
to light and/or bringing discrepant images together for prophetic warning
and/or transformative insight, thus enlarging narrative vision.56 As we
witness the embodied, material, and performative practices of trauma
ministries, we realize they may testify prophetically to alternative lived
experiences of trauma, to the sanctification of life in new forms, as well as
to alternative religious or spiritual world/views or world/sense.57 My
argument is that “poetics” as an expression of beauty, imagination,
metaphoric juxtaposition, or moral call58 need not be restricted to verbal
or literary expressions—that a form of poetic testimony, witness, sancti-
fication, and prophetic challenge can occur through material expressions
as well—and this is worthy of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
attention, particularly sociological attention as well as the attention of
lived religion studies.59
For example, spontaneous street memorials created in the aftermath of
homicide are artistic material renderings and mark implicit, at times
explicit, public prophetic protest. They testify metaphorically and theo-
logically to the “dangerous memories”60 of precious lives lost by virtue of
being performed in public spaces,61 with the potential of such testimony
being magnified by the additional public witness of the media. Families,
youth, and young adults also often resist the removal of such street
memorials from the public space, as self-reported in my research.62 In
an essay on theopoetics and liberation, Rubem Alves writes, “Politics
begins not with the administration of the dead but with the resurrection
of the dead.”63 Various artistic and material practices mark an ongoing
bond with the dead that is not only political but also living, moral, and
sacred (Figs. 4.4 and 4.5).
106 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 4.4 Public Artistic Memorial—Long Shot: A picture from a public artistic
memorial created by a public charter school class using shoes to represent
people lost to homicide in the year 2005. It was displayed at a health center
for a few years with a lengthy plaque including the words “Our goal is to
eliminate violence and bring forth a new community . . . In order to prevent
more deaths we must understand how violence affects everyone in our whole
community. Let us come together as a community and make sure there are no
more empty shoes. We should use these shoes as the beginning of our journey
to PEACE”

One UUTRM leader also shared her experiences with religio/poetic

material rituals used in the aftermath of other traumas as well. For
example, after a shooting at a Virginia university that impacted in part
on a UU congregation in the area, she worked with the minister to
develop a ritual where congregants lit candles to express their concerns
and then placed stones down and washed them with “healing water” to
symbolize metaphorically the laying down of their “burdens.” In Florida,
after a hurricane, she worked with a different minister to develop a ritual
that symbolized the end of the hurricane season and allowed congregants
to “ritually dispose,” in a metaphorically controlled manner, what they
had not been able to control losing during the hurricane, utilizing wood
and paper and pictures or pieces of items that had been lost.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 107

Fig. 4.5 Public Artistic Memorial—Close Up: Items also were added to this
particular public memorial as they are to many public memorials, for example
such as Vietnam War Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial in the US context,
sometimes poignantly so as suggested artistically here as a form of material
poetics with the child-size shoe attached

Finally, this UUTRM leader shared yet another story from her own
parish community of the power of a religio/poetic material ritual and the
creation of a permanent memorial and site of ongoing ritual during times
of loss or trauma. In the aftermath of 9/11, she suggested the use of
granite from the church where she ministers to create a permanent
handprint on the town’s common as a literal “touchstone” of acknowl-
edgment in the aftermath. This was followed by a multigenerational
service in which she said

So this stone that we have here has a handprint in it, and it’s the touchstone
now and whenever you’re feeling like you’ve lost your bearings or whenever
the world feels really scary to you . . . or whenever you feel disconnected,
whenever you don’t feel like you’re part of the community, I want you to
remember that this stone is here with a handprint in it, and I want you to
come and touch that handprint and then you’ll know that you’re never too
far away from anybody else because we have this place and this time to come
together and this is your touchstone to be healed and feel part of it.
108 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

She elaborated that this was a significant communal healing ritual in the
aftermath of trauma because “the healing community is being connected
back to common roots, common integrity . . . coming back to that place
where there is a common purpose of hope, love, respect, worth and value
of being together and that relationship that we all have.” She reported that
town members, beyond members of her own congregation, would return
to this touchstone when there were communal losses after 9/11 as well
(Fig. 4.6).
This embodied and material emphasis in rituals developed by a
UUTRM ministerial leader reinforce the power of a material religio/
poetics in the aftermath of trauma as a prophetic communal practice as
well as a personal pastoral care practice. Embodied metaphors conjoined
to material artistic expression is at the heart of many of the rituals
described—the holding and placing down of stones that carry a physical
weight metaphorically testify to the letting go of “burdens.” The pouring
of water witnesses to and symbolizes the possibility of purification and
healing, a symbolic gesture that easily can be associated to various biblical

Fig. 4.6 Permanent Town Granite Memorial “Touchstone” Handprint. This

stone handprint sits unmarked underneath the town’s US flagpole
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 109

ritual traditions involving water. The creation of a handprint from the

granite of a historic church also becomes a permanent metaphoric and
material site of embodied connection through the physical touch of hands
across generations during times of disconnection and loss—a place of
continuing embodied and moral bonds that is religious and ecclesial in
nature, giving sacred material testimony and witness to a larger spiritual
hope and bond across time. For these temporary moments, at least, and
through the above embodied and material rituals as well as through street
memorials, a “spiritual tribe” can come together in ways that also can
create “liminality” that breaks through into sacred “communitas,” the
creation of sacred space where normally hierarchical or socially
constructed roles may be leveled, in anthropologist Victor Turner’s64
classic theory and observations:

Communitas breaks in through the interstices of structure, in liminality; at

the edges of structure, in marginality; and from beneath structure, in
inferiority. It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or “holy,” possibly
because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured and
institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprec-
edented potency.65

In addition to the above examples, I was aware through public

documents66 of the UUTRM’s work with a congregation in Knoxville,
TN, prior to my own research with members of this congregation. As
stated in the previous chapter, on July 27, 2008, a gunman specifically
targeting UUs killed two adults and injured seven others during a chil-
dren’s performance of a play. At the rededication service for the sanctuary
on August 3rd, ritual reinhabitation of the space, elements of material
religion, and a metaphoric transformation of a song all were used to
reclaim safety and testify to renewal of hope and sanctification of the
space, also as witnessed publicly by the media, as discussed in Chap. 6. My
growing awareness of the combined practices of the Peace Institute and
the UUTRM solidified my interest in the methodological potential of
combining these two different literatures initially through the phrase
“material theopoetics” as a way of theologically naming such performative
practices. In doing so, I came to realize later that I also now am situated in
110 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

and contributing to a larger stream of growing literature called “the new

materialism,” one that also is calling for the crossing of disciplines,
including scholars and writers in philosophy, ethics, political theory,
anthropology, cultural and media studies, corporeality and the arts, etc.67
I will return to this in the final chapter in recommendations for further
research and interdisciplinary explorations, yet this too reinforced my
attention to the power of poetics as a means of connecting disciplines—as
in material poetics or theo/poetics or religio/poetics or even socio/poetics,
among others.

Trauma Studies: Disciplinary Encounters

with Culture and Recognition of Power
My training and background necessarily cross disciplines through clinical
social work, ministry, and practical and pastoral theology. These disci-
plines shape my language and cultural lens and approach—yet there also is
variability within disciplines in the degree to which culture and power are
taken into account. Beginning with my first disciplinary training, social
work taught me to examine the intertwining of the psycho-social-biological
and ecological aspects of human being—that human beings are born
with a particular biological body and are shaped in their psychology by
family relationships within a community and culture. Human beings
also exist within a larger social and cultural context shaped by experi-
ences of power and privilege or oppression over time. However, even
within the discipline of social work, there is variability in the degree to
which the profession and its preferred educational theories attend to the
ecological lens of culture and power beyond the purely psychodynamic
clinical lens. I previously pointed to the way in which IFS theory begins
to integrate this larger lens. Here I point to the necessity of bringing a
power analysis and an intercultural lens of encounter to research,
examining some of the specific contributions of relational-cultural the-
ory (RCT) and liberation health theory as I also draw on them for
application to the case studies in the next chapters.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 111

I argue, first, that a power analysis is a necessary tool for an interdisci-

plinary, or transdisciplinary, lived religion approach to studying violent
trauma in communities either privileged or oppressed by race and class. I
draw on my own experiences with grassroots activist trainings developed
over the years by feminist organizations and writers68 in my understand-
ing that power encompasses four dimensions: (1) access to resources,
(2) access to decision-making capacity, (3) access to norm/standard-
making capacity, and finally through the institutional and cultural weight
of the combination of these three, (4) access to the capacity to define
“reality” and what will or will not be considered a “problem” within an
institutional or sociocultural context—with all elements of such power
ultimately being backed by the violent or nonviolent capacity of force
(nonviolent capacity often being specifically rooted in cross-cultural reli-
gious traditions of radical peaceful protest and disruption).
Second, my lived experiences with being a border crosser of cultures in
different contexts of historical and institutional power also lead me to
advocate for the necessity of opportunities for intercultural encounter in
research. This includes openly drawing upon and illustrating the
researcher’s own experiences of such encounters, as I strive to do with
vignettes in my writing style as well as in particular acknowledgments at
times, including in endnotes, throughout this book.69 Given the scope
and impact of violent trauma, developing intercultural interdisciplinary
research approaches becomes significant as an ethical response during an
era of increasing pluralism and diversity, including discrepancy of access
to power and significant shared global challenges.70 For example, Maria
Pilar Aquino71 has written,

. . . the meaning of interculturality is linked to the historical context of each

people and each culture, so the meaning depends on the realities, the
resources, and the challenges of that context . . . intercultural praxis requires
that we take into account the different constellations of power in order to
analyze the implications and the consequences of the intercultural processes
. . . Through communication and shared dialogue, intercultural approaches
offer alternatives for deliberating about our common commitment to
forging, out of our diverse cultural contexts, a world free of violence and
injustice.
112 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Within psychology, theories such as RCT and the liberation health

model, as well as IFS as previously discussed, can be helpful tools for
beginning to incorporate a power analysis and recognition of intercultural
impact in interdisciplinary lived religion studies of trauma. In contrast to
older critiques of relational-cultural therapy,72 RCT has developed, and
continues to develop, in its theoretical work a power analysis of domina-
tion and subordination through various categories and experiences of
oppression (race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, among others).
RCT’s particular power analysis emphasizes concepts of domination and
subordination, and temporary versus permanent inequality, and initially
was developed by the feminist lens and critique Jean Baker Miller brought
to psychoanalysis.73 RCT also now incorporates concepts by other anti-
oppression writers, such as Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of “controlling
images.” These are defined by RCT as, “Images constructed by the
dominant group that represent distortions of the nondominant cultural
group being depicted, with the intent of disempowering them.”74
Relational-cultural theory would define “power” and empowerment as
“most fundamentally the ‘capacity to produce a change’” and as “power
with” rather than “power over” and as “mutual empowerment.”75 For
example, in fostering group work through their Tuesday Talks format for
survivors, as well as their sibling and teen groups, the Peace Institute
fosters a model of “power with” rather than “power over” others—
experiences of collaboration, creativity, and action, and of mutuality
support, rather than experiences of professional distance and talking
analysis that sometimes was cited by participants as a barrier in more
traditional therapeutic relationships. Consideration of such power dynam-
ics may be helpful for examining how certain “spiritual tribes” or
approaches to communal trauma treatment are successful in functioning
in particular cultural contexts but not others depending on comfort with
particular cultural expressions of power.
Contemporary narrative therapy, as developed originally by Michael
White and David Epston in the 1980s, was deeply influenced by
poststructuralist analysis of power relations, particularly the work of
Michel Foucault, that “storytelling rights are negotiated and distributed
through the professional institution and its archives.”76 “The issues of
power relations, structural inequalities, and ownership of the storytelling
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 113

rights of personhood are central to the work of narrative therapy.”77

Narrative therapy is not necessarily grounded philosophically in the
individual narrative, though larger sociocultural, political, and economic
factors indeed may pressure individual pastoral care providers and clini-
cians to focus primarily on the individual in practice. Instead, narrative
therapy theory shares a similar sociological analysis of power as “a relation”
and “productive,” operating “at the most micro levels of social relations,”78
including through the establishment and psychological internalization of
“cultural hegemony,”79 and such relational power needs awareness by
the caretaker. Bringing a power analysis to religious care, for those
survivors ready to receive it, was shown specifically in the Peace Institute
case study to add an additional level of insight and effectiveness to their
capacity to assume leadership in a public context through their Leader-
ship Academy.
The encounter between cultures, including elements of power illus-
trated by cross-cultural controlling images and narratives or language, also
holds forth the promise of enlarging and expanding our respective aca-
demic disciplines, religious traditions, and shared sociological visions—
our respective world/views and world/sense. Beyond purely the idea of
cognitive dissonance, and drawing instead on more embodied metaphoric
RCT language and narrative for world/view and world/sense, “discrepant
relational images”80 formed in the context of different or new relation-
ships can become a means of changing negative relational images that may
be internalized as culturally dominant. “Another world is shown to be
possible” now, to paraphrase Indian activist Arundhati Roy, in the imag-
ination of possibilities through the encounter with this/these “discrepant”
cross-cultural relationship(s). A link thus can be made between relational-
cultural (RCT) and narrative theories through the framework of beliefs
and experiences that shape into the stories we tell ourselves as well as the
expectations and visions that guide our relationships in particular cultural
contexts.81
As discrepant relational images can become a basis for fluidity and
change, narrative therapy practices would look for the “alternative stories”
we tell that can become a basis for change as well—paralleling the
concealed, resistance, or emerging/transformation stories of critical race
theory mentioned in the introduction.82 The example of the Peace
114 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Institute creating curriculums based on the story of Louis D. Brown’s life

becomes not only an alternative story but also a discrepant relational
image in this sense to the negative controlling images of young black
men in the United States. As discussed further in the next chapters as well,
the TVUUC minister would use a sermon series to create a discrepant
relational image of the liberal religious person as actually powerful and not
weak in response to violence. Intercultural research, to which these case
studies seek to contribute, can highlight “discrepant images” and alterna-
tive stories carried by oppressed groups in counterpoint to a culturally
dominant group’s distorted and controlling images—and all academic
disciplines might learn something new through this process.
RCT founder Jean Baker Miller wrote, “As other perceptions arise . . .
the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and is transformed”—the
capacity and world/sense of human ways of being is expanded.83 RCT
theorist Maureen Walker also emphasizes that “relational-cultural work
represents a worldview or philosophical approach to healing and human
development” rather than simply a collection of therapeutic tools or
techniques—thus a shift of traditional academic discipline paradigms for
psychology in understanding and language.84 As I have been emphasizing,
and discovered through the case studies, there are intercultural research
implications for ethical learning to these concepts as well. Exposure to
discrepant cross-cultural relationships, or exposure to alternative cultural
stories, language, and experiences, also can enlarge and transform visions
and experiences of human possibilities and phenomenological under-
standings, as will be illustrated further in the next two chapters.
RCT is not alone as a clinical model seeking to make this move—the
liberation health social work model does as well.85 This model, developed
historically by radical social workers,86 helps clients to examine their
identified “problem” not only through personal factors but also through
the lens of institutional and cultural issues. In this sense, application of
liberation health theory is compatible with the philosophical influence of
the model of anti-oppression analysis in the Peace Institute case study and
my prior reference to bell hooks integration of theory and liberative
practice, both as discussed in the previous chapter. The liberation health
model is influenced by three streams of theory, per Dawn Belkin Martinez
and Ann Fleck-Henderson: (1) Paulo Freire and the Latin American
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 115

popular education movement, (2) liberation psychology as also devel-

oped in Latin America by Ignacio Martín-Baró, and (3) radical social
work and members of the rank and file movement in the United States,
particularly Bertha Capen Reynolds and Mary van Kleeck.87
Core concepts in this theory include, (1) its own focus on “worldview”
from a more Marxist orientation and as a reflection of the “dominant
ideological messages that we receive [as they] reflect the interests of the
dominant class in a society”88 and (2) drawing on narrative therapy, an
emphasis that the therapist must help the client to see “a problem in its
totality” by developing a “thick description” of all the personal, institu-
tional, and cultural factors that may go into contributing to the problem,
thus “triangulating the problem.”89 Through this process, the problem is
“de-ideologized” and a dominant worldview is “deconstructed.” The
client’s consciousness of these larger forces is raised, and the client is
transformed from a passive sense of self as “object” upon whom others act
and others control and is enabled instead to develop an action plan as
“subject” in the client’s own life.
One additional significant concept of note is the liberation health
model’s focus on “rescuing the historical memory of change.”90 The
shift from “object” to “subject” is not an individualistic phenomenon—
it happens in community through shared learning. By collectively
recalling communal acts of resistance historically, the capacity to be a
“subject” in the face of current present institutional and cultural oppres-
sion is expanded. As discussed in the previous chapter, Peace Institute
survivors in particular spoke both of the power of language and theory in
their learning from the anti-oppression consultant as well as group pro-
grams and activities such as the Leadership Academy as sources of personal
and communal liberation and deep healing, empowering their shift from
victims to survivors and leaders. TVUUC leaders also would engage in
acts of rescuing the historical memory of change through the placement of
plaques and a power point presentation for newcomers commemorating
historical resistance.91
116 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Trauma Studies: Bridging to Religious

and Spiritual Language, Body, Culture,
and Power
Guiding metaphoric and relational images are long familiar to Christian
pastoral care practitioners,92 particularly classic ones such as Seward
Hiltner’s “the solicitous shepherd” or Henri Nouwen’s “the wounded
healer,” and increasingly newer ones encompassing a broader range of
social relationships and responsibilities, such as Margaret Kornfeld’s “the
gardener” and Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s expanded reconception of
Anton Boisen’s “the living human document” into “the living human
web.” Practitioners have used such images to identify their primary
pastoral style of practice as well as for theological reflection. Within my
original research, I drew upon two different pastoral theologians, Charles
V. Gerkin and Larry Kent Graham, to illustrate the significance of
integrating Gerkin’s guiding narrative image and vision of Christian
servanthood with Graham’s emphasis on the systemic analysis of struc-
tural power for Christian prophetic pastoral care as illustrated in the case
studies.93 Through this, I suggested that a social theological anthropology
recognizes that pastoral images are always relational images with a poten-
tial to determine or guide vision and action, including prophetic action.
Within an interdisciplinary lived religion approach that affirms trauma
survivors as experts and subjects of their own lives, or as primary theolo-
gians, relational-cultural therapy (RCT) concepts also are useful in met-
aphorically correlating with and understanding survivor reports of the
healing and energizing function of reconnection with others in the after-
math of traumatic disconnection and isolation. Such reports reflect an
embodied social theological anthropology, or understanding of human
being, one that takes seriously the neuroscience of our corporeality.
“Connection” in RCT is defined as “an interaction between two or
more people that is mutually empathic and mutually empowering. It
involves emotional accessibility and leads to the ‘five good things’ (zest,
worth, productivity, clarity, and desire for more connection).”94
Strategies of connection and disconnection are central tenets of relational-
cultural theory. Such “growth-fostering”95 connection (including, I argue,
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 117

ecclesial connections brought through religious or spiritual rituals) per-

mits mutual empowerment. Such connections can counteract the dis-
empowerment and isolation of trauma, or “traumatic disconnection”96
in RCT language, as will continue to be illustrated with the case studies.
This includes particularly intense forms of shame, internalized oppression,
and “condemned isolation”97 that results from trauma compounded by
historical and cultural oppression, inclusive of all forms of oppression. Such
concepts proved fruitful for metaphorical dialogue with the study of
prophetic pastoral care and trauma in my original research, including
metaphorical correlation and dialogue with constructive Christian theolo-
gies of trauma and “spirit.”
For example, per Heimbrock’s emphasis on the immanence of the
divine in lived religion, these energizing and continuing bonds of physi-
ological experiences also may be correlated to and conceptualized through
the lens of theological anthropology and Christian pneumatology, rather
than psychology, and in terms of the experience of “spirits” or of the
“Holy Spirit” or of “God” or the “Divine” in religious studies. The
neuroaffective base of human embodiment may account for a common-
ality across cultures to the experience of phenomena such as ghosts and
spirits and ancestor worship in different religions, beyond solely the
Christian tradition, and also may account, as previously discussed, for
Thich Nhat Hanh’s greater comfort with the language of “spirit” poeti-
cally and metaphorically in interreligious dialogue. Additionally, George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued that all spiritual experience is
embodied experience and that “imaginative empathic projection,”98
which is an embodied neuroaffective function, is the transcendent and
immanent root of all spiritual experience, a theological form of
panentheism.99 In the field of clinical nursing,100 the importance of
spiritual experiences of both transcendence and immanence through
such empathic relationality also has been noted

The interpersonal dynamic of transcendence is concerned with an extension

of the self towards another. When concerned with care, this extension of self
is focused on a beneficent attending towards another. As we have suggested,
this is an unbalanced equation until we consider what comes back towards
the nurse . . . The therapeutic essence of giving care is not a restricted,
118 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

one-way dynamic . . . It may be suggested here that in extending the self to

attend upon another, the carer is also cared for and sustained through the
elements evidenced in mutuality. If nurses did not experience the freely
occurring themes of mutuality and reciprocity the experience of care
delivery would be static and sterile . . . The response of the patient
evidences the human themes of mutuality and reciprocation that enrich
the state of being for the nurse. This transmission to the nurse of benef-
icent and sustaining themes is a process that can be called “immanence”
and suggests a balancing element to transcendence . . ..

These perspectives on spirituality also dovetail with the collaborative

work of neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and psychiatrist Eugene
D’Aquili,101 who argued that finding a neurobiological basis for our
affective spiritual experiences does not invalidate an alternative theological
or religious interpretation. In other words, “God” or the “Divine” needs
to communicate revelation through some means and that means can be
our neurobiological and somatic nature. Within theological or religious
anthropology, the body becomes a point of connection for the experience
of “God” or the “Divine,” as named by different religious traditions, and
makes a contribution to a deeper theological or religious understanding of
human existence in relationship to “God” or the “Divine,” as well as to
other human beings.
For further illustration, if we are neuroaffectively related in our attach-
ment, as Lewis, et al. argue, then some desire for, or possible experience
of, “being present and alive” may remain after the death of a loved one in
the very neurological fibers of our body, as also suggested by Rynearson
and Salloum in their analogy to phantom limbs.102 This desire or expe-
rience is part of mutuality and energy in relationships, per the relational-
cultural therapy theorists, and also potentially generates “continuing
bonds,” per Silverman and Klass, that may last a lifetime, experiences
which different cultures language, narrate, or story in different ways, per
narrative theory, including in Christian traditions through the language of
“spirit.”
In the pilot studies referenced in my prelude, for example, young adults
uniformly said that wearing buttons or t-shirts with a picture of the
murdered loved one led to an actual visceral experience of the person
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 119

still being alive, present, and connected to them—including the person

being able to continue to participate in and be aware of the activities of the
living. In my original research, and as consistent with both the Christian
tradition and my own UU tradition, I languaged this phenomenon as a
prophetic and performative practice of testimony and witness to ongoing
sacred spiritual connections, a phenomenon that led me later to name this
practice theologically as a form of material theopoetics. In doing so, I was
making a contextualized correlation between religious traditions and the
social scientific phenomena I was observing, inclusive of respecting the
language and experience of the survivors on their own cultural terms and
in their own world/view and world/sense.
Finally, Richard C. Schwartz also has sought to make some linkages
between IFS theory and spiritual affective and cognitive states a person may
report experiencing in correlation with various world religious traditions
and their respective languages, ranging through Christian, Buddhist,
Hindu, and other traditions. For his practical theoretical purpose in work-
ing primarily with therapists, he has simply translated and termed these
“the eight C’s of Self-Leadership,” which include calmness, clarity, curios-
ity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness.103
Beyond the simplicity of these formulations in the context of psychology
rather than religion, what is interesting is that Schwartz seeks an embodied
and immanent affective and cognitive grounding to spiritual experiences
across religious traditions, which may be languaged metaphorically in dif-
ferent ways for different sociocultural purposes. Schwartz does so here in
terms that even secular clinicians might grasp as constituting “mentally and
emotionally healthy states” for human beings. This includes clinicians more
normalized to accept and be viscerally comfortable with Buddhist mindful-
ness practices, as well as Schwartz’ language of “Self energy” rather than
specific religious language, in a Western individualized linguistic metaphoric
context such as the United States.
I turn now to an examination of the lessons learned from the two case
studies, engaging in further interdisciplinary correlations between my
phenomenological observations and experiences with the interdisciplinary
bridge tools outlined in this chapter. The voices, language, and practices
of survivors, and those who serve them, as they experience or seek
God/the divine/the sacred and sustenance and “healing” in the aftermath
120 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

of violent trauma, continue to serve as my normative point of interdisci-

plinary reflection. Clearly in a world suffering from violent trauma—and
barriers to collective action caused by structural divides of race, class,
gender, and religion—case studies that apply a wide variety of tools and
disciplines to understanding and removing these barriers could not be
more necessary than now.

Notes
1. I draw the metaphor of “scratches” in relationship to images from an
older work by Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American
Images of China and India (New York: Routledge, 1980).
2. Judith L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 51–52.
3. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Shattered Assumptions, 137–138.
4. Christine A. Courtois and Julian D. Ford, ed., Treating Complex
Traumatic Stress Disorders: An Evidence-Based Guide (New York:
The Guilford Press, 2009), 209.
5. Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi, “Posttraumatic
growth: The Positive Lessons of Loss,” in Meaning Reconstruction
and the Experience of Loss, 4th edition, edited by Robert
A. Neimeyer (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Associa-
tion, 2005), 157.
6. Ibid., 168.
7. “Religious, philosophical, and folk traditions have for thousands of
years recognized the possibility that the struggle with major losses in
life can be the source of enhanced meaning in life and the impetus for
positive change . . . The phenomenon of posttraumatic growth has
been observed at least in a significant minority . . . , and sometimes in
the vast majority . . . , of people who have experienced a variety of
different kinds of loss . . . The growth experienced tends to fall into
three broad domains: changed sense of self, changed relationships,
and changed philosophy of life,” ibid., 157–158.
8. Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes. “Sacred stories also imply
audiences—what I will call ‘spiritual tribes’—who listen and cocreate
the tale. Each story is situated in a context, with circles of listeners
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 121

who play a role, sacred or otherwise . . . [beyond religious communi-

ties] are there other places where spiritual tribes gather, as well? Are
there mediated communities on the internet or in circles of readers,
viewers, fans (10)?” I want to suggest that a para-ecclesial ministry
such as the Peace Institute and a community ministry such as the
UUTRM also might constitute what Ammerman calls a “spiritual
tribe” guided by a “sacred story” of their founding.
9. Calhoun and Tedeschi, 157–172.
10. Ibid., 167.
11. Ibid., 159 and 168.
12. Calhoun and Tedeschi, 159, cite studies of survivors who reported
growth in the aftermath of trauma. While the survivors reported
increased awareness of vulnerability, paradoxically they sometimes
experienced themselves as “stronger and more capable” too. They
also could report “an increased connectedness with others and a
deepened sense of empathy and the ability to connect emotionally
with other people.” It should be noted that not all survivors report
experiencing post-traumatic growth and certainly not all go on to
found organized ministries.
13. As I discovered in the original research, Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral Care
in the Aftermath of Trauma, this is not a new historical perspective in
the clinical and pastoral care literature, particularly for literature
written by oppressed groups. Within the US context and African
American communities, practical and pastoral theologians readily
document this natural intertwining of healing and liberation. See,
for two examples, Dale P. Andrews, Practical Theology for Black
Churches: Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002) and Carroll
A. Watkins Ali. Survival and Liberation: Pastoral Theology in African
American Context (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1999). See also
Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno, eds. Injustice
and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care.
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009).
14. Janoff-Bulman, Shattered Assumptions, 171.
122 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

15. Some classic resource literature supporting these statements include

Herman, Trauma and Recovery; Janoff-Bulman, Shattered Assump-
tions; Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology
of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 2000); Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: Toward a
Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience (New York: The Guilford
Press, 1999); Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobi-
ology: An Integrative Handbook (New York: W.W. Norton & Com-
pany, 2012); and Bessel van der Kolk, Alexander C. McFarlane, and
Lars Weisaeth, ed., Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming
Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (New York: The Guilford
Press, 1996).
16. The term “historical trauma theory” appears to have entered into the
public health context through the work of Michelle M. Sotero, “A
Conceptual Model of Historical Trauma: Implications for Public
Health Practice and Research” Journal of Health Disparities Research
and Practice, Vol. 1. No. 1, Fall 2006, pp. 93–108.
17. See van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress and The Body Keeps the Score. See
also Amy Banks with Leigh Ann Hirschman, Four Ways to Click:
Rewire Your Brain for Stronger, More Rewarding Relationships
(New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2015) for an integration of
the impact of trauma on the brain with practices for healing the brain.
18. I was captivated by the use of this language of “world sense” recorded
in an interview with an African American nurse. The term is more
embodied on the visceral level, as in “street sense,” as well and also can
be thought of along the lines of “Does the world make sense to me?”
on a visceral level of connection to reality. See Nancy Rule
Goldberger, “Cultural Imperatives and Diversity in Ways of Know-
ing,” in Knowledge, Difference, and Power: Essays Inspired by Women’s
Ways of Knowing, edited by Nancy Goldberger, Jill Tarule, Blythe
Clinchy, and Mary Belenky (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
19. As I point to a new metaphor of “world/sense,” I continue to situate
myself among philosophers and feminists in a phenomenological
tradition as discussed in prior chapters. Additionally, this includes
Eugene Gendlin’s use of the term “felt sense” in Experiencing and the
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 123

Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the

Subjective (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1962/1997)
as well as Michael Polanyi’s concept of “tacit knowing.” For example,
Gil quotes Polanyi, “To use language in speech, reading and writing,
is to extend our bodily equipment and become intelligent human
beings. We may say that when we learn to use language, or a probe, or
a tool, and thus make ourselves aware of these things as we are our
body, we interiorize these things and make ourselves dwell in them.
Such extensions of ourselves develop new faculties in us; our whole
education operates in this way; as each of us interiorizes our cultural
heritage, he grows into a person seeing the world and experiencing life
in terms of this outlook,” 39 in Gill, The Tacit Mode: Michael
Polanyi’s Postmodern Philosophy. I point particularly to his use of the
term “world” here in relationship to “seeing” as in “worldview.” I am
suggesting that our metaphoric conception needs to deepen and
embrace that we actually are experiencing “world/sense.”
20. Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting The New Testa-
ment as Sacred Scripture (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999)
30–31.
21. Ibid., 31. See also Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002) for his discussion of language in
comparative religions. He particularly notes that while language can
constrain experience, language also is capable of being changed by
experience. Schneiders’ statements in the context of intercultural
encounters point to the direction in which this may happen through
the multivalent and polyvalent tensions established by metaphors,
which is a different approach to correlations than simply making
analogies.
22. For example, Barbara J. McClure recently has argued that there is a
need to re-envision a “radically socialized self” within pastoral care
paradigms of theological anthropology. See Moving Beyond Individu-
alism in Pastoral Care and Counseling: Reflections on Theory, Theology,
and Practice (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), 188. I agree with
the need expressed by McClure’s aims but also argue that McClure
has not attended adequately to the neurophysiological dimensions of
124 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

the body as revealed by trauma and attachment studies for support. I

also argue that McClure has not fully grasped the contemporary
literature and practices of either relational-cultural theory or narrative
therapy theories when she critiques these as failing to contribute
adequately to her stated aims.
23. Note that beyond the dictionary meaning of “interplay,” there also is
a global movement of physical play on which I draw for metaphoric
image—see http://interplay.org (accessed September 17, 2015). For a
larger context to the word “emplacement” in ethnographic research,
see again Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography, 27–28. Some examples of
how pneumatology has been expanded in the Christian theological
tradition include Catherine Keller’s works, such as Face of the Deep: A
Theology of Becoming (New York: Routledge, 2003), and Peter
C. Hodgson’s works, such as Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive
Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994)
and “The Spirit and Religious Pluralism,” in The Myth of Religious
Superiority: A Multifaith Exploration, edited by Paul F. Knitter
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), 135–150. Mary C. Grey also uses
the language of spirit in ecological contexts, see Sacred Longings: The
Ecological Spirit and Global Culture (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2004). In regards to science and metaphors, see again Tiffany, Toy
Medium, as mentioned in Chap. 2.
24. See Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1995), 13–14.
25. Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and
Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5.
26. Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of
Love (New York: Vintage Books, 2000/2001), 88.
27. Ibid., 86.
28. Ibid., 62–63.
29. See Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman, ed.,
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (New York:
Routledge, 1996) and Phyllis Rolfe Silverman, Never Too Young to
Know: Death in Children’s Lives (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000). Note that contemporary psychoanalytic theory has attempted
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 125

to move toward a more relational theoretical frame through object

relations theory, self-psychology, and intersubjectivity theories, but
the foundational core of psychoanalytic theory and metaphoric lan-
guage remains framed philosophically by and caught in a Western
individualistic anthropology and understanding of human nature or
being. For more on this, see Renee Spencer, “A Comparison of
Relational Psychologies.” Project Report 5 (2002, Wellesley Centers
for Women, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA) and her feminist
critique and review of this literature and shifting paradigms in psy-
chology. See also an edited collection by Robert Neimeyer, Meaning
Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.:
American Psychological Association, 2005) that reviews shifting par-
adigms in the literature on loss.
For an additional creative effort, however, to push the boundaries of
psychoanalytic theories beyond purely intrapsychic or intersubjective
formulations and encompass attention to the impact of culture and
social oppression on the lives of women of color through the use of
Kohut’s recognition of the existence of cultural selfobjects, see Phillis
Isabella Sheppard’s Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical
Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). See also a lesser
known essay by Thandeka, “The Self Between Feminist Theory and
Theology,” in Horizons in Feminist Theology: Identity, Tradition, and
Norms, Rebecca S. Chopp and Sheila Greeve Davaney,
ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 79–98 in which she also
pushes creatively the metaphoric boundaries of psychoanalytic lan-
guage in reflecting on a social ontology, “self,” and the language of
spirit by utilizing the work of D.W. Winnicott in particular, as well as
Kohut. In addition, see Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral
Psychotherapy in Relational and Theological Perspective (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2007). Finally, see again LaMothe, Becoming Alive, for
his attention to the language of “vitality,” culture, and trauma within
the psychoanalytic tradition.
30. Klass, et al., Continuing Bonds, subsequent quote is from 16 to 17.
31. Ibid., 19–20.
126 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

32. Edward K. Rynearson and Alison Salloum, “Restorative Retelling:

Revising the Narrative of Violent Death,” 179, in Grief and Bereave-
ment in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice, edited
by Robert A. Neimeyer, Darcy L. Harris, Howard R. Winokuer, and
Gordon F. Thornton (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis
Group, 2011), 177–188.
33. Hertz, Marci Feldman, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, and Clementina
Chery, “Homicide Survivors: Research and Practice Implications,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 29 (5S2), 2005: 289.
34. For further studies and summary of the history of developments in
psychology in the area of grief, see additional works by J. William
Worden, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for Mental
Health Practitioners, 4th ed. (New York: Springer Publishing Com-
pany, 2009); Therese A. Rando, Treatment of Complicated Mourning
(Champaign, IL: Research Press, 1993); and Neimeyer, Meaning
Reconstruction. See also Hertz, et al., “Homicide Survivors,” for
further recommendations of the special needs of homicide survivors,
inclusive not only of immediate family and friends but also the
broader communities impacted. Hertz, et al. note in particular a
gap in several areas of research and health provider trainings in
relationship to these needs.
35. Jean Baker Miller is widely regarded as the founder of what is now
known as Relational-Cultural Therapy, particularly beginning with
her Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).
Judith Jordan’s latest book Relational-Cultural Therapy (American
Psychological Association: Washington, D.C., 2010) is the first col-
lation in one monograph of the theoretical terms and definitions of
relational-cultural therapy (RCT) and is drawn upon heavily for
primary definitions throughout this book. Most of RCT’s theoretical
work is spread out through collections of multiple essays, often
focused on direct therapeutic care rather than being organized into
an overall theoretical frame, which is what has made this recent
volume by Jordan helpful for those who might seek to apply their
work across disciplines.
36. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 49, 107.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 127

37. Ibid., 107.

38. See Richard C. Schwartz, Internal Family Systems Therapy (New York:
The Guilford Press, 1995). See also Regina A. Goulding and Richard
C. Schwartz, The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves of
Child Abuse Survivors (Oak Park, IL: Trailheads Publications, 2002).
Note that a full chapter is devoted to IFS theory in trauma specialist,
van der Kolk’s, latest book, The Body Keeps The Score.
39. Ibid., 138.
40. Ibid., 187–189.
41. Street memorials are a separate spontaneous phenomenon and do not
represent a specific practice of the LDBPI; however, many survivors
have participated in this spontaneous practice as well.
42. See E. Francis King, Material Religion and Popular Culture
(New York: Routledge, 2010) and Colleen McDannell, Material
Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1995). Material religion draws on the broader
field of material culture studies, and per McDannell, religious mate-
rial culture is a neglected area of study. For examples of purely
material culture studies, see Daniel Miller’s works, such as The
Comfort of Things (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008). In arguing
for greater attention to material Christianity, McDannell states that
the line between the profane and the sacred is much more blurred
than religious scholars often credit. Items of popular material culture
can be given religious or spiritual significance by virtue of human
relationships, actions, and interpretations.
43. Special note should be made, however, of the work of at least one
other practical theologian: Stephen Pattison, Seeing Things: Deepening
Relations with Visual Artefacts (London: SCM Press, 2007). Pattison
has studied the human tendency to create personal relationships with
visual artifacts. I build upon his work but turn particular attention to
the relationship between the expression of material religion (including
use of visual artifacts) and the psychosocial experience of trauma. I
particularly explore the possibilities in material practices beyond the
visual dimension for a more fully embodied range of sensual material
expression (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste). I am also interested
128 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

in the use of material culture and religion for prophetic and perfor-
mative testimony and witness, again drawing upon Jack Santino’s
work in making this particular link as well, though I also argue that
“something more” is happening in these performances beyond the
political. For another example of the increased interest in material
religion in religious studies, see David Morgan, The Embodied Eye:
Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2012).
44. McDannell, Material Christianity, 2.
45. King, Material Religion and Popular Culture, xv.
46. Ibid., xiv.
47. McDannell, Material Christianity, 1–2.
48. Ibid., 1.
49. On the prophetic dimension of theopoetics, Rebecca S. Chopp writes
in “Theology and the Poetics of Testimony,” Criterion (Winter
1998): “The poetics of testimony is my way of naming the discursive
practices and various voices that seek to describe or name that which
rational discourse will not or cannot reveal . . . The poetics of testi-
mony, expressed in a variety of particular and distinct forms, is
fundamentally concerned with human and earthly survival and trans-
formation, and thus renders a moral claim on human existence. This
imperative is also theological, or at least for those of us who live
Christianity as practices of emancipatory transformation or, in the
words of Albert Schweitzer, as a reverence for life” (2–4). Beyond
discursive practices can be a material dimension to testimony and
witness in calling a larger community to moral transformation, I
argue. See also Paul Ricouer, “The Hermeneutics of Testimony,” in
Essays on Biblical Interpretation, edited by Lewis S. Mudge (Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1980), 119–154.
50. Ricouer, 129.
51. Ibid., 132–134.
52. See the Christian use of this phrase throughout Johann Baptist Metz,
Faith in History and Society. I use this phrase in its expanded meta-
phorical sense as did Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk.
53. See again Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral Care in the Aftermath of Trauma.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 129

54. In this vein, see also Mayra Rivera’s recent contribution, Poetics of the
Flesh (Durham: Duke University, 2015). Rivera’s work is very helpful
in summarizing historical philosophical and theological debates about
the body, but here I point out her influence by Caribbean writer,
poet, and philosopher Édouard Glissant in turning to the language of
poetics. “For Glissant, poetics refers not only to styles of writing, but
also to modes of knowing, being, and acting in the world. The poetic
approach is indispensable for addressing histories marked by disrup-
tion, displacement, and irrecoverable loss—such as those of Carib-
bean peoples, whose very existence emerged from the obliteration of
African and indigenous cultures, religions, and languages . . . For
Glissant, poetics is an approach to knowledge that values processes
of creation from ‘shattered histories’ and ‘shards of vocabularies’ and
acknowledges their discontinuities . . . In addition to relating poetics
to modes of knowing and ways of writing, Glissant links it more
broadly to being in the world . . . The world’s poetic force creates and
expresses itself as Relation (2–3).” Poetics thus understood is helpful
for communicating the rupturing dimension of trauma and also can
be seen to correlate with language survivors’ use in the following
chapters as well as with relational-cultural and IFS theories lifted up in
this book. For the broader philosophical scope of phenomenology
and postmodern poetics, see Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining:
Modern to Post-modern (New York: Fordham University, 1998).
55. Chopp, “Theology and the Poetics of Testimony,” 6. Note that
Chopp is not dismissing the importance of rhetoric and returns to
emphasizing a need “to combine poetics, rhetoric, and hermeneutics
in theology” (11) at the end of this same essay, as the relationship
between the three appears to overlap at times. In her larger work, she
recognizes the power of rhetoric in liberation theology, see for exam-
ple The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political
Theologies (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1986), as well as
Saving Work: Feminist Practices of Theological Education (Louisville:
Westminister John Knox Press, 1995). In this particular essay on
“Theology and the Poetics of Testimony,” Chopp is emphasizing a
constructive theological possibility for poetics as testifying to a moral
130 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

vision and social imaginary, one that also holds promise for “practices
of emancipatory transformation” (11). See also Heather Walton’s
recent essay calling attention to Chopp’s work, “Poetics,” in The
Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bonnie
Miller-McLemore (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 173–182;
as well as L. Callid Keefe-Perry summary work on the history of
theopoetics and his attention to Chopp’s work, Way to Water: A
Theopoetics Primer (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014).
56. In relationship to Chopp’s argument on poetics and rhetoric, Robert
Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice,” is an excellent example of the use of
rhetoric within poetry to provoke eschatological imagination and
prophetic warning.
57. I draw particular attention to parallel work being done in theopoetics,
corporeality, and materiality, albeit in an entirely different arena of
religious studies, by Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination:
Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Miller also is interdisciplinary in her
approach, drawing from material culture studies of the late ancient
Christian period. She engages in a literary analysis of writings about
relics, art, and images of the saints to illuminate their theopoetic and
material nature when a “corporeal imagination” is engaged through
such writing. Miller writes, “From the perspective of the natural
attitude, a relic is simply an object, part of a dead person’s inanimate
body. However, when a martyr’s dust, bone, or body becomes the
center of cultic activity and reverence, it loses its character as a natural
body and begins to function as a site of religious contact. No longer a
mere object, it becomes a thing that does indeed signal a new
subject-object relation, a relation of the human subject to the sancti-
fying potential of human physicality as locus and mediator of spiritual
presence and power” (2). My focus in material culture studies is
shaped less by the theo/poetics of literary analysis than by the theo/
poetics of performance using material culture and the works of Jack
Santino, such as Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of
Death. Miller also points to inherent “performativity” in “hagiograph-
ical writing” that engage the sensory or corporeal imagination. My
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 131

study parallels Miller but focuses on the living experience of sancti-

fication through direct engagement of the senses and theo/poetic
testimony and witness using material objects, art, rituals, and
surroundings.
58. Deepening this connection between poetics and the prophetic,
Chopp continues, 6–7, “Poetics is the discourse that reshapes, fash-
ions in new ways, enlarges, and calls into question the order of
discourse within . . . the ‘social imaginary’. . . By ‘testimony’ I
mean the discourse that refers to a reality outside the ordinary order
of things ... Testimonies enact a moral consciousness and communal,
even at times, global responsibility . . . testimonies . . . are collective
and social . . . testimony is both private and public . . . Testimony
invokes a moral claim; it is from someone to someone about some-
thing. A decision is called for, a change in reality is required.” (6–7).
She writes further on the connection between a poetics of testimony
and theology: “In the theologies formed as a poetics of testimony,
transcendence is a matter of the power and spirit of transfiguration . . .
Transcendence is, quite simply, not a conceptual problem but a moral
summons to imagine hope . . . Understanding theology as engaged in
continually negotiating to sanctify life may enable us to keep theology
more fluid and more multi-dimensional—indeed, more Spiritual—
and may allow us a way to combine poetics, rhetoric, and hermeneu-
tics in theology. Imagining theology as engaged in negotiating prac-
tices to sanctify life by means of tracing Spirit allows us to appreciate
theology as a type of cultural intervention” (10–11). Thus poetic
testimony through material religion can have powerful prophetic
implications for different societies across cultures and can lend itself
to metaphoric theologies of spirit and trauma.
59. The language of “theopoetics,” as I am using the term, is traced to
Amon Niven Wilder, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagina-
tion (Lima, OH: Academic Renewal Press, 1976/2001), who also
held a broader vision of theopoetics than simply verbal or literary
expressions and was inclusive of the cultural arts in many forms,
though this was undeveloped in his work. Wilder wrote, 1–5, “Before
any new theologies however secular and radical there must be a
132 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

contemporary theopoetic . . . Religious communication generally

must overcome a long addiction to the discursive, the rationalistic,
and the prosaic . . . I speak of the need for a richer agenda ... this new
sensibility is also evident in the arts with their heightened awareness of
the elements of perception, the wonder of what is immediately
presented to consciousness in touch, sight, and sound ... I speak of
the need today for an enrichment of the methods of theology . . . wide
scrutiny today of the relation of religion and the arts has opened up
the deeper dynamics of communication and meaning.” It should be
noted that Wilder gives credit to Stanley Romaine Hopper for first
describing “theopoetics” in its literary sense, though again Wilder’s
own broader conception needs further recognition and development.
This is happening through the work of L. Callid Keefe-Perry, Way to
Water, as well as The Association for Theopoetics Research and
Exploration, see http://theopoetics.net (accessed May 12, 2016).
60. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk.
61. I utilized the works of Jack Santino to understand the commemora-
tive and performative dimensions, real and potential, of spontaneous
street memorials in my pilot studies, as mentioned in my prelude.
62. The placement and removal of such public street memorials has been
such a point of controversy in Boston that the Boston City Councilor
interviewed for my research noted her plan to call a public hearing on it.
63. Rubem A. Alves, “Theopoetics: Longing and Liberation,” in Struggles for
Solidarity: Liberation Theologies in Tension, edited by Lorine M. Getz
and Ruy O. Costa (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 159–171.
64. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969/1995).
65. Ibid., 128. These “experiences of potency,” of which Turner writes,
are what make this phase in the life of a community particularly
powerful, with strong potential for political and artistic creativity and
expression. This, in turn, can correlate to a religio/poetic or socio/
poetic material expression.
66. Public documents were accessed through the UUA and the UUTRM.
See www.uua.org (accessed March 9, 2013) and http://www.
traumaministry.org/tragedy-in-knoxville (accessed March 9, 2013).
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 133

