As awareness of the widespread presence of trauma grows, popular culture can name everything stressful "traumatic." Yet, diagnostic definitions of trauma overlook cultural understandings that refine our conceptualization of trauma. M. Jan Holton and Jill L. Snodgrass argue for a theory and theology of trauma to navigate such complexities.
In Reframing Trauma, Holton and Snodgrass compile essays that expand our understanding of trauma as a stress-trauma continuum. The volume engages the challenges of racism, eco-violence, and myriad sociopolitical and interpersonal injustices that injure individuals, communities, and the globe. Each essay is grounded in a strength-based approach to trauma and contextualizes our societal negativity bias within spiritual values of hope, growth, and resilience. Meanwhile, the understanding of a trauma-stress continuum avoids diminishing the suffering that emerges from stress and trauma of all kinds.
Holton and Snodgrass also offer a reframed theology of trauma. The volume mines Christian theology and wisdom from other faith traditions for insight into interpersonal and communal woundedness that, paradoxically, both expands and narrows our understandings of trauma. This exploration helps identify implications for spiritually integrated care and counseling, chaplaincy, and pastoral education.
The result is a groundbreaking understanding of stress and trauma as an ever-evolving concept that is imbued with theological and spiritual wisdom. Such wisdom eschews the limitations of Western understandings of trauma. This wisdom offers insight into how stressful and traumatic experiences can be both life-limiting and life-giving, both despair-inducing and the impetus for growth and resilience.
Reframing Trauma will engage educators in pastoral and practical theology, spirituality, and psychology; care practitioners in congregational and healthcare settings; and clinical mental health professionals who offer spiritually integrated care. Likewise, trained Christian laity will find the book an invaluable resource for cultivating an inclusive and meaningful understanding of trauma in their congregational caregiving.
M. Jan Holton is associate professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Care at Duke University Divinity School. Her work focuses on the psychodynamic implications of trauma and forced displacement, the intercultural dynamics within pastoral care, and pastoral care to marginalized populations. She is the author of two books, Longing for Home and Building the Resilient Community, as well as various articles.
|Rev. Jill L. Snodgrass is professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland. She is a pastoral-practical theologian, scholar-activist, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Her research focuses on spiritual care and counseling with traditionally marginalized populations. She recently coauthored Moral Injury After Abortion: Exploring the Psychospiritual Impact on Catholic Women (Routledge, 2023), and her book Liminality is expected to be published by Fortress Press in 2025.
Introduction - Psychospiritual Understandings of Stress and Trauma
Chapter 1 - Psychospirituality and Trauma: Theory and Theology, M. Jan Holton, Ph.D. and Jill L. Snodgrass
Chapter 2 - Womanist Psychospirituality: Gendering and Racializing Trauma and Resilience, Jessica Chapman Lape
Chapter 3 - Psychospiritual Trauma of LGBTQ+ Communities: Depathologizing Lived Experiences, Keith A. Menhinick and Rev. Cody J. Sanders
Chapter 4 - Ontological Psychospirituality: The Stress and Trauma of Other Species, Ryan LaMothe
Chapter 5 - Psychospiritual Stress, Trauma, and Migration: Understandings for Displaced Communities, Eunil David Cho
Chapter 6 - Psychospirituality and Genocidal Rape: Trauma and Post-Traumatic Growth in Victim-Survivors, Nazila Isgandarova
Chapter 7 - Psychospirituality and Historical Trauma: The Spectral Call, Hee-Kyu Heidi Park
Chapter 8 - Buddhist Psychospirituality of Trauma: A Critical Correlation of Vipassana Meditation and Somatic Experiencing, John Freese
Chapter 9 - A Reframed Psychospirituality of Stress and Trauma: Honoring the Complexity of Lived Experience
Conclusion: Moving from Theory to Practice
"The strength of this volume lies in its insistence on the vitality of diverse communities responding to trauma. The authors resist the pathologizing narratives often associated with trauma, powerfully advocating for communities that are frequently overlooked in trauma literature. These unique essays showcase pastoral theologians as attentive educators and advocates for healing justice. Serving as a model for intercultural literacy, they make excellent additions to a variety of theological courses." --Shelly Rambo, associate professor of theology, Boston University
"Reframing Trauma is a deeply thoughtful and compassionate exploration of how we understand and experience trauma. M. Jan Holton and Jill L. Snodgrass invite us to see suffering through a psychospiritual lens, offering insight and genuine hope for healing and growth. This book speaks to the heart and mind and is a must-read for those seeking to navigate the complexities of human distress with grace and wisdom." --John Swinton, professor in practical theology and pastoral care, School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, King's College University of Aberdeen
"While I have long been skeptical of superficial applications of the concept of post-traumatic growth, I find in this book a sophisticated understanding of the coexistence of traumatic suffering with resilience. From a psychoanalytic perspective, I appreciate this as a move from unconscious splitting to greater possibilities for wholeness. By widening the lens in this approach to trauma beyond a purely medicalized conception, and beyond Western and Christian notions of trauma and healing, the authors offer an expanded and more contextualized understanding of how persons navigate both trauma and healing. By framing stress and trauma as a continuum, this volume invites