67. Two helpful summary articles of these trends include David Morgan,
“Religion and media: A critical review of recent developments,” in
Critical Research on Religion, 1(3), Sage Publications, 2013, 347–356;
and Arjun Appadurai, “Mediants, Materiality, Normativity,” Public
Culture, 27:2, Duke University Press, 2015, 221–237.
68. I specifically credit the Women’s Theological Center in Boston for
the particular shape of power analysis as I draw on it (see http://www.
thewtc.org), and also see Suzanne Pharr, “The Common Elements of
Oppression.” In Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (Inverness, CA:
Chardon Press, 1988), 52–64.
69. See my original research for writers who influenced the evolution of
my thought and method in this approach, Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral
Care in the Aftermath of Trauma. See also cultural anthropologists
George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural
Critique: An Experimental Movement in the Human Sciences, 2nd
ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).
70. See Melinda McGarrah Sharp, “Globalization, Colonialism, and
Postcolonialism,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical The-
ology, ed. Bonnie Miller-McLemore (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2014), 422–431, as well as Nancy J. Ramsey, “Redefining a Time of
Ferment and Redefinition,” In Dictionary of Pastoral Care and
Counseling, Rodney J. Hunter, ed., 1349–1369 (Nashville, TN:
Abingdon Press, 1990/2005). Beyond self-critical intercultural aware-
ness in pastoral care practices, Sharp points to the emerging impor-
tance of interculturality in research methods, a contribution toward
which this book seeks to make. However, I also recognize that the
very approach of my particular research may be re-inscribing a colo-
nizing and imperialist stance, minimally for those who are racially and
socioeconomically different from myself, rather than participating in a
fully decolonizing methodological approach to interculturality. See
also Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. On the dangers of research,
writing, and representation, Smith writes as an indigenous person
that, “Representation is important as a concept because it gives the
impression of ‘the truth.’ . . . reading and interpretation present
problems when we do not see ourselves in the text. There are
134 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

problems, too, when we do see ourselves but can barely recognize

ourselves through the representation,” 37.
71. Additional work in this area of interculturality is being done by Latin
American feminist theologians in particular, such as Maria Pilar
Aquino and Maria Jose Rosado-Nunes, ed., Feminist Intercultural
Theology: Latino Explorations for a Just World (Maryknoll: Orbis
Books, 2007), 14–15 from which Aquino’s quote is drawn. I am
grateful for my colleague, Sofia Betancourt, in calling my attention to
Aquino and Rosado-Nunes’ text as she also is employing an
intercultural approach in her own forthcoming dissertation through
Yale, “Our Mothers Made Do: An Ecowomanist Ethic at the Panama
Canal.” See also S. Wesley Ariarajah, “Intercultural Hermeneutics—
A Promise for the Future?” Exchange (vol. 34, no. 2, 2005) 89–101
(13). While not specifically utilizing the language of interculturality,
see also Kathleen J. Greider’s work distinguishing between “religious
plurality,” “religious pluralism,” and “religious alterity” and her desire
to reduce “Christian-centrism” on behalf of ethical concerns for peace
and justice, “Religious Pluralism and Christian-Centrism,” in The
Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bonnie
Miller-McLemore (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 452–461.
72. See, for example, how McClure, in her text Moving Beyond Individ-
ualism in Pastoral Care and Counseling, continues such critiques but
does not explore equally RCT theorists’ responses and later develop-
ments. See also Cooper-White, Many Voices, who usefully summa-
rizes this shifting psychoanalytic frame but does not integrate
relational-cultural theory nor narrative theory and metaphor into
pastoral theology in her summary focus on changing psychoanalytic
trends. Of note, however, is Cooper-White’s tangential references to
sandplay therapy, which will be explored later in the LDBPI case
study, and also her recognition of theories of multiplicity of selves/
parts within contemporary psychoanalytic literature. She does not,
however, cover IFS theory, though it draws on multiplicity theories of
mind in combination with family systems theory.
73. Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women, 6–8. “Once a group is
defined as inferior, the superiors tend to label it as defective or
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 135

substandard in various ways . . . In addition, the actions and words of

the dominant group tend to be destructive of the subordinates . . .
Dominant groups usually define one or more acceptable roles for the
subordinate . . . A dominant group, inevitably, has the greatest influ-
ence in determining a culture’s overall outlook—its philosophy,
morality, social theory, and even its science. The dominant group,
thus, legitimizes the unequal relationship and incorporates it into
society’s guiding concepts . . . Inevitably, the dominant group is the
model for ‘normal human relationships’.” Trauma specialist, Judith
Herman, was among a group of women deeply influenced by RCT
founder Jean Baker Miller’s work and also was supervised by the late
Miller in the 1970s through the Somerville Women’s Mental Health
Collective, as reported by Christina Robb, This Changes Everything:
The Relational Revolution in Psychology (New York: Picador, 2006/
2007). Herman also was among the first to point out that the
relational and analytic lens of trauma provides new insights into
various replicating sociopolitical issues over time, including violence
and war.
74. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 102–103. See also Patricia Hill
Collins, “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images,” in
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2000), 69–96.
Phillis Sheppard also works with Collins’ concept of “controlling
images” or “controlling icons” in her creative work with Kohut’s
cultural selfobject, see Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical
Theology, 49–50, 135. RCT was initially criticized in much academic
literature for what was perceived as its essentialist feminist stance as
well as for being initially developed by white middle class female
academics, but it is important to recognize that it has theoretically
grown substantially over the years, including in participation by
women of color who identify as RCT theorists, and that some
critiques also were misunderstandings of their theoretical frame. See
Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, for further in response to these
critiques. See also recent work by clinical psychologists
recommending the use of RCT for exploring experiences of class
136 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

differences in therapy, Lauren Appio, Debbie-Ann Chambers, and

Susan Mao, “Listening to the Voices of the Poor and Disrupting the
Silence About Class Issues in Psychotherapy,” Journal of Clinical
Psychology: In Session, Vol. 69(2), 152–161, (2013). In a lesser
known essay, Catherine Keller also briefly discusses the context of
her shared perspective with myself that these early feminist works
were misread in many ways, see “Seeking and Sucking: On Relation
and Essence in Feminist Theology,” in Horizons in Feminist Theology:
Identity, Tradition and Norms, ed. Rebecca S. Chopp and
S.G. Davaney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 62. RCT
remains a relatively young theoretical movement but one that I argue
shows unexamined metaphoric promise for integration into lived
religion studies of trauma ministries.
75. Ibid., 105.
76. Stephen Madigan, Narrative Therapy (American Psychological Asso-
ciation: Washington, D.C., 2011), 7.
77. Ibid., 21. As I discovered in my case study with the LDBPI, the power
of storytelling and the giving of survivor testimony illustrated the
usefulness of critical race theory as an additional social scientific
theoretical tool for correlation to the prophetic empowerment of
survivors, particularly in a community oppressed by race and class.
See Lee Anne Bell, Storytelling for Social Justice.
78. Madigan, Narrative Therapy, 169.
79. Ibid., 164, a term derived from Antonio Gramsci and integrated into
narrative therapy by Madigan as follows in definition: “Cultural
hegemony is the dominance of one social group over another—for
example, the ruling class over all other classes. The theory states that
the ideas of the ruling class come to be viewed as the norm and are
seen as universal ideologies that benefit everyone, though really only
benefiting the ruling class.”
80. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 27, 49, 103.
81. See Maureen Walker, “How Relationships Help,” in How Connec-
tions Heal: Stories From Relational-Cultural Therapy, edited by
Maureen Walker and Wendy B. Rosen (New York: The Guilford
Press, 2004).
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 137

82. See Madigan, Narrative Therapy, 163. See also Bell, Storytelling for
Social Justice regarding critical race theory and narrative applications.
83. Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women, 1.
84. Walker, “How Relationships Help,” 7. While RCT theorists kept
their language simple and accessible, the totality of the worldview shift
should not be underestimated through oversimplification of their con-
cepts, and the therapeutic practice requires a high level of relational
engagement and mutual vulnerability, recognizing power differentials in
the therapeutic relationship rather than distancing and objectification.
85. See an edited volume of essays by liberation health clinical workers,
Dawn Belkin Martinez and Ann Fleck-Henderson, eds., Social Justice
in Clinical Practice: A Liberation Health Framework for Social Work
(New York: Routledge, 2014).
86. For more on the history and failure of radical social work in the
United States context, see Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews, The
Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
87. Ibid., see chapter one for historical theoretical formation.
88. Ibid., 20.
89. Ibid, 22–24.
90. Ibid., 24–25.
91. See also Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes, 56–57, for her
review of theories of practices where she adds another level of distinc-
tion to such practices as ones of “strategy” versus “resistance,”
depending on the experience of power and privilege versus powerless-
ness. For the context of the Peace Institute and the TVUUC as
spiritual tribes experiencing violent trauma, practices of “recovery of
the historical moment of change” would seem to correspond to
practices and rituals of resistance. Yet one also could see powerful
sociocultural institutions using ceremony and material art poetic
practices as a strategy to reinforce stock stories as well.
92. For more on each of these pastoral care images, see Robert
C. Dykstra’s Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings (St. Louis,
MO: Chalice Press, 2005).
138 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

93. See my tracking of the history of the creation of “prophetic pastoral

care language” as this stemmed from a historical period of sociological
and political turmoil in the 1960s and Gerkin and Graham’s further
development of this phrase, Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral Care in the
Aftermath of Trauma. See also Gerkin, Prophetic Pastoral Practice
and Larry Kent Graham, Care of Persons, Care of Worlds: A
Psychosystems Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling (Nashville,
TN: Abingdon Press, 1992).
94. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 25, 41, 103. The language of
“zest” has particular associations with energy by definition.
95. Ibid., 76, 103.
96. Ibid., 5–7, 83–84, 108.
97. Ibid., 28, 102, RCT term created by Jean Baker Miller.
98. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 565.
99. Ibid., 567. In a volume edited by Heimbrock and Scholz, Andrea
Bieler cites the work of Johnson and Lakoff in her own argument
for embodied knowing: “It is in, with, and through our bodies
that we come to know who God is: this is where we receive a felt-
sense of the holy . . . It is through the emerging felt-sense that
embodied knowing finds ways through movement and languge to
express what I have called the pragamtic consciousness,” see
Andrea Bieler, “Embodied Knowing: Understanding Religious
Experience in Ritual,” in Religion: Immediate Experience and the
Mediacy of Research - Interdisciplinary Studies, Concepts and Meth-
odology of Empirical Research in Religion, Hans-Günter Heimbrock
and Christopher P. Scholtz, ed. (Germany: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2007), 52–53. See also an essay by Astrid Dinter on
the importance of “nonverbal oriented religious forms such as
ritual and meditation as helpful for a reconstruction of meaning,”
“Searching for a Construction of Meaning: Ritual and Meditation
as Necessary Part of Pastoral Work,” in Lived Religion: Conceptual,
Empirical and Practical-Theological Approaches, Essays in Honor of
Hans-G€ unter Heimbrock, Heinz Streib, Astrid Dinter, and Kerstin
S€oderblom, ed. (Boston: Brill, 2008), 223.
 4 Trauma in a Lived Religion Perspective 139

100. Kevin David Kendrick and Simon Robinson, “Spirituality: Its Rel-
evance and Purpose for Clinical Nursing in a New Millennium.”
Journal of Clinical Nursing 2000; 9: 704.
101. Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili, and Vincent Rause, Why God
Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (New York:
Ballantine Books, 2001/2002).
102. See also Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of
Human Relationships (New York: Bantam Books, 2006) as well as
his earlier work Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books,
1997). Other recent works that seek to integrate the fields of
neurophysiology and human relationality include Louis Cozolino’s
The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Devel-
oping Brain (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006) as well
as Daniel Siegel’s Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology.
103. See Richard C. Schwartz, Introduction to the Internal Family Systems
Model (Oak Park, IL: Trailheads Publications, 2001).
 5
Attending to “Survivors as Experts”:
Lessons Learned

The Power to Name and Claim One’s Own

Reality
During my time as a “lay community minister/social work clinician shap-
ing as clergy,” I worked for an urban ministry that expanded greatly in
youth programs over the decades of my service. While there were signifi-
cant grassroots components to the youth ministries at the beginning of
their outreach to urban youth, including staff who had grown up and lived
in the urban community all of their lives, gradually and over time more and
more volunteers from outside of the community also began to participate.
These particularly included white suburban and economically and educa-
tionally privileged volunteers, who also began to become heavily involved
in the shape and direction of the youth programs. This had the advantage
of bringing tremendous resources to the youth programs in their expansion,
and also, at its best, provided opportunities for communities of people who
typically were racially and economically segregated to interact and bond
with and learn from each other. Yet I began to wonder if something wasn’t
beginning to be lost at the same time in this trade for resources as well as
access to contact, interaction, and mutual support and learning.

© The Author(s) 2017 141

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_5
142 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

I sat with particular discomfort one day in a meeting in which several

prominent and well-meaning white volunteers were explaining to an
African American staff person that their education equipped them with
the knowledge and skills needed to, in essence, whip the afterschool
program into shape in a matter of a year or two. When I suggested that
people from the cultural background of the youth might indeed know
more than those from outside the community and that they might be
being overly ambitious, my sense was that this fell on deaf ears and that
the group, again as good hearted and well intentioned as they were, carried
a normative sense of cultural superiority rather than cultural humility by
virtue of their education and class status.
In their fullest normative sense of the world, they truly experienced that
they knew best what was needed and comfortably asserted their power,
either directly or indirectly, to name and claim this reality. Tensions such
as these rode high in the urban ministry as it continued to expand its
program capacity across the borders of race, geography, culture, power,
and privilege. How could such different worlds meet on common ground
with ethical respect and cultural humility such that learning and growth
was mutual for all involved, understanding that these different worlds
needed each other if they were to become one shared world in both power
and reality? Tensions and questions such as these in many different areas
linger with me today, and a leveling of power toward those marginalized
or oppressed in particular institutional or communal contexts impresses
me as significant for moral address and mutual sustenance—perhaps even
mutual salvation, in a broad metaphoric and interfaith sense, when
spoken from my clergy identity.

Practices of Meaning-Making After Trauma:

Normativity and Lived Experiences
One of the most striking lessons during the completion of both of my
original case studies1 was the importance of attending to the voices and
lived experiences of survivors. As deeply as I had lived in the urban context
for many years, and had become identified with the Unitarian Universalist
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 143

(UU) tradition for the equivalent amount of time, I realized in my studies

that I continued to bring assumptions with my very questions and
approaches at times—many of which I am sure I will continue to be
learning even after the publication of this particular book. What assisted
me in attending to at least some of these assumptions was that I had lived
in and had a commitment to these communities—and I had already
learned from and been transformed by them. There is a transformative
bond of mutuality in such a commitment—it is a continuing moral bond
that may falter at times but cannot be ignored, or it is ignored at one’s
own emotional moral risk.
When the Peace Institute in particular stressed the phrase “survivors as
experts,” I realized that this was compatible with a range of disciplinary
approaches—from psychology to anthropology to theology and others—
for attending to the innate wisdom apparent in the practices of individuals
and communities struggling under experiences of marginalization or
oppression. Power and privilege tend to blind would-be human service
caregivers and researchers with a normative lens of “the taken for granted”
language and dominant cultural way of being assumed to be superior—in
the United States context, this means dominant cultural ways of being
rooted in whiteness and economic privilege.2 The full richness of the
original case studies will remain in their original documentation for
reference by those interested. In this chapter, I pull out some of the
lessons I found most powerful between the two case studies when I strove
to understand their meaning-making processes, language, and cultural
worldviews on their own terms. Through honoring normativity and
respect of “survivors as experts” in their lived experiences and sources
and practices of religious and spiritual meaning-making, interdisciplinary
explorers of lived religion may begin to see and attend to the significance
of phenomena in new ways.
144 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Meaning-Making Through Story, Poetic Images,

and Poetic Material Art
Both case studies demonstrated the power of meaning-making for survi-
vors through practices of telling their stories in narrative form or with
poetic images and engaging in poetic material art expressions. These
practices shaped differently for the particular context of each case study,
yet commonalities in the power of these particular forms of practice were
witnessed.

Key Lessons from the Peace Institute Case Study

“Transforming pain and anger into power and action” is the core principle
of every aspect of the Peace Institute’s spiritual practices, with an end goal
of creating communal peacemakers. The initial drive, by the co-founding
parents of Louis, to create and sustain an organized peace ministry itself
involved a central power-filled act of meaning-making in the aftermath of
their violent traumatic loss. Meaning-making through the use of story—
the life story of their son Louis—was a core initial practice and has
remained so, embodied in poetic material form throughout their various
peace curriculums and peace principles, as well as in the very name of their
agency and the ministry leaders’ connection to their sense of mission.
Louis is lifted up as one who dreamed of and worked toward peace and
who had aspirations to be the first African American United States
president.
The development of the Peace Zone: A Program for Teaching Social
Literacy K-53 curriculums arose as a partnership of Deborah Prothrow-
Stith (then at the Harvard School of Public Health) with the Lesson One
Company4 and the Peace Institute founders in response to these needs for
trauma resolution and peace practices. Each curriculum in Peace Zone
opens with the story of Louis D. Brown and his life values and dreams, as
well as the trauma of his murder and its impact on his family and friends.
The biography of Louis written for 4th and 5th graders in Peace Zone
includes many anecdotal stories of his desire to become the first black
president of the United States and how his parents reinforced this dream.
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 145

They would tell Louis that he was a “guiding light for peace” in choosing
to work toward “helping teens stop acting violently and stop using guns”
when he joined Teens Against Gang Violence, and he would say in
response: “I want to teach people how to make peace and live peacefully.”
5

Feelings in response to this story, as well as other stories from Louis’

life, are threaded throughout the curriculums’ focus on the development
of emotional literacy and advocacy skills, such as safety and commitments
to peace. This focus is developed through various art activities, games,
writing assignments, stories/literature, and community service projects.6
The Peace Institute’s holistic methodology for accomplishing inner peace
and communal education and advocacy encompasses the arts, bodily
awareness, and emotional and cognitive literacy and integration, as well
as public action in the community on behalf of peace.
In narrative theory, liberation health, and relational-cultural terms,
Louis’ life story becomes an “alternative story”7 that helps to break
down some of the stereotypes, to “deconstruct the dominant worldview/
dominant discourse”8 as well as the “controlling images”9 and meanings
assigned to murdered young black men in urban America—images that
they are always gang-involved and with implicit meanings conveyed that
they are generally less than worthy recipients of society’s embrace and
support. Because Louis is lifted up as a young black man who specifically
was working on gang peace issues at the time of his murder, even though
he had not been involved in a gang, his life story becomes a potential
imaginary and transformative bridge for those who might otherwise
dichotomize the black community into good and bad people via the
media or in other ways—a “sacred story” guiding hope for a “spiritual
tribe.”10 As a “liberatory practice,”11 as well as a “liberation health
practice,”12 these peace curriculums also provide young people with
language and tools for imagining an alternative vision and transformative
peacemaking possibilities for their lives and communities.
This use of Louis’ life story also can be termed a type of religious social
justice or prophetic pastoral care practice and considered as an example of
lived religion in popular culture, one in which meaning-making and a
vision of communal peace can happen outside formal religious contexts.13
A “continuing living bond”14 with their son is both expressed and
146 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

transmitted to others through prophetic and poetic communal imagina-

tion, a material and embodied poetic communal imagination through the
use of the arts and specifics of his life story in their various peace
curriculums. These practices engaged through Louis’ life story also then
are exemplified in lifting up and transforming, through material art form
and testimony, the life stories of others lost to homicide—a performative
example of a type of religio/poetics or socio/poetics of material religion in
this public testimony.
The shape of transformative action takes many forms in the Louis
D. Brown Peace Institute (LDBPI)’s spiritual care practices, from the
personal level to a more public level, and led several survivors to talk of an
eventual transformative impact on their lives overall. On the personal
level, the Peace Institute has long found value in the use of the arts for
expression and transformation of internal pain and anger,15 particularly
now through their Holistic Healing Center. In the aftermath of trauma in
an already oppressed community, participant responses support that the
use of the arts to convey one’s story and experiences has particular power
as a spiritual and transformative care practice.
One ministry leader spoke of the need to find alternative ways for
survivors to express traumatic experiences, ways that allowed the neuro-
physiological and embodied dimensions of healing from trauma to be
unlocked. An example she gave, among others from their Holistic Healing
Center, was sandplay (Fig. 5.1), in which miniature objects are used to
create a symbolic and metaphoric yet somehow living world in the sand
(including other earth elements such as fire and water when desired):16

I think that it’s so hard to talk about [the trauma] that you have to provide
different ways to express . . . sand tray gives you alternative ways to kind of
spark that, whatever’s going on inside of you to bring it out and be
processed. And it’s like trauma and these things that are happening, like
they can’t always be explained in words. You have to feel it and one way that
you can feel it is through art and music and literature and sand tray . . . when
you play in the sand and just touch it, it opens up that part of your brain
that the trauma affected. And . . . the process of playing in the sand and . . .
creating [with] the figures . . . a world allows for the trauma to . . . kind of
come to the front of the brain to be processed.
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 147

Fig. 5.1 Peace Institute survivor’s sandplay example. Sandplay in process and
performed by a participant following a visit with her son’s murderer in jail. In
the picture, the participant indicated she was reflecting on self through the
figure placed by the mirror. She also indicated she was reflecting on reconcil-
ing the perpetrator’s innocent child self with the horrific action in which he
had later engaged through other figures in the tray. Small white figures
perched on the edge of the tray were indicated to be spectators of the
sandplay world

By arranging material objects in the sand tray, the survivor can give
both theo/or religio/poetic and socio/poetic testimony to their metaphoric
world of experiences and be empowered as a witness to the world they
have created as well, often a witness in partnership with others. Such
religio/poetic and socio/poetic testimony and witness is performative and
embodied, functioning on a more visceral level of connection to the
traumatic loss as material objects become touched by emotional
energy—the world is enlivened and made sacred in the process. As
survivors talk about the world they have created, another type of “sacred
148 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

story” expressed through material art ensues. One survivor described her
sand tray to me as demonstrating her ongoing and transformed connec-
tion to her deceased son and to her prophetic, eschatological, and socio-
logical “hope” for “peace in the dark world,” revealing also through her
words, sighs, tears, tone of voice, and touch the multivalent and meta-
phoric use of material objects as religio/poetic living and performative
symbols in the sand:

This is my world in here. This is the barrier I want to keep between the
outside world and my family. This is the angel watching over my whole
world. That’s my husband, me, and my younger son. This is the enemy I’m
trying to bury. This is my [deceased son—uses an eagle for the symbol]. When
I see eagles in the sky, I think of him. I keep him near our home. This is the
love for my family that is sometimes questioned. The mirror is on hope—I
have hope and I want my family to see that too. That was one of my
[deceased son’s] favorite toys—guarding our family between two worlds.
This is the bright world. This is the dark world. I put peace in the dark
world hoping for that. [She rubs the stone lettered “peace.”] If there’s peace in
the dark world, it can’t hurt my world.

Such artistic material expressions through sandplay, quilt, collage, or

drawing (Fig. 5.2) often conveyed the survivor’s continuing bond to their
lost loved one, as well as the ambivalence of unresolved and often
unresolvable pain of severed connections, including struggles with for-
giveness. Through sandplay and other material artistic renderings, partic-
ipants gave narrative, metaphoric, and sacred witness to the hidden depths
of their personal and communal feelings of loss and separation (e.g. an
enemy needing to buried, a love that is sometimes questioned, and a
barrier dividing the world into brightness and darkness in the above). Yet
they also testified in religio/poetic terms to their prophetic, eschatological,
and sociological hopes for transformation, peace, and ongoing embodied
and living spiritual connection (e.g. a mirror rests on hope, a peace stone is
placed in the dark world, an angel and the son’s favorite toy guard the
world, and an eagle persists as a symbol of spiritual connection kept near
the home).
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 149

Fig. 5.2 Other art by Peace Institute survivors. Part of a patchwork quilt from
the “Express Yourself” project displayed on Peace Institute walls at the time of
the original case study. This is one survivor’s artistic rendering on forgiveness

The founding ministry leader also spoke of the power of using sandplay
to give her control over what she would and would not choose to confront
in relationship to her own trauma, a sense of control over her own
testimony, witness, and movement through the play, a sense of control
that she did not necessarily experience if she chose to engage in talk
therapy. Through the play, she maintained control over the pace of her
own transformative role in the living world she was creating, whether
metaphorically in the moment with one particular sand tray, or also
implying real-world prophetic social justice steps she might choose or
not choose to take. Here she talks both of her preference for sandplay and
her ambivalence as well:

I don’t hafta sit and talk to anybody if I don’t want to, you know . . . that I
have the power . . . to choose my course, that I have the power within me to
select. Again, the landmines are there, my child was murdered, my husband
left me, I can’t change that no matter what I do. Do I wanna stay stuck in
grief or do I wanna move through the next phase of the journey, and I think
150 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

that’s what it does for me, it really—and sometimes I wanna stay stuck, I
won’t even do sandplay because if I do it, I’m gonna reveal somethin’ that I
know but I don’t wanna go there right now, I wanna stay right here, and,
again, that’s a choice . . ..

Relational-cultural theory (RCT) would identify such ambivalence in

moving toward and then away from the power of these forms of artistic
embodied and poetic material expressions in the aftermath of trauma as
the “central relational paradox,” where there is always a desire for growth
and connection, for relational life, but various hurts or traumatic viola-
tions can build up over time and result in powerful “strategies of survival
and disconnection.”17 These serve as a paradoxical form of protection of
relational life from further relational hurts, wounds, or traumatic viola-
tions. RCT would advise a clinician or prophetic pastoral care provider
that such strategies needed to be honored with “radical respect”18 for their
wisdom given a particular context of relational experiences and images
available to the survivor, hence also supporting the survivor’s strategies of
needing control in the aftermath of trauma. In the experience of partic-
ipants, including the founding ministry leader, sandplay provided this
type of needed control as a spiritual care practice, as did many of the
artistic material mediums provided, though these types of comments
came up most specifically in relation to sandplay.
As previously stressed, the Peace Institute ministry leaders recognized
that a multitude of holistic spiritual, social justice, and clinical care
practices are necessary in “transforming pain and anger into power and
action,” but the value of the various artistic peace practices they offered
was spontaneously emphasized by several survivors. These included the
above practices as well as the sibling group art activities, including the
creation of “safe boxes” and “Peaceville” (a three-dimensional ideal city of
peace).19 The Peace Institute’s emphasis on family participation and
inclusion in these artistic peace practices was particularly valued. One
survivor said: “I think it’s really important when it’s a family affected that
you go at the same time. Even though we’re not in the same room that
we’re both reachin’ out or getting services around a loss because once
again you don’t really talk about your feelings.” Another would report
that her daughter had shut down initially in the aftermath of losing her
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 151

sibling, but after working with the Peace Institute ministry leaders she
gradually began to open up and “express herself.” Thus, even for the
youth, sacred story-making through spiritual, artistic, and poetic peace
practices allowed them to “transform their pain and anger into power and
action,” as an additional survivor reported:

. . . I have a younger son, so he attends the youth program during the year
when there’s a particular project, like they did Peaceville . . . and they did an
appearance at the State House. So he spoke there, him and another youth
that are involved at the Peace Institute . . . He spoke to different people that
were there about his project, and the news reporters that had questions for
him . . . He’s now 13. And he’s able to articulate what he feels and expresses
himself, whether it’s with his hands or verbally.

The Peace Institute’s discovery over the years of the spiritual power of
art activities and body work, including more recently sandplay and their
latest use of yoga, massage, and acupuncture, dovetails with other research
that supports the use of embodied modalities in trauma and “healing.”20
This can be witnessed in survivor use of home altars as well (Fig. 5.3). An
appropriate cautionary note was raised by ministry leaders and survivors
alike that these modalities are so powerful in their embodied experiences
that one must in some sense be ready to work with what emotional and
visionary energy is revealed in their use—this came out most strongly in
relationship to material on sandplay, but the Peace Institute’s use of
massage, yoga, and acupuncture may prove similar once those modalities
are more fully engaged. Above all else, participants stressed that survivors
cannot be pushed into post-traumatic growth and the capacity for lead-
ership—the pace of their own “healing process” must be fully in their own
control for participation in particular spiritual and social justice practices.

Key Lessons from the UU Trauma Response Ministry

Case Study

The need for survivor stories to be heard into being as sacred stories on a
personal level, as well as on a religio/social level, in the aftermath of violent
152 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 5.3 Home altar example. Artistic memorial practices continue in the
privacy of home as well. A home altar can include pictures of the lost loved
one, including t-shirts and memorial buttons, trophies, letters and certificates,
etc. (picture used with parent permission)

trauma was stressed again and again as an important religious and spiritual
practice for “healing.” This also was considered by many to be an example
of the type of ministry that Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist
Church (TVUUC) congregants did for each other and that the Unitarian
Universalist Trauma Response Ministry (UUTRM) leaders did for the
congregation in the aftermath of the violent intrusion, “a ministry of
presence.”21 The former Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) presi-
dent interviewed spoke of meeting with the widow of Greg McKendry
and her son in the church sanctuary and how she and her son had not yet
had an opportunity to tell each other their respective stories of that day.
The UUA president said: “ . . . they needed to tell each other the stories
. . . ministry can make a space for those stories [to] be told so that they
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 153

don’t go underground in a person and that’s a part of healing—of being

able to come to terms with your own story and share it so that it’s not held
in a secret, walled-off place in your spirit.” This “ministry of presence,”
particularly the importance of the UUTRM’s presence as fellow UUs, was
mentioned by more than one TVUUC leader: “You need someone to
receive your pain . . . if there’s no one in that role, then it just stays locked
up inside you.” The TVUUC minister used a bodily metaphor of being a
“pastoral ear,” citing the Sufi mystic Rumi: “You are not God’s mouth-
piece. Try to be an ear.”
For one UUTRM leader, ministry in the aftermath of trauma entailed
holding the entire context of their ministry with human beings as
connected in and through community, including in how “we understand
God”: “ . . . it’s really about grounding us in a presence [emphasis placed
by UUTRM leader], that we as a team are a manifestation of. We’re a
manifestation of the history. We’re a manifestation of God as we under-
stand God. We’re a manifestation of a movement. We’re a manifestation
of the values that we hold in common. We’re a manifestation of beliefs
that can make for fuller, healthier, deeper living.” For another UUTRM
leader, this ministry of presence and meaning-making represented a
capacity to hold forth religious hope in the aftermath of violent trauma
and in the face of evil: “ . . . by our very presence . . . we hope our words
and actions hold out the hope . . . that the evil thing, the horrible thing,
the traumatic thing is not the last word. That’s our ministry . . . to make
sure goodness has the last word, that hope has the last word, that solidarity
and community have the last word.”
Threaded throughout the UUTRM and TVUUC leader interviews was
a focus on relationships, narrative, and liberation from isolation—both for
personal pastoral healing as well as for prophetic social justice witness and
challenge. Narratives or stories of pain needing to be shared and received
in relation and community, rather than staying “locked up” or “walled
off” spiritually and psychologically, were spoken of, with a stress that all
stories needed to be shared. These included even the “alternative stories”22
of painful disconnection as these yielded insight into the religious hope for
a renewal of relationship, of renewal of the sacred continuing bond of
their spiritual tribe. Such sharings would be the first step toward relational
reconnection. Through such prophetic pastoral care “listening”—the
154 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

“pastoral ear”—would be found a “ministry of presence” and meaning-

making and connection to a larger community of prophetic hope, both as
UUs and on an ecumenical and interfaith basis.
Some stated that this ministry of presence also could be found through
the humble comradeship of a peer, not necessarily and only through a
trained professional.23 For example, another UUTRM leader focused on
the ministerial role being broadly conceived as encompassing both laity
and clergy, drawing on a theological frame first offered within her faith
tradition by the Unitarian ethicist James Luther Adams.24 She used his
words of “the prophethood and priesthood of all believers” to express her
role as a “placeholder” in fostering a larger “connection to hope,” one
where the work alone “is sacred no matter what the tasks are”:

[T]ruthfully, as UUs with the prophethood and priesthood of all believers,

we all have our ministries to do ordained or not . . . personally, it doesn’t
matter if I’m handing out a bottle of water or cleaning up a bathroom or
sitting with someone as they’re telling me their story . . . I’m a placeholder
at that point. I’m a connection, because I hold my connection to my higher
power, to the God of my understanding, and my place as that connection to
hope and something bigger than wherever we are. That’s what makes it a
ministry . . . what we do is sacred, no matter what the tasks are.

This particular UUTRM leader also had been a leader in New York
chaplaincy disaster relief and had worked at Ground Zero, though she had
joined the UUTRM much later. She spoke to a certain kind of “credibil-
ity” coming more from life experiences, whether directly as a survivor or
from being able to say that one had worked at Ground Zero as a first
responder—credibility from some level of shared story in experiences. If
the helper was identified as a first responder or survivor, then they
embodied credibility and hope and the capacity to normalize the trauma
survivor’s ability to “make it through,” as in “We’re gonna be OK . . .
New York’s here.” This UUTRM leader also found that the small
spontaneously created and peer-led groups in the TVUUC’s fellowship
hall worked best as debriefings in the aftermath of the shooting. Peers
were able to “normalize” their experiences through shared credibility as
experts from having lived in through the violent trauma together first
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 155

hand, with a UUTRM leader interacting only to highlight and reaffirm

their sharings at crucial points.
All UUA institutional supporters saw the fundamental role of trauma
ministry to lie in assisting with meaning-making and supporting survivors
to find “their own sources of resilience,” as well as in helping them to
“connect to something larger than themselves, something that can guide
their life and provide some solace to them in a different way.” At least one
UUA institutional supporter also stressed the additional importance of
training, however, to provide credibility as professional ministers and
pastoral care providers. While assisting in the task of meaning-making
was one significant component, an equally important component was
viewed to be UUTRM leaders’ grounding in their religious tradition and
UU theology with specific professional ministerial training. This was
viewed as important for enabling them to do a different professional
care task than social workers, medical professionals, or other professional
laity who might work in the aftermath of trauma—one that encompassed
an ability to assist with the spiritual aftermath of trauma.
For some TVUUC leaders, however, a sense of disconnection, confu-
sion, disappointment, and disruption of credibility also arose when the
conception, expectation, and experiences of a “ministry of presence” by
the UU Trauma Response team did not conform to needs or preexisting
ideas. For example, a TVUUC leader spoke of his disappointment in
overhearing a UUTRM representative25 speak of being “ghostbusters”
more than once in a boastful manner. He developed a perception that this
representative was arrogant, which tended to generalize to the UUTRM as
a whole for him and was at odds with his perception of a ministry of
presence that entailed humility with a pastoral image of “servanthood”
rather than separateness or presumed professional superiority:

[T]hey were way too self-aware and not enough of what my old Bible
professor would have called the sufferings, or not enough servanthood there,
not enough humility there . . . I do know that I shied away because that
woman said that more than once. And it was sort of said in a joking haha
manner, “We’re the Ghostbusters.” And one doesn’t like to think of one’s
self as the phenomenon even though one is. It’s a servant, which I would see
them as. Their role is not to lead us through, but to service as we go
156 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

through. And a servant doesn’t call attention to his separateness from

what’s going on.

Such sharings demonstrated the potential for different expectations and

relational images of religious care roles to exist in the aftermath of trauma.
Different expectations and images then can result in “acute disconnec-
tion”26 in that moment with the religious or spiritual provider. However,
these painful moments did not necessarily result in chronic or traumatic
disconnection since relational resilience and movement also were demon-
strated in the very drive to share these alternative stories with the
researcher when given the opportunity.27 Rather than repressing such
stories in the interview process, or choosing to separate from the TVUUC
in the immediate aftermath of the trauma, these church leaders continued
to hope for reconciliation and renewal of their religious connections, their
spiritual tribe, through the act of sharing these painful stories and using
my identity as a fellow UU and researcher in this case study as a “pastoral
ear.” Relational “authenticity”28 in sharing stories and creating religious
meaning was valued more highly, and this can be a significant learning
and point of awareness for religious care providers, a learning about the
power of meaning-making through story that was stressed also by the
UUTRM leader and ongoing consultant in the aftermath of the TVUUC
shooting.

Troubling the Language of “Healing”

and “Wholeness” for Survivors
Key Lessons from the Peace Institute Case Study

As I sought to explore the care practices Peace Institute participants found

helpful, I assumed that the word “healing” would be a noncontroversial
equivalent to the word “helpful” in my questions.29 While I also intended
to explore what “healing” meant to participants, the use of the word
“healing” triggered such a range of reactions from study participants
that a pause for more careful thematic attention was signaled. As I listened
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 157

carefully to survivor responses as expert, their lived experiences of con-

flicted relationship to this word as a normative reference point for pastoral
and clinical care practices began to make more sense. Some participants
readily accepted the use of the term without a need to qualify, including
most of the Peace Institute ministry leaders and institutional supporters,
yet it was viewed as problematic or needing to be rejected as adequate
language by some survivors, as well as by the institutional supporter who
served as a mental health clinician with survivors. The founding ministry
leader herself recognized why the word and concept can be challenging
and ambivalent in the aftermath of trauma: “Yeah healing means more
trauma [laughter] because you’ve got to go through some crap to get to
that point, so healing is traumatic.”
The mental health clinician interviewed as an institutional supporter
struggled with words as she expressed the difficulty in finding an alterna-
tive language to “healing” for survivors of homicide, recognizing that this
word tended to imply a closure not experienced by survivors in practice.
She suggested that “movement” might be a better alternative for the care
provider to use, a word that doesn’t challenge the survivor’s right to
name, and thereby own, an experience they would rather have never had:

I think language is complicated and . . . you can’t assume that you’re using
them in the same way or that the concept is the same and I think “healing,”
that word, as with some other words to survivors, suggests . . . that there will
be an ending to this experience of loss. That there will be a time at which
you’re over it . . . how do you participate in life again once you’ve gotten
through to surviving, how do you participate again in a way that maybe you
can imagine, at some point, meaning and purpose . . . It suggests move-
ment. We talk a lot about movement, movement, so that things can shift,
they can change . . . it [laughter] takes more—more language, more words
than one to sort of get at what the person might be thinking or talking about
or contemplating and what we might be doing with them . . . and “move-
ment” is a word that comes up a lot because . . . that doesn’t challenge what
belongs to them. As much as they don’t want the experience, it’s theirs.

For the survivors interviewed, words such as “process,” “cope,” and

“being able to function” and “get up,” as well as continued daily
158 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

movement despite the pain, came up most frequently, including an

outright rejection of the possibility of “healing” by some. One survivor
called it an “open wound” and that she needed to keep moving or risk
being attacked:

I don’t think that you ever heal . . . Am I healed? No. Just trying to . . . put
one foot in front of the other or just goin’ to work . . . I just feel like it’s an
open wound . . . I think that you learn ways of copin’. I think that just
tryin’ to maintain . . . it feels like runnin’, just stayin’ busy . . . just like the
minute you stay still you’re attacked by it . . . Like I just feel like as long as I
stand up and can keep my feet movin’ I’ll be able to function and make it
through the day. But I don’t feel it as healin’, I don’t, I just get up.

Another survivor said that she had learned to look at “healing” differ-
ently, as an “ongoing journey,” or “a big circle,” and—in language that
resonated with Internal Family Systems (IFS) use of multiplicity and
systems theory30 and “parts”—having enough other “pieces” in place to
heal some of the “1,000,001 pieces wounded.” She comes to know she
will no longer “shatter,” though she might “lose pieces” at times and need
to “replace them”:

It’s huge. I don’t know. It’s so many different ways you can look at it, but
for me I guess one is just to be able to get up and function . . . I think
because healing is so broad, I think you work on little pieces at a time, of
yourself. It’s not like one straight thing . . . Something may happen, an
experience may happen that may contribute to help heal a certain part of
what’s wounded inside you, because I feel like I have 1,000,001 pieces
wounded inside of me, and today I might feel like I’m okay in this area, and
this process has helped me . . . Something else might come up, and I might
forget about that process that I did . . . because now this over here has . . .
overshadowed what I felt over here, but you don’t totally forget about that,
and so sometimes you have to reach back into what you’ve already have to
help you work on the next piece, but I think healing is an ongoing journey
. . . it’s just a big circle, and you just continually keep going. It’s like endless,
but you do get to a place . . . where you’re not gonna shatter. You might lose
a little piece, but you’re not gonna shatter . . . I just lose pieces and try to
replace them.
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 159

For the Peace Institute ministry leaders, there was use of a similar
metaphor, and again resonance with IFS use of multiplicity and systems
theory as applied outward, in the recognition that many different “pieces”
are needed for a “kaleidoscope” of practices of “healing” by survivor
families, “one size does not fit all,” per the founding ministry leader:

[I]t’s not this one-size-fits-all, you know . . . healing from trauma is like
lookin’ in . . . kaleidoscopes ... It’s not the same thing, you know? Many
different people can look inside that kaleidoscope and see something
completely different . . . bein’ able to heal from trauma, there’re a lotta
different little pieces that we must provide to families and I think that’s one
of the things that has helped me ....

Participant remarks around the language of “healing,” “movement,”

“wounded pieces,” and “kaleidoscope” were particularly striking. Though
it became a problematic word in my questions to participants, I did not
have a pre-association to the term “healing” that it meant closure rather
than an ongoing process, particularly when one has experienced the loss of
a child to homicide. However, it was clear that to some survivors, as well
as the professional mental health clinician interviewed, the word “healing”
can have the metaphoric association of expected closure when used by a
care provider in practice—or that it signaled “dominant worldview dis-
course” from a liberation health perspective.31 As Hertz, Prothrow-Stith,
and Chery indicated, there is no “post” to the homicide of a family
member—there is no moving beyond or over.32
The language of being in “wounded pieces” and needing a “kaleido-
scope” of different “pieces” in the “healing process” also has resonance
with the primary cognitive metaphor used by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman in
her book on trauma, Shattered Assumptions, though the “shattering”
expressed by survivors extended along bodily and emotional levels beyond
purely the cognitive. This form of “shattering” resulted in an “endless
ongoing circle” of losing and replacing wounded pieces. The founding
ministry leader reached for the metaphor of a “kaleidoscope” to describe
their pastoral, clinical, and spiritual care practices. A kaleidoscope image
also is a circular one, constantly shifting and elusive—pieces move and
disappear and often reconnect to form in new ways with new images, but
160 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

still with some familiarity and recognition and still held by one embodied
container. Through movement, the lost piece comes to be seen in a new
image and form.
The kaleidoscopic and “holistic” nature of “healing” and practices in the
aftermath of trauma repeatedly were stressed by the ministry leaders, as
one said: “Yeah, healing’s just like a lifelong process and it’s not any one
thing that’s gonna help, it’s a holistic thing: physically, mentally, spiritu-
ally.” Connecting and helping survivor families get what they need “in real
time” in the immediate crisis period, and on a practical and logistical level,
can be the first step in providing effective clinical, pastoral, and spiritual
care and affirmation, this as well as empathically normalizing the full range
of their feelings and responses, as another ministry leader stressed:

. . . the more you can contain the immediate crisis and trauma event, the
better. And the way that you can do that is like making sure people know
step by step what’s gonna happen so that there’s no like mystery. They
know exactly where they can go to get whatever it is that they need. They
know who’s in place to help them, they know what their rights are, and
they know that there’s somebody that’s gonna be there to help them
exercise their rights. Validating them so they don’t feel like they’re crazy
for whatever it is that is on their mind because half the time it’s pretty
similar for most people and unless you experienced it then you might
think it’s crazy.

Most specifically, ministry leaders associated “healing” with “regaining

control” in one’s daily life, as another stated: “ . . . being aware of how the
trauma is affecting you on a day to day, physically, mentally, emotionally
. . . noticing that you don’t eat or you eat too much, [then] how are you
gonna take steps to kind of control that? So I think healing is really
regaining control.” This regaining of control requires a holistic range of
practices—from assisting with practical logistic details such as raising
funds for a burial to providing emotional validation of and normalizing
their status as “peculiar people” (adults as well as children) to connecting
with others and engaging in healthy body and spiritual self-care practices.
Body practices, such as breathing techniques, emphasized in the LDBPI
peace curriculums also now are extended through yoga, massage, and
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 161

acupuncture in their survivor outreach Holistic Healing Center as well.

The ministry leader who introduced bodywork to the Peace Institute
spoke about the importance of having a variety of “holistic health options”
because “some individuals did not respond to traditional talk therapy as
others may.” She particularly stressed that it was important to offer
survivors of color in her community alternative forms and paths of
“healing,” this in light of their spiritual reliance often and solely on God:

Sometimes with a lot of survivors, in particular survivors of color, it’s like

we have two options; we go to God or we just deal with it in our way which
may be unhealthy or you just, “Okay, that’s what we need to do. We’re
resilient people. We’re just gonna bounce back or life goes on.” You’re
dealing with these inner struggles. So this leaves two things that happen. It’s
not to say oh you don’t bring it to God but sometimes we need some
additional support. So taking care of yourself in this way as another way to
take care of yourself I think is important to have and . . . know that it’s a
healing option . . . Then the connection between massage and psychother-
apy and that there’s been a lot of good research in terms of that connection
of bringing those two different modalities together to kind of help people
who are suffering from some type of traumatic experience.

Establishing peace in spirit and body was seen as key to working toward a
fuller embodied communal peace for survivors of color living in an
oppressed community.
Finally, for at least one institutional supporter of the Peace Institute,
the connection the Peace Institute makes between personal “healing” and
the impact of oppression, their stress on the prophetic social justice change
of larger institutions, was seen as one of the most valuable aspects of the
Peace Institute’s kaleidoscopic or holistic embodied approach to “healing”
in the aftermath of trauma. Through such prophetic pastoral care and
social justice practices, and consistent with a liberation health approach as
well, “blaming the victim” for what are actually societal problems is
avoided:

[M]ost of the folks that I am aware of that the Peace Institute works with are
. . . oppressed. Their social conditions make the likelihood of this kinda
thing higher than if they were living in a different situation . . . I think if
162 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

those who are historically excluded understand that that’s a social issue and
not a personal fault or a fluke, then we will be able to better advocate for our
own social and physical and mental health . . . [because otherwise] they
could blame the victim. They could blame themselves and/or their family or
community, or . . . they could become depressed and hopeless because they
could say there’s no way out. It helps instill hope and power as opposed to
just be depressed and giving up.

However, ministry leaders and survivors also were aware that transfor-
mation of their pain and anger into power and action on such a societal
level was a delicate process that often required pacing and an emphasis on
the survivor’s own control over the process. Clinical and pastoral care
providers, as well as social and public health policy makers, seeking to
implement any of these practices would do well to heed those cautions.33
Survivors need ample time to foster peace within first before they can be
expected to foster peace in a larger community. When successfully
engaged through such initial pastoral practices for internal transformation
of pain and anger, however, survivors were then positioned to enter the
public square in testimony with power and action, such as the young
people mentioned in the display of their “Peaceville” at the local State
House or survivor families participating in the annual Mothers’ Day Walk
for Peace.
Overall, participant responses led me to ask if the language of “healing”
could be reclaimed for survivors of family homicide or if it needed to be
abandoned in psychosocial scientific literature, as well as religious care
practices, and new metaphors developed and utilized, such as “move-
ment” and a “kaleidoscope” of holistic care practices. As has been recog-
nized, there is a certain “unsayability”34 to the experience of trauma, one
in which “more language,” per the mental health clinician, is needed.
When validated for the right to name their own experiences as experts by a
care provider, embodied metaphors are pushed and reshaped by survivors
such that “fracturing” and “movement” appear to be emphasized over
stability and solidity, as well as the sheer strength of will to “get up,”
“cope,” and continue to “function” despite the “open wound,” despite
losing and needing to replace the “pieces.” It is clear that there is more
theoretical and metaphorical work and research needed to encompass the
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 163

lived experiences of these particular survivors of family homicide living in

already oppressed communities. When one contemplates this challenge
across cultures and beyond the United States context, the call to further
qualitative research is magnified.

Key Lessons from the UU Trauma Response Ministry

Case Study

The impact from this violent trauma also left TVUUC leaders struggling
with definitive content for their own ideas of personal and communal
healing in the aftermath, though without overt rejection of the language of
“healing.” Hesitant language of “I guess” or “kinda” often popped up in
survivor descriptions of personal healing as their thoughts roamed over
different dimensions of experiences and practices the word “healing”
might call forth for them. These included getting back to some sense of
normalcy, such as bodily normalcy or normalcy in the expectation of
safety, as a TVUUC leader present that morning would say of the success
of various contemplative and body practices in which she had engaged:

Well, for a long time I, like everyone else, had a lot of jumpiness. And I
literally thought I would never be able to sit in that sanctuary again without
watching the door constantly. And I find it amazing now that that’s totally
gone cause it seemed so strong at the time. Like I thought I was gonna jump
out of my skin if anybody opened that door. And so there was that kinda
healing just in terms of not being so hypervigilant all the time.

Sometimes “normalcy” entailed not only a “getting back to” but also an
incorporation of the traumatic event into a new and more positive sense of
self, a form of post-traumatic growth. One TVUUC leader spoke of being
troubled by the fact that she froze under fire instead of immediately
fleeing for her life. She later processed this with a chaplain soldier at a
Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital where she also was serving as a chaplain, a
career shift after the shooting. She took relief in understanding that
soldiers also initially freeze but are trained repeatedly to get up and
move despite gunfire. Ultimately, she spoke of the shooting event as “a
164 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

blessing” that increased her capacities for empathy, relating her post-
traumatic growth also to the pastoral care image of the “wounded healer”:
“I later considered it a great gift . . . that I’ve had this experience . . .
assimilating that into your reality base of possibilities . . . for ministry the
more knowledge of things that can happen, the better able you are to help
others, the wounded healer thing . . . So I felt blessed by the event in an
odd way . . . Not that I would want it to happen again, could have done
without it [ironic laughter].” For her, expanded knowledge yielded post-
traumatic growth as a pastoral care provider and greater capacity for future
control and efficacy.
Personal “healing” as associated with practices that allowed for an
affirmation of skills or having something to contribute also came from
having a leadership role to play in the aftermath, which each of the
TVUUC leaders interviewed did have. Such a relational role in turn
lessened some of the impact of the trauma by allowing control and
influence to be exerted through embodied action—again, a form of
achieving efficacy in relational connection. For example, though others
also spoke to the importance of having a role to play, a TVUUC leader
who became heavily involved in media representation as a volunteer felt
affirmed in being able to offer his skills in helping in the aftermath: “ . . .
that was such a profound affirmation of who I was that I never expected. I
mean the work I did was a profound affirmation for me . . . So in that
sense of the word, healing wasn’t an issue because I had been reached
down and touched with the ability to help in ways that I could never have
envisioned.” However, for some it also was true that laying down the
burden of a leadership carried for a long period had a stronger association
with the possibility of “healing” and, again, returning to normalcy, as it
did for one of the TVUUC board president leaders interviewed: “Getting’
back to normal . . . like, not being intruded upon . . . not being pulled into
other responsibilities, and not having that role anymore, basically, would
be healing for me.”
UUTRM leaders, in contrast to the TVUUC leaders interviewed, often
had more elaborated conceptions of the meaning of personal healing in
the aftermath of trauma as a guide for their pastoral care practices. One
said that personal healing was “the ability to retain or to attain some sense
of closure, strength, self-sufficiency, and regaining personal power.”
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 165

Another would say: “healing is figuring out a way . . . of putting this event
in context with your life . . . so that you can go on without being disabled
by it . . ..” It also was seen as a return to “functionality,” or as one UUA
institutional supporter gruffly put it, “[helping people to] kinda regain
their sea legs and find their strengths.” This focus on effective pastoral care
as specifically restoring embodied personal functionality and efficacy was a
common theme among the UUA institutional supporters interviewed in
their understanding of “healing” in the aftermath of trauma. UUTRM
leaders shared a similar focus on prioritizing personal pastoral healing in
their practices by providing restoration to a sense of efficacy and control
for survivors. However, this pastoral emphasis was not disconnected from
UUTRM leaders’ sense of connection to their larger prophetic and com-
munal mission of providing a sense of “hope amidst the chaos” as a liberal
religious presence.
This return to strength and functionality, as well as the possibility of
post-traumatic growth, also was recognized to be a nuanced and compli-
cated process of integration in religious or clinical care, as per a UUTRM
leader:

I am not one who believes that one gets over something. I’m one that
believes that we all learn how to integrate difficult experiences into our lives
so that over time, they don’t require as much energy and attention that we
might give to them in their most acute phases. And so healing, for me, is
learning how to integrate difficult experiences into one’s life in a way that
does not impede their health and growth but may, in fact, assist in their
health and growth.

Another UUTRM leader reflected that personal functionality could

entail a sense of wholeness that was different but still possible in the
aftermath of trauma. Here it also is intriguing to see the use of the
language of “whole” and “part” in relationship to IFS use of multiplicity
and systems theory and “parts.” “I don’t think people are the same after
trauma. But I think that they can be whole. I think that they can
incorporate and weave into their lives the loss, that it becomes part of
the fabric of who they are. So by then the very nature of that, they’re no
longer the same. But that doesn’t mean that they’re so fractured that they
166 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

can’t function.” She noted that human nature is fundamentally resilient: “

. . . healing is absolutely possible, because we’re resilient. We were created
miraculously . . . And most people bounce back . . . really without much
of our help . . . and I think that’s actually good news . . . that most people
do not need acute spiritual or mental health care, and they will find
whatever healing they get to.”35
This same UUTRM leader, who was the African American member
interviewed and who had worked on many of the UUTRM responses to
homicide, spoke more cautiously of “healing” in the aftermath of the
murder of a family member, however, paralleling the results from the
Peace Institute case study:

It’s harder and harder to make that argument, the closer the circle gets, by
the time you’re the mother or the daughter or the son of someone who’s
been murdered, you know that the fabric of their lives is forever changed . . .
there’s always gonna be a hole. But what you try to help people believe is
that they’ll be able to live, and that their life will mean something, and
they’ll even be happy again someday. It just won’t be the same way.

Nonetheless, turning as did Peace Institute survivors to the language of

“pieces,” she continued to argue that personal healing was: “Regaining . . .
after traumatic loss, a new sense of wholeness. And sometimes I think it
can be wholeness with pieces missing, that there’s still wholeness with
pieces missing, and that’s what healing has to mean after traumatic loss.”
Having a hole or pieces missing in the aftermath of trauma was not
necessarily a permanent barrier to cultivating a sense of resiliency, hope,
and wholeness in her experience of healing and religious or clinical care
practices.
Additionally, it was clear that the UUA institutional supporters and
UUTRM leaders interviewed were very aware of the potential for burnout
by clergy and of the need for clergy to have long-term support and
strategies of spiritual self-care for healing.36 Fewer spontaneous comments
arose expressing an understanding of the long-term impact and need for
support and healing for church staff and volunteer leaders, except by two
UUTRM leaders and the two UU District Executives interviewed, the
District Executives more often being involved in the provision of such
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 167

long-term assistance. The District Executive for the TVUUC, given

longer-term familiarity, also was more likely to understand the internal
leadership stress dynamics and governance struggles of the TVUUC.
Considering the impact of stress and burnout on several of the TVUUC
leaders interviewed also yielded insight into this researcher’s unexpected
experience of having the pastoral and clinical care dimensions of her
ethnographic listening presence drawn out at times, her own capacity to
provide a “pastoral ear.” These particular TVUUC leaders both needed
additional pastoral care in the opportunity to share their stories and
experiences and also sought to use their access to power through an
interview process prophetically as a means of speaking back their lived
experiences in providing recorded and material testimony and learning
to others, including the UUTRM. My sense that my research project was
providing some added level of “healing” for a few of these participants was
confirmed in later emails sent to me. This becomes thematically impor-
tant phenomenological information for researchers who cross borders and
carry different identities into the research—how are the relationships
forged in the research shaping what happens as well? Does this make
the phenomenon released, so to speak, less valid or objective or is
objectivity found in the naming of the character of the relationship?

Claiming Survivor Power Through Communal

Unity and Public Testimony
Key Lessons from the Peace Institute Case Study

When the pastoral and the prophetic in religious terms, or the micro and
the macro in sociological terms, were successfully linked through a survi-
vor’s participation in Peace Institute practices from both their Holistic
Healing Center and their Leadership Academy, then a survivor was
positioned more effectively to be able to take public leadership, such as
has been done by the “Peace Warriors” group. Specifically, when their
material poetic-artistic and storied expressions were displayed or
performed in a communal context they become prophetic and liberative
168 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

in their ability to challenge the controlling images of the dominant culture

and to educate and call a broader public to personal and political action.
Within the broader community, for example, the Peace Institute is most
well known for their specialized funeral orders of service (Fig. 5.4) as well
as for the memorial buttons they produce. The funeral orders of service,
designed by families with the support of Peace Institute ministry leaders,
include the standard obituary and order of service, but also give families an
opportunity to include multiple pictures of their loved one, as well as letters
to or poetry about their loved one. This gives survivor families a larger
opportunity to shape and control a unique narrative of their loved one’s
life, sometimes in counterpoint to stories and stereotypes that are being
portrayed in the media—a sense of control important in trauma treatment
and also a type of sacred story-making. The funeral orders of service become
enlivened by the family’s embodied participation in their construction in a
process similar to the construction of sandplay worlds—and this enlivened
construction then functions as a religio/poetic and socio/poetic testimonial
to their lived experiences for a broader community to receive in witness.
A separate unique contribution to these funeral orders of service by the
Peace Institute is the inclusion of information about trauma reactions,
symptoms, recommendations, and resources. This is both for the sake of
the family and also to give prophetic pastoral and psycho-educational
guidance to the larger community (sometimes hundreds attend these
funerals). Through this information, the gathered community is guided
in how to continue to support the family after the funeral, including the
importance of remembering special dates and anniversaries and watching
for signs of unhealthy grief. Since these specialized funeral orders of service
have been permeating these communities for over two decades now, this
information and the language of trauma has been widely disseminated.
The community also is engaged in learning the seven Principles of Peace37
and an interfaith Peace Prayer by the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse,
interspersed with the Christian refrain “This I pray,”38 at the end of the
funeral order of service. Various recommended personal and communal
spiritual and social justice actions to be taken are included also at the end,
such as selecting a principle of peace to focus on as a spiritual practice
and/or committing to turning schools and neighborhoods into Peace
Zones free from violence.
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 169

Fig. 5.4 Peace Institute funeral order of service, sample resource page.
Resources with recommendations and advice given to community attendees
at the funeral so that they may help survivors better in the aftermath of the
homicide
170 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

At the time of a funeral, the Peace Institute also is known for the
creation of buttons with the loved one’s picture on it and some wording
from the family (sometimes wording related to a peace principle), which
are then distributed at the family’s discretion to family and friends.39 One
button also is retained for the Peace Institute’s Traveling Memorial
Button Project (Fig. 5.5), which is prominently displayed at major public
events, such as their annual Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace. Of the wider
purpose of these buttons, the founding ministry leader strikingly drew on
an embodied metaphor with the language of “touches” for connection
when saying:

I . . . wanted the larger community to see that violence touches all of us, you
know, whether it’s inner city, gang violence, domestic, sexual abuse, what-
ever it is, violence touches everybody, and I wanted the photos to be more
than just a number, you know? I wanted people to see the faces are real, the
names are real and the impact that it has on the community . . . I mean more

Fig. 5.5 Traveling memorial button project. The Traveling Memorial Button
Project, seen here displayed at the Peace Institute’s twentieth annual Mothers’
Day Walk for Peace, is displayed at various events. The bottom reads “When
Hands Reach Out in Friendship, Hearts Are Touched With Joy”
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 171

than the homicide statistics that they show in the inner city . . . take off this
myth that it’s only gang related in a concentrated area . . .

I regard these practices as clearly reflecting poetics in material form—

whether termed material theo/poetics, religio/poetics, and/or socio/poet-
ics. They also may be termed “sacred stories” in material form. From the
funeral orders of service to the memorial buttons, each of these become
powerful and energetically living material and artistic vehicles of prophetic
testimony to, and then received in witness by, the larger community.
They speak to the need to remember the dead and to construct a sacred
poetic and visual narrative through material expression of the lives lived
and lost but not gone or forgotten. A continuing bond of living energetic
connection is initiated and performed in the testimony of love, conveyed
through new material forms with hope for receipt in witness and com-
mitment by a larger community on behalf of peace and justice (a realized
eschatology in Christian language or a social justice vision in sociological
language), and calling forth a life beyond mere statistics. Through these
practices, the dead are marked as and transformed into powerful and still
living motivating forces for resistance and prophetic transformative action
in the community.
Rebecca S. Chopp writes on the theopoetics of story and testimony:
“The telling of these stories is for life, for the mending of life, the healing
of life, the ability of life to live and survive and thus conquer . . . extremity
. . . If one is not authorized to live, then surviving is both resistance and
hope. These testimonies are discourses of survival for hope and of hope for
survival.”40 Lives are indeed lost in one embodied form; yet, they also live
on in the public square through a performative testimony that is embod-
ied as much via the material as the oral or literary. They live on in new
artistic poetic and material shape through the narratives and pictures of
the funeral orders of service, memorial buttons and t-shirts, and banner
displays on the streets of Boston during the annual Mothers’ Day Walk
for Peace. They continue to resist and challenge prophetically the dom-
inant culture’s marginalization of lives lost to violence. As lived religion
practices, they bear the sacred mark of embodied spiritual energy and an
eschatological hope for peace, thus becoming fuel for constructive practi-
cal theologies of trauma as well as other religious conceptions of trauma as
172 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

similar practices are researched and witnessed in other countries and

contexts.
Survivor families as experts also took their testimony beyond the streets
to the halls and social institutions of power that impacted their lives or
purported to serve them. Most institutional supporters directly spoke of
the Peace Institute as “unique,” as “experts,” and as a model of successful
and effective collaboration, including in faith-based collaboration as well
as in creating secular human service provider networks for serving survi-
vors. The public health doctor interviewed as an institutional supporter
said: “ . . . there’s so much we don’t know and . . . survivors really haven’t
gotten the level of attention that is necessary . . . they still remain the
experts at this point, and their stories and their experiences and how
they’ve gotten better represent a starting point for this.” She also would go
on to say regarding religious institutions:

I think that the churches and . . . the religious institutions and the funeral
homes together should understand the expertise that the Peace Institute has,
and together work toward creating protocols that allow for more fluid
referrals, but also allow people to do what they do best and not do other
things that need to be done but are better done by somebody else. And
again, I think until that kind of innovative partnership explores the options,
we won’t have the best set of strategies for people.

A Peace Institute ministry leader supported that this would require a

major cultural shift in awareness, a “mindset shift”: “ . . . it’s really like a
whole mindset shift in how to really respond to families impacted by
violence. . .in order for institutions really to better serve people impacted
by violence, I think that the policies and things in place should be driven
by the people impacted.”
The Leadership Academy is the most explicit example of the Peace
Institute’s practices in supporting, through training and advocacy, the
post-traumatic growth of survivors and their recognition as “experts” and
“Peace Warriors,”41 whether teens or adults, in the larger community.
The Leadership Academy educates and empowers survivors and allows the
public to witness their often newfound confidence as experts, or as one
ministry leader said: “ . . . [it] is really good for personal healing because it
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 173

kind of like flips the script, like survivors are now the experts. And
sometimes people who’ve never felt like an expert in their life but now
they are, they are an expert, and you have a program backing you up that
you can refer to when you’re trying to talk about your own expertise.”
For example, one survivor appreciated that, through the Leadership
Academy, the Peace Institute encouraged and allowed a fellow survivor,
who did not have an advanced degree, to lead the sibling survivors group
for a period of time. She argued that more than degrees, “experience was
the best education”—that expertise in the ability to connect and help
comes first and foremost from being seen to have survivor rather than
textbook experience:

I mean, I’m a firm believer in you can have all education in the world that
you need, but sometimes experience is the best education, and dealing with
the loss or grief through homicide, you can only educate through
experience. . .if you’ve never gone through something so traumatic as
such, you haven’t a clue. . . one of the surviving mothers. . .actually had a
hand in doing the leadership for the youth sibling survivors. And I thought
that was awesome. . .Because those children know why this one mother is
here. . .It really helped for them. . .it’s better than having a child psycholo-
gist come. . .It’s just not something that you learn about in a textbook.

This dovetails with the words of some members of the UUTRM’s case
study as well, though their UUA institutional supporters continued to
prefer to see formal education in trauma treatment.
Some of this newfound confidence as experts can be traced to education
provided to survivors through the Leadership Academy and the use of
theory to understand their pain not as an individual problem of self-blame
but as a communal problem demanding communal action. If trauma is
pathologized as purely an individual intrapsychic problem, there is a
neglect of the social relational context of trauma and the potential for
transformative possibilities in the relationship of self to society.42 The
rejection of this individualization of trauma was a strong and consistent
thread throughout survivor, ministry leader, and institutional supporter
responses, which also is consistent with a liberation health model
approach to treatment.
174 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

For example, survivors often spontaneously referenced the intersections

of race, class, and gender, regardless of the specific question at hand, and
these references often revolved around profound questions of “why?” in
the aftermath of violent trauma. Their responses alternated between
despair and anger—as one survivor painfully demanded: “Why, like why
the African American male? Why did we go through the slavery? Just
goin’ back to like all of that, and why are these certain areas, like the drug
infested and then the projects and why aren’t African Americans more
motivated ... ?” Survivors repeatedly questioned why their communities
were targeted, particularly when such violence should be preventable—
where were the sources of resistance? These questions became even
sharper in tone when further sociological and institutional education,
such as that provided by the Leadership Academy, brought deeper levels
of insight and motivated ongoing learning by survivors. One illustration
of the transformative impact this social change education brought in
empowering and motivating survivors to testify as experts in the public
square is found in a survivor’s comments:

I think the Leadership Academy is the most empowering tool that they have
. . . I’ve never been to college, didn’t know nothing about social change,
didn’t really care about what was going on in the community as long as like
the kids were okay . . . and even though this unfortunate tragedy brought
me to the Peace Institute, it has brought me to a place in my life where I
thought I would never be. Like I said, I’m getting ready to graduate from
college. The hunger that I have to wanna just try to make a difference in my
community and find out what is needed and where do I fit in and where do
I belong and how am I supposed to do this . . ..

RCT would identify the practices of the Leadership Academy in

empowering survivors as experts in such testimony to be exhibiting
some of their core principles in the provision of “growth-fostering rela-
tionships” through “mutual empathy” and “mutual empowerment.”43
Such education provides resistance to a pattern of social stigmatization
of survivors that can lead to “condemned isolation,”44 to the pathologiz-
ing of the trauma as an intrapsychic problem, resulting in social shame
and isolation, rather than as a relational problem attributable to and
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 175

needing to be engaged by the larger community. Per Judith V. Jordan,

“The growth that occurs is both affective and cognitive and leads to an
enlarged sense of community . . . a feeling that one’s vulnerability will not
be taken advantage of or violated . . . people in any growth-fostering
relationship are experiencing more aliveness, more clarity, and a greater
sense of possibility and potential agency.”45
IFS theory would note that these practices fostered confidence, cour-
age, creativity, and connectedness for survivors in Self leadership.46 One
survivor spoke of the Peace Institute’s spiritual focus as giving survivors
the strength to become peacemakers in their communities: “ . . . we’re
taking it back, and we’re sharing it with our families, we’re sharing it with
our coworkers, we’re sharing it with our . . . churches . . . we’re creating a
trail of . . . peacemakers.” A ministry leader noted that faith and spiritu-
ality became unexpected prophetic components of the public testimonials
of survivors, and that this was important to their pastoral healing as well
because it was language coming directly from their community. I was
struck by the use of the language of “a piece of themselves” to affirm the
significance of survivor religious or spiritual parts and the resonance of this
with IFS’ language of “parts” and use of multiplicity and systems theory.
She stated survivors felt confident in witnessing to the power of their
relationship with God first and foremost rather than the authority of
secular systems or programs:

. . . the way that we talk about faith and spirituality on a public level in the
circles that we talk about it in is sort of unheard of . . . especially when
you’re like talking to people either in government or like the health world or
in academia too . . . I think it’s more of a community minded approach. So
I think when the community sees us doing it in those settings, it’s healing
because it’s like that’s how I feel. They can see themselves in the work.
They can see themselves, a piece of themselves in it, and it’s in a language
that they know and that they drive, you know?

The public nature of the Peace Institute’s focus on spirituality even

prompted the institutional survivor who is the antiracism consultant to
say of their annual Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace that “It feels like
church”: “I think the march is spiritual . . . just that it’s a time of the
year when hundreds of people come to share that few hours together in a
176 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

way that’s an honoring of the dead and a call for life . . . for the survivors. I
find it very moving. It feels like church. It’s having a neighborhood
witness.” If these case studies had not used an interdisciplinary lived
religion framework for studying these trauma ministries, some of these
metaphors, analogies, and phenomenological data might have been
missed in the significance of the Peace Institute’s pastoral and public
social justice and educational practices with survivors.
In an effort to bring expert survivor witness from the Peace Institute to
the halls of government, a listening hearing was organized by the Boston
City Council in 2010,47 and survivors gave testimony on their experiences
and needs to begin to use this as a basis for developing protocols among
service providers. Reflecting the understanding of survivors as experts, the
city councilor interviewed said: “I thought it important that these families
be empowered, that government not speak at them, but work with them
because as I often sort of define it, they have PhDs in suffering and they
are authorities on violence, and we should be engaging them as stake-
holders in the solutions to ensure that they’re fully informed.” Advocacy
with police departments, district attorneys, employers, funeral homes,
hospitals, and the media48 were all discussed in this hearing and regarded
throughout my interviews as important areas of needed education for
social institutions regarding survivor struggles and their painful experi-
ences. The Peace Institute’s Leadership Academy often was cited as the
means by which survivors gained support in navigating each of these
systems and being affirmed in their sense of injustice when a system failed.
Two final areas of themes worth noting in survivor testimonies as
experts in the public square were their expectations of the mental health
profession as well as the church and other religious institutions. Ministry
leaders and survivors both expressed feelings of ambiguity toward the
professional mental health field, some having positive experiences but
many experiencing the programs and activities of the Peace Institute as
providing more “therapy” than traditional forms of “talk” therapy. Feeling
“listened to” and having shared experiences of loss and connection were
contrasted with experiences of therapists setting an “agenda” for the
survivor, therapists who may not have had a baseline for a shared experi-
ence. As one survivor pointedly said:
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 177

I even said that to my therapist. I said, “I love you, and you’re a great
support to me, but the Peace Institute is doin’ my therapy.” . . . at the Peace
Institute it’s about how I’m feeling about my loss, how do I get past this, is
this normal, did this happen to you—just we connect. We connect because
I’m talking to someone who may not know exactly how I’m feeling but
have a idea of what I’m going through, not me just talking to you and
you’re like, “Mm-hm,” just lookin’ at me, and I’m saying to myself, “You
don’t even have a clue.”

The founding ministry leader’s advice to professional mental health

clinicians, which has implications for religious care counselors as well, is to
place oneself in a more humble, listening, and learning position with
survivors—a position of being an ally to the survivor as the expert in their
own needs:

. . . just . . . stop tryin’ to fix somebody. Just really don’t if you’re gonna

work with survivors, don’t go in with the notion that you’re gonna fix “em
that you know, really don’t. Really, really, really don’t . . . Go with the
attitude of sharing and learning, teaching and learning, hearing and
speakin”, giving people the opportunity, hear the fullness of what someone
is sayin’, you know? Don’t go in “I’m-gonna-help-you”, go in and ask them
the question, “I am here, what can I do?” and go in bein’ patient. This is not
a one-two-three, this is not gonna be as pretty as your textbook.

And most particularly, the founding ministry leader would say, do not
make a survivor “dependent” on you as the care provider so that when you
are gone, they no longer know what to do. Instead, it remains vitally
important to “transform pain and anger into power and action,” into the
survivor’s own ability to work toward communal transformation and
peace. There is resonance here with the liberation health model of
treatment, as well as with the classic quote often circulated among activists
and on social media by an indigenous Australian woman, Lila Watson: “If
you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time . . . But if
you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us
work together.”
Peace Institute ministry leaders also uniformly spoke out on the need
for the church and clergy to be a counter role model to the typical conflicts
178 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

and competition exhibited in the larger society, a need they felt the church
often failed to meet. Ministry leaders experienced church leaders as
participating in “infighting” and as having “turf issues” in a way that
was similar to what caused “gang violence.” In their experience, there was
little sense of collaboration and more of a sense of competition for grants
and money within the faith-based community. “. . . we’re not acting as a
peaceful people. To be violent is not just to be physically violent. You can
be violent in a very silent way, and by omission we can be violent by not
doin’ certain things,” one ministry leader would say. All providers, from
the secular realm to the religious realm, were called upon to exhibit a deep
sense of “cultural humility” in respecting survivors as experts in their own
needs.49

Key Lessons from the UU Trauma Response Ministry

Case Study

The immediacy of concrete communal support and denominational

presence by the UUTRM and the larger UUA, as well as the Red Cross,
were regarded as a key factor in increasing the TVUUC’s overall capacity
for a public religious response in the aftermath.50 The overall speed of
response and presence of UUTRM and UUA leaders was frequently cited
by participants as helpful in organizing the many levels of response—from
initial contact with the media to coordinating debriefing groups to devel-
oping a service the next night. The ongoing supportive presence of a
UUTRM consultant throughout the first year and beyond, and the
recognition of the congregation’s proud survival on a national UUA
level, including its connection to the establishment of a public social
justice witness and religious ecumenical and interfaith campaign by
UUs, “Standing on the Side of Love,” also were cited as helpful, though
more long-term and concrete support was viewed as needed in specific
crucial areas.51
Despite this support in the first year, the need for ongoing support and
the importance of ministering to lay leaders, who were overtaxed in the
aftermath of the traumatic event, was repeatedly stressed by TVUUC
leaders. More often, given their long-range needs, this concrete ministry
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 179

came through their UUA District Executive than the UUTRM. TVUUC
leaders reiterated that it was important not to underestimate the sheer
number of logistical issues in need of guidance in the aftermath of such a
communal and ecclesial trauma—logistics that ranged from the need to
clean the sanctuary professionally; to the hiring of part-time contractors;
to the inpouring of cards and money that needed management and
response; to the turnover of church leadership from stress, health needs,
and physical exhaustion; to the infusion of visitors and prospective new
members; etc.
The strain of roles, and expectations attached to those roles, was a
poignant point of sharing by TVUUC leaders. Examples included the
church administrator, who had been in the direct line of fire that morning,
finding herself worrying as to whether or not she had paid the church’s
catastrophic insurance policy—and the incoming board president, who
had shotgun pellets pass within five feet of him that morning, saying his
bigger trauma “was the self-perceived responsibility to help people get
through it, for the church and the congregation . . . worrying about
500 people . . . that was a daily impact on me for two years . . . I started
healing mostly when I quit bein’ president.”
Impressions varied, however, as to whether the UUTRM was there
mainly to support the minister as the primary congregational leader or
whether the UUTRM was at the TVUUC with a larger eye on supporting
all of the church leadership and congregants in that initial week and
beyond, and this role confusion led to mixed expectations and reception
at points. Of the TVUUC leaders interviewed, only the minister had any
prior awareness of the UUTRM and, of the five TVUUC leaders
interviewed, only the TVUUC minister would have the most unqualified
enthusiastic response to all of the UUTRM prophetic pastoral care
services provided, paralleling the enthusiastic responses of the UUA
institutional supporters interviewed as well.
Of the remaining four TVUUC leaders, all would praise many aspects
of the UUTRM services, though there also would be specific critiques and
recommendations they wanted to offer as well. Two in particular were
stressed: (1) while the TVUUC leader who was board president at the
time placed great value on the ongoing phone consultation services of the
UUTRM, he also expressed frustration that they needed specific and
180 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ongoing long-term assistance in particular areas and had lacked guidance

and warning about these needs from the UUTRM, requiring them to turn
belatedly to their UUA District Executive for the majority of these
emerging logistical pastoral care needs;52 and (2) while all TVUUC
leaders interviewed placed great value on the national UU response in
supporting the TVUUC, including by the UUTRM, several also argued
that there were nuances of culture, governance, relationships, and needs
that could not be met by members of a national trauma team flying in and
out over the course of a week, that communication breakdowns naturally
occurred in the transitions of leadership, and that speed of response at
points overwhelmed time and space to build adequate relationships and
understand different needs, history, and cultures. These included differing
needs for personal recognition as well as for personal spiritual care. In
other words, the perceived designation of being considered the UUA’s
official trauma response ministry, even though the UUTRM had no such
formal linkage and was volunteer in base, set relational expectations very
high and rather naturally led to some level of disappointment or role
confusion.
The most definitive statement on practices of communal healing in the
aftermath of trauma came from the TVUUC minister, who testified to
healing as “being a church.” Indeed, the clearest emotional expressions,
confession, and testimony of inspiration and sustenance among the
TVUUC leaders came in describing, often with tears in their testimony,
profound moments of connection to a sense of a larger ecclesial community,
whether this was their church, the Knoxville ecumenical and interfaith
community, or the UUA and a larger movement. A UUTRM leader said,
using language of connection and energy, which resonates with RCT,
though in this case dissipating negative traumatic energy: “ . . . I think that
one of the best ways to get over a traumatizing event is to start feeling like
you’re part of the human race again, so . . . any ritual that can get people
connected and mitigate, send that energy out, dissipate that energy, is a
positive thing and, for me, that’s the biggest thing.”
UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional supporters alike stressed the
importance of narrative in the communal healing process—the telling of
one’s own personal story and the weaving of a story large enough to hold
the multiplicity of these varying stories and experiences of violent trauma
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 181

in an ecclesial context. This case study finding also resonated with possible
use of IFS’ focus on multiplicity and systems theory for a broader range of
congregational studies after trauma. The UUTRM leader who played an
ongoing role consulting to TVUUC spoke about his focus on narrative in
the healing process as helping survivors of trauma to hold the “sacred
ambiguity” in these varying experiences—a practice of care that also might
be seen to parallel IFS clinical theory stressing that no part in a system
should be exiled, all parts need to be welcome. This UUTRM leader
regarded this practice as his particular contribution to the overall pastoral
care practices of the UUTRM and stated:

[O]ne of the concepts that is sort of unique to my work . . . is a concept that

I refer to as the spiritual discipline of sacred ambiguity in relationship to
trauma . . . the way in which institutions craft a macro narrative of a
traumatic situation can have a huge impact on whether or not people feel
included or excluded from the institution and its memory of what hap-
pened, and can either aid or inhibit in the healing process of individuals in
that institution over time . . . Ministers worth their salt that are in these
situations understand that the spiritual discipline is to affirm everyone’s
experience and to figure out a way to not have to align oneself with a
particular aspect of it in order to legitimize that aspect and inadvertently
delegitimize every other one.

The TVUUC minister experienced this UUTRM consultant’s advice

as invaluable in constructing public sermons and rituals that encompassed
a broad range of perspectives and possibilities into the ongoing TVUUC
ecclesial narrative of the trauma. One other TVUUC leader did as well in
understanding the need to bring newcomers relationally into the narrative
of what had happened on July 27, 2008. His contribution would be the
PowerPoint on the church’s history that allowed newcomers to situate
this violent event in a larger story of ongoing prophetic resistance by the
church, again an example of what liberation health theory might call
“recovering the historical memory of change.” TVUUC leaders’ under-
standing that there can be different experiences and truth claims in the
aftermath of trauma appeared to be the source of grace granted in
182 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

maintaining their relationships overall, maintaining their spiritual tribe,

despite their differences in opinion regarding the media conflict.
“Being church” entailed not only holding stories of difference and
supporting one another through stress and burnout. “Being church”
also often meant being willing to open the doors to religious strangers, a
fully embodied welcome that included those previously stereotyped as
potentially hostile to UUs. One UUTRM leader observed a small con-
servative Christian home church coming in as volunteers to scrub the
bathrooms for the TVUUC. She said, using now significant and familiar
language of pieces and wholeness again, as well as a reference to the
language of “self image” as part of “a bigger community”:

. . . number one, to see people who probably never heard of the UU before
show up for this, unbelievable. Unbelievable in terms of making something
whole with the pieces missing . . . there’s always a suspicion of, “Oh, the
evangelicals hate us and the Christians think we’re this.” And . . . this little
group that nobody knows, well, they know who you are now. And I think
by showing up, appreciating, not keeping people out, but finding ways to
include, probably helped the healing—some self image healing . . . for UUs,
as well as getting them into a bigger healing of a bigger community.

Another UUTRM leader said: “I was just floored. I’d never seen that
much interfaith amenity. I mean people showed up who couldn’t be more
antithetical to what UU’s believe.” The unexpected in such experiences
was stressed again and again, as well as the connection to a larger relational
experience that was countercultural to their existing relational image,
hence a discrepant relational experience and image.
The language of “wholeness” and “pieces” also emerged here through
the experiences of a different UUTRM leader as an expansion beyond a
personal pastoral image of healing and into one that was more of an
interconnected system, resonating with IFS understandings. This rela-
tional image now encompassed a larger ecclesial image of ecumenical and
interfaith relationships and restoration, at least temporarily, for “whole-
ness.” The unexpectedness of the broken ecclesial faith “pieces” coming
forward as a larger experiential and relational “whole” in the aftermath of
the trauma surprised and overwhelmed all TVUUC leaders interviewed,
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 183

and many of the UUTRM leaders on site as well, to the point of tears or
awestruck tones of voice in the interviews. This again took on confessional
and testimonial tones of “something more” in these moments that are
more consistent with findings in lived religion and sacred story and
religio/poetic meaning-making experiences and practices. This relational
movement toward greater embodied and transformative connection was
repeatedly named and experienced as “love” by many TVUUC and
UUTRM leaders alike, a love that was to be welcomed, honored,
respected, and reaffirmed as the meaning of “being church.”

Notes
1. For the most detailed examination of the original case studies, see
again Michelle A. Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral Care in the Aftermath of
Trauma.
2. Critical race theory, inclusive of critical whiteness studies, provides
helpful theoretical tools for understanding the dominance of white
supremacy culture in the United States context. See Richard Delgado
and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edition
(New York: New York University Press, 2012) as well as Kimberlé
Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds.,
Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement
(New York: The New Press, 1995).
3. For the purposes of this book, only the teacher’s guide for grades
4 and 5 is referenced in the bibliography, as a sample of one among
many LDBPI peace curriculums. See Deborah Prothrow-Stith, et al.,
Peace Zone.
4. More information about Lesson One can be found at their website:
http://lessonone.org (accessed August 27, 2013).
5. Prothrow-Stith, et al., Peace Zone, 23–26.
6. The Peace Institute also recently completed and published a new
workbook for children, Always in My Heart: A Workbook for Grieving
Children (internal 2011 publication of the Louis D. Brown Peace
Institute), which again, similar to their other peace curriculums, is
based on an emotional literacy approach with a focus on art and
184 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

writing activities, though this workbook is structured particularly

around the use of the seven Principles of Peace in addition to the
story of Louis D. Brown. It also should be noted that the drawings
used throughout the Peace Zone curriculums reflect the ethnic diver-
sity of the Boston student body as the curriculums’ primary target
audience.
7. Madigan, Narrative Therapy, 33–36, 66–70, 163.
8. See concepts discussed in the previous chapter as part of a clinical
social work liberation health approach. Martinez and Fleck-
Henderson, Social Justice in Clinical Practice.
9. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 28–31, 102–103.
10. See again Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes.
11. hooks, Teaching to Transgress.
12. Martinez and Fleck-Henderson, Social Justice in Clinical Practice.
13. Transforming a tragic loss—whether by violence or in other ways—
into foundations or institutions named after the person lost can be
observed widely in society and also might be understood and labeled
as a form of protest, liberation, or prophetic pastoral care practice
when the socially transformative intent is made explicit in their
mission. I also have suggested that these might be examples of
“spiritual tribes” formed around “sacred stories” and exhibiting
post-traumatic growth in doing so.
14. Klass, Silverman, and Nickman, Continuing Bonds.
15. See for example their use of art and literature activities even in their
early years through their various peace education curriculums as
previously discussed. They also utilized a well-known local arts ther-
apy university for additional group programs, and ministry leaders
frequently incorporate art activities into their work with both the teen
and sibling groups and the adult groups, such as the “Tuesday Talks”
from which the Peace Warriors emerged.
16. The Peace Institute founding ministry leader specifically was intro-
duced to the technique of sandplay when she spontaneously requested
to accompany this researcher to a training during my early period of
ethnographic immersion and volunteering. Given the Peace Insti-
tute’s commitment to the power of the arts in “healing,” I thought
this particular art form might be of interest to the founding ministry
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 185

leader, though her initial request to accompany me was entirely

spontaneous. I did not expect how fully and completely the Peace
Institute ministry leaders, as well as some survivors, particularly teen
survivors, would embrace this particular technique, now regarded as a
major component of their Holistic Healing Center with a room fully
dedicated to sandplay. Ministry leaders have embarked on further
trainings on their own, though it also needs to be noted that I was
asked to lead a few early trainings for ministry leaders and some
survivors. The particular technique the Peace Institute initially was
introduced to and trained in for sandplay (that this researcher is also
trained in) is what is known as Sandtray-Worldplay by Dr. Gisela
Schubach De Domenico (see http://vision-quest.us/vqisr/about_us.
htm, accessed April 20, 2013). They have continued to explore other
dimensions of sandplay trainings, and the fullness of their embrace of
this constitutes its own phenomenon, including their recent
renaming of it as “Peace Play.” Sandplay, as a therapeutic technique
originally used with children, is traced back to the work of Margaret
Lowenfeld in England and later was developed further by Dora Kalff,
including uses with adults. See Sand Tray World Play: A Comprehen-
sive Guide to the Use of the Sand Tray in Psychotherapeutic and
Transformational Settings (Oakland, CA: Vision Quest Images,
1995). For further information and general history, see also Katherine
Bradway, Karen A. Signell, Geraldine H. Spare, Charles T. Stewart,
Louis H. Stewart, and Clare Thompson. Sandplay Studies: Origins,
Theory, and Practice, collected by the C.G. Jung Institute of San
Francisco. Boston: Sigo Press, 1981, and Kay Bradway and Barbara
McCoard, Sandplay—Silent Workshop of the Psyche (New York:
Routledge, 1997).
17. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 28, 37, 102, 108.
18. Ibid., 37, 104, 106.
19. “Safe Boxes” was an art project in which the youth decorated boxes
and put materials into the boxes that helped them to feel safe.
“Peaceville” was another interesting example of a combined religio
and socio/poetics of material religion as a spiritual practice. Youth
created a their ideal city of peace, a large artistic construction project
that amounted to a hoped for fully realized eschatological and
186 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

sociological vision—a sacred story. Eventually, it was placed on

display at the Massachusetts State House and later within the Peace
Institute itself for a period of time.
20. See Peter A Levine, with Ann Frederick. Waking The Tiger: Healing
Trauma (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997); Ian
Macnaughton, Body, Breath, and Consciousness: A Somatic Anthology
(Berkely, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2004); Pat Ogden, Kekuni
Minton, and Clare Pain, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor
Approach to Psychotherapy (New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2006); Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology
of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 2000); Robert C. Scaer, The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden
Wounds and Human Resiliency. New York: W.W. Norton and Com-
pany, 2005) and The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation,
and Disease, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007); and van der Kolk,
The Body Keeps the Score.
21. This specific language was used by UUTRM leaders and institutional
supporters separately in the interview process, and Hudson, Congre-
gational Trauma, also cites a bomb site volunteer who uses this
language in reference to clergy at trauma sites as well (47). In the
disciplinary language of pastoral care contexts, this language appears
traceable to pastoral care works by Henri Nouwen, who also devel-
oped the pastoral care image of “the wounded healer.” See Dykstra,
Images of Pastoral Care.
22. Madigan, Narrative Therapy, 163.
23. It is worth noting that relational-cultural theorists also have pointed
to the power of self-help peer-led groups, such as Alcoholics Anony-
mous (AA), on occasion as well. See Christina Robb, This Changes
Everything.
24. See James Luther Adams’ 1947 essay, “The Prophethood of All
Believers,” in The Prophethood of All Believers, edited by George
K. Beach (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 99–103, as well as in The
Essential James Luther Adams: Selected Essays and Addresses, edited by
George K. Beach (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 105–113.
25. I use “representative” here because it was not clear that this particular
person was identifiable with any of the known UUTRM leaders on
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 187

site who were interviewed for this particular case study. More
UUTRM representatives came in and out throughout that week
than those interviewed, and UUTRM leaders were among the first
to state that there was always a need for ongoing training among those
who served on the UUTRM as volunteers, particularly in their early
years of formation and operation, such as was the case for this
particular case study.
26. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 5–7, 101.
27. Ibid., 5–7, 36, 107 and Madigan, Narrative Therapy, 163. RCT
integrates several theoretical frames, including literature on trauma
as well as resiliency. Narrative therapy also attends to the possibilities
inherent in reframing stories.
28. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 101–102.
29. My clinical trainings led me to think of the word “healing” in terms of
“health,” per one root linguistic meaning, and my theological train-
ings in terms of “wholeness,” per another root linguistic meaning.
30. See Schwartz, Internal Family System Therapy, as referred to in
Chap. 4.
31. See Martinez and Fleck-Henderson, Social Justice in Clinical Practice,
per discussion in Chap. 4.
32. Hertz, Prothrow-Stith, and Chery, “Homicide Survivors.”
33. Indeed not all survivors would utilize these extended offerings of the
Peace Institute, either their Holistic Healing Center or their Leader-
ship Academy. Many survivors of family homicide only come to
interact with the Peace Institute for its crisis management services,
though some may return many years later for their other services.
Sustaining the long-term availability of the place and space of the
Peace Institute, given the need for survivors to pace and control their
“healing” in the aftermath of trauma, is an effective practice noted by
institutional supporters.
34. Annie G. Rogers, The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
(New York: Random House, 2006). This may be why symbolic play
with material images can be so powerful for survivors of trauma, as
seen in the street memorials from my pilot studies as well as in the
Peace Institute’s use of sandplay and other art forms. The missing
metaphorical words for relational images and experiences sometimes
188 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

can be more deeply and poetically conveyed through shifting, chang-

ing, tactile objects, and images. This bears further investigation, as the
embodied role of play is a developing area in practical theological
research. There may be usefulness in bringing a material theo/poetics
or religio/poetics to this literature. See Jaco Hamman, “Playing,” in
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bon-
nie Miller-McLemore (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014),
42–50. See also Michelle A. Walsh, “Taking Matter Seriously: Mate-
rial Theopoetics in the Aftermath of Communal Violence,” in Post-
Traumatic Public Theology, edited by Shelly Rambo and Stephanie
N. Arel (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
35. Research into resiliency and trauma supports this statement by the
UUTRM leader. See in particular George A. Bonanno, “Loss,
Trauma and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the
Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?” Amer-
ican Psychologist (January 2004), 20–28.
36. A text recommended by one UUTRM founder for clergy self-care
during interviews was Kirk Bryon Jones, Rest in the Storm: Self-Care
Strategies for Clergy and Other Caregivers (Valley Forge, PA: Judson
Press, 2001). The TVUUC minister interviewed clearly did carry an
enormous felt weight of responsibility, as initially expressed in his ride
home to the church after first hearing the news and his worries that
“there are more ways to get this wrong than right.” See also again
Hudson, Congregational Trauma, in support of pastoral care concern
for clergy and lay leaders. Also see generally for any human service or
clinical care provider working in the area of trauma, Laura van
Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk, Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday
Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (San Francisco:
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 2009).
37. One interesting example of the power of such material religio/poetic
witness in the space of the Peace Institute itself was the prominent
display of seven bricks painted by former social work interns as a gift
with the Principles of Peace. These two interns clearly had absorbed
the importance of embodied and material practices in their year with
the Peace Institute and considered this an appropriate goodbye gift as
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 189

a thank you, which it happily was received as, hence the prominent
display at the time of the case study.
38. The Peace Prayer recited at the end of the funeral order of service
honors the interdependency of peace in the larger world necessitating
peace at home and in the heart, as seen in the poem by Lao Tse here
http://www.worldprayers.org/archive/prayers/meditations/if_there_
is_to_be_peace.html (accessed May 7, 2016).
39. After wearing these memorial buttons had become a prominent
practice in the Boston community, young people and families also
began to create t-shirts with their loved one’s picture displayed as
well. These would be worn in different settings, such as the march
known as the LDBPI’s annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace or for
family gatherings. In my pilot studies, the young adults interviewed
stated that these memorial buttons and t-shirts gave them a visceral
embodied feeling of connection to their lost loved one, a sense that
their loved one was physically present when the button was worn—
more than simply a memory—and that when more family members
wore these buttons or t-shirts at family events, the stronger this
energetic sense of connection and presence became for them. This
included experiencing the loved one as witnessing events, not being
“left out,” and feeling the loved one’s “vibe.”
40. Chopp, “Theology and Poetics of Testimony,” 7.
41. The language of “Peace Warriors” came about from one mother
attending the “Tuesday Talks” who said she was not a “survivor” so
much as a “warrior,” and most survivors attending that night
embraced this new language. However, one survivor interviewed did
express ambivalence for this new language, akin to the ambivalence
expressed for the word “healing,” stating that she felt more like a
“survivor” than a “warrior.”
42. Marla J. Arvay, “Shattered Beliefs: Reconstituting the Self of the
Trauma Counselor,” in Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of
Loss, 4th ed., edited by Robert A. Neimeyer (Washington, D.C.:
American Psychological Association, 2005), 213–230.
43. Jordan, Relational-Cultural Therapy, 3–5, 103–105.
44. Ibid., 28, 102.
190 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

45. Ibid., 10–105.

46. Schwartz, An Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model.
47. See the Report of the Committee on Women & Healthy Communities to
Members of the Boston City Council: Family Voices: Strengthening
Homicide Response and Family Support in the City of Boston, by Ayanna
Pressley, Chair (Boston, December 15, 2010).
48. The media often is critiqued by the ministry leaders and survivors for
setting an immediate narrative as to who is considered an “innocent
victim”—hence “good” and worthy of more attention and support—
and who is considered “potentially gang involved”—hence “bad” and
less worthy. Again, the creation of the specialized funeral orders of
service became the Peace Institute’s way of giving control of the
narrative back to the family, as well as any assistance they provided
with drafting statements for the media. One other poignant area that
has been a source of personal dismay to me as a minister as I came to
know the work of the Peace Institute is the added burden placed on
families during the initial period of trauma in the struggle to find
money to bury their loved ones in their preferred culturally appro-
priate way. One survivor shared that she was told by cemetery staff
that the gates would be locked upon their arrival if she did not come
up with the money in advance for the burial site. The Peace Institute
has established a permanent burial fund for survivor families. For me,
understanding the importance of and desire to bury their loved one
well, often times at quite a bit of expense, was a time of encountering,
accepting, and supporting a deep difference in theological beliefs and
cultural ways. This was due to my own background as a UU and my
comfort with the lesser expense as well as the theological meaning of
cremation.
49. Tervalon, Melanie and Jann Murray-Garcia, “Cultural Humility
Versus Cultural Competence: A Critical Distinction in Defining
Physician Training Outcomes in Multicultural Education,” Journal
of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (May 1998: 9, 2)
117–125. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia write of the need for a greater
level of “cultural humility” rather than continued “cultural compe-
tency” trainings by human service providers. Though they focus
 5 Attending to “Survivors as Experts”: Lessons Learned 191

particularly on medical doctors in their study, their recommendations

could apply equally to mental health professionals, law enforcement
officials, politicians, the media, and religious institutions. They write
that practitioners and institutions alike need “to identify and examine
their own patterns of unintentional and intentional racism, classism,
and homophobia,” 120, committing themselves to “continually
engage in self-reflection and self-critique as lifelong learners and
reflective practitioners,” 118. The concept of “cultural humility”
supplements previously discussed concepts of “power” within
relational-cultural theory and “cultural hegemony” within narrative
therapy.
50. Hudson, Congregational Trauma, notes that the American Red Cross
is often the first line of defense in situations of trauma, whether
congregational or disaster based, and many denominations join with
the Red Cross either through a partnership with the Church World
Service (see http://www.cwsglobal.org/what-we-do/emergencies/us-
emergency-response/, accessed October 29, 2013) or through some
other designated agency (57). However, it should be noted that the
American Red Cross is geared toward large-scale disasters and only
works in partnership with the US Department of Justice Office for
Victims of Crime when acts of terrorism or mass murder occur. The
TVUUC shooting constituted an attempt of mass murder in a
religious context, hence the immediate response of the Red Cross,
whereas other types of traumatic incidents in a congregational or
communal setting would not call forth such a response. See US
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Responding to
Victims of Terrorism and Mass Violence Crimes: Coordination and
Collaboration Between American Red Cross Workers and Crime Victim
Service Providers (see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/
infores/redcross/ncj209681.pdf, (accessed October 29, 2013).
51. Many of these findings on the importance of immediate and logistical
response support the case study anecdotal general findings in Hud-
son, Congregational Trauma. For more information on the UUA
Standing on the Side of Love campaign, see http://www.
standingonthesideoflove.org (accessed October 29, 2013).
192 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

52. This particular TVUUC leader said that sheer physical exhaustion
proved to be more of point of contention months later than any
differing versions of the actual narrative of the shooting (which the
UUTRM consultant had advised might be a stressor). He also stated
that their long-term support needs were great and varied and
completely underestimated by both UUTRM representatives and
TVUUC leaders.
 6
Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research:
Lessons Learned

Forging Trust, Hearing Stories, and Risking

Questions in Cross-Cultural Encounters
One night in the early years of my role as a “lay urban community
minister/social worker,” I was driving some of the teenage girls home.
From the back of the youth ministry van, I heard a sharp comment from
one girl to another: “You fight like a white girl!” “Hey,” I called out,
“What’s going on back there?” Laughter broke out in the van, and one of
the girls yelled back, “You heard that?” A comical and embarrassed yet
earnest conversation ensued with the African American youth explaining
the racialized meaning-making stereotypes among them that “white girls”
lack the power to be direct or to engage in a physical fight and that this
was regarded as a great insult to deliver between African American girls. I
listened without challenge and accepted this with a sense of humor,
putting it in my memory bank of the stories to which I was privy while
living between and having relationships in different cultural worlds of
experiences. Clearly there was spiritual meaning for these young people in
exercising a sense of superiority and toughness of capacity compared to
privileged but soft white girls.

© The Author(s) 2017 193

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_6
194 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Some stories were more poignant or painful than humorous, however.

Of the more painful or challenging sort were questions posed to me such
as: “Do you think racist thoughts?” “Is it my fault because I’m black that
this is happening to me at work?” “Why do all the white people live out in
the suburbs with fancy houses and we live here in the ghetto?” In the
conversations accompanying these questions, tremendous suffering was
laid bare that yielded an existential crisis of meaning-making for each of
us—how to make meaning and sustain relationship in the face of socially
constructed and real experiences beyond any of our control. Through the
discomfort of living in authentic relationship by sitting with and engaging
together honestly such questions, even admitting to ignorance or help-
lessness with only the capacity to listen empathically and with compas-
sion, still a sense of gratitude remained that the relationship itself was
trusted to bear these questions and conversations with mutuality. I needed
to embrace that all of these experiences and sources of meaning-making
were valid and true in their own right, for they came from vastly different
lived experiences than my own in the borderlands of race and class in
US cities. I only could share from my reality and learn to listen to different
realities and find the possibilities somewhere in the between spaces.

Culture and Power in the Case Studies

Socioeconomic and racial demographics of participants in the two case
studies differed enormously, thus exposing different cultural world/view
and world/sense and spiritual practices as shaped by historical circum-
stances and present lived realities.1 Core cultural values are revealed often
through examination of differences in ways of being2 and communal
practices. The cultural world/views and world/sense of most of the
Louis D. Brown Peace Institute (LDBPI) case study participants were
shaped by their experiences of racialization by a dominant US culture that
institutionalizes that black lives do not matter as much as all other lives,3
particularly through media images and by living in an impoverished urban
environment with greater exposure to daily violence and fewer opportu-
nities for higher education and class mobility. Given that single violent
events in a survivor’s life occurred in the midst of multiple experiences of
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 195

ongoing oppression, the Peace Institute chose to focus their practices on

resistance by transforming survivor pain and anger directly into power and
action.
The cultural world/view and world/sense of the majority of Unitarian
Universalist Trauma Response Ministry (UUTRM) case study partici-
pants, by contrast, were shaped by racialization in a dominant US culture
that privileges whiteness, education, and class mobility and expects safety
from violence as the norm. Practices focused heavily on narrative and
material meaning-making in the aftermath of the Tennessee Valley Uni-
tarian Universalist Church’s (TVUUC) experience with a violent event
that was seen as alien in the realm of imaginative possibilities. Priority
often was given to congregational pastoral care over congregational pro-
phetic social justice action in this meaning-making process, as per the
report of those interviewed. Participants carried religious differences as
well between the two case studies, one focused on the centrality of the
Christian story, especially its call to be peacemakers, and the other on a
public ethical and ecclesial tradition shaped by worshiping and acting
together within a commitment to welcoming diverse beliefs and spiritual
practices.
What is revealed by lived religious examination of these two case
studies, and how do their contrasting cultures result in contrasting prac-
tices of meaning-making? In asking these questions and stressing the
importance of intercultural encounters in interdisciplinary research, I
affirm the magnitude and challenge of violent trauma in the US context
and globally as a contemporary societal challenge that needs cross-cultural
attention, particularly for preventive practices of meaning-making as well
as meaning-making practices in the aftermath to ameliorate the impact. I
am not “objective” in any classic Western scientific sense of this word
when I pose this question either. I view myself as deeply implicated in and
by the violence of my world and relationships within it. I affirm my own
religious tradition’s public ethical commitment to the worth and dignity
of every person and to the tradition’s recognition that we live in an
interdependent web of existence where that which affects the web affects
us all.4 I turn now to intercultural lessons from these two case studies.
196 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Spiritual Experiences and Meaning-Making

Through Sacralization of Place and Space
Key Lessons from the Peace Institute Case Study

One of the strongest common themes related to questions of “healing” or

“helping” that emerged in the language of nearly all study participants was
the spiritual power of an embodied and material culture of peace and
safety in the physical space and place of the LDBPI at the time of the
interviews. Words such as “comfortable,” “safe,” “touchstone,” “spiri-
tual,” “aura,” “like family,” “supportive,” and “culture of peace” repeat-
edly came up in interviews. It was clear that to the ministry leaders
themselves, as well as to survivors and institutional supporters, Peace
Institute leaders strove to model what they preached to others and to
create an environment in their physical space that gave witness to this
culture as well. This was so much the case that several people spoke of
being drawn to connect and visit with the Peace Institute if they were
merely in the area. A survivor said, “I just felt like it was a place that I
could just go talk, but I didn’t know what I was gonna talk about ‘cause I
really didn’t realize what I was feeling or whatever. I just felt comfortable
being there, and so I would go by and sit and talk . . ..” Even an
institutional supporter said,

I think again . . . it is sort of a touchstone . . . that provides some thread of

continuity . . . there is certainly something that takes action on their part to
sustain it, to create that kind of space and culture over time . . . I think it’s
also a place where sometimes people just want to stop by. It represents
something. It’s solid, it’s in the community, it’s there. They have associa-
tions with it. There’s a welcoming sort of aura there and I often use it as a
place where I’ll stop by . . . I think it’s relationships . . . shared experiences
. . . over time . . ..

Survivors stressed that the survivor-led nature of the Peace Institute

gave them a feeling that they did not need special permission to call or a
particular appointment to come over to the Peace Institute or that they
needed to explain their presence—they were simply accepted and
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 197

understood: “You have that outlet like no matter what time . . . [the
ministry leader] stayed with me on the phone for like an hour . . . I
could call and cry or don’t say anything and they know. They give you
that . . ..” Survivors were provided with a “safe space” to share whatever
needed to be shared, and they did not need to share the specific details of
their stories: “When you’re a survivor, it just seems like we don’t ask each
other those questions. We know why we’re there. The story is someone
shot and killed your child. That’s the story . . . they don’t need the details
. . . They know why we’re there, and it just seems like we all have that one
particular connection. So it’s very helpful at times for me to be there.”
Both the physical setting and survivor-led culture enhanced the spiri-
tual “aura” of peacefulness and safety experienced by survivors to connect
and express the full range of their feelings, even if they were more often
distrustful of people, as one survivor reported: “I’m like a hard nut to
crack . . . [and I think] like there’s just an aura around that place, and it’s
just peaceful. And you know that they have spirituality in their lives and
you know that they’re good people. So you connect. There’s no question
about what they’re tryin’ to do. They’re not taking advantage of you.
They’re experiencing the same thing you have.” A Peace Institute minis-
try leader also stressed that “this space is healing in itself” and that “it’s a
very spiritual space.” From the perspective of also being a survivor who has
now come to work at the Peace Institute, this ministry leader continued: “
. . . for me knowing that . . . an organization like the Peace Institute
existed was healing in itself because at least we can say that we have an
organization that does this work in our community and in our state.” This
ministry leader also would call their work a “survivor-based methodology”
that is “real” and “unique” because so many of the ministry leaders have
had their own lives touched by homicide; thus there is no “stigma” or
“shame” in their connection with the families, “it brings down any walls.”
The primacy in value given to consistency of culture and stability of
material place by nearly all participants also was striking. For an interdis-
ciplinary lived religion approach attending to sacred stories and meaning-
making practices in the aftermath of trauma, these experiences have
correlational capacity with relational-cultural theories of the power of
empathy, mutuality, and connection, and the metaphoric capacity of
these theories to suggest embodied energetic connection that could be
198 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

termed spiritual. As previously discussed, ethnographer Sarah Pink draws

on sociologist Amanda Coffey’s concept to point to the significance of
spatial emplacement.5 However, an additional correlational tool also
might be postmodern place theory, as utilized by Mary McClintock
Fulkerson in her ethnographic study of a multicultural church. Drawing
on the authors of postmodern place theory, Fulkerson writes, “Place is a
structure of lived, corporate, bodied experience . . . a category that char-
acterizes all knowledge . . ..”6 It is through place that unity of experience
creates a sense of reality that is fully embodied in our senses and feelings,
in our world/sense, and one that also can hold “conflict and contradic-
tion.”7 The people and the place of the Peace Institute came to represent
in world/sense both a place that could retrigger ambivalence and painful
memories of loss and a place of “spiritual healing,” peace, and restoration.
All of these lived experiences—the multiplicity of experiential parts of the
Self when correlated with IFS theory—were contained and held via place
through a spiritual “aura” similar to church, where the material architec-
ture of the place became a form of religio/poetic testimony and witness
itself, calling forth poetic religious language such as “aura” for description.
Correlating again with Ammerman’s research8 in the sacred stories of
spiritual tribes as enacted also in space, place, and a sense of home,
uniformly ministry leaders also spoke of creating an embodied culture of
peace, love, and support for each other, threaded with their spiritual sense
of Christian “calling” as a lay ministry and practicing what they “preach.”
This meant they strove to be “like family” and to “check each other with
love,” supporting each other in pastoral practices of self-care while role
modeling this pastoral care practice as a prophetic practice to the broader
community as well:

We are very much a family unit, if you will. And that’s appropriate because
much of what we try to teach or preach or train is that peace starts at home.
It starts within. So if we’re in turmoil all the time, in chaos all the time and
can’t see eye to eye with one another most of the time, then what are we?
And who are we to preach or teach peace? ... [W]e eat together, we talk
together, we share together, we cry together, we give ourselves to one
another . . . we lift one another up rather than tear one another down. If
someone makes a mistake, we don’t tear ‘em down. We lift them up. We
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 199

help them with that mistake, help ‘em figure it out and get it right. All those
things that we would like for the community to do and to be, we try to be,
you know.

The central pastoral care ritual for supporting each other as ministry
leaders revolved around their use of the Peace Institute’s seven Principles
of Peace and striving to internalize them for the culture of staff meetings,
as well as board meetings, through check-in’s and close-outs: “[W]hat
principle are we lifting up today or struggling with today and what do we
need to help that struggle? . . . So we just stay engaged with one another so
that we’re assured that one another is safe.” But equally important was
shutting down entirely for lunch together, where business was not allowed
for discussion, as well as allowing the space for the ministry leaders to
partake in the same healing activities available for families, such as art
activities, massage, and bible study. Ministry leaders realized that their
own pastoral care of self practices were profoundly important for sustain-
ing the prophetic missionary dimension of their Christian lay ministry,
and they were self-conscious in implementing this role modeling to
others.
Their embodied spiritual culture of peace and safety, of role modeling
being a “healthy family” as fellow survivors, also fostered a sense of
mutuality, empathy, energy, and empowerment in this “place” that was
experienced as immanent. This expanded their capacity for connection to
their broader community as well, a connectional expansion consistent
with Lakoff and Johnson’s understanding of embodied empathy as the
root of all experiences of spiritual transcendence and also correlating with
the writings of relational-cultural theory (RCT):

When empathy and concern flow both ways, there is an intense affirmation
of the self and paradoxically, a transcendence of the self, a sense of the self as
part of a larger relational unit . . . The primary channel for this kind of
mutuality is empathic attunement, the capacity to share in and comprehend
the momentary psychological state of another person. It is a process during
which one’s self-boundaries undergo momentary alteration, which in itself
allows the possibility for change in the self. Empathy in this sense, then,
always contains the opportunity for mutual growth and impact.9
200 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

For such interactions to grow to their fullest fruit obviously requires a

sturdy foundation in pastoral and clinical care practices of trust, safety, and
stability over time, particularly in light of trauma theory emphasizing that
disruption of control and reestablishment of control are key to creating a
sense of safety and connection again. Continuity of ministry leaders and
their embodied spiritual culture of peace and safety holding10 these shifting
“kaleidoscopes” of feelings, “pieces,” and practices in a particular place
became a repeated value reflected across participant interviews. This sta-
bility allowed survivors interviewed to pace their interactions and created a
context for a slow post-traumatic growth in feelings of empowerment and
confidence as they took the opportunity to experiment with a particular
connection or practice. Providing such continuity also required a certain
level of vulnerability on the part of ministry leaders as pastoral care pro-
viders. This vulnerability was reflected both in their ongoing commitment
to these relationships in a particular place and also in their commitment to
authenticity in disclosures and sensitivity to impact in relationships, core
values expressed also in relational-cultural theory and practices.
An unexpected theme that emerged in response to my questions
relating to institutional religious communities as a potential “place” of
support was a heavy sense of disappointment with and frequent anger
toward the institutional church and clergy by several survivors.11 Passion-
ate survivor critiques centered on the failure of senior ministers to visit the
survivors; a perception that the churches often were more eager to help
families survivors of “high-profile” murders of “innocent youth” than
others deemed “gang-involved”; and anger that the church’s status with
wealthier congregants who commuted from the suburbs was perceived as
of greater concern than the welfare of the urban communities in which the
church was located. When the lived experience of the institutional church
failed to embody the power of a spiritual culture of peace and safety, the
contrast of survivors’ embodied para-ecclesial experiences with the Peace
Institute became even more significant. A survivor who experienced
discrimination by clergy due to the circumstances of her son’s murder
would say, “ . . . I’m so in tuned with the Peace Institute because to them,
everyone is equal. Even the perpetrator has an equal right of some sort.
And that holds a lotta weight with me. A whole lotta weight with me.”
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 201

While not every survivor had a disappointing experience with a church

or clergyperson, it was clear that the quality of pastoral care experience a
survivor had in the aftermath of a family homicide could have a lifelong
spiritual impact on the survivor. This included their capacity for prophetic
social justice engagement of society if support was not given for their
experience of righteous anger—unless they found support elsewhere, as
many did through the Peace Institute. The founding ministry leader
provides one example of a successful pastoral encounter, though she also
did speak initially of a family priest failing to reach out personally after her
son’s murder. Instead, a different priest came to visit on the recommen-
dation of a friend, and this person became an ongoing supportive presence
in her life for several years.
In his first impression, he quietly visited their household “like every-
body else” and spoke to people and then simply asked to pray with them
before he left, continuing this pattern for the next few days. While she
continued at a different church in the meantime, this particular priest
became important in simply being with her through her process of anger
with God, struggles with forgiveness, and ultimately transformation into
her present journey and ministry. She specifically experienced him as
“humbling” himself and really listening to and learning from her, and
she in turn began to respect and engage with him as a result:

. . . I had stopped going to confession because all he wanted me to do was

forgive and I’m like, “No, that’s too big for me. I’ve done everything God
wanted me to do, I’ve donated to the needy, I attended mass, I read the
bible, I help my children understand, I believe I’ve done good and then
you’re tellin’ me that this is God’s will? You got to do better than that,
you’ve got to help me to understand.” And I think him really humbling
himself and realizing that, “You can’t just tell me forgive, you really can’t
just tell me to come to confession and ask God to forgive if you haven’t
taken me through and helping me to understand why would this happen to
me . . . when I was doin’ everything I believed God wanted me to do?” And
I think he understood that and didn’t take it personally when I told him I
couldn’t do that, when I told him it wasn’t fair that he is not even helpin’
me to understand this journey, he didn’t take it personally, he would give
me books, he would call me after mass and he really, without even minister-
ing to me, he was ministering to me in a way that I respect . . ..
202 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

In the cultural world of the Peace Institute survivors, visitation by

clergy, when experienced as a more gentle unassuming “presence” and
as a recognition of the extent of the survivor’s pain and anger rather than a
push toward a particular religious experience or action, often was valued
or desired by survivors interviewed. Ideally and preferably, this was from
the clergyperson who was the leader of the church where the survivor
actually attended. Support of this nature also can take the form of
“survivor ministries” that embody a spiritual culture of peace and safety
within congregations, as survivors interviewed suggested and agreed based
on their experiences with the Peace Institute. Participants suggested that
checking in on families during holidays or anniversaries or providing care
baskets and support groups also can be experienced as very helpful for
surviving families, again particularly when the senior clergyperson
embodies such support.

Key Lessons from the UU Trauma Response Ministry

Case Study

Providing immediate assistance in reclaiming the sacredness of the

TVUUC building and the sanctuary were significant practices in
the aftermath of their violent trauma. These practices also illustrated
the importance of embodied relationships and material religio/poetic
meaning-making in the aftermath. For example, the rededication ser-
vice one week after the shooting included many elements: a ministry of
presence by several former ministers as well as the UUA District
Executive; the inclusion of a favored UU hymn that took on new
embodied meaning that morning by participant reports, “May Nothing
Evil Cross This Door”;12 the giving of artistic material courage awards
to the children; the recognition of the courage of many members in
helping to keep the church safe that day, followed by a promise from all
gathered to continue to help to do so in the future, with all being called
to stand physically as able; and a benediction that entailed the minister
standing on the spot where Greg McKendry had been shot and died to
reclaim and resanctify that space as well.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 203

The words of benediction the minister had always used, and continued
to use, also took on new embodied meaning that morning by participant
reports: “Prophetic church, the world awaits your liberating ministry. Go
forward in the power of love. Proclaim the truth that makes us free.”13 At
the end, the children reprised the song “Tomorrow” from the musical
“Annie,” as they had the night after the shooting at the “interfaith”
community service at the Presbyterian church that had sheltered them
on the day of the shooting—but this time, they did so while standing at
the front of the sanctuary during the rededication service and on the very
stage that had been targeted during the shooting. Such ritual and liturgical
reinhabiting of the physical space imparted some control to all involved
against the experience of ongoing traumatic fear after the shooting and
reclaimed the material space as once again sacred for their spiritual tribe.
UUTRM leaders, particularly the long-term consultant, were viewed as
providing a significant role in feedback and consultation regarding the
sermon, rituals, and creating a sense of physical safety and renewal in the
church space—in fact, security was a role that the ministerial consultant
played in this initial rededication service, including assisting with evalu-
ating security at the church’s one year anniversary as well. To create a
sense of safety in the sanctuary itself required some reorientation of and
physical changes to the space. To resacralize the space, as the UUTRM
leader consultant explained, not only did the damaged and blood-soaked
pews need to be removed, but also certain pews were shifted by 15 degrees
in their material orientation, as well as the pulpit. These recommenda-
tions were made based on the UUTRM leader’s understanding of the
neurobiology of trauma triggers and the further disruption of spiritual
experience these could provoke:

[W]e didn’t want anyone to go back into that space and sit down and be
oriented exactly the way it happened. That by simply shifting what a focal
point would be would diminish the potential for intrusive memory in that
environment, if they happen to be sitting down here . . . you can also shift
the pulpit from the middle over a little bit, so that when you’re sitting here,
you’re also oriented differently up here. And the notion is that part of what
we understand about the neurology of trauma is that environment has a lot
to do with the way in which that particular neural map gets triggered, and if
204 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

we can alter the environment just a smidgen, we don’t tend to continue to

re-traumatize over time.

The UUTRM leader and consultant also suggested that the TVUUC
might want to save some of its damaged materials and artifacts to create
memorials, and this material memorialization also was important for
religio/poetic meaning-making in the aftermath—demonstrating con-
tinuing bonds. The congregation did in fact choose to rededicate two
areas of the building as the Greg McKendry Fellowship Hall and the
Linda Lee Kraeger Library (Fig. 6.1).
The current pastoral care office also was designated for a space near the
sanctuary stage, next to the still pellet-ridden door that had been the
pathway to escape and safety for many children and adults, now preserved
carefully and marked with a plaque (Fig. 6.2). This placement of her office
in this particular space struck the TVUUC leader interviewed, who also
was the former church administrator and now pastoral care minister, as
“funny,” as in ironic. Yet there was a sense of religio/poetic testimony to
life and prophetic hope in such an architectural and material placement of
the heart of the TVUUC pastoral care ministry in this location as well.
This same former church administrator also intuitively understood the
importance of saving damaged materials and artifacts from that day for
their artistic potential, despite those who challenged her in doing so. This
TVUUC leader reported that some people thought she was
“retraumatizing” herself by wanting to keep the pellet-torn curtain that
had covered the entryway to what would become the pellet-ridden door,
yet there clearly was great spiritual comfort, significance, and sacred
meaning-making for her in keeping this curtain as a potential symbol of
the hoped for eventual transformation of this violent event.14 This same
church administrator who had “see[n] the light from the curtain being
open” and ran toward it for safety lifted the original pellet-torn curtain up
to the light to show me, stressing its religio/poetic symbolic transformative
potential as a material artifact:

For instance, I protected this curtain. No one else seemed to care about the
curtain. I thought . . . we should keep [it] ‘cause I thought somebody could
make a piece of artwork out of it at some point and that they would want to,
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 205

Fig. 6.1 TVUUC Linda Lee Kraeger Library Memorial. Painting by Emily Taylor,
a TVUUC congregant, as a tribute to the Westside Unitarian Universalist con-
gregant who lost her life that morning. It celebrates her love for learning and
scholarly writing in religious history and witnesses to the power and “lasting
reminder” of a life lived in the “pursuit of academic excellence.” I note that, as
an ethnographer, the selection of this image to include in the book also is my
own tribute to the losses experienced by the Westside Unitarian Universalist
congregation that day, often overshadowed by the focus on the TVUCC, which
my case study unintentionally replicated
206 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 6.2 TVUUC Pellet-Marked and Memorialized Door. In the aftermath of

the shooting, the congregation chose to memorialize the door that both had
been riddled with pellets and also had been the door to freedom and safety
for many, including the children on the stage. In so marking with a plaque,
they also expressed gratitude to the embrace of a larger community of care in
the aftermath—specifically “the faith and community organizations that
responded to the tragedy, and people throughout the world who expressed
their support”

so I’ve had it in the top drawer in the office ever since . . . See how the light
comes through though? ... See, that to me seems very symbolic of the
transformation from—I mean I just thought there was a lot of good
symbolism in this . . . It’s like star shine.

Material memorialization was deemed important by UUTRM and

TVUUC leaders alike, and memorialization in a way that would not
retraumatize but rather would give religio/poetic testimony to the “some-
thing more” of the embodied power of the lives lived and lost or injured,
even though there might be disagreements on how best to witness to those
religio/poetic values. The reported deepest sense of resacralization of
space, however, came from the fact that the majority of people did not
abandon the church after the shooting—they kept returning and they
kept bringing their children, including the immediately following Sunday,
and the church did indeed grow in membership in the aftermath. The
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 207

TVUUC minister said, “ . . . one of the most healing things to happen was
tackling that guy as quick as they could,” which in turn created a sense of
efficacy and capacity for the congregation to keep their church safe. The
rededication service affirmed this shared commitment to continuing the
spiritual and material form of the church as sacred space, both through
the formal call to stand as physically able in affirmation and through the
many spontaneous standing ovations that happened throughout that
morning. The material pews, floors, walls, and space were resanctified
through very bodies of congregants enlivened by energetic connection in
joy and hope that day.
A poignant story of this “continuity” of the church in sacred space also
was shared by the TVUUC minister regarding the rededication service
and involved the head usher who had directed Greg McKendry to stand
on the spot where he had ushered and was later killed:

[T]his is part of what makes that a sacred space almost as much as anything
really. [The head usher] had terrible survivor’s guilt that first week. And he
came in and talked to me. English isn’t his first language . . . he’s a refugee
from a war country. So he’s got layers of violence. But . . . really the
moment that makes that space sacred is when I came in . . . and there was
[the head usher] with the bulletin. He was the usher and he’s standing
where Greg stood, and . . . to me that just was a powerful, powerful moment
of continuity.

For the benediction that rededication Sunday, the TVUUC minister went
to stand on that spot with the head usher, surrounded also by the
UUTRM leader and consultant as well as the UUA District Executive.
This was an embodied standing of ground that had marked death and
now marked renewal of life again. As a ritual action, it gave religio/poetic
testimony and witness to resacralization of the material space as well as
their continuing moral bond to the deceased congregant. The TVUUC
minister continued to go to that spot for many future Sundays as well to
give his traditional benediction: “Prophetic church, the world awaits your
liberating ministry. Go forward in the power of love; proclaim the truth
that makes us free.”
208 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Such material memorialization processes thus continue to be strong

examples of the moral need for “continuing bonds” with the dead and, in
the case of the TVUUC, the powerful role a religio/poetics of material
religion plays in constructing or reinforcing a religious narrative and
sacred story in the aftermath of violent trauma through rituals of
resacralization of building and space. The church building itself already
materially embodied a historical and religious message and sacred story
through the various values inscribed on its exterior walls, as well as
through its ecological architectural design, giving testimony to a larger
UU religious narrative designed for public witness by others. The new-
comer PowerPoint also became a material artifact and gave religio/poetic
testimony through its use of the story and image of Jim Person being
welcomed into church membership as the first African American,
witnessed now across the generations by those who viewed the
PowerPoint and, as previously suggested in correlation to liberation health
theory, “rescuing the historical memory of change” to reinforce prophetic
social justice witness, through material form in this case. The same is true
of the inclusion of Jim Person’s story and name in the welcoming
congregation plaque eventually placed on the building itself.
The decision to leave pellet holes in some walls and also to mark these
with a material plaque expressed yet another sacred continuing moral
bond to the larger religious story of risk and “being a prophetic church,”
again examples in material form of “recovering the historical memory of
change” for resistance and transformation. These all were choices to turn
toward the trauma, rather than away, as a sign of post-traumatic growth,
prophetic hope, resilience, resistance, and overcoming in religio/poetic
material testimony and witness through the resacralization of the build-
ing. The material building thus is marked in ways large and small with the
religio/poetic living relational images and energy of a religious tradition
and community in place and history—the embodied and material sacred
story as a particular spiritual tribe.
It also was true that the most painful moments, and for some TVUUC
leaders a feeling of being wounded again, came during a conflict over use
of the space of the sanctuary in the week after the shooting. This central
story was touched upon by four of the TVUUC leaders interviewed and
entailed different perspectives on, experiences with, and narratives in
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 209

relation to a local TV station being allowed to film in the church

sanctuary. This was a few days after the church shooting but before the
planned rededication ceremony. It was clear that the opportunity to tell
this story was significant15 for those who fell on the “losing side” of this
conflict. At the time, this conflict revolved around the request and initial
authorization by some TVUUC leaders of a camera crew to film a more
“neutral,” in their perception, part of the sanctuary, such as the empty
pulpit, for a backdrop to a news story to be shown later that night. The
TVUUC minister was not involved in this initial decision, but a member
of the UUTRM became aware and objected in very strong terms, had the
camera crew leave, and informed the minister who also then strongly
objected to the presence of the camera crew.
Relational, cultural, and narrative differences seemed to be at the root
in this conflict, as well as sources of power and authority in governance.
For the UUTRM leader and the TVUUC minister, the camera crew was
viewed as treating the sanctuary as a “crime scene,” and their perception
was that this relational image and narrative would be retraumatizing for
congregants if shown on the news that night, particularly without warning
or planning and before the sanctuary had had a chance to be resanctified
through a rededication service. The TVUUC minister said, “I really
thought it would be important for the first image to be sanctuary
rededication and healing and recovery.” For the other TVUUC leaders
involved in the initial authorization, however, there were personal rela-
tionships at stake, they were demonstrating appropriate sensitivity, and
they observed cultural differences in attitudes toward the media being
expressed.16 One TVUUC leader explained that the cameraperson

. . . was the son of our longtime congregants . . . He’s very sensitive to the
whole thing. The press people are all our friends . . . We know ‘em . . . We
can talk to them and say, ‘Hey, this is what we wanna do. We don’t wanna
do this or that . . . So that whole dynamic of fighting with the press and . . .
being suspicious of the press didn’t fit, which I think is part of a north/
south, big city/small city kind of issue.

The perception by one TVUUC leader also was that the particular
UUTRM representative involved “had a lot of affect” and “basically
210 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

screamed at me a few times.” This was experienced as particularly painful

for the TVUUC leader, who said he had to step away from his birthday
celebration with his family that night to intervene with the TV station and
convince them at the last minute not to show the film they had taken. He
reported, “I ended up shakin’ like a tuning fork for, you know, months
after that . . ..” Another TVUUC leader who was heavily involved with
media relations throughout that week also concurred that a different
experience with and attitude toward the press was brought with the
UUTRM and that, for at least a short period, this posed significant
barriers to a cultural style in which he was more accustomed to operating.
The TVUUC minister, in contrast, experienced the “image of chasing the
camera people out” as a positive prophetic pastoral image akin to “Jesus
chasing the money changers out of the Temple,” though this was disso-
nant to and disconnecting for the experience of other TVUUC leaders
whose pastoral relational image and expectation of UUTRM representa-
tives was that they minimally be dispassionate or be a humble servant at all
times. Additionally, this conflict over sacred space highlighted points of
tension that can occur in a congregational setting when the lines of
authority and communication are dispersed or not clear in the aftermath
of a trauma.17

Cultural Meaning-Making in Narratives

of Encountering God and Encountering Evil
Key Lessons from the Peace Institute Case Study

All Peace Institute ministry leaders and survivors interviewed stressed the
significance of one’s personal relationship with God more than formal
religious traditions or church communities, and “God” was the sponta-
neous language used rather than “Jesus” or “Christ” for most ministry
leaders and survivors.18 Survivors spoke to their sense of God being a
primary sustaining force in the aftermath of the murder of their child,
helping them to “move” and “function.” They experienced this sustaining
force through various signs, practices, or the beauty of God’s creation,
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 211

with one survivor explicitly calling it “God’s spirit.” A survivor spoke of

the coffee she needed as mysteriously appearing in the hands of a neigh-
bor, while another survivor spoke of the movement of her son in the
moment before he died as a sign from God. Still another said there was a
“healing force” in nature, and a survivor and a ministry leader both made
spontaneous references to the process of sandplay as an almost physical
spiritual guiding of their process by God, a “taking over” of their body.
While most survivors interviewed spoke of their sense of faith being
questioned or even shattered in the aftermath of trauma, there still was a
sense of God being available as a loving and reassuring presence in their
journey, even if in mysterious ways, to the degree that they were able to
see the signs. For most of these particular survivors, there was no spon-
taneous direct association of God’s action with the cause of their suffering
as a form of punishment, primarily they questioned “why” in the after-
math.19 This result dovetails with other lived religion research by
R. Ruard Ganzevoort and Nette Falkenburg, who also drew on continu-
ing bonds literature in studying parents who lost children to severe illness
rather than homicide. They discovered that the parents they studied
preferred to focus on the significance of the life of their child in their
meaning-making rather than on their death and that this took the shape of
a wide variety of spiritual experiences and practices illustrating their
ongoing connection to their deceased child and experience of receiving
religious support.20 The Peace Institute founding ministry leader, in
particular, spoke of God placing an allotted time frame for one’s presence
on earth, drawing on Ecclesiastes for her understanding, though not
prescribing the form of the end of that time frame. Peace Institute funeral
orders of service explicitly suggested that people refrain from telling
survivors that the murder of their loved one “was God’s will.”
Uniformly, all Peace Institute ministry leaders spoke of their personal
connection to God as the source of a “calling” or “mission” to engage in
the work and ministry of the Peace Institute, and all survivors, as well as
most institutional supporters interviewed, minimally viewed the Peace
Institute’s work as “spiritual.” Thus for the Peace Institute ministry
leaders, the shape of God’s communication was missional and ecclesial
in a lay Christian narrative to create a community of peacemakers and
transform their larger world toward a vision of God’s peace. First and
212 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

foremost, however, the ministry leaders experienced themselves as called

to reflect God’s culture of peace in the space and place of the Peace
Institute itself—a peace within self first practiced by following the seven
principles of Love, Unity, Faith, Hope, Courage, Justice, and Forgive-
ness—principles considered biblically based and widely applicable from
both an interfaith as well as a secular perspective. The interiority and
immanence of these peace principles reflecting peace within self first
before turning outward to the community also can correlate to Schwartz’
efforts within IFS theory to connect embodied affective and cognitive
experiences to spirituality across religious traditions as well through the
8 C’s of Self Energy, as suggested in chapter four.
When asked direct questions about “healing” and their spirituality or
faith, embodiment in their experience of spirituality and faith—a physi-
cality to the experience of spirituality and God—was another significant
theme to emerge in relation to Peace Institute participant interviews. For
example, one survivor spontaneously spoke of sandplay as spiritual and
that “something just took over my body,” something she could not
explain, though it did not frighten her. This survivor was so powerfully
affected that she brought in sample trays and objects to lead a mini-
training in testimonial for her human service college class:

And I was tryin’ to explain it to my professor. I said, “It just took me

somewhere spiritually. I just went somewhere, and I began to just put things
in the sand tray . . . I would pick up the pieces and say, ‘This is my family,’
and then I put my family, I put the house in, and I could remember I felt
like I needed to protect my family. I can remember, like, ‘Okay, if I put up
this wall, I could protect my family.’ Then I would move stuff because it
didn’t represent this, and whatever,” but I’m tellin’ you like, I can’t even
really explain that feeling to anybody. I was like, “You have to experience it
personally to even understand it ’cause, I’m tellin’ you, I felt like something
else took over me.” But it was a feeling that I wouldn’t mind feeling again
over and over again. When I left there, I kept thinking about, “Wow, how
did that happen? Okay, God, what’s really going on?” I wasn’t scared, but it
was different.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 213

A ministry leader also spoke spontaneously of sandplay as a spiritual

experience of God, as “God working through me” and that it required “a
leap of faith” in what God was trying “to show” her:

I think just the whole process of building the world and then not really
knowing where it’s going . . . it’s like taking a leap of faith because I don’t
know, you’re going somewhere. You’re going somewhere that you might
not necessarily want to go and then once the world comes to you, then you
can either shut down or you can explain where you fit in there . . . it’s just a
real deep spiritual moment that happens in sandplay . . . I mean that God’s
working through me and working through me building the world and really
trying to show me something.

A different ministry leader spoke about one of the principles of peace,

“faith,” as representing an embodied movement of spirit. She reported
that faith could mean a particular religion, but it also might mean just
being spiritual, with spirituality for her meaning a force of energy and
connection, a higher power guiding her or placing particular people in her
life:

I think spirituality is hard to explain. It’s more of like a feeling, something

that you just know, energy, people being connected, and I think that’s
through spirit . . . Like I feel a higher power or something like speak to me
or put me in different situations. Like I think that just me being at the Peace
Institute is like an example of me following something spiritual. I didn’t
ever think that I would end up here.

If in the academic discipline of theology, material theo/poetics reflects

the movement of God or Spirit in material form, then these artistic and
peace practices can be correlated metaphorically to the academic discipline
of psychology’s neuroaffective studies of an embodied—or perhaps better
said en-neuroned—experience of “God,”21 as referenced in Chap. 2,
though without reduction of one academic cultural world/view and
language to the other. Such practices also may be correlated to
relational-cultural theory when it speaks to “energy, power or ‘zest’” in
human relationships,22 if this language is metaphorically reconceptualized
214 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

in part as one’s relationship to God or Spirit as well and how that

relationship might be experienced in and through the body:

The movement of relationship creates an energy, momentum, or power that

is experienced as beyond the individual, yet available to the individual . . .
Empowerment is based on the capacity to turn toward and trust in the
relationship to provide the ongoing context for such interaction. This action
or movement of relationship, then, transfers to action in other realms as the
person has become increasingly response/able and empowered to act.23

If survivors are regarded as experts or as primary theologians and

granted normativity of phenomenological experience for their own lan-
guage and narrative, then such metaphorical correlations to the embodied
movement of spirit or God in the relationship also has possible implica-
tions for speaking back to academic theologians regarding the experience
of power and control in one’s relationship with God, as well as the
location of God and God’s embodiment in the human and in the
material. Again, I will stress that I am not reducing one academic disci-
pline’s cultural world/view and world/sense and language to the other; I
am simply seeking to mutually and critically correlate them through the
multivalent excess of embodied metaphors and poetics while respecting
the inherent normativity of these different phenomenological worlds. Not
to engage in such respect would risk the unethical and the imposition of
power that historically has been experienced as a colonizing cultural
approach to religion and religious studies.24
For example, some of these reported experiences by Peace Institute
participants included that spirituality was associated with “energy” and
“people being connected”—through which a ministry leader spoke of
“feeling” her spirituality. The founding ministry leader spoke of a “sense
of a warm blanket inside of me, on me” when she attends church and says
something similar happens to fellow survivors when they enter the Peace
Institute. In regards to sandplay in particular, one survivor reported, “I felt
like something just took over my body,” while another ministry leader
similarly said sandplay was “like taking a leap of faith . . . God’s working
through me . . . building the world and really trying to show me some-
thing.” “God exists here,” another ministry leader said of the Peace
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 215

Institute itself. God was regarded as an embodied and material presence in

the space and was tangibly expressed through the quotes and other
decorations on the walls. This spirit lingered and created an “aura” for
the place of the Peace Institute as a whole, an experience of immanence as
discussed in the prior section.
Each of the above statements by participants, as well as others by
survivors who spoke of their personal experiences of God outside the
context of the Peace Institute, reflected not an abstract distant experience
of God or spirit but a relational image that was fully and physiologically
embodied, at times material, and deeply personal and directly connected.
This included the experience of God being the immanent sustaining force
helping a survivor to get up in the morning or being the mysterious
presence creating the appearance of a cup of coffee through a friend just
when needed. God’s movement was experienced spiritually through
human-embodied connection to each other, as well as through human-
embodied connection to material objects in sandplay and through other
artistic expressions created. As explicit language of hope and peace, or a
“leap of faith,” was used in confession and testimony, a religio/poetic
interpretation also began to enter for these material expressions, one
with ecclesial and eschatological suggestions in a lay Christian theological
context, as well as at times socio/poetic political suggestions, interpreta-
tions, and protest in other contexts, including in public testimony with
memorial buttons, banners, and t-shirts.
Finally, it is important to recognize the role that the evolving theology
and spirituality of the Peace Institute’s founding ministry leader has
played in shaping practices in light of her personal survivor relationship
with God, one that complicates the idea that God controls each event of
the world. Based on her own as well as survivor experiences, she has made
a policy recommendation of what to say and not to say to survivors
regarding this personal experience of God. This includes never to say “It
was God’s will” in reference to a survivor’s family member’s homicide.
Pastoral care recommendations such as these are given religio/poetic
material testimony in the Peace Institute’s specialized funeral orders of
service (Fig. 6.3). A more nuanced theological perspective and experience
arose in the founding ministry leader’s own personal connection to and
discernment of God’s will and her missionary calling in the aftermath of
216 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 6.3 Peace Institute Funeral Order of Service, Sample Pastoral Care Advice
Page. Pastoral care recommendations the Peace Institute makes to those who
attend the funerals, including religious or theological statements to avoid
saying and awareness of days or situations when a survivor may be in need
of particular pastoral care and attention. The extent of communal religious or
spiritual education accomplished through these services should not be
underestimated given the institutional power of the Peace Institute’s involve-
ment in pastoral care after the majority of homicides in the greater
Boston area
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 217

her son’s murder. Theologically, as she struggled to come to terms with

the murder of her son, she arrived at the belief that human beings
experience free will, but God can set an ultimate timetable for individuals,
an understanding derived in part from Ecclesiastes 3:1–8: “ . . . I don’t
think it was ever God’s will for Louis to die the way he did . . . He
could’ve been hit by a car . . . anything could’ve happened but that was
his time . . . There’s a given time when we are born, there’s a given time
when our life is no longer here on this earth . . . I think it says somewhere,
‘A time to live and a time to die, a time to mourn . . . ’.”
Not every survivor was successful in “moving” through the structured
spiritual healing processes created by the Peace Institute. Many never
claimed a “Peace Warrior” identity and continued to exhibit broken and
tenuous connections. Ministry leaders respected that each person might
have an unknown timetable and personal responsibility for recognizing
and choosing the path of peace God is “preparing.” Formally and explic-
itly, the Peace Institute embraced the overall “brokenness” or limitations
of humanity with compassion. Programmatically, ministry leaders also
rejected any intent by God as having a purpose in causing suffering in
survivors or as designating some of those murdered as “good” and some as
“bad.” All are loved and worthy of being saved, and there is accountability
for choices but not “punishment” in most of these ministry leader and
survivor images of God.
For the founding ministry leader in particular, as well as other ministry
leaders who spoke in terms contrasting “spirit” and “flesh,” suffering was
seen as an inevitable aspect of the finitude of the human condition (“there
is a season”) as well as the God-given capacity of human free will. For this
reason, community was needed to help each other achieve God’s intended
peace. Ministry leaders and survivors often strongly conveyed expectations
that the church and its ministers should participate prophetically in
creating God’s peace as role models. They should seek humbly to learn
from survivors as experts and prioritize supporting them both pastorally
and prophetically. Unfortunately, this expectation often was disap-
pointed, frequently bitterly so in survivor experiences reported. Those
interviewed witnessed instead the church and many of its ministers
emulating the competitive and status-seeking behaviors of the larger
culture. If the church itself could not be an emblem of peace, then
218 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

alternative communal space, and in many ways an alternative spiritual

tribe, was needed and found through the place and practices of the Peace
Institute.
Given their experiences with the institutional church and larger society,
personal wholeness was seen as complicated by an inevitable “brokenness”
and limitation that is part of the human condition, only compounded in
the face of violence and trauma. For the founding ministry leader, God
also can express a desire for how individuals choose to deal with the
timetable God has set, though God will not mandate the outcome.
Instead, God works actively to prepare individuals for God’s calling and
desire, though it remains up to the free will of the individual to recognize
and receive that preparation:

[B]ut I also believe . . . that we were bein’ prepared for Louis not bein’ here,
and I can only say that now. I can only say that, really now, and now,
understanding, why we say, “God won’t give you more than you can
handle” but in that beginning that’s not whatchoo wanna hear . . . the
choices I could’ve made was to stay home, to deal with my anger in a
different way and that would’ve been justified because something bad did
happen to me but that just wouldn’t seem right with . . . what I believe I’m
being called to do, with what I believe the purpose on earth, my purpose, or
we each have a purpose on earth, or with what I believe, again, “Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.”

This calling and preparation then has implications not only for a
particular individual but also for the larger community, church, and
society and is an understanding that may come again only with time.
For the founding ministry leader, her experience of her call from God
became an embodied call to make God’s message of peace a Christian
eschatological reality in her community and beyond. This mission of
peace could take both human and material shape, and the Peace Insti-
tute’s prophetic pastoral care practices were deeply shaped by her embod-
ied experience and vision of this call.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 219

Key Lessons from the UU Trauma Response Ministry

Case Study

Trauma disrupts all sense of normalcy, and for victims of violence, it does
so in a way that can be experienced as morally intrusive and deliberate
when at the hands of another human being. One TVUUC leader, present
in the sanctuary that morning, said when asked about the process,
practices, and meaning of “healing” for her:

I guess healing means coming to a place where I can accept what happened
in the sense that this person willfully chose our congregation because of who
we are and what we strive to do . . . it’s hard to accept that there are evil
people in the world . . . I didn’t wanna accept that, because I wanted to
accept that, you know, life is good. It’s what you make of it, you know, dah,
dah, dah, dah. And it’s hard to accept that somebody has so much hate in
them that they want to harm you.

Reconciling prior more optimistic or liberal conceptions of human nature

with the experience of being attacked and then failing to see remorse in
the perpetrator, seeing that he experienced himself as a “proud offender”
instead, left some TVUUC leaders struggling with accepting concepts of
“evil” in their new frames of reference for their experience of the world. As
previously indicated by participant reports, a favorite hymn “May Noth-
ing Evil Cross This Door” took on new religio/poetic meaning in the
aftermath of this violent intrusion.
Another TVUUC leader and direct survivor from that morning said,
“. . . I’ve just never seen such hostility on a face before . . . it felt like, um,
sort of a supernatural force of destruction. It really did.” Jones also would
write that congregants had their first direct exposure to the assailant’s lack
of remorse at his preliminary hearing: “For many this situation challenged
their long-held UU beliefs of dignity and worth for every human being.
Thoughts about what to do with a murderer who showed no remorse, as
well as occasional desires for revenge or atonement, gave rise to compli-
cated emotions and some community debate.”25 Though the UUA
historically has taken a public social justice stand against the death
penalty, both the consulting UUTRM leader and the UUA president
220 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

recommended, and the TVUUC ultimately decided, not to take a public

stand as a church. To take a stand as either for or against the death penalty
was regarded as placing an additional strain on individual congregants and
the congregation as a whole in the midst of already turbulent emotions. A
UUTRM leader said of their emphasis on the pastoral over the prophetic
at that time: “The issue is to get everyone to come together, feel safe,
support one another and be together, not polarizing over something like
[the] death penalty, which can be so divisive,” particularly since this act of
violence impacted on an entire “social milieu.”
Relational-cultural theory (RCT) emphasizes the role of connection
and mutual empathy in human life as the basis of growth and authenticity
and that disconnection creates feelings of hopelessness and isolation
instead. UUTRM leaders sought to avoid further feelings of disconnec-
tion within the congregation amidst their encounter with violent trauma.
For survivors of the TVUUC shooting interviewed, the attacker’s hatred
and failure to exhibit any capacity for remorse, as an expected basis for
their own connection to and empathy with his humanity, already left
them with a severe sense of visceral disconnection and no language other
than “evil” or “supernatural force of destruction,” in the sense of
experiencing the attacker as alien or “other.” This was a cognitively and
emotionally disruptive experience for those interviewed, given their his-
torical and sociocultural commitment to a religious tradition that often
affirmed the innate goodness and capacity of human beings to love and
care for one another and progressively improve over time. This then
contributed to ethical and spiritual struggles regarding their proper
response to the attacker as UUs committed to the worth and dignity of
each person, which in turn overwhelmed their capacity at that time to
affirm as a congregation the larger association’s social justice commitment
against the death penalty.
As pointed out in Chap. 2 and elsewhere, George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson view “imaginative empathic projection”26—or what might be
called imaginative empathic imaging in RCT language—as the basis of all
embodied spiritual experiences. A failure to experience such empathy with
or from an attacker can disrupt personal and group spiritual experiences
for survivors in the aftermath of violent trauma if expectations of such
experiences of empathy with all human beings have been normalized
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 221

within a group’s culture, world/view, or world/sense of spirituality or

religion. A clinical or pastoral care provider might readily see how such a
disruption of an expected embodied felt connection to a fellow human
being then could feel alien or abnormal, to the point of being categorized
as “evil” or a “supernatural force of destruction,” and result in “othering”
and a confused, paralyzed, or divisive and polarizing response depending
on the religious and sociocultural historical context of those impacted.
This also includes how such an encounter might stir uncomfortable
feelings of hatred, fear, repulsion, and the desire for revenge—despite
explicit spiritual beliefs opposing action on such feelings. The pastoral
focus chosen by the UUTRM leaders at the time directed attention to
reestablishing communal connections and empathy on this feeling level
for TVUUC congregants rather than debate about beliefs and course of
action, a longer-range project.
Drawing on IFS theory to broaden and examine this at the cultural level
beyond conflicts within the self, parts of a larger social or religious system
also can become polarized when the dominant culture’s normalized
expectations of empathy, diplomacy, or democratic or even “civilized”
ways of being are disrupted from and by subdominant cultures. Such
polarization can create tremendous situations of polarization in the cul-
ture of a religious institution or in a society itself, with human tendencies
to “other” and denigrate more pronounced.27 One UUTRM leader
affirmed that UUs struggle with “human evil”28 and have a need for a
richer range of spiritual rituals or practices to help them “mend the
potential of one’s understanding of the universe”:

I think that UUs don’t have a particularly good handle on . . . human evil;
on the capacity for human beings to do destructive things . . . although I
think this is less the case now than it was 30 years ago—the dearth of
religious language or religious understanding for some people does not give
them tools with which to do this work from a spiritual standpoint. It is
psychologized but there’s very little meaning making that occurs, you
know? So I find the people who are most adept at doing this work are
able to express themselves in a way that mends their relationship to the
ultimate, when that relationship has been severed, by whatever name they
call the ultimate . . . the trust in the universe—the universe is a good place
222 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

. . . or the church itself is a safe place—and then having to grapple with the
fact that it’s also a human place and it’s susceptible to things that human
beings are susceptible to.

Yet another UUTRM leader expressed a passionate yearning for a

richer capacity to theologize about and create rituals for recognizing
trauma and evil within the UU tradition, a way to “embody” the inherent
“brokenness” in our humanity more deeply and create accountability
rather than elide the starkness of the encounter with an event that
challenges an otherwise positive or optimistic view of human being:

[S]ome of my strong criticisms of Unitarian Universalism, as a birthright

UU, is that we do not have a theodicy. We don’t talk about evil. We don’t
talk about that. We have had this trajectory, since at least the ‘30s, of
onward and upward forever. We will become human perfection. We can do
that. And so, that sense does not allow for a way to talk about our
brokenness . . . We have no understanding of what does it mean to screw
up and no rite of reconciliation, as in the Catholic Church where we can
say, “I’ve screwed up. Here’s how I want to come back . . . ”—the fallibility
of humankind . . . has never been seriously dealt with since we turned away
from the Calvinists. And we need to develop a more robust theodicy . . . I’d
long for something like the Rite of Reconciliation of the Catholic Church
where we can say, “You know, I really screwed up.” And rather than saying,
“Oh no, no, no,” someone will take me seriously and say, “Yeah, you did.
And how are you gonna change your life now?” That kind of deep account-
ing, we too often don’t do. We have not done very much collectively . . . So
although we’ve thrown out original sin, we’ve thrown out, also, the
possibility for people to be human . . . And so, collectively, we need more
theology that deals with what does it mean to be human? How do we deal
with evil? What is evil, how does it exist? How do we embody that, in order
to be able to even begin to delve into then what is grief, death, loss about
because . . . especially with traumatic death, if we don’t have an under-
standing of how we get there, we have no way to know how to come back.

The development of vibrant spiritual practices also may hinge on the

UU tradition of being able to reconsider aspects of its tendency to
normalize a positive theological anthropology or belief in innate human
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 223

goodness, including the power and significance of reason (as well as formal
education for salvation and protection).29 Correlations to neuroaffective
and attachment studies may help with such a project and “speak back” to
UU theologians regarding their assumptive worlds and emphasis on
cognition and reason, in essence continuing a long Western Christian
tradition of mind and spirit over body. As discussed in Chap. 4, Thomas
Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon argue that we are physiologically
interdependent and permeable through our limbic systems as mammals
and that through “limbic resonance,” emotions are actually contagious
and can become communal:

Because limbic states can leap between minds, feelings are contagious, while
notions are not. If one person germinates an ingenious idea, it’s no surprise
that those in the vicinity fail to develop the same concept. But the limbic
activity of those around us draws our emotions into almost immediate
congruence . . . The same limbic evocation sends waves of emotion rolling
through a throng, making scattered individuals into a unitary, panic-
stricken herd or hate-filled lynch mob.30

Emotions can be contagious—whether these are emotions of hate or fear,

such as might be “caught” from an experience with a mass shooter, or, on
a more positive note, whether these are emotions experienced through
shared wonder, awe, laughter, tears, reassurance, or beauty, such as might
be felt during congregational worship, including the experiences shared by
TVUUC leaders in reference to their “interfaith” and rededication
services.
In other words, a correlation with phenomenology observed by the
social science of neurophysiology teaches that there is no inherent endur-
ing biological disposition toward love and empathy or reason other than a
minimal baseline as infants we share with other mammals. Instead,
human beings are vulnerable and share emotional and physiological
capacities and needs, which include attachment and fear, and these are
socialized, nurtured or repressed, and responded to in interaction with
family and a larger ecological and institutional environment over time,
including through the impact of trauma. As Lewis et al. also write,
“Because mammals need relatedness for their neurophysiology to coalesce
224 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

correctly, most of what makes us a socially functional human comes from

connection . . . Children who get minimal care can grow up to menace a
negligent society . . . America produces remorseless killers in bulk.”31
Human beings are capable both of great acts of love and great acts of
“evil” or harm, and of an entire range in between.32 Religious rituals and
practices are needed across all traditions to ground us spiritually in the
painful complexity of this potential reality—while continuing to foster the
social conditions for empathy, compassion, and love. In this, there is a
shared ethical responsibility, and in this, also we can learn from
intercultural lived religion studies.
As illustrated in Chap. 4, UUTRM leaders did give additional examples
of religio/poetic material rituals designed to meet such needs in the
aftermath of trauma, including those drawn from other traumatic events
to which they had ministered. One example cited by a UUTRM leader
was that of the use of “holy humor”33 to assist holding survivors and their
first responders or helpers with compassion through the complex range of
human feelings possible in the aftermath of trauma. In particular, she
shared a story from serving at Ground Zero as an illustration of how
extraordinary and complex emotional tensions may be held and released
with humor, affirming how an action that might be experienced as
offensive to some actually becomes a release of righteous anger and
religio/poetic witness to a different vision of God through the recognition
and practice of such empathic “holy humor”:

I’m thinking of a story of Ground Zero and I’m thinking of these born-
again Christian missionaries who showed up when it was a little more open
and . . . one of my jobs was to . . . be at the morgue and bless body parts and
the bodies as they came in—and these born-again Christians were bound
and determined that anyone who died was gonna have the blessings, so that
they could go straight to heaven. And two firefighters that I know of went
and got socks that had been donated, and after sitting outside for a few days
the socks were kinda grungy, and they put ‘em in a black plastic bag, and
they brought ‘em up to these two that had been blessing everybody, you
know, “Go straight to heaven” . . . and they said to those two guys, “You
gotta come because we think we’ve found a body part,” and it was really
that the firefighters had taken a black plastic bag, gotten dirty socks, put that
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 225

in there and done it. So you might think that’s that a really bizarre situation,
and it is, but it is a way of dealing with, kind of, that bizarre humor, that
holy humor that helps . . . because . . . these firefighters were overwhelmed
with having been given the responsibility for the safety of, what they said to
me quote unquote, “these two idiots” who were bound and determined that
they were gonna get a body part and that they were gonna make sure that
this body went straight to heaven. And I said to the firefighters, “Whadda
you think about that?” and they said, “We are so busy taking care of
everyone and ourselves and we know and trust that ultimately, as horrible
as this thing is, God is a God of Love and nobody needs to be blessed. No
one would ever not have eternal rest after this experience but we’re charged
with taking care of these two idiots, so we just conjured up this scheme.”. . .
Not a lot of people would appreciate that story . . ..

Human service providers might recognize this practice in a secular

context as what we have termed “graveyard humor” as a way of releasing
extraordinary physiological tension in intense situations—in IFS lan-
guage, the multiplicity that arises in the self and in the larger community,
all vying for attention space in their respective needs. When the language
of “holy” is added to this, however, it becomes lifted metaphorically to a
new level of the “something more” of meaning-making in significance,
lending perhaps a quality of human forgiveness and compassionate and
connected poignancy beyond what might otherwise seem cynical or
acutely disconnected. The connection in this moment to a ministerial
presence through a “listening ear” also serves to bring out the larger sacred
story and narrative behind the practice, illuminating religio/poetic dimen-
sion as an expression and release of pain for this particular spiritual tribe
tasked with holding so much affect—anger, exhaustion, heartbreak, com-
passion, and hope.
For TVUUC participants interviewed, the memorialization of the
TVUUC’s minister’s 10-part series of sermons on a CD for all congre-
gants proved to be a powerful religio/poetic material artifact testifying to
their spiritual continuity and resiliency as a congregation in the aftermath
of violent trauma and their experience with “evil.” The TVUUC minister
self-described his homiletic style as a “journey from irreverence to rever-
ence,” and indeed, his sermons were peppered with much responsive
226 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

laughter, as observed within the first minute of the rededication sermon

only one week after the traumatic event. In his tenth and final sermon on
the CD, the TVUUC minister used All Soul’s Day to highlight the intent
to create memorials to the slain within the church and also linked this
intent to stories of the long line of UU martyrs in history, particularly to
the first formally recognized Unitarian martyr Michael Servetus.34 This
narrative act placed the two slain persons as souls in a larger community of
guiding UU saints in sacred story making, materially marked in memory
now on the church’s interior. Such saints then could be pointed to and
drawn from in an ongoing communal narration that was both religious
and material in nature, as, for example, written in the last line in the
dedication plaque for Greg McKendry: “Greg McKendry’s love of life and
impulse for service inspire everyone who enters this place of fellowship.”
All ten sermons, including the rededication sermon, were collected on
this CD as a permanent material artifact for members of the congregation
and were made available to me as a researcher. Throughout the sermon
series, there is a striking narrative use of self by the minister, particularly
through the pastoral care image of “the wounded healer”35 to create a
“relational pulpit”36 and to “story a religious vision” in the aftermath of
this traumatic event. He links pastoral care of self and communal pro-
phetic challenge, as well as unity through the public disclosure of his own
emotional processes of grief, rage, and anxiety. Two examples are seen in
his third sermon, “Healing Waters,” and in his fifth sermon, “A New
Beginning in the New Normal,” in which he openly shares about his own
emotional and bodily struggles in the aftermath of trauma, including the
“molting of his hands” and role modeling the need to seek out all forms of
healing and therapy while also drawing upon communal support to find
spiritual healing. The permanent recording of these sermon stories then
became a material artifact of religio/poetic testimony to and sacred story of
the resilience and resistance of this particular spiritual tribe in the after-
math of violent trauma, witnessed by ongoing and new members to the
tribe who received copies of the CD, again what might also be termed an
ongoing practice of “recovery of the historical memory of change,” per
liberation health theory.
The power of a religious narrative to create vision and an “alternative
story” in the aftermath of trauma, as well as the recognition of the
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 227

systemic dimensions of social power, come together in the arc and

material preservation of these ten sermons. These sermons intertwine
pastoral care and prophetic care by reinforcing a Universalist theological
narrative of “God is Love,” a mystical unifying love repeatedly seen to
undergird all major religions.37 This experience of God, as preached by
the TVUUC minister, calls each to care for self and neighbor but also to
honor human limitations and vulnerability in providing such care—
including the experience of anger and limitations on forgiveness. This
was seen as particularly important by the minister when challenging a
dominant cultural discourse of powerful social forces acting to dehuman-
ize entire groups of people, including liberals, through “hate speech.”
Sermon themes also preached to the “vulnerable, peace-loving, nonvi-
olent liberal,” whom “it does not take much courage to attack and
wound.” Paradoxically, in the TVUUC minister’s experience, this reli-
gious liberal finds power in responding to the call of love through
prophetic self-defense, as well as public resistance through “self definition”
rather than “other definition.” This overall combination of homiletic
relational images and narrative with a religio/poetic material remembrance
amounts to what Edward Rynearson and Alison Salloum also identify as a
“restorative retelling”38 in the aftermath of violent traumatic death—a
restorative retelling process in which intrusive violent imagery and narra-
tives are gradually moderated by more “hopeful and purposive”39 imagery
and narratives in the context of historical relationships. A “liberal” is not
weak and vulnerable to attack; a liberal is prophetic and powerful in
capacity to stand on the side of love in this reframed sacred story, per
the TVUUC minister’s sermons.
Referring often to their experiences of receiving “love” and affirmation
and to the TVUUC covenant “love is the spirit of this church, service is its
law,” TVUUC leaders placed relationships and a sense of a larger unity at
the center of their experience of the sacred or divine in the immediate
aftermath of the trauma. This centering in spiritual love explicitly was
connected to a common mystical thread in all world religions by the
TVUUC minister throughout his sermons, frequently drawing from the
Sufi mystic Rumi for quotes as well as the minister’s oft-repeated defini-
tion of God: “Whenever two or more people gather together to love and
228 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

support and encourage each other, there is a power greater than ourselves
that can renew, restore and sustain us.”40
Love is thus experienced as the source of renewal and hope, of suste-
nance, restoration, and service in community.41 UUTRM and TVUUC
participant responses were consistent with understanding Unitarian Uni-
versalism as being and possessing a public theology in ethical and ecclesial
practice rather than being a religion of specific doctrines of the divine or
sacred.42 However, despite this heritage of a common public theology
focused on ethical relationships, many interview participants often shared
deep frustrations with their faith tradition and its perceived limitations for
religious practices in the face of trauma. These frustrations and limitations
centered on a sense of inadequacy in preparation for understanding and
reconciling in practice the negative capacities and limits of human nature
with the faith tradition’s emphasis on more optimistic human possibilities
for love, compassion, and progressive rational growth through justice and
equality in “beloved community.”43 This inadequacy was experienced as
particularly stark when confronted with the reality of violent traumatic
intrusion, loss, and human evil.
Through the development of rituals and practices of sacred ambiguity
or holy humor, UUTRM leaders also sought to be nuanced and sensitive
in holding pastorally the paradoxes and contradictions of human experi-
ences and emotions in the aftermath of trauma, the multiplicity and
ambiguity in these experiences, creating healing space for the develop-
ment of a sense of normality, functionality, efficacy, integration, and
transformation over time. For TVUUC leaders, having a leadership role
to play at times assisted their healing process by giving them focus and a
greater sense of control in the aftermath of trauma. However, both the
provision of care and the receipt of care could be marked by confusion,
disorientation, fear, anger, frustration, hurt, disappointment, despair,
burnout, etc. In my site visit, a TVUUC leader was observed to say in
her Sunday morning pastoral prayer that the human heart during normal
times “is a mess in there.” Trauma compounds this “mess.” Rituals are
needed to hold and transform the “sacred ambiguity” of this process as
well as affirm its “holy humor” when possible, releasing tension through
laughter and a loving, compassionate community.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 229

A Few Overall Key Lessons in My Intercultural

Encounters
Maintaining an ethical focus of respect in dialogue across difference is
consistent with my UU religious tradition’s embrace of ethical principles
in covenant, including their affirmation of the worth and dignity of each
person and promotion of justice. However, I discovered in the course of
listening to participants in the case studies that an additional layer of
ethical tension exists in any dialogue, particularly intercultural ones,
which is the right of naming—the right of claiming the language that
expresses one’s experiences, worth, and dignity. Valuing such a right also
is not inconsistent with my own UU tradition in their practice of right
relationship through awareness of power relations and promotion of
justice nor with my profession of clinical social work practice. Nonethe-
less, the extent of the contemporary problem of violence, particularly in
the US context, emits its own ethical call for action, interdisciplinary
work, and the capacity to forge new links between different communities
of language and experiences. Thus I engage the risk entailed in laying out a
few more overlapping lessons and wonderings not already explicitly
drawn out.

Sources and Language of Sustenance and Connection

While an explicit theism was central to the experience of God for LDBPI
ministry leaders and survivors, and love was central to the experience of
the divine or sacred for TVUUC leaders, as well as many other UUTRM
participant interviews, the need for relational sustenance was an important
common thread in both studies. Culturally, this took the form of turning
to a theistic God for support in getting out of the bed each morning, as
well as to fellow survivors for solidarity and support in the Peace Institute
study. In the UUTRM study, this took the form of being inspired by the
spontaneous human outpouring of communal, denominational, ecumen-
ical, and interfaith support. For both case studies, violent traumatic loss
highlighted human vulnerability and the social need for others, whether
experienced and named in Christian terms as a sustaining relationship
230 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

with God and Spirit or with the divine as mediated through human grace
and love.
Additionally, the quality of this relational sustenance often was couched
in immanent physical terms and embodied rituals, including ones
expressing a material religio/poetic. From my initial pilot studies with
young adult family members in Boston, I learned that loved ones lost
through violent trauma also were felt as an ongoing visceral presence, most
often when they wore memorial buttons or t-shirts with pictures of their
loved one, and particularly when several of them wore them together for
the same event. Buttons were enlivened with the presence of their
murdered loved one in a similar way that sandplay worlds were enlivened.
This enlivening in turn is amplified in performative testimony with other
survivors as well as with witnesses, buttons worn together with family or
on the Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace brought forth even more powerfully
the still living presence of their murdered loved one. The focus on
relational energy and connection conveyed through material objects, as
well as the place and space of the Peace Institute, gave religio/poetic
witness both to God’s presence for survivors and to an implicit meta-
phoric pneumatology of living and embodied spiritual energy.
These testimonies also gave witness to the usefulness of continuing
bonds and relational-cultural theory in highlighting this lived religion
phenomenon as expressed by survivors through their sacred stories and
testimonies in the Peace Institute case study. For UUTRM and TVUUC
leaders, a variety of religious practices expressed an expanded and embod-
ied sense of spiritual connection and growth, physical testimonial, and
material witness to the divine or sacred, named by these case study
participants as love and grace. Thus the experience of God or the divine
often would take embodied and material form for participants in both
studies, though their particular cultural religious language for that expe-
rience might differ significantly by virtue of being a Christian narrative or
a UU narrative in religious interpretation of their respective phenomeno-
logical experiences and truth claims.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 231

Struggles with Meaning-Making and Forgiveness

It was interesting that both the LDBPI founding ministry leader and the
TVUUC minister drew upon the parable of “The Good Samaritan,”
though in different ways and from different cultural needs—one to propel
outward prophetically and the other to justify an inward pastoral focus.
The LDBPI founding ministry leader specifically conceptualized her sense
of God’s call to “Christian neighbor-love” through the Good Samaritan
narrative and challenged herself with the question, “Who is my neighbor?”
This motivated her movement outward from purely a focus on her
community of origin to work instead across lines of race and class as
well as religion. The TVUUC minister drew differently upon the Good
Samaritan narrative to legitimize and normalize the congregation’s need
to care for its own brokenness first. While he recognized that the one who
had inflicted harm also was sick and in need of grace and care, he resisted
various pressures “to forgive” and focus on the person who had engaged in
harm, as much as this tested a faith claim to care for the worth and dignity
of each person. The TVUUC minister distinguished between holding a
perpetrator to “accountability” versus the granting of “cheap grace,” role
modeling instead that “forgiveness has its own timetable” and the “best we
can do is be open to forgiveness” while also giving priority to establishing
safety and boundaries. These latter points align with the Peace Institute
ministry leaders’ formal stance that while all are worthy in God’s eyes,
there is accountability in personal choices.
Both the Peace Institute founding ministry leader and the TVUUC
minister found areas of practical agreement that “forgiveness has its own
timetable.” They agreed that adequate pastoral care first involves the
rejection of forced forgiveness on a survivor. Instead, human finitude
needed to be honored while also holding tenderly the hope and possibility
for a more embracing, inclusive love and letting go that accompanies a
deeper internal peace. This included holding such hope at times through
the complexity of “holy humor,” UUTRM language that also fits the
experience of the Peace Institute founding ministry leader calling “for-
giveness,” one of their seven Principles of Peace, “the ‘F’ word.” She often
would laugh as she said this in various contexts, holding the fiercely
232 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

defiant rage, “I am a very angry woman,” together with what she saw as
the possibility of a larger letting go in peace, “the fullness of God’s peace.”

The Language of “Evil” in Cultural Context

Ministry leaders in both case studies were particularly sensitive to the

creation of pastoral care practices to hold this complex range of emotional
experiences in the aftermath of violent trauma, to hold the tension
between the reality of devastation, loss, and anger and the desire for
hope and renewal, through a “kaleidoscope” of practices addressing the
multiplicity of the many “pieces.” However, for TVUUC leaders, the
uniqueness of violent trauma occurring in a cultural context that typically
experienced itself as sheltered and privileged led to a sense of confusion, as
well as a sense of loss, for practices to grapple with human “evil.”
Escalating anxiety and confusion in the aftermath meant the larger
denomination’s social justice commitment against the death penalty,
based on an ethical commitment to promoting the worth and dignity of
each person, had to be deferred for fundamental pastoral care needs first.
Such a violent traumatic event was foreign and thoroughly disruptive to
the normal lived reality and expectations of UUs, as experienced by
TVUUC leaders, adding another layer of traumatic disruption to their
world/view and world/sense.44
In contrast, a concern for “evil” did not tend to emerge spontaneously
in LDBPI survivor and ministry leader interviews, where there more often
was an explicit rejection of binaries of salvation, binaries reflecting an
understanding that some were innately bad and deserving of punishment
while others were more worthy of life. Instead, Peace Institute ministry
leaders’ interpretations of their lay Christian narrative and culture, and
survivors’ daily encounters with oppression by race, class, and/or violence,
led to more explicit and extensive connection of personal and social
salvation, particularly for survivors when educated to see these links
through the Leadership Academy. For LDBPI ministry leaders, all were
potentially vulnerable, though accountable to a loving God who prepared
a path of grace for each. There could be no fullness of personal salvation
until all were saved in the realized eschatology of God’s peace.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 233

While TVUUC leaders professed a UU theological heritage of Univer-

salism and universal salvation and love, in practice, the need to engage
others who might test such beliefs was not part of their cultural lived
religious reality in quite the same way as it was for LDBPI survivors and
ministry leaders. Peace Institute participants interviewed sometimes faced
having a victim and perpetrator in the same family or needed to reconcile
parents or siblings of both victims and survivors being in the same survivor
group with each other. A striking example is the founding ministry
leader’s relationship with the mother of her son’s murderer, who volun-
teers regularly at the Peace Institute and, since the time of the original
research, now speaks regularly in partnership with her son and the
founding ministry leader on restorative justice practices. There were
greater opportunities and need for communal reckoning, restoration,
and renewal on a more personal, embodied, and social level in the cultural
context of the Peace Institute case study than the cultural context of the
TVUUC case study.

“Healing” in the Cultural Context of Power and Privilege

Versus Oppression

Both case studies reflected some cultural level of clinical or soteriological

belief in the resiliency of human nature and its capacity to “heal” itself,
including in the aftermath of trauma, but this belief was sharpest in the
LDBPI study as a form of prophetic pastoral care protest that “survivors
are experts” with “PhD’s in suffering” whose voices and experiences need
to be heard at the highest levels of society in order to better shape policies
and programs. Seeds of this belief also were present explicitly in the
UUTRM study, including in relational images of the “wounded healer”
and recognition of the added credibility such experiences might bring.
These were heavily tempered, however, by cultural beliefs also in the value
of ongoing specific professional training in trauma treatment and minis-
try, particularly by UUA external supporters of the UUTRM, who sought
assurances of authority and ethical competence in UUTRM ministry
leaders through such training. Again, this was consistent with a historical
tendency for UUs to place a high value on education as enhancing a path
234 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

to salvation and enlightenment and protection against potential harm to

self or others.
This suggests that the needs of participants for “healing” in each case
study might have been different by virtue of differing social experiences
with oppression or privilege. For LDBPI survivors and ministry leaders,
asserting as a social equity and justice practice the public identity of
“survivors as experts,” including the capacity of survivors to educate
themselves and others, provided a counter story to the controlling images
of low-income people of color as “less than capable.” In contrast, the
demand for competency and training in UUTRM leaders both reinforced
the need for cultural humility in those deemed more socially privileged
while also paradoxically reinforcing that same privilege through social
certification, certification that often required time and money to achieve
and maintain. Paradoxically also, the hoped for result of humility in
“servanthood” by UUTRM leaders did not always play out in the pastoral
experiences of some TVUUC leaders for this particular case study, though
this certainly was not true of every interaction with UUTRM leaders for
all TVUUC leaders, others of whom expressed very positive and overall
appreciative interactions.
LDBPI survivors and ministry leaders spoke of finding more “therapy”
in the para-ecclesial space and place of the Peace Institute than in a
traditional therapist’s office—they found more “healing”
(or “movement”) and empowerment through companionship with fellow
survivors who shared their journey and struggles and with whom they did
not have to repeat or even speak their stories. TVUUC leaders often found
great solace in “being church,” in taking leadership roles connecting their
story of survival to a much larger story of religious persecution and
resistance for both their denomination and their specific church. Even
when a greater experience of healing was found in eventually laying the
burdens of leadership down, the powerful connection to a larger religious
narrative and felt sense of a transcendent “we” in their shared sacred story
as a spiritual tribe remained for TVUUC leaders.
Of course, the probability of exposure to violence resulting in homicide
was clearly a greater shared and ongoing lived reality for the racial and
socioeconomic community served by the LDBPI than for the communi-
ties generally served by the UUTRM, or for the TVUUC in particular.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 235

Cultural expectations and world/sense by LDBPI ministry leaders and

survivors were created against a backdrop of living within a larger reality
that constantly presented controlling media images of their oppressed
status as racialized survivors. They reported frequently being served by
white middle-class educated providers and subjected to a range of
microaggressions45 from the very people tasked with their care, from
police to therapists. Hence, a felt need for a permanent para-ecclesial
institution to provide structural analysis of the root causes of such violence
also was greater in the Peace Institute’s lived cultural context.
Consistently, yet only in responses by Peace Institute participants, there
was an emphasis on the need for theoretical education regarding issues of
systemic oppression and violence, particularly the intertwining of race,
class, and gender and a public health approach to violence prevention.
Only in Peace Institute participant responses was such education experi-
enced as liberating and motivating toward dismantling structures of
oppression and implementing instead a sociological or religious vision of
a more peaceful and just community. In contrast to the UUTRM case
study, literature that spoke to resisting “cultural hegemony” and “con-
trolling images” from the dominant social culture correlated more fre-
quently with the needs and practices expressed by Peace Institute
participants. There were hints of this in the UUTRM case study, primar-
ily in the TVUUC minister’s resisting perceptions of the larger society’s
controlling images of “liberals.” Nonetheless, participant responses in the
TVUUC context did not draw out the fullest range of correlative possi-
bilities to a specific anti-oppression social analysis or metaphors reflecting
a living consciousness of their existence within a dominant culture of
power and privilege.46 However, their explicit cultural struggles with
understanding a religious response to “evil,” even the labeling such as
alien and “other,” supported an implicit social analysis appropriate to
those living with more power and privilege and normally a wider variety of
choices in protection from or response to violent traumatic intrusion.
There also was a shared cultural understanding by the TVUUC
minister and LDBPI ministry leaders and survivors that personal peace
and social peace are tied together. Both stressed the cultural value of
teaching the young the skills of peace, but the two communities
proceeded to do this task differently. Only with the LDBPI ministry
236 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

did this emerge as a specific program of commitment, including their

development of a peace curriculum for use in the Boston Public Schools.
The UUTRM leaders did embrace a specific anti-oppression commitment
to justice in their mission and spoke of various contexts where that
commitment came more explicitly to the fore.47 However, religious
trauma experienced by the TVUUC did not bring this intertwining of
pastoral and prophetic care practices out in as dramatic a fashion as in the
LDBPI study. TVUUC and UUTRM leaders interviewed primarily
shared a concern for the pastoral care gap in their capacity to respond
effectively to evil and suffering due to the paucity of UU theological
resources and rituals for engagement of trauma.
Finally, in examining the cultural power of an explicit religious narra-
tive, it is interesting also to note that the public embrace of a specific
religious narrative in the context of the UUTRM’s work with the
TVUUC allowed the minister to consciously and deliberately place the
two murdered victims into a larger UU narrative of religious persecution
and resistance over centuries. For the LDBPI, which seeks to operate in
secular and interfaith contexts, ministry leaders often were less public
about their lay Christian cultural orientation. There similar theology of
resistance and hope48 is more frequently muted and only implicit in their
various prophetic pastoral care and social justice practices, such as the
creation of their traveling wall of memorial buttons displayed at public
events, including their annual Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace.
The LDBPI thus is limited in some ways in expressing the fullest
Christian cultural meanings that might be attached to their particular
performative and commemorative practices, ones that also seek to create
dangerous memories of testimony and witness to the Christian eschato-
logical vision of “the fullness of God’s peace,” in the words of the Peace
Institute’s ministry founder. However, the sacred story they create
through the life of Louis as well as the seven Principles of Peace do
draw out interfaith and interdisciplinary secular transcendent power in
ways that a commitment solely to the Christian tradition might not.
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 237

Notes
1. Derald Wing Sue and David Sue define worldview as “how a person
perceives his or her relationship to the world (nature, institutions,
other people, etc.) . . . [N]ot only are worldviews composed of our
attitudes, values, opinions, and concepts . . . [they also] affect how we
think, define events, make decisions, and behave . . . [race and eth-
nicity], economic and social class, religion, sexual orientation, and
gender are also interactional components of a worldview.” See
Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, 4th edition
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003) 267–268.
2. “Ways of being” is a language that I have observed used in various
activist communities, such as the recent Boston Occupy Movement,
to express differences in cultural styles and forms of expression that
can sometimes cause conflict between groups seeking to do collabo-
rative organizing. These require explicit uncovering, discussion, and
practice to create shared guidelines and agreements.
3. See Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the
United States. Also see Dwight N. Hopkins, Being Human: Race,
Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 128–160,
for an excellent historical summary of the history of the idea of race
through a theological lens. A briefer practical theological focus on race
in the twenty-first century can be found in Dale P. Andrews, “Race
and Racism,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology,
edited by Bonnie Miller-McLemore (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2014), 401–411.
4. It is likely that the language of “the interdependent web” as found in
the 7th UU principle draws from a zeitgeist of feminist and process of
theological thinking in the 1980s, but there is no formal tracing of the
roots of this language. See Commission on Appraisal, Engaging Our
Theological Diversity, 72–74. I have argued often in other contexts
that the language of “the interdependent web” is UU contemporary
metaphorical God-talk.
5. Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography.
238 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

6. Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Places of Redemption: Theology for a

Worldly Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 26. I
appreciate Fulkerson’s use of ethnographic and auto-ethnographic
descriptive terms such as “visceral” in this study. I found correlative
use for this type language with RCT’s use of “zest” and “power” for
describing energetic connections as well as in relationship to young
adult descriptions in my pilot studies for their experience of their
connection to their lost loved one while wearing memorial buttons
and t-shirts.
7. Ibid., 29.
8. Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes.
9. Judith V. Jordan, “The Meaning of Mutuality,” 82, in Women’s
Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center, edited by
Jordan, Judith V., Alexandra G. Kaplan, Jean Baker Miller, Irene
P. Stiver, Janet L. Surrey (The Guilford Press: New York, 1991),
81–96.
10. It is the case that certain psychoanalytic frames of analysis also could
be fruitfully applied to this same data, such as D.W. Winnicott’s
“holding environment”; however, this book seeks to highlight the
metaphoric and conceptual possibilities in other social scientific the-
ories, for example, relational-cultural theory (RCT), not typically
used for correlation with theological language, in order to explore
their metaphoric fit (e.g. RCT’s embodied sense of energy and
connection and the language of Spirit). For another effort to push
the boundaries of the psychoanalytic conception of self and a creative
use of Winnicott’s concepts in application to theology, including an
affirmation of the embodied self and an examination of the relational
space between selves via air and water metaphors, see Thandeka, “The
Self Between Feminist Theory and Theology.” The difficulty with
Thandeka’s efforts in her essay, as at times with other psychoanalytic
correlations to religion, can be the perceived reduction of religion to
psychology, e.g. the reduction of the “Holy Spirit” to Winnicott’s
concept of the “transitional object,” rather than holding theology and
psychology as separate metaphorical fields to be mutually and criti-
cally correlated through the multivalent excess and creative tension of
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 239

embodied metaphor rather than reduced one to the other or even

stated as purely analogous.
11. My assumption was that the church would be experienced minimally
as a helpful resource for the families in the aftermath of homicide
through pastoral care and visitation. Hence, I was surprised that this
was not the experience of most of the survivors I happened to
interview, and this admittedly was disturbing to my own value system
as a minister.
12. Unitarian Universalist Association, Singing the Living Tradition (Bos-
ton: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993/2000), 1.
13. The TVUUC minister reported that these words are drawn from
another classic UU hymn, “As Tranquil Streams,” ibid., 145. Though
the text of this particular hymn was written in 1933, it also was used
for the service honoring the consolidation of the Universalist and
Unitarian denominations into their current association in 1961.
Complete text for hymns referenced may be found in the current
edition of Singing the Living Tradition, and more historical informa-
tion about the hymns may be found in Jacqui James, editor, Between
the Lines: Source for Singing the Living Tradition, second edition
(Boston: Skinner House Books, 1995/1998).
14. This also reminded me of reports by some young adult survivors of
family homicide in my pilot studies of the importance to them of
keeping the bullet-torn clothing, or even samples of blood, of their
murdered loved one from the crime scene. There was a deeper
embodied connection through such preservation that also represented
hope and a sacred longing for or experience of continued bonds, albeit
with a different religio/poetic significance than that given by the
former TVUUC church administrator to the curtain.
15. One TVUUC leader wrote an appreciative email later to the
researcher that the telling of this story allowed the TVUUC leader
to “debrief” in a way that had not happened at that time.
16. Hudson, Congregational Trauma, found that working with the media
in a situation of congregational trauma was highly sensitive and
warranted the devotion of a substantial part of one chapter in terms
of pastoral care tips, see Chap. 7, “Surviving in the Public Eye.”
240 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

17. In Jones, Straightening Up, 22, the UUTRM representative involved

in the media conflict was reported as angrily saying at one point,
“Who’s in charge here?!” and this interaction would prompt a lot of
reflection afterwards on the complicated realities of church gover-
nance for TVUUC leaders in Jones’ analysis.
18. “God” also was clearly a classically theistic God (as distinguished from
panentheistic or pantheist) as well as a gendered God in the use of
male pronouns by all survivors and ministry leaders. This study did
not seek to explore personal Christologies, though all ministry leaders
and survivors interviewed referenced being raised in Christian tradi-
tions. One ministry leader did use explicit Christological language,
while another ministry leader stressed that she experienced herself as
more “spiritual,” and another ministry leader said she historically had
experienced a deeper relationship to “Mary” than to “Jesus” in her
own faith journey.
19. Two (a survivor and a ministry leader who also was a survivor),
however, did raise beliefs that there was a “purpose” or a “test” in
their suffering, a larger perhaps mysterious reason that was associated
for both participants with their scriptural learning.
20. R. Ruard Ganzevoort and Nette Falkenburg, “Stories Beyond Life
and Death: Spiritual Experiences of Continuity and Discontinuity
among Parents Who Lose a Child,” Journal of Empirical Theology
25/2 (2012), 189–204.
21. Newberg, et al., Why God Won’t Go Away.
22. Janet L. Surrey, “Relationship and Empowerment,” in Women’s
Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center, 162–180,
edited by Jordan, Judith V., Alexandra G. Kaplan, Jean Baker Miller,
Irene P. Stiver, Janet L. Surrey (New York: The Guilford Press,
1991), 172.
23. Ibid., 168.
24. It was beyond the scope of these particular case studies to implement a
full decolonizing approach in methodology, and likewise, it is beyond
the scope of this particular book to integrate all the work being done
in postcolonial studies. Primarily, I seek to lift up the voices, language,
and experiences of survivors as experts on their own terms and seek
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 241

points of metaphorical contact in correlations with social science

theories that reflect their lived experiences and offer liberative frames
of analysis. For theologians in particular, however, I do recommend a
further and deeper embrace of this material.
25. Jones, Straightening Up, 46–47.
26. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 565.
27. I have observed Richard Schwartz in recent annual IFS conferences to
be expanding upon his respective IFS concepts of “cultural legacy
burdens” and “polarized parts” to apply to larger sociological cultural
systems, particularly the current US context.
28. For example, the Universalist belief that “God is love” and the
Unitarian belief in optimistic ethical progress for humankind has
meant, at times, the place or role of sin, suffering, and evil in UU
theology and practices is less than clear. In a 2002 UU World edition
(the denominational magazine) dedicated to the problem of evil in the
aftermath of 9/11, Warren Ross wrote, “Lois Fahs Timmins—the
daughter of the great Unitarian religious educator Sophia Lyon
Fahs—once criticized her own liberal religious education for failing
to address the reality of evil. ‘We spent 95 percent of our time
studying good people doing good things, and skipped very lightly
over the bad parts of humanity,’ she said in 1996. ‘I was taught not to
be judgmental, not to observe or report on the bad behavior of others.
Consequently, because of my education, I grew up ignorant about
bad human behavior, incompetent to observe it accurately, unskilled
in how to respond to it, and ashamed of talking about evil.’” See
Warren Ross, “Confronting Evil: Has Terrorism Shaken Our Reli-
gious Principles?” UU World http://www.uuworld.org/2002/01/fea
ture1.html (accessed July 19, 2013).
29. Twentieth century Unitarian ethicist and minister James Luther
Adams also has written on the struggle liberal religious faiths, includ-
ing Christianity, have had with conceptions of human nature
throughout time. See “The Changing Reputation of Human
Nature,” in The Essential James Luther Adams: Selected Essays and
Addresses, 51–78 (1941), edited by George K. Beach (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1998). On the issue of education as a path of salvation, I note
242 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

here very interesting doctoral work being done in this area by Hannah
Adams Ingram, a religious studies student at the University of Den-
ver, who presented at the 2016 Bienniel Association of Practical
Theology conference on “The Myth of the Saving Power of
Education”.
30. Lewis, et al., A General Theory of Love, 64.
31. Ibid., 218.
32. This is not to dismiss or minimize the spiritual potential and capacity
of human beings nor the human capacity for strength and resiliency
but merely to temper more understanding of that potential as highly
vulnerable when isolated or damaged, particularly by trauma, and in
need of communal and institutional protection and sustenance to
access that potential, unless the damage is irretrievable through the
neurophysiological vulnerability of the body. The social scientific
theories utilized in correlation for these studies would be supportive
of both strength and vulnerability along a number of levels. I will
return to theological correlations on this point in the final chapter.
33. Another UUTRM leader said that one of the ways UUTRM leaders
provide pastoral care support to each other is by recognizing that “we
have a tremendously morbid sense of humor” in sharing and
discharging the buildup of the complex range of emotional tensions
they hold.
34. Michael Servetus was an anti-trinitarian, claimed in the heritage of
European Unitarianism, who lived in the sixteenth century and wrote
several texts opposing the doctrine of the Trinity. Ultimately, he was
burned at the stake by the decree of John Calvin for refusing to recant
his views. In critiquing this decision by Calvin, Sebastian Castellio
would famously write, “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine. It is
simply to kill a man.” See Charles A. Howe, For Faith and Freedom: A
Short History of Unitarianism in Europe (Boston: Skinner House
Books, 1997), 41.
35. See Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care, for an outline of the various
images of pastoral care that often have been drawn upon as guiding
relational imagery by pastoral care providers. The image of “the
wounded healer” is particularly associated with theologian Henri
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 243

Nouwen and his pastoral theology that the minister is not apart from
the shared conditions of humanity, that the minister also is capable of
being wounded, but the minister then uses these wounds to relate to
humanity more empathically and compassionately in the healing
process.
36. See Scott W. Alexander, The Relational Pulpit: Closing the Gap
Between Preacher and Pew (Boston: Skinner House, 1993), as well
as John S. McClure, The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership and
Preaching Meet (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), on relational and
collaborative preaching styles, and also see Jacqueline J. Lewis, The
Power of Stories: A Guide for Leading Multi-Racial and Multi-Cultural
Congregations (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008) on the power of
prophetic preaching to “story a vision.”
37. See also Unitarian ethicist James Luther Adams sounding more like a
Universalist in his essay, “God is Love,” in An Examined Faith: Social
Context and Religious Commitment, 213–219 (1947), edited by
George K. Beach (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991). However, given
that the consolidated UU tradition is covenanted around ethical
practices and is social justice oriented, they also fit well with Nancy
Ammerman’s research in Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes and what she
terms the “Golden Rule Christians,” though UUs extend the Golden
Rule to embrace wisdom from all the world religions.
38. Rynearson and Salloum, “Restorative Retelling,” 177.
39. Ibid., 187.
40. There was a recognized mystical thread in the responses of some other
TVUUC leaders as well as UUTRM leaders. This is not surprising
and corresponds to the findings of the Commission on Appraisal
report Engaging Our Theological Diversity, which found that “ . . .
58 percent of lay respondents said that they have had mystical
experiences, compared to 81 percent of clergy. Most such experiences
fall under the heading of natural mysticism” (79). Of the many
different studies cited in this 2005 report, interview participant
responses in the UUTRM case study are highly consistent in values
and theological orientations with the 2005 report.
244 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

41. This also is consistent with twentieth century Unitarian ethicist and
minister James Luther Adams’ connection of the language of love
with the communal power of “God” metaphorically as “the
community-forming Power that we confront in the Gospels and in
the Free Churches. This community-forming Power calls us to the
affirmation of that abundant love which is not ultimately in our
possession but is a holy gift. It is the ground and goal of our vocation.”
See James Luther Adams, “Our Responsibility in Society,” in The
Essential James Luther Adams: Selected Essays and Addresses,
171 (1953), edited by George Kimmich Beach (Boston: Skinner
House, 1998).
42. UU theology is essentially a shared anthropological and ecclesial
theology, with a pneumatological underpinning in its emphasis on
spiritual experiences. In other words, as a public theological practice,
UUs recognize the limits of universal claims to know the divine and
instead promise through a public affirmation of covenant to a set of
ethical principles that they will journey in right relationship with each
other in the search for experiences and knowledge of the divine,
experiences most often publically named as a “Spirit of Life and
Love.” Practical evidence of this is the popularity of the hymn “Spirit
of Life” in Singing the Living Tradition,123, as cited within the
Commission on Appraisal’s Engaging Our Theological Diversity but
also as cited by a UUTRM participant in recalling that this song was
spontaneously sung as a source of comfort at a General Assembly
when a man collapsed just prior to the opening ceremony.
43. Drawing most likely on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
development of this term, “beloved community” has become an
often-used phrase to describe a community striving toward justice
and right relationship within Unitarian Universalism. See the Com-
mission on Appraisal, Engaging Our Theological Diversity.
44. An interesting text to read on the changing conceptions of “evil” in
human history in juxtaposition with changing cultural worldviews,
particularly in response to traumatic events ranging from natural
disasters to the Holocaust, is Susan Neiman’s Evil in Modern
 6 Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Research: Lessons Learned 245

Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2002).
45. See Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender,
and Sexual Orientation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2010). Sue
defines microaggressions as “brief, everyday exchanges that send
denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group
membership” (xvi).
46. An exception being one TVUUC leader who did notice a gap
between responses they received as a congregation in the aftermath
of the homicides in comparison to impoverished areas of Knoxville
that experienced such violence on a more ongoing basis. This obser-
vation was not more broadly engaged in analysis or action.
47. This included trainings in which they sought to teach congregations
to know the socioeconomic demographics of their communities and
which populations might be most severely impacted by a natural
disaster or other communal trauma. This also included references
made to anti-oppression work engaged by a UUTRM leader at
national conferences of trauma responders on their need for greater
interfaith awareness and representation.
48. The language of “theologies of resistance and hope” is drawn from the
work of Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk.
 7
Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense:
Cultivating the Lessons

Tales of Normativity, Worldview, Difference,

and Ethical Respect
One day, when I was a clinical social worker shaping as clergy and
academic, I sat in on a world religions class in a large undergraduate
lecture hall. I listened as the professor recounted his encounter with a
fellow religious scholar in India to the class. He shared that in a light-
hearted moment of conversation, he said to his Hindu colleague with a
knowing chuckle, “Listen, you guys don’t really believe in reincarnation,
do you?” His Hindu colleague with all seriousness replied, “You mean you
don’t? I thought you believed that you are reborn in heaven.” This
moment struck me as a powerful example of different experiential world-
views as transmitted through language and narrative stories as well as how
easily human beings dismiss what others experience as and believe to be
real, while elevating their own experience of reality to a superior level of
cultural truth. Internalized superiority in one’s sense of reality led so
quickly to enforcement of one’s superiority when acquiring the power
to do so, in ways of being subtle and not so subtle.

© The Author(s) 2017 247

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1_7
248 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

I appreciated this particular professor’s vulnerability in sharing his

cross-cultural encounter with the class, and the ethical respect it trans-
mitted of his own willingness to be called out on his attitude and
assumptions. It reminded me of my own decades of being challenged as
a young white female lay urban minister and social worker by the young
people I served. I remembered how hard it was to be challenged in one’s
narrative stories and language when one’s visceral lived experiences were
so radically different. I thought particularly of a time when I witnessed
members of an African American urban community speaking back to a
predominantly white audience at a church and using the language of
“genocide” and “white supremacy” for their lived experiences—how
easy it was for some in the audience present to minimize their language,
story, and lived experiences, calling it “exaggeration” and thus somehow
less than real.
I carried these many experiential and pedagogical moments into my
own preferred experiential style of teaching later, most often with secular
United States social work students. As I taught my spirituality and social
work class, I would begin by saying that I gave them a “money back
guarantee” that each them would experience at least one moment of deep
discomfort by the end of the course as they encountered a broad range of
what human beings might experience as spiritual—and indeed, I have not
failed a student in this yet, nor experienced that they did not see the
wisdom of such discomfort. The same pedagogy was crucial in teaching
my racial justice and my ethics courses in social work as well—students
needed living encounters with differences in how reality was conveyed on
both verbal and nonverbal levels. They needed to sit compassionately and
without judgment of themselves and others in the discomfort stirred and
with openness to possible transformation in their own sense of reality.
From my heart and my own lived experiences, I believed deeply as an
ethical principle that opportunities to cross boundaries and borders of
culture and power, and to live with and learn from each other without
hierarchy of power in the vulnerable and liminal borderlands of human
experience, was a key—a key to begin to unlock the doors for entry into a
larger peace and shared understanding and capacity for vision and actions
together. A commitment to this pedagogy became my covenant and
fulfilled my call to ministry.
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 249

Poetic Visions of Peace and Beloved Community

from Two Different Worlds
Developing Peace Zones in the Borderlands

Peace Institute ministry leaders poetically imagined, confessed from

their world/sense, and testified to a vision of communal transformation
that would result in the creation of “peace zones” in every major city,
including having their own building and base of operation to train
providers in their many decades of grassroots peace-building wisdom.
The founding ministry leader viewed such centers as places where “all
stakeholders” could come together—“victims, perpetrators, stakeholders
within the community”—to “invest” in a model of nonviolence and
peace education. This vision was familiar to all participants interviewed
in the Peace Institute case study, and uniformly, and sometimes with
frustrated laughter, they stated that the primary challenge for the Peace
Institute was financial support.
At the time, this frustration seemed to stem from the fact that while the
Peace Institute appeared to be recognized and appreciated with ample
public praise and many referrals, this was not accompanied always with
the necessary funds to support their infrastructure—a dilemma the
UUTRM also faced. One institutional supporter observed:

. . . I think that the kind of political capital that the Peace Institute has with
the families has elevated its standing in the professional community more. I
also think that the Peace Institute has a lot of political support . . . I’m not
always sure with the political support whether it’s political support because,
for example, the Peace Institute is really valued or its political support
because, “Oh, thank God. Somebody’s doing that and now I don’t have
to worry about it so much.” You know? ... So I’m not always sure how
genuine it is, but there is a lot of political support in the community for the
Peace Institute . . . And support . . . among academic institutions that have
honored [the founder] and the work of the Peace Institute . . . there’s lots of
support in a number of different areas that don’t always translate to the kind
of on-the-street support that the Peace Institute might need in order to most
effectively carry out its mission.
250 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

This need for ongoing stable funding was related not only to the challenge
of sustaining the Peace Institute’s present work, it also was related to their
larger hope and vision, shared repeatedly by several survivors, to own a
Peace Institute building—a home and a place where they could even more
fully express their culture of peace. For another ministry leader, this would
entail “tak[ing] our rightful place and really be[ing] seen as the experts that
we are and validated as the experts through ways that other experts are
validated: through money, through publication, through money, [smiling]
through resources . . ..”
The desire for resources to implement this larger vision, including
through increased participation in the Peace Institute’s annual Mothers’
Day Walk for Peace, led to the creation of an Interfaith Committee at the
Peace Institute, but with some unexpected results according to the
founding ministry leader: “ . . . we got more support from our white
suburban faith community and our white urban faith community than
the black faith community. We got a lotta support from the survivors in the
African-American faith community that would come, and we’ve got [only]
some support from the African-American faith [community leaders] . . ..” A
similar frustration was expressed by a different ministry leader:

You know, we think that churches sort of get caught up a little bit in their
own protocol, in their own programs and kind of forget . . . the larger
purpose . . . They may support it in spirit, if you will, but not every church
comes out to physically support let’s say the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace.
We think that it would be a powerful, powerful message if the churches in
the city could ever set aside that day . . . adjust their service time, so that they
could come out and make it to their Mother’s Day Walk for Peace . . . it’s a
citywide event for all people who are concerned about the violence that’s
taking place in this city [pounds desk]. If the church doesn’t publicly indicate
that concern, it’s a problem. And folks see it as a problem.

All institutional supporters also were agreed on the need for better
funding and infrastructure support for the Peace Institute, and one
specifically wanted to see the Peace Institute receive a grant for a staff
position solely related to public policy advocacy, while another wanted to
see the Peacezone curriculum expanded in its use in schools. The
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 251

institutional supporter who served as an antiracism/anti-oppression con-

sultant specifically wanted to see survivors continue to be educated in and
empowered to lead on the public health model established by Deborah
Prothrow-Stith, “helping survivors to make the link to how this is oppres-
sive, and oppression at this level has to do with certain communities get
the right to safety and certain don’t. That’s a policy issue to me . . . it’s a
justice issue . . . It’s a spiritual issue.” Several institutional supporters also
expressed concern that the very “variables” that make the Peace Institute
successful also make it hard to replicate, including a worry that the
founding ministry leader herself was irreplaceable, but also expressing
confidence that if the founding ministry leader needed to step down,
she and the Peace Institute would work toward a new leader who could
“take it to the next level.”
While experiences of racism and classism posed both very real systemic
and emotional barriers, the enormity of the challenges faced in eliminat-
ing violence and in implementing their vision of peace pushed ministry
leaders to confront their own world/sense stereotypes or prejudices. The
founding ministry leader, for example, spoke to carrying internalized
stereotypes prior to the murder of her son and of being a “wannabe
suburban mom.” She drew upon her Christian faith, including the
Good Samaritan parable and question of “Who is my neighbor?,” to
help her in her own internal transformation of motivation on behalf of
the “fullness of God’s peace.” This included working with her more
economically privileged “white neighbor[s]” and learning not to judge
them or to divide people into good and bad, despite her anger, and instead
to see their common humanity:

So again . . . it was only until Louis was killed that I took off these blinders
because I was also in my own world, the violence only happens to certain
people, I went to church, I gave to the needy, I hadda husband, I had my
home but I still live in the community, I haven’t changed my community
but . . . I had my tunnel vision on. If you’re in this perfect world, then
nothing bad happens to you, you’re protected . . . and then we allow society
to tell us who the good people are and who the bad people are . . . and in
doin’ that we’re molding into this world that pits us against each other, the
haves and the haves-not, so it’s . . . goin’ back and understanding the
252 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

scriptures and understanding the power of God and understanding and

what’s God’s peace and what’s this fullness of God . . . it’s really putting
yourself in somebody else’s shoe and it’s really you experiencin’ . . . what’s
the awkwardness of them [her white neighbors] comin’ into this commu-
nity and how do I acknowledge them and not force them to do more but
how do I do more and hopefully they see the humanity, and not get upset
with them when they have more and they can give more but they’re not
doin’ more? How do I not be angry and hold that against them for what
they have? But . . . how do I speak to what it is God is callin’ them to do or
what they’re studying or what their beliefs say they are and how do I have
them to look within that and examine that and then really ask themself that
question? You know again who is my neighbor? . . . somewhere in the
scripture it gives you this parable of the Good Samaritan, you know, that
who we expected to help this man didn’t help. Anyway, so makin’ those
type of comparison and really havin’ peace, have us take off our blinders and
have us see our humanity and have us see also how many of us in wantin’ to
help sometimes we also have some blinders because we are judging someone
else who we believe should be doing more.

The Peace Institute’s drive toward inclusiveness in their larger vision of

peace extended to an interfaith community across borders of culture,
religion, class, and race—and also to perpetrators of violence as well as
victims. The founder experienced this interfaith opening, through the
world/sense of her Christian tradition, as a new “calling” of and vision for
the Peace Institute. She believed the Peace Institute had professional clinical
and pastoral training and expertise to offer, not only to secular providers but
also to interfaith clergy.1 Once again, the founding ministry leader also used
her personal lived experiences to extend a vision of peace in working with
perpetrators of violence, while also holding them accountable through a
restorative justice approach. In subsequent years after completion of the
original research, she and the mother of the son accused of murdering her
own son, as well as this man now released from prison, began to speak
together in public contexts about the power of forgiveness and restorative
justice practices. This included speaking together at the Peace Institute’s
historic 20th annual Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace, for the first time
marching from the streets of Dorchester to Boston City Hall with thou-
sands of marchers from diverse communities.2
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 253

The Sacred Ambiguity of Being a Liberal Church

for the World

Within the foundational experiences and mission of the UUTRM was the
confession of a liberal religious world/sense and testimony to the need for
culturally sensitive practices in pastoral care after trauma—a vision which
reimagined the possibility of religio/poetic hope and human resilience in
the midst of chaos, as well as social justice for a beloved community. For
the participants in this case study, the experience of being attacked for
their religion left all with a deeper sense of bonding to each other and an
embodied connection to the theological narrative and meaning of their
UU faith tradition, despite earlier internalized doubt that had been
fostered by critique.3 Some also gained a sense of confidence in claiming
and confessing their religious identity and speaking out and testifying on
behalf of their religion more publicly and coherently:

. . . it certainly made everybody in the congregation think, “Do I wanna be

here or not? Is this worth it?” . . . You know, love is the spirit of this church.
It has become a much deeper thing that we say every week, and very true.
And it’s a legitimate way to go about things. It’s not kind of a half-sell kind
of thing . . . love and service become the twin pillars, and that makes a good
faith.

For the TVUUC leaders in particular, there was a larger relational context
experienced within this theological narrative—one that was historical,
value-driven, and deeply intertwined with their sense of their identity,
sacred story, and world/sense as a unique UU congregation surviving and
thriving in a more conservative Southern context—“a respected oddity” in
the words of the TVUUC minister. Feelings of self-worth and being
newly affirmed, energized, and empowered in their group identity, that
of a UU spiritual tribe, were broadly reported.4
However, it was the TVUUC minister, as well as the UUTRM leaders
and some UUA institutional supporters, who held the clearest sense of
connection between their pastoral care and prophetic social justice prac-
tices and the experience of healing in the aftermath of trauma, including
in their understanding of their call to give testimony to their faith
254 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

tradition in the public square. Beyond the minister, TVUUC leaders

interviewed waivered in their sense that the church had embraced a
clear and consistent social justice call to the public square linked specif-
ically to the violent traumatic event. One TVUUC leader said:

Well, here’s one thing that’s bothered me. What I became aware of was that
this thing is going on all the time and that poor communities and such are
not getting the kind of support we did. You know, like when these random
shootings occur in East Knoxville, some black section in town and such—
they’re not gettin’ the kind of support. And so we kind of got flooded with
it . . . it just makes you aware that traumatic things happen every day and
have probably happened every day up until our shooting where people are
not supported at all . . . I mean it’s almost embarrassing that we got so much
attention . . . Yeah, it’s like when a white girl gets kidnapped in Aruba and
it’s all over the news forever . . . but if it wasn’t the blond white girl from a
wealthy family in Connecticut or whatever it was, there just wouldn’t be
that much attention. So the invisible violence that goes on without any
acknowledgement.

For UUTRM leaders, in contrast, the connection of their mission to

challenging social oppression was woven into the very content of their
mission statement, or as one UUTRM leader stated, their mission was “to
work within the paradigms of social justice and action that we live as
Unitarian Universalists as anti-oppression [and] antiracist” to prepare
people in coping with traumatic events.5 UUTRM leaders gave various
examples of how they fulfilled this mission, from the awareness they raised
through various national and district trainings to their interfaith
commitments.
When interview participants reflected generally on UU struggles
with responding to violent trauma with public vision, profession, and
action, beyond this particular event, their thoughts turned in one of at
least two directions. First, the practical and logistical barriers posed by
congregational polity, and the operation of the UUTRM as a
volunteer-based community ministry; and second, a perception of a
lack of adequate UU cultural, religious, and theological preparedness
for coping with trauma, particularly coping with “evil” when the
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 255

trauma was violent and human made and put them experientially in
conflict with their belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each
person. In regards to the former, the informal relationship of the
UUTRM to structures available within the UUA, including the UUA’s
congregational governance polity, often was viewed as a major challenge
for the development of adequate financial support for the UUTRM, as
well as for its ability to conduct the level of preparedness education and
operational connection on a regional national level for congregations
that they might otherwise desire.6
These structural challenges were viewed as reinforced by a particular
UUA institutional culture that sought to respect the rights of each congre-
gation to manage their own concerns. One UUA institutional supporter
said: “I think it’s part of the culture . . . of UUA staff to . . . not presume to
dictate what ought to occur either in congregations or in districts.” The
exceptions, he would go on to say, were “youth safety issues” due to legal
liability as well as ethical concerns. Mandating the need for congregations to
receive training related to emergency preparedness and trauma was viewed
as potentially subject to “pushback” that would be “counterproductive.” An
overall UU culture of autonomy and independence also was seen as
reinforced at times by the UUTRM leadership itself, creating an ambiguous
dynamic of desiring greater institutionalization but also resisting perceived
potential losses of creative flexibility, freedom, or control and authority
through such institutionalization.
Several UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional supporters confirmed
an overarching need for the UUTRM to regionalize its capacity and
institutionalize its connection to the UUA more formally. UUTRM
leaders also saw a need to expand their membership so that greater
diversity was reflected by race, gender, skill sets, and lay positions within
a congregation, with more peers working with peers rather than primarily
being led by clergy. As one UUTRM leader, who had a dual role as a UUA
District Executive, put it, paralleling similar concerns to institutionalizing
the Peace Institute’s larger vision: “’Cause the only way it’s gonna work is
if regional teams are created and sustained, that there is a clear sense of
structure, and modality, and a clear understanding of it surviving beyond
the lives and interests of this wonderful group of dedicated people who
have done marvelous work in our congregations.” One UUA institutional
256 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

supporter also saw the UUTRM’s struggles in this area as reflecting a

broader problem of the relationship of congregational polity to what are
termed “community ministries” within the UUA. Community ministries
are ministries that are focused outside the walls of the parish, many of
which are not even connected to parish ministries. He saw accountability
issues in this as well as a potential to strengthen the promise of community
ministries through the positive example of the UUTRM and greater
institutionalization throughout the UUA districts.
Beyond the practical and logistical challenges of congregational polity, the
socioeconomic status and privileges of UUs often were cited as an experien-
tial barrier—a world/sense barrier—to engaging issues of violence and
trauma with sustained spiritual and religious focal attention. Such concerns
were raised especially by UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional supporters,
often in strong and sometimes sharp terms. One UUA institutional sup-
porter, the former UUA president, spoke to the spiritual paradox of privilege
being “both a blessing and a curse,” one that gave more resources for effective
action, but one which also created a danger of insularity from rather than
connection to a larger shared human experience—an insularity of world/
sense in this respect. In words that also echoed a Peace Institute ministry
leader’s concern for the Peace Institute being tasked with the burden a larger
society rejects in fully sharing, the former UUA president said of the
UUTRM, lived experiences of trauma and suffering, and UU congregations:

The privilege of most of our members and most of our communities is both
a blessing and a curse. And the blessing is that we are persons who, A, have
resources both personal, financial, educational . . . so that we are able to
actually be more effective than many. The curse is that . . . most of us
personally, we’re insulated from much of what is normal life for many
people . . . a good colleague of mine describes it as ministry to the shallow
affluent—and I say that not to denigrate that ministry, because . . . all
people are important to receive ministry. But it means that there’s a
whole range of human experience that we don’t often directly engage . . .
it’s no small thing to be able to understand that we are a part of one human
family, and it’s easy to say, “I’m glad we’ve got a Trauma Response
Ministry,” you know, “They’re taking care of that piece of my response
to being human for me. I don't have to do that” and there’s a spiritual
danger in that.
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 257

Repeatedly, both UUTRM leaders and UUA institutional supporters

experienced UUs as struggling spiritually and religiously with the reality
and world/sense of traumatic suffering and evil in light of both their
privilege as well as their resistance to authority, optimistic view of human
nature, and denial that anything truly hurtful might occur to them. For
example, using physiological metaphoric language for depth, a UUA
institutional supporter said: “I think it’s core in our DNA. I think it’s
part of what has led many of us to leave our traditional religious back-
ground, if we had a traditional religious background . . . a deep down
engrained resistance to authority, a deep down engrained belief that we
know what’s best for us and you can’t tell us what to do.” One UUTRM
leader also spoke to a cultural rationalistic tendency of UUs to seek to
control chaos and the possibilities of anything bad ever happening to
them, so much so that UU’s forget the “awe, mystery and wonder”: “I
think there’s an arrogance [laughter] about us that we think we’ve got the
universe all figured out . . . our tendency to be rational . . . and that once
we’ve figured it out then nothing bad can happen . . . We forget awe. We
forget awe, yeah, awe, mystery and wonder and that we’re not in control.”
There were significant lived truths of ironic holy humor, sacred ambi-
guity, and passionate frustration expressed in these participant experiences
and analyses of world/sense limitations to a UU capacity to fulfill a religio/
poetic vision of the liberal church in responding to trauma, particularly
human-made violent trauma.7 Yet there also was truth witnessed and
hope experienced that something in the UU tradition did exhibit rela-
tional resilience—as perhaps might be the case for any sustained religious
tradition. Something in the tradition itself did yield the capacity to bring
forth an alternative narrative and ecclesial world/sense experience in the
very birthing and sustenance of the UUTRM, even as the UUTRM, like
the Peace Institute, struggled with institutionalizing its own support
within the larger denomination.
Through each of these small trauma response community ministries
studied, one lay and urban and one denominational, particular practices
and rituals are seen to continually evolve in response to violent trauma,
beginning also to encompass larger religio/poetic narrative visions and
world/sense through opportunities and power taken for public testimony.
For the Peace Institute participants, this entailed a vision of a home of
258 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

their own with interdisciplinary and interfaith Peace Zones across the state
in which peace within individuals and peace in the larger community
might be actively fostered and practiced, while also bringing the voices,
body, and material witness of this vision through survivors as experts to
Boston City Hall and beyond. For the UU participants, this entailed
connection to the denomination’s larger Standing on the Side of Love
national campaign, sparked in its public format by the Knoxville tragedy
and furthered in public recognition through marriage equality and immi-
gration rights. This later situated the campaign to launch another level of
public activism with Black Lives Matter banners in support of the original
Black Lives Matter movement.8 These two culturally diverse case studies
illustrate that the embodied interplay of lived religious experiences with
narrative and material practices enables religio/poetic vision and world/
sense to continue to reimagine and metaphorically expand in capacity,
including for public confession and testimonial.

Speaking as Experts from the Bottom to the Top

of the Power Hierarchy
Shifting the Paradigms in Clinical, Pastoral, Health
and Human Service Care

Embracing a poetics of world/sense and a power analysis for interdisci-

plinary and transdisciplinary clinical, pastoral, and health and human
service care means taking survivors seriously when they ask to be seen as
the experts in their experiences, needs, and particular expressive forms of
world/sense. This often is a paradigm shift for professional training in
clinical, pastoral, health and human service (including medical) care—one
that requires trust in inner client and communal wisdom and a focus on
partnership and mutuality as stressed in the five primary clinical theories
that correlated with survivor descriptions in the case studies: narrative
theory, RCT, IFS theory, liberation health theory, and continuing bonds.
This paradigm shift requires an even deeper level of trust and cultural and
intercultural humility in approach to clients and an ethical respect for
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 259

choice of language and cultural methods of communication, including

nonverbal and material expressive forms. This paradigm shift also entails
an appreciation for the embodied affective and cognitive dimensions of
immanence rather than solely transcendence in religious spiritual experi-
ences.9 Finally, this paradigm shift also requires attention beyond talk and
narrative therapy to holistic engagement of the body and structures of
power, particularly when considering the long-term impact of violent
trauma on the neuroaffective and interdependent physiological dimen-
sions of the body and community. Again, through world/view
reconsidered metaphorically as our world/sense, we are seen to be embod-
ied and enfleshed, enlanguaged and encultured, en-neuroned and
enhormoned, and emplaced and embedded in sociohistorical and material
structures of power.
For example, the studies illustrated that comfort with the language of
“healing” was refracted through the lens of both the nature of the violent
trauma—loss of a child to murder distinct from violent intrusion and
murder in a church context—as well as through class, race, and comfort
with a discipline’s professional cultural language. Perceptions and experi-
ences of survivors themselves could differ, as seen in the case of the origin
of the language of “Peace Warriors” versus the language of “survivors” in
the Peace Institute case study. One mother stated that in their “Tuesday
Talks”: “. . .honestly I got tired of being called a survivor. And I had said
to them, ‘I’m not a survivor, I’m a warrior,’ ’cause I have to get up every
day and fight this . . . And so from that day, everybody kept sayin’ they
were warriors.” While another mother said: “I don’t like to take away
from the fact that I am a survivor. I commend my fellow Warrior moms
who are able to step up and [say], ‘I am a warrior.’ . . . Me, personally, I’m
still a survivor . . . This drains me. This takes a whole lot out of me . . . on
a regular basis, it consumes a lot of my life.” Language is complex with
significant metaphoric implications. Language needs to be contextualized
fully to the lived experiences of the particular client and community. Even
what might be termed the same event, such as the violent church intru-
sion and its aftermath, could be experienced in different ways by different
people, including different aspects of an event heightened, emphasized, or
recalled in stories shared. All stories needed to be shared, heard, and
affirmed for their lived experience—if not adequately so, the story
260 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

returned in some sense when given the opportunity, as experienced with

the TVUUC through my interviewer presence.
In reconsidering attention to metaphor and survivor chosen language
and narratives, the Peace Institute case study illustrated that many survivors
experienced themselves as being physically weighted down by and bonded
to their lost loved one, such that it was a challenge to get up and function,
let alone put one foot in front of the other. The desire expressed was not to
sever the bond despite this weight but to learn to carry and move with it in a
different way so that the loss did not “attack” and paralyze them
completely. Clinical, pastoral, health and human care providers might
need “to play” or experiment with relational and metaphorical images for
such bonds, including through use of expressive material arts and in
consultation with survivors—this includes communal moral bonds that
continue in the aftermath of other forms of violent trauma, as highlighted
in both case studies. Clinical, pastoral, health and human service care
providers may be positioned to help clients to reshape these connections
as ongoing physiological bonds that are recognized to be experienced
naturally as embodied connections when languaged with a poetics of
science if this resonates with the clients. But they also could help clients
to attend to their religious traditions and spiritual tribes for embodied or
material poetic metaphors as a source of strength and resilience—as
happened with the Universalist language of “all souls” in the TVUUC
minister’s sermon. The task would be to emphasize survivor control in
reimagining the weight of carrying this bond more lightly, rather than
severed, with possibilities through their own sacred communal story, and
also perhaps with an elasticity that prevents shattering as well as an
adhesion that allows for the reassembly of lost pieces—including pieces
that take new religio/poetic but physically lighter material and embodied
form in their expressions, such as through art and body practices or
material memorialization.10
Seeking alternative embodied metaphors and narratives, including
sacred stories, for healing that are more consistent with the lived experi-
ences of family survivors of homicide dovetails with existing narrative
theory and practice.11 This also is consistent with clinical, pastoral, health
and human service care practices of empowerment, such as liberation
health and IFS, that prioritize a survivor’s ability to claim their particular
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 261

language for their lived experiences and burdens under larger sociohistor-
ical systems of cultural and structural oppression. Consistent with RCT, I
suggest that clinical, pastoral, health and human service care providers also
may learn new relational images, metaphors, and language from lived
religion studies of intercultural and interreligious encounters, particularly
in the aftermath of trauma. Such attention by care providers and lived
religion scholars also may prove useful both in expanding the world/sense
of clients and freeing them to find and claim their own personal and
communal language as well.
For example, intercultural exposure to the concept of “han” from
Korean culture can illustrate that not all cultures exhibit a world/sense
of individualism or disconnection from the larger forces of history and
collective struggle. “Han” specifically expresses suffering as a world/sense
of interdependency in the collective experience of a people under colonial
oppression. Choi Hee An describes “han” as “a fundamental feeling of
defeat, resignation, the tenacity of life, unresolved resentments, or
grudges” but also as situated in the “interconnections of classism, racism,
sexism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and cultural imperialism . . . It is the
suppressed, accumulated, and condensed experience of oppression caused
by the carrier of a message from the collective unconscious in Korean
historical and social structures . . . Han, as a symbol for the cry of
oppressed people, has become a political metaphor.”12 Used in the Korean
context, “han” is a felt experience of world/sense and not easily translat-
able because it is connected to the specific historical experiences of a
particular people with repeated invasions by colonial powers. Drawn
from the Korean context and expanded metaphorically, however, it also
can become a word to express the contextualized world/sense of others
living collectively under oppression. Lifted up in a clinical, pastoral, health
or human service care context as an example, such a practice also can free
others to find or develop their own cultural metaphors and language to
express the felt experience of collective systemic oppression as a people.
Finally, the embodied neurophysiological nature of human
interdependency and its potential for fostering vicarious trauma or vicar-
ious growth in impact on clinical, pastoral, health and human service care
providers as well as survivors came up as a lesson stressed in both case
studies. At the Peace Institute, internalizing self-care practices through
262 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

communal support and role modeling their culture of peace was recognized
by institutional supporters as crucial for the long-term sustenance and
effectiveness of the ministry leaders. The mental health clinician interviewed
discussed the importance of self-care in light of her professional experiences
and the impact of vicarious trauma, with implications for the Peace Insti-
tute’s ministry leaders when they were in the care taking role as well:

. . . there can be a cumulative impact and effects of working with people

who are suffering so much . . . and also a cumulative effect in seeing such
bravery, so . . . It’s part of the professional responsibility, keep track of
where you are because it affects how you work with survivors . . . [you can
get] vicarious trauma . . . you can distance yourself, you can remote, you can
get overwhelmed, you can absorb more than is good for you or for the work
that you’re doing . . . I had a supervisor who . . . said to me, “You hafta learn
how to walk up to the abyss, so that you can get close enough but you can’t
go into that abyss. Survivors don’t need you there, they’ve got people there.
You hafta use whatever you might offer.” So staying, finding that place
where you can stand, where you’re very present and connected but you’re
not falling into that place . . ..

UUTRM leaders also stressed awareness and self-care practices for pro-
viders when working in the aftermath of trauma, and the TVUUC
minister demonstrated vulnerability in the pulpit in role modeling this
for his spiritual tribe as a leader as well.

Brief Implications for Secular and Religious Educators

Lessons learned of the value of a holistic approach to clinical, pastoral,

health and human service care through the case studies point to a need for
broader consideration of the value of such approaches for secular and
religious educators as well across a broad range of age groups and contexts,
particularly in light of the impact of trauma within educational settings.
Through their Peacezone curriculums and active involvement with the
Boston Public School system, as well as the emphasis placed on anti-
oppression education and analysis through their Leadership Academy, this
was most evident in the Peace Institute case study. A commitment to the
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 263

value of expressive art and embodied practices in all forms for this
education, including bringing this forth in public testimony to their larger
communities through projects such as Peaceville, were threaded through-
out their curriculums and activities. Attention to the impact of trauma on
children and youth was very much part of the religious education practices
in the UUTRM work with the TVUUC as well, including artistic
material practices during the rededication service and ongoing attention
and care in their religious education program. These lessons serve as a
general and significant reminder for educators that embodied practices of
learning, including use of the arts and with contextualized attention to
larger social systems of oppression with opportunities to put learning into
action, are significant across the age span and worthy of respect and
further research development in holistic, integrative learning, including
through lived religion studies.13

To Social and Religious Institutions: “Nothing About Us

Without Us”14

What struck me as a researcher was how often survivors interviewed in

both case studies saw my research presence as an opportunity to publicly
document and testify to the ways in which they experienced larger
institutions they expected to serve them—whether social or religious—
as having missed the mark in many ways. The public health institutional
supporter interviewed in the Peace Institute case study again would affirm
the importance of the need for further research attending to survivor
voices and experiences as the “experts”:

. . . I think the medical, social service, public health and criminal justice
organizations need to pay more attention to this. I mean, this . . . should be
the subject of some very intentional evaluation. I mean, there’s some things
that are very similar to what other parents who experienced the death of a
child would need. But I think there’s some very different aspects that
deserve additional attention. And I think depending on where they are in
their healing process, there’s the capacity to heal through helping. But . . .
that’s not everybody, and . . . I don’t know well enough when in the process
. . . I just think there’s so much we don’t know and that survivors really
264 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

haven’t gotten the level of attention that is necessary to really answer that
question. I think they still remain the experts at this point, and their stories
and their experiences and how they’ve gotten better represent a starting
point for this.

Survivors interviewed in the Peace Institute case study in particular

more often did not experience themselves being regarded as the expert in
their own needs by larger social institutions. Instead they reported being
confronted with a bewildering array of bureaucracy to navigate or treated
with indifference if not callousness by the very institutions meant to serve
them, often law enforcement and judicial institutions were singled out in
particular.

It was really, really difficult. No support. The mayor didn’t knock on my

door. The chief of police didn’t knock on my door. The cop who actually
was dealing with the incident with my son, knocked on my door, handed
me an envelope. “Here’s your son’s belongings,” and walked away, literally.
Literally, never stepped foot inside my door. “Oh, I just want to drop this
off. These are your son’s belongings.” Like really? [harsh ironic laugh] But
it’s the assumptions that . . . I had to deal with.

The founding ministry leader had sharp words at the time regarding
professional therapists, some of which were based in repeated experiences
of being dismissed or minimized as a survivor when she first turned
toward professionals, including being asked if she wanted medication
for depression when she did not. She repeatedly felt that survivors were
placed in a particular “role” by a larger system, a role which circumscribed
their ability to make a contribution to necessary knowledge, a role she also
experienced as a racialized rather than empowering and authentic and in
counter-distinction to a liberation health model:

Why are ya gonna give me medication if you’re tellin’ me this is something

normal? Then why are ya gonna give me somethin’ to suppress what’s
normal and . . . Professional white women, yeah. That’s a funny one . . . this
is coming from my own perspective that I believe people saw me a survivor
and [for] clinicians, survivors have a role, survivors have their place, you
know? Survivors can advocate. Survivors are called to gun control, death
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 265

penalty, you know, survivors are called to tell their story, and I think, with
me, I can do all that but I also need to know who you are, I also need to
understand whadda you know about me and I think that’s the difference
between me and other survivors. I wanted to understand all this grief and
trauma. I wanted to understand all of that, I wanted to be educated. I also
wanted to know what your role was . . . I wanted to know what everybody
role was, so that I can understand who are the people in place to help and
that I can also again share [with] other survivors ... the providers have gotten
to trust us but providers are also stubborn . . . I still believe, as a black
woman doin’ this work and as a survivor, I still believe I’m not bein’ heard
the way I should be heard and that our expertise and wisdom as survivors is
still not bein’ valued because . . . [they] have no issue in calling me and
havin’ me come to the table and still don’t get compensated.

One survivor expressed a cautionary note, however, that there are times
when professional help is necessary, that there are risks that “signs and
symptoms” of suicidal ideation and severe depression, for example, might
otherwise be missed by the lay ministry leaders at the Peace Institute—
though she also noted that even the professionals can get it wrong when
she spoke of a therapist misdiagnosing her child with anxiety attacks when
the child actually was experiencing medical seizures. The Peace Institute
ministry leaders also admitted to struggling at times with the policing role
of professionals in filing child abuse and neglect reports rather than
working foremost with confidentiality and trust building for families.
Since the original case study, however, I have observed that the Peace
Institute is working cooperatively with hospitals and agencies for grants to
maintain therapists on site, hence a mutual and trusting relationship has
deepened overall, though they continue to shift toward institutional
trainings for human service and clergy providers and further away from
direct care. Overall, the “provocateur” role of the Peace Institute was
deemed valuable by institutional providers in the larger social arena in that
they could agitate at times in ways licensed service agencies might be
restricted politically in doing so, per the mental health provider
interviewed: “I think that, you know, [laughter] . . . they certainly have
played the role, intentionally or not . . . to some extent as a provocateur, as,
266 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ya know, just a voice for, and sometimes a pretty rowdy voice for, people
who struggle and suffer . . ..”
The case studies also highlighted the importance of localization of
religious trauma response to assist in the development of time, energy,
and resources for greater creative capacity and cultural sensitivity in
diverse spiritual care practices, as well as for consistency in meeting
practical logistical needs and preventing leadership burnout for the long
run. This recommendation was highlighted as much by the success of the
Peace Institute’s para-ecclesial grounding through place and space in
community as by the frustrations signaled by TVUUC leaders with the
limitations of continuity of care by a national trauma response team. Both
case studies demonstrated that organized local and secular trauma
responses do exist through local mental health agencies and local deploy-
ment by the Red Cross. The Peace Institute case study highlighted the
cultural preference of several survivors in their particular community for
more peer led interventions than solely professional mental health inter-
ventions, and the TVUUC leaders also demonstrated that relationality
through shared cultural context was significant for them as well.
Responses needed to violent trauma, however, often exceed the capac-
ity of religious institutions solely, and this may be significant for all to
understand in the disappointment and frustration expressed by survivors
in both case studies to relational responses by clergy at times. Religious
institutions and clergy can be subject to higher expectations than other
secular social institutions due to the added weight of sacred meaning-
making and relational images of care held by all involved—in essence
projections based in desires for the “God-like” perfect caretaker, with
gender and race adding additional intercultural variables to those expec-
tations. The pain of disappointment in this area carries enormous impli-
cations, as one Peace Institute survivor indicated by generalizing her
personal disappointment to her experience with church overall:

I personally feel like that the churches can be doin’ more . . . I want to hear
from the pastor from the church and I had been goin’ and goin’ and goin’
and he was too busy to come out. He kept sending other people. When he
did connect—and I feel like I hurt—I go to listen to your voice every
Sunday and I needed you to be here and he wasn’t . . . he did not come. He
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 267

did not call and I kept calling church and begging. And he called me
probably like three or four weeks later . . . I said, “I need you to come.”
And no he did not come. So since that day I have not been back to church.

For a different Peace Institute survivor, there was a felt discrimination

between who is regarded as an “innocent” victim and hence worthy, and
who is considered part of the street life and hence less worthy by clergy
and religious institutions. Her critique of the church differed from her
feelings about her experiences with the Peace Institute and their restor-
ative justice practices. She spoke of this discrimination occurring before
her son’s murder, when clergy would visit her son regularly in prison but
not upon his release, and then also did not come to see her after his
murder:

You can’t pick and choose. You can’t pick and choose those you wanna
help or those you wanna reach out to. Everybody should be treated as an
equal . . . My son was 20, was into the street life, but still shouldn’t a never
happened to him. So they just can’t pick and choose. And I always keep in
the back of my head that you’re human . . . And I don’t make my son’s
story a secret. When people ask me, and I say to them, “This is not your
fairytale killing here. He was the intended target. It was the life that he
lived.” But no one still had the right to do that. And it doesn’t make his life
any less valuable, which is another reason why I’m so in tuned with the
Peace Institute because to them, everyone is equal. Even the perpetrator has
an equal right of some sort. And that holds a lotta weight with me. A whole
lotta weight with me.

Religious institutions, including in the UUTRM and TVUUC case study,

may need to consider the weight of these relational expectations and the
significance of pain created that can carry implications for the life of the
survivor family in relationship to institutions and their practices, while
also recognizing that trauma is often societal in nature and religious
institutions cannot bear the burden alone. There may need to be addi-
tional practices developed that assist survivors and their caretakers to be
more aware of both the naturalness and the inherent limitations of these
expectations, including practices of reconciliation and repair when
needed.
268 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

The scope of this needed social response was witnessed in the Boston
City Council hearing with Peace Institute survivors, with implications
again for the UUTRM and TVUUC case study as well. The range of
providers impacting the lives of homicide survivors included the police
department, district attorney offices, hospitals, emergency medical ser-
vices, public schools, government, grief and trauma services, and the
media. A small sample of many concrete recommendations at this partic-
ular hearing included: increase funding for grief counselors and defray the
burial costs for those who cannot pay; allow families to ride in the
ambulance or get police escort if they cannot; improve hospital response
and sensitivity to family members as well as follow-up with services; have
trauma response teams available in all schools; require trauma training for
all school staff; increase the number of bereavement days after the loss of
an immediate family member; improve gun-control laws; ensure the
media notifies families before publishing information and that the
media is accountable for the accuracy of information published; and
develop a prerelease victim/offender dialogue program with also increased
support for young men with criminal records.15
Practical recommendations from the UUTRM case study included
stressing the need for better overall emergency preparedness training,
beyond the creation of a “Go-Bag” with important documents and
supplies, as well as the need for ongoing emotional and financial support
to survivors in the aftermath. One UUA institutional supporter wished for
a “centralized, organized, transparent, and comprehensive plan” in the
event of social traumas, having experienced that “we don’t have one as a
country.” A UUTRM leader hoped for a greater understanding of survivor
resiliency in the aftermath of trauma, as well as for the reduction of stigma
and self-consciousness in interacting with survivors. Other specific sug-
gestions included seeing “churches continue to sponsor communitywide
groups for people who have been survivors of violence,” as well as creating
local partnership programs with public service agencies such as the police
or their local Red Cross. One UUTRM leader also strove to use UUTRM
educational workshops as opportunities to develop consciousness in reli-
gious institutions about their larger community and the needs of the most
marginalized in emergency preparedness:
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 269

. . . one of the things that I talk about is a congregation wide advocacy so

that it touches on not just things like groups for victims of violence and
trauma but also things like do you know what you’re zoning regulations are
for flood plains? Do you know how vulnerable your poorest populations are
in the community to particular disaster scenarios, whether it be chemical or
explosions? So that communities recognize that they have the potential to be
an advocate for the most marginalized in the community as part of their
own emergency preparedness programs . . . to make certain that they
understand that, you know, they have a larger role to play in being present
with the community to get word out, like pandemic flu response materials,
you know, you name it. I think there’s a lot that we can do as churches . . ..

Other UUTRM leaders echoed that it would be useful if more con-

gregations, rather than individuals, specialized in trauma responsiveness
and took up opportunities for education in this area. Currently, the
UUTRM is the primary vehicle within the UUA for engaging in this
continuing education—and one UUTRM leader pointed out that in her
national trauma training experience, the UUTRM is unique for its
internal denominational focus rather that purely engaging in externally
focused disaster relief efforts with specialized practical ministries. Overall,
the intercultural lessons of the case studies demonstrated that social and
religious institutions must work in partnership with secular agencies at
local levels. Such partnerships must be in depth, fostered from mutual
education and practical encounters in developing a shared power analysis,
as well as a shared narrative vision that taps the veins of enduring
embodied metaphoric truth and world/sense correlated between sociocul-
tural academic language and religious traditions.

Implications for Theological and Religious Scholarship

Implications for theologians and scholars of religion do not stand alone

without some interdisciplinary support. The public health doctor
interviewed in the Peace Institute case study spontaneously introduced
the term “theological” when referencing the Peace Institute’s inclusion of
a process of forgiveness in their work, stating that it was hard for her to
imagine being able to do this particular work in this community without a
270 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

ministerial focus and that there was a need to develop research techniques,
per the lived religion focus of this book:

I know [the founder looks at it as ministry], and I think that’s a pretty

healthy way to look at it . . . I think there’s a certain part of the work that’s
definitely spiritual or even theological in that it holds especially true when
you’re dealing with issues like forgiveness and the rationale for forgiveness
or the basis for forgiveness or even the process for forgiveness . . . I suspect,
depending on the community, you’re going to get the cultural and spiritual
influences of that community. So it’s hard for me to imagine that it could
be done without it being a ministry of sort . . . I actually think that
forgiveness, even as a healing strategy, is an interesting and evaluatable
concept. But it’s really hard. It’s easier to recommend helping as a way of
healing. I think it’s much more difficult and probably inappropriate to
recommend forgiveness as a way of healing. But I think to understand that
process and to be able to talk to others about it would be a helpful addition
to those service providers’ repertoire of what happens.

Indeed, the idea and language of forgiveness did come up in the two
case studies, with differences dependent on their respective cultural con-
texts. For example, one Peace Institute survivor spoke at length of her
spiritual struggles with their peace principle of forgiveness. She spoke of
finally of being able to “let this go” and come to a greater sense of “ease”
and “control” in her life: “You know when you don’t forgive people, they
really do have power over you? It’s like they control how you think, how
you feel, and how you act. I don’t want the enemy havin’ control over me
like that.” This survivor spoke of needing “to let go” of “bad thoughts or
animosity” to be fully connected to God—that the desire for revenge was
acting as a physical barrier to her natural connection with God and
making her feel so controlled that she could contemplate using her body
in a vengeful way. Only when she “let go” did she feel a sense of regaining
personal control and power over her body and a sense of peace and “ease”
becoming available again, a sense she associated with her natural embod-
ied connection to God being reestablished. For her, this initial discon-
nection also was associated with her struggle with anger and the meaning
of “forgiveness.” As God forgives her, she also sought to be a Christian role
model in being able to forgive others, and even if she could never completely
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 271

forgive, a physical easing occurred as she practiced “letting go” and forgiving.
An embodied language of connection was threaded throughout her
responses.
Within the UUTRM case study, the capacity for forgiveness was
complicated by a theological frame that affirmed the worth and dignity
of each person without a thickness to practices that also incorporated a
place for the human capacity for harm or “evil” and acts of reconciliation
or restorative justice approaches. In a 1998 talk at a UU General Assembly
that I heard in person and lingered with me, sociologist Robert Bellah,
after reviewing UU Commission on Appraisal reports and demographics,
argued that the overt UU commitment to an “ontological individualism”
and right to dissent placed UU’s “religiously and therefore culturally,
[at the] mainstream, right at the American center.” Such demographics,
beliefs, and practices diluted transformative UU social witness in the
world. Bellah challenged UUs to reexamine their theological anthropol-
ogy and “recover your fundamentally social nature ” and, even more
radically perhaps, to place “the interdependent web of existence” as the
first UU principle.16 Only by doing so, in Bellah’s implied soteriological
critique, would UU’s achieve a depth to their missiological visions.
As per the former UUA president, there was a “spiritual danger” in the
experience of privilege that could insulate people from a shared humanity
and necessity to forgive in this context, whereas in the Peace Institute
study, harm often was being done by community members against each
other, sometimes with victims and perpetrators in the same family. When
experienced as living in the same world, the moral bonds could not be
disassociated and survivor vengefulness or guilt needed to be addressed for
life to feel free to move again. When the shared impact of trauma was not
owned or addressed, then there were different cultural legacies for those
who lived with privilege and those who lived with oppression. In IFS
language, these cultural legacies and burdens included emotional, moral,
and practical legacies for religious traditions and communities, all of
which could bear further tools of analysis within religious, as well as
theological, studies. Essayist, literary scholar, and activist Elaine Scarry17
places the language of “world making and unmaking” at the center of her
study of human creativity and the constricting and unmaking effect on the
world of a person whose body is in pain. There is theological fruit in her
272 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

innovative language for this process, including “dissolving world-exten-

sion” or “lack of world-extension” to describe the privileged who keep
themselves from the moral bonds of suffering and pain—in essence,
disassociating from the connectedness of survivor’s guilt. Are there theo-
logical and religious implications to beginning to view living in worlds of
privilege as disassociated states from possibilities of moral injury18 or
survivor’s guilt?
For theologians, there is a need to reconsider theologizing from this place
of world/sense—particularly how different world religious traditions
beyond solely Christianity find resources within their respective narratives
and practices to theologize from human being as embodied and enfleshed,
enlanguaged and encultured, en-neuroned and enhormoned, and emplaced
and embedded in sociohistorical and material structures of power. The
lived experience of trauma challenges us particularly to theologize from the
physiological, interdependent body in community—and to attend to survivors
as primary theologians who give expert testimony through their voices,
language, and embodied and material practices as guides. As pointed to in
my original research, some theologians of trauma have begun to do so—yet
they vary in the normativity they grant to the lived experiences of survivors,
including to fellow theologians who openly write as survivors and who lay
claim to a fierceness of testimony in their survival, such as Rebecca Parker
and Rita Nakashima Brock in particular.19 Theologians of trauma also vary
in the levels of their attention to physiological dimensions beyond the flesh,
including physiological interdependence.
Here I only will point out the usefulness I discovered in conjoining
trauma theology with disability theology for constructive and practical
purposes within Christian theologies. In particular, I highlight the
work of Thomas Reynolds and his development in a Christian
context of the language of “vulnerable communion.”20 Metaphorically
expanding the concept of ‘vulnerable communion’ beyond solely a
Christian context was helpful for reconsidering normative theological
associations of the language of perfection with wholeness. As survivors
in both case studies indicated, there is a need to theologize from the
place of vulnerability and wholeness even with pieces missing and
needing to be replaced. I also lift up from my original research the less
referenced works of Jennifer Beste and Nancy Pineda-Madrid for the
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 273

significance of their theological attention to the centrality of communal

bonds as sources of resiliency under the impact of suffering and trauma.21
Beste is interesting as a Catholic theologian for her effort to seek to shift
the locus of human freedom and mediated grace from the individualized
wounded victim to the caretakers—“grace as mediated through support-
ive relationships,” because she recognizes the depth of physiological
woundedness may require dependency on others.22 Pineda-Madrid pro-
poses a “social-suffering hermeneutic” in theological studies that also
should be of interest to religious studies scholars, a hermeneutic which
recognizes the importance of “naming the experience of suffering”; “the
presence of interests in naming our suffering”; “the interplay between
societal problems and personal suffering”; and the ways in which “cultural
representations and symbols mediate the construction of social and self-
identity” and hence expressions of suffering.23 Each of these had correl-
ative possibilities with the case studies in my original research.
For scholars of religion, there also is a need for further congregational
and community case studies, inclusive of community-based, para-ecclesial
ministries across cultures and religions, to study the intercultural range of
possible trauma responses, not only to violent trauma but also to other
forms of trauma.24 This book has suggested the usefulness of a variety of
social science, theological, spiritual, and linguistic conceptual tools for
correlation to the lived experiences of trauma survivors, including pro-
phetic pastoral care, neuroaffective trauma studies, continuing bonds
literature, narrative theory, RCT, liberation health theory, IFS theory,
and an embodied metaphorical and mutual critical correlational interdis-
ciplinary approach, inclusive of attention to material poetics. Further tools
and methods may be needed to attend more adequately to phenomena
that arise in the face of cultural oppressions, inclusive of the need for
intercultural dialogue and encounters across lines of difference by race,
class, gender, ability, sexual and affectional orientation, and religion
among others, with a larger openness by all academic scholars to disclosing
their own social identities and locations in the research as well. This study
drew from relational-cultural, narrative, liberation health, IFS, and critical
race theories to highlight some of these intercultural factors and dynamics
of power between the two case studies.25
274 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Interdisciplinary Encounters with Intersectional

Signs of Hope
If our emplacement and embeddedness as embodied and enfleshed,
enlanguaged and encultured, en-neuroned and enhormoned beings also
is contextualized by sociohistorical and material dimensions of structural
power, then the call for intercultural research that is more forthcoming in
documenting our own contextualized emplacement and experiences as
researchers is an ethical mandate. Hints of this are sometimes seen across
disciplines, including trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk openly
discussing his own experiences with trauma and therapy as a source of
motivation and insight for his research.26 An excellent example also of this
type of more forthcoming intercultural encounter with radical difference
in written research is that of Mattjis van de Port, a cultural anthropologist
and white European gay male.27 In his description of his first encounter
with a Candomblé spirit possession ceremony in Bahia, Brazil, he shares
the mutuality of impact on himself when one by one those around him
fall into a trance. For van de Port as an anthropologist of religion,
withholding himself from the research, withholding the data of his own
lived experiences of these encounters, would mean that he was withhold-
ing important phenomenological data about the living power of these
religious experiences, experiences which in turn challenge his own
normativity of world/view beliefs and world/sense ways of being. He
writes:28

The drums were beaten evermore frantically. Each time someone would fall
into a trance there was a lot of cheering and applause. I felt nervous. I was
overwhelmed by the sight of behavior I could only interpret as a complete
lack of self-control. And I was scared that I too would fall to the floor, with
but with no narrative other than “hysteria” to make sense of it. I panicked; it
was only a sense of professionalism that kept me for wrestling my way back
to the exit. I recall that I crossed my arms over my chest. I tried to
disassociate myself from the scene by rummaging in my rucksack to look
for nothing in particular. I urged myself to breathe deeply and calmly. I told
myself that I do not believe in spirits. I forced myself to think of what
anthropologist have been saying about possession trance, invoking the
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 275

spirits of science to protect me from whatever it was that was creeping

toward me that rowdy night. What calmed me down, in the end, was the
sight of a dog. Not a Saint Bernard dog, to be sure, but a breed akin to a
German Shepherd. The animal had been walking around freely over the
dance floor, pursuing its own canine pursuits. Undisturbed by the interac-
tions of people and spirits, the dog offered a reassuring image of normalcy to
hold onto.

This is a different style of research writing, one that incorporates

reflexivity at a vulnerable level, an experience more common within
ethnographic writing. I note particularly his reach for cultural academic
language to help him make “world/sense” of the situation, that is, “hys-
teria,” and also that his bodily comfort and “image of normalcy” is
reestablished by connecting in that moment to the commonness in his
“world/sense” of seeing a German Shepherd calming walking around. I
use this striking example to suggest that just as the use of the third party
voice normatively in our research writing styles29 actually may be ham-
pering our ability to attend to our ethical call to see and hear in new ways
for the societal challenges of our times, the white male normative ideo-
logical ideal of “objectivity” also may be limiting our ability to be faithful
to all phenomena we are experiencing in our interdisciplinary research,
particularly in our qualitative research. Paradoxically, by bringing more of
our self—our intersectional “I” of lived experiences and identities—
openly into our writing and our research, we may begin to develop a
more faithful practice to the complexity of living world/views and world/
senses and ultimately to the diversity of forms of human sacred meaning-
making, including in relationship to formal religion.30 In making this
statement, I situate myself in larger reflexive dialogues common to eth-
nographers within anthropology, dialogues that could be fruitfully
brought into broader interdisciplinary discussion as well as into lived
religion studies of trauma.31
As I begin to close where I began, I note that there are interdisciplinary
parallels occuring between these case studies focused on peace in the
aftermath of violence, with their various religio/poetic material practices,
and the work of what are termed “the New Materialists” emerging in this
era of climate change, with climate change’s potential for traumatic
276 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

impact as well. Circling back to my references to the power of embodied

metaphor as a correlational tool between religious and spiritual commu-
nities and the sciences, inclusive of the language of ‘spirit,’ I point
particularly to new materialists Clayton Crockett, religious studies, and
Jeffrey W. Robbins, philosopher,32 who state:

. . . we suggest that this crisis [of ecology, energy, and finance] could provide
an opening for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way
of being in and of the earth. This opening is an opening onto a new
materialism that is neither a crude consumerist materialism nor a reductive
atomic materialism, but a materialism that takes seriously the physical and
material world in which we live. The New Materialism is a materialism
based on energy transformation. Energy itself is not reductive matter but
resonates with “spirit” and “life” . . ..

The looming of climate change adds its own ethical challenge to find
the points of connection across disciplines and across the fields of human
embodied and material existence—a going back to ancient wisdom indig-
enous peoples have long known in their own world/sense, which others of
us now are attempting to recapture with new language for Western and
planetary salvation. For example, referencing Bruno Latours’ concept of
“actant,” and forging a paradigm shift in the face of destructive ecological
forces, Jane Bennett, a political theorist,33 is drawn ethically to argue that
matter is vibrant and vital, and that these are characteristics constituative
of matter itself rather than added by traditional dichotomous ideas of
matter and spirit, as passed down through a dominant Western cultural
heritage and world/sense.
In this, I draw particular attention to the works of anthropologist Birgit
Meyer34 as well, who is keenly aware that the “mentalistic approach” of
the Western Protestant Enlightenment world/sense defines and constrains
“religion” through its history of colonialism, creating a need for a major
integration of cross-disciplinary studies to defamiliarize the “academic
canon”:

The point is to grasp the specific dynamics of power that constitute and
“normalize” the academic study of religon within historically and socially
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 277

specific formations, showing how ways of studying religion reflect ways of

perceiving the world at large. We need to spotlight biases, blind spots and
inadequacies in these established and perhaps all-too-familiar ways, enabling
us to imagine new, alternative directions for our work.35

In point of fact, according to Meyer’s studies, and as I have suggested

above, indigenous cultures understood that “religious” experiences, the
sense of “something more,” always were mediated through human action
and material means—and this is a significant and promising area of
interdisciplinary research, as lived religion studies often demonstrate:

I propose to place at the centre of scholarly inquiries the very concrete ways
through which humans “fabricate”—by mobilizing texts, sounds, pictures,
or objects, and by engaging in practices of speaking, singing, being pos-
sessed and so on—a sense of presence of something beyond. Foregrounding
“fabrication” prompts very concrete empirical questions about the specific
practices, materials and forms employed in generating a sense of something
divine, ghostly, sublime or transcendent . . . the genesis of a sense of
extraordinary presence . . . as practices and materials are indispesable for
religion’s existence in the world as a social, cultural, and political phenom-
enon, they need our utmost theoretical and empirical attention . . .
Intended as a provocative shout to signal the need for a new approach,
“material religion” is in fact a pleonasm that will become obsolete once the
study of religon has been materialized.36

Meyer’s particular contribution of a methodological tool is the term

“sensational form” in “religious mediation,” mediation that also takes
seriously embodied and material dimensions of power: “This notion refers
to a configuration of religious media, acts, imaginations and bodily
sensations in the context of a religious tradition or group” that are
“authorized and authenticated” mediators of the religious experience.37
Fostering the “shared partaking in religious mediation sustains collective
identities . . . within a particular material environment . . . ,” one in which
“the sensation-power nexus needs to be taken seriously.”38 I embrace
much in the approach of these New Materialists, particularly in the
work of Birgit Meyer. I raise additional issues related to normativity and
power—who authorizes and who authenticates?—and maintain an
278 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 7.1 Intersecting issues at the Mothers’ Day Walk for Peace. Young people
clearly understanding the intertwining relationship between violence, justice,
outreach and the need for jobs as they illustrate their banner with the 7 Prin-
ciples of Peace and names, pictures, and buttons of the dead

appreciation for an embodied metaphorical correlational approach that

honors the linguistic systems, verbal and nonverbal, that express different
cultural world/sense across academic disciplines.
Finally, beyond all the academic disciplinary struggles, there also is what
is happening on the ground among the people outside the walls of acade-
mia, walls that often are labled ivory towers in their disconnectedness. How
connected those towers seek to be to the struggles in the streets, including
the seriousness with which the streets are taken in the academy and
research, is both an individual and collective act of ethical accountability
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 279

Fig. 7.2 Intersecting issues at a climate change protest. Activists from West
Roxbury and the surrounding Boston area communities protesting the
installation in process of a natural gas lateral pipeline carrying fracked
gas, understanding the implications for issues of race and class as well as
the environment

and a matter of world/sense in the attribution of sacred meaning to the

living, pulsing, power, and reality of those streets.39 So here I choose to
leave my readers with signs of such intersectional hope on the streets of
Dorchester, in a climate change protest, and in a youth movement
embracing the living power of a new sacred story through a spiritual
tribe of activism. If a larger peace is to be achieved, it may come more
through those who demand it with their bodies and work to build
embodied connections than through those who only write about it
(Figs. 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3).
280 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

Fig. 7.3 Intersecting issues through youth activism and new stories. There is
an international grassroots network of young activists training under the
narrative vision of the Harry Potter stories and called the Harry Potter Alliance.
This picture was taken at a related organization’s conference, The Granger
Leadership Academy, where teens and young adult activists took part in a
wide variety of social justice workshops, ranging from “Planning to Change
the World A Lot” to “Showing Up for Racial Justice” to “Wake Up and Smell
the Environmental Racism” to “Transgender Advocacy 101.” Embodying
young adult literature becomes a new story and path to peace and justice

Notes
1. The primary advice of ministry leaders to clergy in the immediate
aftermath of violence was not to focus on theology but to focus on
practical logistical care. Time and again, survivors would say that this
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 281

type of compassionate and practical case management was an aspect

of the Peace Institute’s crisis services that they most valued. If they
did not have the money to bury their loved one or if they had a
housing crisis, the Peace Institute’s focus was first and foremost on
these logistical practical details of care to reestablish survivor safety
and control. UUTRM leaders would concur in this as well.
2. For media coverage, see https://www.bostonglobe.com/
metro/2016/05/08/thousands-gather-for-mother-day-peace-walk/
nxxmwkwmZQBUqIdgZoe6pJ/story.html (accessed May 9, 2016).
3. A TVUUC leader specifically referenced a book some had studied
together that had critiqued the UU faith tradition, see Michael
Durall, The Almost Church: Redefining Unitarian Universalism for a
New Era (Tulsa, OK: Jenkin Lloyd Jones Press, 2004).
4. For further conceptual work within RCT on the energizing power of
group identity and a sense of “we,” see Stephen J. Bergman and Janet
L. Surrey, “Couple Therapy: A Relational Approach,” 167–193, and
Nikki M. Fedele, “Relationships in Groups: Connection, Resonance,
and Paradox,” 194–219, in The Complexity of Connection: Writings
from the Stone Center’s Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, edited by
Jordan, Judith V., Maureen Walker, and Linda M. Hartling
(New York: The Guilford Press, 2004), as well as Karen Skerrett,
“Moving toward ‘We’: Promise and Peril,” 128–150, in How Con-
nections Heal: Stories From Relational-Cultural Therapy, edited by
Walker, Maureen and Wendy B. Rosen (New York: The Guilford
Press, 2004); and most recently Judith V. Jordan and Jon Carlson,
editors, Creating Connection: A Relational-Cultural Approach with
Couples (New York: Routledge, 2013).
5. This sense of the founding mission of the UUTRM was consistent
with the UUTRM leader’s angry reaction to the possibility of con-
servative faith traditions oppressing gay, bisexual, lesbian, or trans-
gender (GBLT) persons in the 9/11 disaster.
6. See again Hudson, Congregational Trauma, where she lays out a range
of practical tips from the need for specific information, agencies that
help in particular contexts, Christian worship suggestions, and tips for
working with the media among others. Many of these tips and
282 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

strategies were employed in the provision of basic pastoral care in the

aftermath of trauma for both case studies.
7. A recent contribution to the dilemma that UUs experience in living
into their profession of the worth and dignity of each human being is
Nathan C. Walker’s book illustrating the engagement of moral
imagination to cultivate empathy, Cultivating Empathy: The Worth
and Dignity of Every Person—Without Exception (Boston: Skinner
House, 2016). See also Kathleen D. Billman and Daniel
L. Migliore, Rachel’s Cry: Prayer of Lament and Rebirth of Hope
(Cleveland: United Church Press, 1999) for possible useful material
in this area, including for Unitarian Universalists.
8. See http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/the-power-of-the-black-
lives-matter-banner (accessed May 20, 2016).
9. In addition to clinical theories and approaches lifted up in this book
already, see also the intercultural approach to pastoral care developed
by Carrie Doehring, The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern
Approach, revised and expanded edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2015), and also an essay on immanence in pastoral
psychotherapy by Daniel Shaw, “Immanence and Intersubjectivity,”
in The Skillful Soul of the Psychotherapist: The Link Between Spiritual-
ity and Clinical Excellence, edited by George S. Stavros and Steven
J. Sandage (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). The collection
of essays in this latter volume as a whole are useful examples of clinical
self-reflection in the practice of therapy and spirituality. The embodied
affective and cognitive experience of immanence is an under-
conceptualized and under-studied interdisciplinary area in most defi-
nitions of spirituality, including for lived religion studies as well as in
spirituality and social work in my experience where the language of
transcendence tends to be more prominent. See Holloway and Moss,
Spirituality and Social Work, as well as Edward R. Canda and Leola
Dyrud Furman, Spiritual Diversity in Social Work Practice: The Heart of
Helping, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). See
also the efforts of Srdjan Sremac to research such an immanent
experience as conversion within substance abuse populations,
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 283

“Conversion and the Real: The (Im)Possibility of Testimonial Repre-

sentation,” Pastoral Psychology, Springer, published online April
28, 2016.
10. Some art therapy texts have previously been recommended. Here I
call particular attention to Helen Land, Spirituality, Religion, and
Faith in Psychotherapy: Evidence-Based Expressive Methods for Mind,
Brain, and Body (Chicago: Lyceum Books, 2015).
11. See Griffith and Griffith, Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy.
Griffith and Griffith are pastoral psychotherapists who speak to the
importance of “multichannel listening,” 61, and “eliciting multiple
metaphors,” 67, when working with clients. No single metaphor is
usually sufficient in facilitating a client’s capacity to reframe their life
story for healing or movement and empowerment. See also Herbert
Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving
Together the Human and the Divine (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998)
for additional examples of meaning-making through story and ritual,
albeit through the Christian tradition.
12. Choi Hee An, Korean Women and God: Experiencing God in a Multi-
religious Colonial Context (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005). Also see
Andrew Sung Park, From Hurt to Healing: A Theology of the Wounded
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004).
13. For a few different recent examples of this across different contexts see
Loretta Pyles and Gwendolyn J. Adam, eds., Holistic Engagement:
Transforming Social Work Education in the 21st Century (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016); Christopher Emdin, For White Folks
Who Teach in the Hood. . .and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy
and Urban Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016); and Courtney
T. Goto, The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Leaning Into God’s New
Creation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016). See also classics
such as Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th edition
(New York: Continuum, 1970/2003) and Henry A. Giroux and
Peter McLaren, eds., Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of
Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1994). Also see another
classic Barbara G. Wheeler and Edward Farley, eds., Shifting Bound-
aries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education
284 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991)—and I call

particular attention to two essays in this volume: Paul F. Knitter,
“Beyond a Mono-Religious Theological Education” 151–180; and
Mark K. Taylor, “Celebrating Difference, Resisting Domination: The
Need for Synchronic Strategies in Theological Education” 259–293.
14. Paralleling the political advocacy of the disability rights community, I
can see how survivors are often not treated as the experts in their own
experiences and needs by larger institutional and professional com-
munities. Hence, I have drawn on the title of this classic book for this
subheading, which in turn draws on a phrase from the disability rights
movement: James I. Charlton, Nothing About Us Without Us: Dis-
ability Oppression and Empowerment (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2000).
15. See Report of the Committee on Women & Healthy Communities to
Members of the Boston City Council, entire.
16. Robert N. Bellah, “Unitarian Universalism in Societal Perspec-
tive,” Unitarian Universalist Association, General Assembly,
Rochester, NY, June 27, 1998. Bellah also did point out that
James Luther Adams did not share an ontological individualism
view of human nature. See also Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen,
William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits
of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
(New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1985).
17. Scarry, The Body in Pain.
18. The literature on moral injury is growing and originates in the context
of war, though it also has applicability to other contexts. Here I wish
to suggest the usefulness of integrating continuing bonds theory into
this literature along with revisiting the older concept of survivor’s
guilt. See Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, Soul Repair:
Recovering from Moral Injury After War (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013)
for an accessible text in this area.
19. See Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebbeca Ann Parker, Proverbs of
Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and The Search For What Saves
Us (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). See also Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral
Care in the Aftermath of Trauma for my engagement with a wide
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 285

variety of constructive theologians of trauma based on the results of

the case studies and the ways in which their works reflect or do not
reflect survivor experiences. Of particular concern was a tendency for
theologians to disregard contextuality of sociocultural location in
constructing theological claims.
20. See Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of
Disability and Hospitality (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008).
See also Walsh, Prophetic Pastoral Care in the Aftermath of Trauma for
my development of the usefulness of disability theology when linked
to trauma theologies.
21. Jennifer E Beste, God and the Victim: Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and
Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Cynthia Hess, Sites of
Violence, Sites of Grace: Christian Nonviolence and the Traumatized Self
(New York: Lexington Books, 2009); and Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Suf-
fering and Salvation in Ciudad Juarez (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2011). Two additional classics in the field of trauma and theology
include Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured
World (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009); and Shelly
Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). Rambo’s work is particularly
helpful for theologians wishing to theologize from the place of imma-
nence rather than always transcendence. Jones’ work is noteworthy for
her attention to “liturgies of the flesh,” 156.
22. Beste, God and the Victim, 101.
23. Pineda-Madrid, Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Juarez, 21–24.
24. Studies such as this have been mentioned in prior chapters. One
additional recent ethnographic study that examined economically
privileged urban congregations in their responses to poverty in their
midst is a dissertation by Andrew Stephen Tripp, “Poverty and Urban
Ecclesial Discipleship: A Practical Theological Investigation Of Con-
gregations Caring For The Poor“ (PhD Dissertation, Boston Univer-
sity, 2015).
25. Again, further attention is needed to decolonizing approaches in
research and writing that take seriously mutuality of learning power
relations. The ongoing work of Kwok Pui-lan is significant for
286 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

religious and theological studies, for example her classic Postcolonial

Imagination & Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2005). In broader scope for intersectional issues of
power, see the works of Andrea Smith, beginning with her essay
“Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy:
Rethinking Women of Color Organizing,” in Color of Violence: The
Incite! Anthology, edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006). Also see the classic work
of Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders:
Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, 3rd Edition (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2004). Finally also see David Chidester,
Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2014).
26. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score.
27. This is excerpted and edited from my paper presentation given at
the Association for Practical Theology 2016 Biennial Conference,
“Examining Whiteness: Recovering the Intersectional ‘I’ and
Experiences of ‘Peoplehood’ in Writing and Research”
(New York: Fordham University, April 9, 2016). See also the
historical role of feminists in bringing attention to intersectionality
and contextual knowledge as well, such as through standpoint
theory. Sandra Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory
Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (New York:
Routledge, 2004). See also Goldberger, Nancy, Jill Tarule, Blythe
Clinchy, and Mary Belenky, eds., Knowledge, Difference, and
Power: Essays Inspired by Women’s Ways of Knowing (New York:
Basic Books, 1996).
28. Mattjis Van der Port, Ecstatic Encounters: Bahian Candomblé and the Quest
for the Really Real (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011) 65.
29. For example, while using a first person rather than third person voice
to my opening chapter vignettes, I am inviting the reader to enter into
the particularity of my experiences with their own experiences, thus
grounding any effort at generalizing or universalizing.
30. I lift up here the work of James W. Perkinson in theology. Perkinson
broke some initial barriers in academic writing as a white male by
 7 Poetics and Ethics of World/Sense: Cultivating the Lessons 287

integrating his lived experiences into his now classic text, White
Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2004). See also another early work not as often referenced in
the area anti-racism work in the academy and ministry: Jennifer
Harvey, Karin A. Case, and Robin Hawley Gorsline, eds., Disrupting
White Supremacy From Within: White People On What We Need To
Do (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2004).
31. See again Brettell, Anthropological Conversations. Brettell sees anthro-
pology as an academic discipline naturally situated for these types of
interdisciplinary efforts. I agree, though I also see other disciplines
naturally suited for such efforts as well, such as social work and public
health. Brettell’s text does provide an excellent summary of these
efforts within anthropology, including intersections with psychology
and trauma though primarily through psychoanalytic theories.
32. Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins, Religion, Politics, and the
Earth: The New Materialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
xv–xvi.
33. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2010) viii–ix.
34. Birgit Meyer, “Mediation and the Genesis of Presence: Toward a
Material Approach to Religion,” Inaugural Lecture, Universiteit
Utrecht, October 19, 2012. Meyer’s interest in decolonizing and
defamiliarizing methodologies follows my own, as illustrated in my
introduction. Her focus solely on a Protestant legacy may be
questioned by those who argue the mind/body/spirit split is deeply
rooted overall in the encounter of Christianity with Hellenistic cul-
ture and Plato. See again for example, Douglas, What’s Faith Got To
Do With It?. See also W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?: The
Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2005) as part of this emerging zeitgeist of the New Materialists.
35. Ibid., 8–10.
36. Ibid., 22–23.
37. Ibid., 26. See also Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the
Senses, ed. by Birgit Meyer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
38. Meyer, “Mediation and the Genesis of Presence,” 30.
288 Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power

39. In addition to Black Lives Matter and beyond the former Occupy
movement, two other grassroots movement in the United States are
worthy of attention. First is the Moral Monday Movement, with its
focus on intersectional fusion politics, led by Rev. Dr. William J.
Barber II. See his two recent books documenting the rise of this
movement that began in North Carolina: Forward Together: A
Moral Message for the Nation (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2014)
and The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the
Rise of a New Justice Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016). Also of
note for immediate attention is the secular and interfaith Showing Up
for Racial Justice Movement led by white allies in support of Black
Lives Matter. See Chris Crass’ books in partial documentation of the
growth of white anti-racist education and movement building:
Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis,
and Movement Building Strategy (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013) and
Towards the “Other America”: Anti-Racist Resources for White People
Taking Action For Black Lives Matter (St. Louis, MO: 2015). Finally,
see also a recent work examining nonviolent grassroots social move-
ments on an international scale during this century: Mark Engler an
Paul Engler, This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the
Twenty-first Century (New York: Nation Books, 2016).
 A Queer Postlude of Intersections
in the Aftermath

This manuscript was finalized on the day after my fifth wedding anniver-
sary, a special date known as Loving Day1 that we consciously chose to be
married on as an interracial couple. Loving Day occurs during the Pride
celebration month of June and is a day honoring the United States
Supreme Court’s 1967 decision to overturn state legal bans on interracial
marriages. Ironically, the couple’s last name in the legal challenge was
Loving. As I finished posting a few picture reminders of the wedding for
my husband and friends on Facebook in celebration of this particular
Loving Day, June 12, 2016, I began to hear with growing horror and
anger reports coming from the television of a mass shooting at a lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) nightclub in Orlando,
FL—the news only worsened throughout that day as the number of the
dead rose to at least 50, inclusive of the shooter himself who was being
termed a self-radicalized Islamic terrorist.2
When the number so quickly reached 50, the mass media began to
term this the deadliest mass shooting in the US history—yet those of us
who know that the history of the United States is founded in violence also
know that that is not true, that there have been other mass shootings
known and unknown, inclusive of Wounded Knee among others.3 The

© The Author(s) 2017 289

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1
290 A Queer Postlude of Intersections in the Aftermath

violence that erupted in the Orlando nightclub carried a relationship to all

the mass shootings and historical US violence that went before it, the
violence known and the violence unknown. We record, remember, and
memorialize our history selectively by whose bodies are marked as signif-
icant at any particular time—and by who have the power to record,
remember, and memorialize particular stories of particular lives. Social
media became a powerful tool once again in the aftermath of this partic-
ular June 12th. Material poetic and artistically designed images of mourn-
ing and protest rapidly began to appear—Facebook profile images shaded
with rainbows, a wolf howling in a Facebook profile juxtaposed against
rainbow lines of candles, hearts with rainbow colors affirming love, and
many, many more, alongside the posting of articles and memes calling for
further gun control laws.
This particular social media explosion also came on the heels of yet
another turbulent week of social media activity spotlighting gender vio-
lence and rape culture, focused particularly on higher education campuses
in the United States.4 The publication of the victim witness letter of a
campus rape survivor prompted remarkable outpourings from many
corners, including further sharing of gender-based violence in both
small and large public and private groups. Members of Congress also
made plans to read her letter into the US congressional record, a CNN
reporter read parts of it out loud on television, and the sitting US Vice
President wrote a public heartfelt response, calling her a “warrior.”5
Ironically, the ready-made intersectional link available between these
two violent events, separated in time by barely a week, was still too distant
for some media analysts, even one who spoke clearly to patterns of
dominance and control being examples of “toxic masculinity”6 in US
history and its aversion to gun control. Power, domination, and control
can lead to violence across a spectrum of cultural identities when given the
opportunity—we’ve seen this in the militarization of police culture and its
impact particularly in poor communities of color, as stated in my intro-
duction. To understand intersectionality on an embodied level is to
understand that there is a queerness inclusive of, as well as beyond,
experiences of sexual or affectional orientation and gender status.
This is the queerness that occurs when one crosses also between borders
and into the borderlands of race, class, religion, ability, and the academic
 A Queer Postlude of Intersections in the Aftermath 291

disciplines—into the borders between worlds or world/sense—through

the markings of social constructions and lived experiences and through
the push and play of language and expanded metaphors. This is the queer
sense of being in an unfamiliar, peculiar, or strange land where one’s
visceral sense of the world is challenged and where one’s grasp on felt
reality seems to shift, with anxiety and desire for control often resulting.
As a final though different example as I complete the writing of this book
manuscript, the candidate also mentioned in my introduction who
shamelessly called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and
for building a wall along the Mexican border appears to have garnered the
nomination of a major political party. There can be a felt experience of
queerness in this as well for those whose sociohistorical world/sense has
not included an intellectual and visceral understanding of the rootedness
of violence, patriarchy, and white supremacy in the United States—that
the emergence of this candidate represents, drawing on Malcolm X’s
controversial phrase, “the chickens coming home to roost.”
As our paradigms shift in understanding human being,
intersectionality, and our essential embodied relatedness to and depen-
dency on one another, as well as on our shared though endangered planet,
then the call to enter into these borderlands of queerness becomes louder
and more imperative—and to enter while we have an opportunity to do so
freely without being forced to do so from the lived experience of trauma
queering us into a new world. For the lived experience of trauma,
particularly violent trauma, marks many of us as liminal people and
members of a shared tribe across all of these borders, as well as within
the borderlands, of a multitude of social and professional identities. We
are the embodied “spiritual tribe” of the “scar clan,” as Catholic Jungian
analyst, poet, post-trauma recovery specialist, and multiracial daughter of
indigenous immigrant and refugee families, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, might
call us7—and in sharing tribal status as scar clan members, perhaps there
also is power in sharing our “sacred stories” of survival as scar clan.
Through our creative practices in embodied narrative and material poetic
or artistic form, we may find metaphorical bridges and the intersectional
liminal common ground of communitas for constructing peace in our
larger shared and troubled world.
292 A Queer Postlude of Intersections in the Aftermath

Are we able to heed this call to enter into the borderlands of queerness
with an open and compassionate heart, as well as with ethical respect and
an intent to level social, cultural, and institutional power? Do we share in
witness to the ethical urgency to do so in light of global violence as well as
the looming threat of climate change? Heeding such a call means leaving
our respective academic or professional disciplinary, religious, or secular
comfort zones or ivory towers in more ways than we might possibly
imagine at present. It means engaging the visceral realities of different
world/sense encounters and risking the potential for transformation
involved in such engagement. The reward may yet be a more peaceful,
sustainable, and equitable shared world. As my self that always will remain
a community minister at heart would say, even in and to an academy that
may find a minister queer in its midst, “May it be so. Amen, Amen, Ashe,
and Blessed Be.”

Notes
1. See http://lovingday.org/learn (accessed June 13, 2016).
2. See http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/
index.html (accessed June 13, 2016).
3. See http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/01/01/truth-
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4. See http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0609/Outcry-over-
Stanford-case-hints-at-shift-in-rape-culture (accessed June 13, 2016).
5. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stanford-sexual-assault-vic
tim-letter-congress_us_5758d597e4b00f97fba74969 (accessed June
13, 2016) and https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/joe-biden-
writes-an-open-letter-to-stanford-survivor?utm_term¼.klx5Z1G2Y#.
vhMKY2x5D (accessed June 13, 2016) and http://www.cnn.com/
videos/justice/2016/06/06/stanford-rape-survivor-letter-brock-allen-turner-
ashleigh-banfield-orig.cnn/video/playlists/stanford-rape-case/ (accessed
June 13, 2006).
6. See http://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/overcompensation_nation_
its_time_to_admit_that_toxic_masculinity_drives_gun_violence/?
source¼newsletter (accessed June 13, 2016).
 A Queer Postlude of Intersections in the Aftermath 293

7. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With Wolves (New York:
Ballentine Books, 1996). See also her website for a complete list of
her works going back decades. Trauma theologian Shelly Rambo,
influenced also by philosopher Richard Kearney’s works, has postu-
lated the significance of theorizing about the scar as well as the wound.
“While trauma is figured as wound, its afterlife might be figured as scar,
as a textured surface that serves as a critical crossing between death and
life, interior and exterior, hidden and revealed. Moving between
wounds and scars requires theorizing the textured surface of the skin.
(p. 266)” See Shelly Rambo, “Refiguring Wounds in the Afterlife
(of Trauma),” in Carnal Hermeneutics, 263–278, edited by Richard
Kearney and Brian Treanor (New York: Fordham University Press,
2015). Per my writings, there also are the wounds and scars that are not
relegated to the surface of the skin alone but are internal and neuro-
physiological, which also need theorizing and metaphorical exploration
across academic disciplines, including theology. There also are inter-
esting pastoral care considerations to make as to the value of adding to
the “wounded healer” pastoral care image that of the “scarred healer.”
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 Index

A autoethnographic, xii. See also

Adams, James Luther, xvin9, 154, ethnography
186n24, 241n29, 243n37,
244n41, 284n16. See also
covenantal theology; prophetic B
Ammerman, Nancy, 33, 89, 120n8, Beste, Jennifer, 272, 273, 285n21,
121n8, 137n91, 184n10, 198, 285n22
238n8, 243n37. See also lived mediated grace, 273
religion; spiritual tribe bible
anthropology, xi, xv, 5, 25, 40, 43n9, Bible study, 199
47n46, 93, 95, 110, 116–18, Ecclesiastes, 211, 217
123n22, 125, 143, 222, 275, Ezekiel, 25, 26, 34
287n31 Good Samaritan, 231, 251, 252
anti-oppression historical approach, 24
anti-oppression analysis, 57, 114 seven Principles of Peace, 57, 58,
anti-racism, 287n30 184n6, 231

Note: Page number followed by ‘n’ refers to notes

© The Author(s) 2017 317

M. Walsh, Violent Trauma, Culture, and Power,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41772-1
318 Index

Black Lives Matter (BLM), 2, 6, borders, 12, 37, 167, 248, 290, 291
85n27, 258 Brock, Rita Nakashima, 272, 284n19
police violence, 2 moral injury, 284n18
body. See also feminism; Fulkerson,
Mary McClintock; immanence;
neuroaffective studies; queer; C
visceral Centers for Disease Control and
embodied, 5, 11, 13–16, 21n29, Prevention (CDC), 1, 16n1. See
25–30, 32–4, 36, 37, 39–41, also Prothrow-Stith, Deborah;
43n8, 43n9, 56, 92–100, public health
103–5, 108, 109, 113, 116, Chopp, Rebecca S., 104, 105,
117, 119, 122n18, 127n43, 125n29, 128n49, 129n55,
138n99, 144, 146–8, 150, 151, 130n55, 130n56, 131n58, 171,
160–2, 164, 165, 168, 170, 189n40. See also poetics
171, 182, 183, 188n34, climate change, 32, 35, 275, 276,
188n37, 189n39, 196–200, 279, 292
202, 203, 206–8, 212–15, 218, Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 30–2
220, 221, 230, 233, 238n10, Collins, Randall, 34, 36, 46n31,
239n14, 253, 258–61, 263, 46n33, 46n36. See also
269, 271–4, 276, 277, 279, interdisciplinary; sociology
282n9, 290, 291 continuing bonds theory. See also
enfleshed, 30, 91, 259, 272, 274 body; limbic resonance;
enhormoned, 30, 91, 259, 272, neuroaffective studies
274 bereavement, 97
en-neuroned, 30, 91, 213, 259, communal bond, 273
272, 274 limbic resonance, 95, 96, 223
limbic resonance, 95, 96, 223 moral bond, 109, 143
neuroaffective, 91, 93, 95, 117, moral injury, 272
119, 213, 223, 259, 273 phantom limbs, 97
neuroscience of corporeality, 116 phantom presence, 97
physiological, 93 survivor’s guilt, 272
physiology, 95, 96 Copeland, Shawn M., 30
Scanlon, Michael J., 29, 43n9 correlation. See also interdisciplinary;
border crossing. See also metaphor
intersectionality; oppression; embodied metaphorical
power analysis; queer correlational, 41, 91, 273
borderlands, 52, 88, 194, 248–52, interdisciplinary bridge tools, 41,
290, 291 91, 104
 Index 319

mutual critical correlational, 41 academic disciplines, 10, 12, 14,

Poling, James N. and Donald 23–5, 28, 40, 93, 104, 114,
E. Miller, 40, 48n51 213, 278, 287n31, 293n7
covenantal theology, ix. See also cross-disciplinary, 5
Unitarian Universalist disciplinary boundaries, xii
Association multiple disciplines, 5
congregational polity, 80, 256 paradigm shifts, 114
critical race theory
concealed story, 3, 4
emerging or transformation story, E
113 ecological, ix, xiv, 14, 19n17, 93
resistance story, 18n10 ecological systems theory, 60
stock story, 18n10 Epston, David, 112. See also narrative
culture. See also body; language; theory; power analysis
metaphor; poetics; worldsense; Estés, Clarissa Pinkola, 291, 293n7
worldviews ethical relations, 228. See also
cultural, 5, 10, 11, 14, 24, 26, 32, Unitarian Universalist
56, 60, 79, 80, 82, 98–100, Association
110, 111, 113, 117, 118, ethics, 110, 248, 276, 278, 292
125n29, 131n58, 142, 194, ethnography, 15, 40. See also
195, 202, 221, 232, 235, 261, autoethnographic
273, 277, 290 ethnographic, 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16,
dominant culture, x, 168, 221, 20n21, 26, 45n20, 100, 167,
235 184n16, 238n6, 275
enculturated or encultured, 90, 91,
97, 259, 272, 274
paradigm shifts, 125n29, 258, F
259, 276, 291 feminism, 29, 33, 41, 43n11, 111,
popular culture, 32, 38, 145 112, 122n19, 135n74, 237n4.
ways of being, 101, 114, 143, 194, See also body
221, 237n2, 247, 274 patriarchy, 291
Fulkerson, Mary McClintock, 44n13,
198, 238n6. See also place;
D visceral
dangerous memories, xi, 104, 105,
236. See also metaphor; Metz,
Johann Baptist; Welch, Sharon G
disciplines. See also interdisciplinary; Ganzevoort, R.Ruard, 19n16, 28, 33,
transdisciplinary 37, 42n1, 43n7, 43n8, 45n25,
320 Index

211, 240n20. See also lived vulnerable communion, 272

religion; narrative theory wholeness, 156–63
Gerkin, Charles V. See also prophetic wound, 116, 159
pastoral care wounded healer, 164, 226, 233,
Christian servanthood, 116 242n35, 293n7
narrative image, 116 wounded pieces, 159
Graham, Larry Kent. See also Heimbrock, Hans-Günter, 37, 38,
prophetic pastoral care 40, 46n37, 47n46, 48n50,
structural power, 116 138n99. See also lived religion;
systemic analysis, 116 metaphor; poetics
Herman, Judith, 78, 86n28, 88,
120n2, 122n15, 135n73. See
H also trauma
healing. See also body; place; practices; homicide, vii, 7–9, 13, 17n1, 20n21,
trauma 53, 54, 62–4, 76, 82n2, 87, 97,
connection, 91, 103, 116, 161, 105, 106, 146, 157, 159, 162,
164, 165, 171, 180, 182, 197, 163, 166, 169, 171, 173,
199, 207, 211, 234, 270 187n33, 197, 201, 211, 215,
disability, 29, 272 216, 234, 239n11, 239n14,
disability theology or theory, 272 245n46, 260, 268. See also
functionality and efficacy, 165 trauma
God, 56, 119, 161, 211, 212 hooks, bell, 61, 83n11, 114, 184n11
holistic, 160, 161 liberatory practice, 61
integrative, 165
kaleidoscope, 42, 159
leadership role, 164, 228, 234 I
mediated grace, 273 immanence. See also body; Johnson,
movement, 157–9, 234, 283n11 Mark ; Lakoff, George;
normalizing, 160 transcendence
pieces, 158, 159, 182 energy, 38, 117, 118, 212, 259
regaining control, 160 God, 117
relational or relationships, 153, physicality, 212
182 intercultural, 16, 110–12, 114,
relational sustenance, 229 123n21, 195, 224, 229, 258,
scar, scar clan, scarred healer, 291, 261, 266, 269, 273, 274. See
293n7 also culture; metaphor;
shattering, 159 oppression; power analysis
sustaining, 187n33 han, 261
 Index 321

interdisciplinary. See also J

anthropology; lived religion; Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 86n30, 89,
social work; sociology; 120n3, 121n14, 122n15, 159.
transdisciplinary See also trauma
clinical, 5, 261, 262 Johnson, Mark, 28, 29, 36, 40, 41,
educational, 5, 55 42n4, 42n6, 49n54, 92, 117,
health, 5, 55, 260–2 138, 199, 220, 241n26. See
history, 40 also body; Lakoff, George;
human service, 16, 260–2 metaphor
nursing, 117–18 Jordan, Judith V., 126n35, 126n36,
pastoral, 5, 55, 260–2 135n74, 136n80, 138n94, 175,
philosophy, 30, 32 184n9, 185n17, 187n26,
psychology, 40 187n28, 189n43, 238n9,
religious, 94, 104 240n22, 281n4. See also
science, 41, 94 relational-cultural theory
interdisciplinary bridge tools, 41, 104.
See also interdisciplinary;
metaphor; transdisciplinary L
internal family systems theory (IFS). Lakoff, George. See also Johnson,
See also correlation; culture; Mark; metaphor
interdisciplinary; metaphor; imaginative empathic projection,
oppression; power analysis; 117, 220
spirituality immanent, 117, 199
cultural burden, 99 transcendent, 117
eight C’s of Self-Leadership, 119 language. See also correlation;
legacy burden, 98, 99 metaphor; poetics
multiplicity theory, 98, 134n72, enlanguaged, 11, 26, 30, 33, 91,
158, 159, 165, 175, 181 259, 272, 274
polarization, 221 han, 261
Schwartz, Richard C., 98, 212, linguistic, 40, 273
241n27 translation, 12
Self energy, 119 liberation health theory. See also
systems theory, 158, 159, 165, culture; oppression; power
175, 181 analysis
intersectionality, 286n27, 290, 291. client as subject rather than object,
See also border crossing; queer 115
intersectional, 2–4, 16, 275, 279, dominant ideological messages,
290, 291 115
322 Index

liberation health theory (cont.) evil, 31, 153, 210–28, 232–3, 235,
dominant worldview discourse, 236, 241n28, 244n44, 254,
145, 159 257, 271
rescuing the historical memory of forgiveness, 55, 149, 201, 225,
change, 115, 208 227, 231, 252, 269–71
triangulating the problem, 115 fullness of God’s peace, 57, 232,
limbic resonance, 95, 96, 223. See also 251
body; continuing bonds; God, 12, 25, 43n9, 56, 57, 72, 73,
trauma 93, 117–19, 138n99, 153, 154,
lived religion, 4–7, 10, 14, 15, 25–8, 161, 175, 201, 210–32,
31–4, 37–41, 91–5, 97, 99, 240n18, 244n41, 252, 270,
100, 102, 104, 105, 111, 116, xivn6
117, 143, 145, 171, 183, 197, han, 261
211, 230, 270, 277, 282n9. See imagination, xii, 15, 25, 27, 28,
also Ammerman, McGuire, 36, 41, 92, 100, 105, 130, 146,
Meredith, Nancy; Ganzevoort, 277
R.Ruard; Heimbrock, Hans- imaginative, 25, 26, 41, 195, 220
Günter; interdisciplinary; othering, 221
transdisciplinary polarization, 46n26, 221
religious liberal, ix, 66, 71–3, 78,
114, 165, 227, 241n28, 253
M sacred, 26, 204, 266, 275
material religion, 100, 104, 127n42, something more, 183, 225
127n43, 131n58, 146, theodicy, 88
185n19, 277. See also poetics; memorial buttons, 52, 63, 152, 168,
practices 171, 189n39, 215, 230, 236,
material art, 137n91 238n6. See also material
McFague, Sallie, 48n50. See also religion; poetics; practices
metaphor metaphor. See also correlation;
McGuire, Meredith, 38, 47n44, 102 interdisciplinary; Johnson,
meaning-making. See also healing; Mark; Lakoff, George;
Johnson, Mark; poetics; meaning-making; Panksepp,
practices; van der Kolk, Bessel Jack; poetics; transdisciplinary
calling, 21n27, 24, 29, 56, 57, 66, embodied cognitive and affective
76, 99, 110, 128n49, 130n55, root, 93
134n71, 171, 198, 211, 215, metaphoric, 16, 40, 41, 94, 95,
218, 231, 248, 252, 265, 267, 104, 105, 159, 214, 238n10,
290 260, 261
 Index 323

multivalent, 12, 41, 93, 104, 148, textual, 25, 26, 32, 91
214, 238n10 neuroaffective studies. See also body;
symbolic, 146 continuing bonds; Panksepp,
Metz, Johann Baptist, xi, 128n52. See Jack; visceral
also dangerous memories attachment studies, 95, 223
Meyer, Birgit. See also new materialists cognitive and affective spiritual
religious mediation, 277 experiences, 92, 93, 175, 212,
sensational form, 277 259, 282n9
Miller, Jean Baker, 112, 114, 126n35, empathic relationality, 117
130n57, 131n57, 135n73. See limbic resonance, 95, 96, 223
also feminism; power analysis; New Materialists, 275, 277. See also
relational-cultural theory material religion; Meyer, Birgit;
dominant and subordinate, 135 poetics
ministry Nhat Hanh, Thich, 93, 117, 124
church, 9, 152, 176, 178, 180, normativity, 29, 40, 46n28, 142–3,
198, 201–4, 210, 214, 217, 214, 247–8, 272, 274, 277. See
218, 234 also culture; oppression; power
clergy or clergyperson, ix, 9, 51, analysis
141, 202, 252, 280 normative, xxi, 33, 39–41, 120,
community ministry, xiiin3, 23, 142, 143, 157, 272, 275
121n8, 254
ministry of presence, 153–5
religious institutions, 16, 39, 172, O
176, 191n49, 221, 263–9 oppression. See also critical race
survivor ministries, 173, 202 theory; feminism;
trauma response ministry, 7–10, intersectionality; normativity;
180 power analysis
urban ministry, xii, 53 classism, 60, 261
colonialism, 27, 261, 276
historical structures, 6, 15, 41, 55,
N 90, 98, 117
narrative theory. See also body; LGBTQ, 289
meaning-making marginalization, 143
alternative story or stories, 113, microaggressions, 235
114, 145, 153, 156 patriarchy, 291
embodied hermeneutic, 25 racialized, 235
hermeneutic, 26, 28, 273 racism, 261
storytelling rights, 112 structural power, 98
324 Index

oppression (cont.) Lesson One Company, 144

whiteness, 195 Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, xi,
white supremacy, 31 6, 20n21, 194
memorial buttons, 63, 168, 170,
215, 230, 236
P mission, 9, 54–7, 144, 211, 236,
Panksepp, Jack, 94, 124n25 249
paradigm shifts, 258, 259, 276 Mothers Day Walk for Peace, 170,
Parker, Rebecca, 272 175, 230, 236, 252
pastoral, xi, xvn7, 5–7, 16, 18n15, orders of funeral services, 63, 100,
19n20, 20n21, 26, 29, 35, 38, 168–9
44n15, 48n50, 49n54, 55, 60, Peaceville, 150, 151, 263
64, 74, 76, 77, 79, 81, 93, 103, Peace Warriors, 9, 90, 167, 172,
104, 108, 110, 113, 116, 117, 259
121n13, 123n22, 125n29, Peacezone, 59, 83n7, 144, 250,
133n69, 133n70, 134n72, 262
137n92, 138n93, 138n99, 145, Peace Zones, 168, 249
150, 153–7, 159–2, 164, 165, safe boxes, 150
167, 168, 175, 176, 179–2, Sandplay or Sandtray Worldplay,
184n13, 186n21, 188n36, 195, 185n16
198–201, 204, 210, 215, 216, self-care, 166, 198, 261, 262
218, 220, 221, 226–8, 231–4, seven Principles of Peace, 57, 58,
236, 239n11, 239n16, 242n33, 231
242n35, 252, 253, 258–62, sibling groups, 63
273, 282n6, 282n9, 283n9, Survivor Leadership Academy, 60
283n11, 284n19, 285n20, survivor ministries, 202
293n7. See also practices Traveling memorial button
pastoral prophetic, 5 project, 170
Peace Institute. See also place; Tuesday Talks, 64, 90, 112
practices; Prothrow-Stith, peacemakers, 54, 144, 175, 195, 211
Deborah; public health peculiar, x, 63, 83n13, 160, 291. See
advocacy skills, 60, 145 also queer
emotional literacy, 145, 183n6 performative, xi, 29, 101, 105, 109,
healthy family, 199 119, 132n61, 146–8, 171, 230,
holistic engagement, 259 236
Holistic Healing Center, 64, 146, political performative, xi
161, 185n16, 187n33 permanent Public Memorial, 107
integrative learning, 263 phenomenology
 Index 325

phenomena, 37 spatial, 198

phenomenological, 8, 9, 12, 13, stability, 197, 200
26, 40, 114, 119, 122n19, 167, suburban, 250
176, 214, 274 urban, viii, 200, 250
phenomenon, xi, 11, 14, 31, 37, poetics. See also body; Chopp,
115, 119, 120n7, 127n41, 155, Rebecca S.; interdisciplinary;
167, 185n16, 230 material religion; metaphor
Pineda-Madrid, Nancy, 272, 273, material poetics, 107, 110, 273
285n21, 285n23 poetic images, 144–56
social-suffering hermeneutic, 273 poetic material art expressions, 144
Pink, Sarah, 20n21, 45n20, 124n23, religio/poetics, 104–8, 110, 132,
198, 237n5 146–8, 168, 171, 183, 188n34,
emplaced, 45n20 198, 202, 204, 206–8, 215,
place. See also Fulkerson, Mary 219, 224–7, 230, 239n14, 253,
McClintock; Pink, Sarah; space; 257, 258, 260, 275
spirituality religio/socio, 151
aura, 196–8, 215 socio/poetics, 104, 110, 132n65,
building, 67, 208, 249, 250, 265 146, 147, 168, 171, 185n19,
consistency, 197, 266 215
desecration, theo/poetics or theopoetics, 104,
embedded, 272 105, 109, 119, 128, 130n55,
emplaced, 272 130n57, 131n59, 132n59,
geographic or geography, 142 132n63, 171, 188n34
healing, 54, 55, 61, 106, 108, 153, power analysis. See also critical race
158, 160, 179, 196–9, 212, theory; feminism; normativity;
219, 226, 234 oppression
localization, 266 accountability, 79, 80, 279
peacefulness, 197 authorization, 209
pews, 207 colonialism, 27, 261, 276
postmodern place theory, 198 cultural hegemony, 113, 235
re-sacralize, 203 dominant culture, 235
sacralization, 196–202 economic privilege, 235
safety, 79, 109, 196, 197, 199, 200 funding, 268
sanctuary, 61, 67, 109, 179, 208, governance, 180, 209
219 han, 261
space, 67, 106, 109, 187n33, historical structures, 111
196–202, 208, 212, 215, 218, infrastructure, 80
230, 234, 261 institutionalized power, 4, 5
326 Index

power analysis (cont.) 161, 163, 168, 180, 194, 218,

interpersonal, 5 226, 229, 233, 258, 260–2
media, 110, 269 credibility, 233
normative or normativity, 39, 40, curtain, 66
142, 143, 272 ecumenical relationships, 180
perpetrators, 252 emergency preparedness, 81, 255,
power and privilege, 51, 98, 110, 268, 269
137n91, 143, 233–6 Go-Bag, 268
power differentials, 14, 61, Good Samaritan, 252
137n84 healthy family, 199
power relations, 26, 30, 34, 112, holy humor, 224, 225, 228, 257
229 interfaith relationships, 182
restorative justice, 252 kaleidoscope, 42, 159, 162, 200,
social-suffering hermeneutic, 273 232
sociocultural, 111, 113, 269 leadership role, 164, 228, 234
socioeconomic, 27, 98 logistics, 179
sociohistorical, 91, 259, 272, 274, material testimony, 109, 167, 215
291 memorial buttons, 152, 168, 171,
stakeholders, 52 189n39, 215, 230, 236
structures of power, 36, 38, 259, mindfulness, ix, 23, 119
272 ministry of presence, 155
whiteness, 143, 195 Mothers Day Walk for Peace, 175,
white supremacy, 4, 31, 248, 230, 236, 252
286n25 movement, xiiin5, 33, 100, 156,
practical theology, ix 157, 159, 160, 162, 180, 183,
practical theologian, x, 28 211, 213, 215, 234
practical theological, 237n3, normalcy, 163, 164, 219, 275
272–3 normalizing, 160
practices and rituals. See also bible; orders of funeral services, 100
Peace Institute; place; pastoral ear, 167
Tennessee Valley Unitarian pastoral prophetic, 5
Universalist Church peace curriculums, 54, 62, 144,
(TVUUC); Unitarian 145, 160
Universalist Trauma Response Peace Zones, 168, 258
Ministry (UUTRM) placeholder, 154
being church, 183, 234 plaque, 226
communal, 4, 5, 16, 26, 30, 33, power point, 67, 115
40, 88, 90, 100, 108, 144–6, public practices or rituals, ix
 Index 327

religious practices or rituals, viii, 5, Prothrow-Stith, Deborah, 1, 16n1,

14, 32, 228, 230 59, 82n1, 83n7, 83n8, 97,
restorative justice, 54, 64, 233, 126n33, 159, 183n3, 183n5,
252, 271 187n32, 251. See also public
sacred ambiguity, 181, 228, 253 health
sandplay, 100, 146, 150, 151, 168, psychoanalytic, 30, 38, 96, 97,
211, 213, 215, 230 124n29, 125n29, 134n72,
Sandtray Worldplay, 185n16 238n10, 287n31
sermons, 181, 225, 226 psychoanalysis, 112
servanthood, 116, 234 psychodynamic, 110
seven Principles of Peace, 57 public health, 2, 9, 11, 13, 19n17,
spiritual practices or rituals, ix, 4, 21n27, 59–62, 91, 96, 122n16,
6, 32, 33, 39, 40, 44n16, 66, 144, 162, 172, 235, 251, 263,
88, 144, 194, 222 269. See also Prothrow-Stith,
Standing on the Side of Love, 258 Deborah
survivor ministries, 202 public health model, 59, 60, 251
transforming pain and anger, 54–5 public policy, 5, 60, 64, 250
traveling button memorial project, public theology, xvn7, 44n15, 100,
170, 236 188n34, 228. See also testimony
yoga, 151 public theological, ix, 244n42
prophetic. See also practices
eschatological, 130, 148, 171, 218,
236 Q
prophet, 11, 12 queer. See also border crossing;
prophethood and priesthood, 154 intersectionality
prophetic social justice change, 161 queered, x
soteriological, 233 queerness, vii, 52, 290, 291
testimony, 69, 103–5, 119,
128n43, 128n49, 131n58,
136n77, 146, 149, 167, 171, R
198, 204, 207, 208, 253 relational-cultural theory (RCT). See
prophetic pastoral care, 7, 19n20, also interdisciplinary; Jordan,
116, 117, 121n13, 138n93, Judith V.; metaphor; Miller,
145, 150, 153, 161, 179, Jean Baker; spirit; spirituality;
183n1, 184n13, 218, 233, 236, Walker, Maureen
285n20. See also Gerkin, acute disconnection, 156
Charles V.; Graham, Larry authenticity, 200, 220
Kent; practices central relational paradox, 150
328 Index

relational-cultural theory (RCT) ordinary theology, 33, 47n48

(cont.) popular religion, 26, 32, 34, 38,
condemned isolation, 117, 174 40, 100, 127n42, 145
controlling images, 113, 114, Unitarian Universalist (UU) or
135n74 Unitarian Universalism, xivn6,
discrepant relational images, 113 xvn7, 6, 7
domination and subordination, resiliency
112 resilience, 155, 156, 188n35, 208,
five good things of connection, 116 226, 253, 257, 260
growth-fostering connection, 116 resilient, 166
mutual empathy, 174, 220 restorative justice, 54, 64, 233, 252,
mutual empowerment, 112, 117, 271
174 Reynolds, Thomas, 272, 285n20
mutuality, 112, 199, 258 vulnerable communion, 272,
radical respect, 150 285n20
relational images, 113, 116, 261
strategies of connection, 116
strategies of disconnection, 116 S
traumatic disconnection, 116, 117 Santino, Jack, xi, xviin12, 128n43,
religions 130n57, 132n61. See also
Buddhist or Buddhism, x, 93, 105, spontaneous shrines
119 Scarry, Elaine, 29, 43n10, 271,
Christian or Christianity, x, xi, 284n17. See also body;
xivn6, 7, 29, 33, 93, 102, 104, meaning-making; narrative
116, 117, 119, 127n42, 171, Schneiders, Sandra, 92, 123n20,
211, 224, 230, 231, 243n37, 123n21. See also metaphor
252, 270, 283n11, 283n33 secular, vii, ix, x, 6, 12, 13, 16, 23, 26,
folklorist or folk religion, xi, 26, 33, 57, 60, 79, 119, 131n59,
121n13 172, 175, 178, 212, 225, 236,
God, xivn6, 25, 34, 43n9, 48n50, 248, 252, 262–3, 266, 269,
93, 117, 119, 138n99, 211, 292
213, 214, 224, 227, 230, servitude, 56
243n37, 252, 270 Christian servant, 56
Hindu or Hinduism, 119, 247 social justice, ix, xvn7, 12, 34, 35,
humanist or humanism, x 55, 60, 66–8, 85n19, 103,
Jewish or Judaism, xi, 33, 93 136n77, 137n82, 137n85,
Methodist or Methodism, ix 149–51, 153, 161, 168, 171,
Muslim or Islam, 4 176, 184n8, 195, 201, 208,
 Index 329

219, 220, 232, 236, 243n37, aura, 196–8, 215

253, 254, 280 faith, ix, x, 4, 24, 40, 66, 88, 175,
social sciences, x, 11, 24, 40, 41, 182, 211–15, 240n18, 251,
43n9, 94 253, 283n10
social work, vii, ix, x, xiiin3, xiiin4, 7, revelation, 118
10, 11, 13, 20n21, 21n27, 23, salvation, 234, 276
25, 32, 33, 45n20, 46n26, 51, spiritual path, 24
52, 55, 60, 87, 96, 110, 114, spiritual tribe, 46n27, 89, 90, 92,
115, 137n85, 137n86, 141, 109, 112, 120n8, 121n8,
184n8, 188n37, 229, 248, 137n91, 153, 156, 182,
282n9, 283n13, 287n31. See 184n13, 198, 203, 208, 225,
also interdisciplinary; public 226, 234, 243n37, 253, 260,
health; transdisciplinary 262, 291. See also Ammerman,
clinical social work, 52, 229 Nancy
sociocultural sacred story, 89, 121n8, 208, 226,
socioeconomic, 98 234, 253
sociohistorical, viii, 91, 259, 274, spontaneous shrines, xi, xviin12,
291 130n57. See also Santino, Jack
sociologist, 33, 271 spontaneous street memorials, xi
sociology, 5, 31, 40, 46n31 suffering
space. See also place evil, 236, 241n28, 257
desecration, flesh, 217, 272
rededication, 67, 109, 202, 203, God, 44n16, 57, 161, 211, 217,
207 236, 241n28
re-sacralize, 203 spirit, 161, 211, 217
sacralization, 196 survivors
spirit. See also body; continuing Peace Warriors, 9, 90, 167, 172,
bonds; immanence; 189n41, 259
neuroaffective studies sibling groups, 63
embodied affective and cognitive, survivors as experts, 116, 141–92,
119, 212, 259 217, 234, 240n24, 258
metaphoric correlations, 33, 35,
93, 105, 117, 124n23, 125,
131n58, 159, 213, 238n10 T
translations for, 12 Tennessee Valley Unitarian
spirituality. See also body; healing; Universalist Church (TVUUC).
immanence; metaphor; place; See also practices; Unitarian
transcendence Universalist Association
330 Index

(UUA); Unitarian Universalist Tiffany, Daniel, 41, 48n52, 124n23.

Trauma Response Ministry See also interdisciplinary;
(UUTRM) metaphor
All Souls Day, 260 transcendence, 38, 117, 118, 131n58,
being church, 182, 183, 234 199, 259, 282n9, 285n21. See
building, 67, 68, 202, 204, 208 also body; immanence; Lakoff,
curtain, 66, 204, 239n14 George
God is love, 227 transdisciplinary, 6, 11, 16, 19n17,
ministry of presence, 153–5 21n27, 35, 42, 44n16, 45n21,
pastoral care office, 204 104, 105, 111, 258. See also
pastoral ear, 153, 154, 167 culture; interdisciplinary;
plaque, 70, 71, 115, 204, 206, metaphor; public health
208, 226 transformation
power point, 67, 115 transformative, 13, 26, 105, 143,
religious liberal, xvin9 145, 146, 149, 171, 173, 174,
sermons, 67, 181, 225–7 183, 184n13, 204, 271
Standing on the Side of Love, transforming, 18n10, 54, 55,
178 84n13, 88, 90, 144, 146, 150,
Welcoming Congregation, 69 184n13, 195, 283n13
testimony. See also narrative theory; trauma. See also body; continuing
prophetic; science; witness bonds; interdisciplinary;
confession or confessional, 104, meaning-making; poetics; van
180, 215, 253 der Kolk, Bessel; visceral
fierceness, 272 climate change, 32, 35, 275
material testimony, 69, 109, 167, cultural trauma, 25
208, 215 disassociation, 38, 87
public testimony, 64, 146, historical trauma, 91, 98, 122n16
167–83, 215, 257, 263 homicide, vii, 1, 7–9, 20n21, 54,
Ricouer, Paul, 104, 128n49 62–4, 76, 97, 105, 106, 146,
survivor testimonies, 176 157, 159, 162, 163, 166, 171,
Thandeka, 30, 45n19, 125n29, 173, 187n33, 197, 211, 260,
238n10 268
theological anthropology, 116. See limbic resonance, 95, 223
also Unitarian Universalist neuroaffective trauma studies, 91,
Association 273
Bellah, Robert, 271 neurophysiological, 242n32, 261
human nature, 125n29, 233 police violence, 2, 30
ontological individualism, 271 posttraumatic growth, 89
 Index 331

resilience, 155, 156, 188n35, 208, credibility, 76, 86n31, 154, 155,
226, 253, 257, 260 233
unsayability, 162 emergency preparedness, 81, 255,
vicarious growth, 89 268, 269
vicarious trauma, 261, 262 Go-Bag, 268
violence, viii, xii, 2–5, 8, 23, 26, Ground Zero or 9/11, 72
27, 30, 31, 54, 60–3, 84n13, holy humor, 224, 228, 231, 257
90, 106, 111, 135, 168, 171, ministry of presence, 153–5
174, 176, 191n50, 195, mission, 74–6
218–20, 232, 235, 254, 256, sacred ambiguity, 181, 228, 253–7
268, 269, 275, 284n19,
285n21, 291
violent trauma, viii, ix, xi, xii, 1–6, V
10, 14, 23, 25–8, 31, 34, 35, Van der Kolk, Bessel, 26, 27, 38,
37–42, 61, 78, 89, 94, 98, 104, 42n3, 47n43, 122n15, 122n17,
111, 120, 137n91, 153, 154, 127n38, 186n20, 274, 286n26
163, 174, 180, 195, 202, 208, Van der Port, Mattjis, 274, 286n28
220, 225, 226, 230, 232, 254, visceral. See also body; Fulkerson,
257, 259, 260, 266, 273, 291 Mary McClintock
enlivened, 147, 230
Lamothe, Ryan, 38
U limbic resonance, 95, 96, 223
Unitarian Universalist Association Van der Kolk, Bessel, 38
(UUA). See also covenantal
theology; theological
anthropology W
living tradition sources, xvin8 Walker, Maureen, 114, 136n81,
principles and purposes, 72 137n84, 281n4. See also power
Standing on the Side of Love, 178, analysis; relational-cultural
191n51 theory
Unitarian Universalist Trauma Welch, Sharon, xi, xviin12, 104,
Response Ministry (UUTRM). 128n52, 132n60, 245n48. See
See also practices; Tennessee also dangerous memories
Valley Unitarian Universalist White, Michael, 112. See also
Church (TVUUC); Unitarian narrative theory; power analysis
Universalist Association witness, xvn7, 10, 11, 39, 88, 104,
(UUA) 105, 109, 119, 128n43,
332 Index

131n57, 147–9, 153, 168, 171, 122n19, 123n19, 194, 195,

172, 176, 178, 188n37, 196, 198, 214, 221, 232, 235,
198, 206–8, 224, 230, 236, 247–87, 290–2
258, 271, 290, 292. See also worldviews, x, 10–13, 24, 25, 33, 35,
testimony 37, 41, 79, 94, 143, 237n1,
sacred witness, 148 244n44. See also body; culture;
worldsense, 91, 122. See also body; metaphor
culture; metaphor world/view, 91, 98, 99, 104, 105,
world/sense, 16, 21n26, 91, 98, 113, 119, 194, 195, 213, 214,
99, 104, 105, 113, 114, 119, 221, 232, 259, 274, 275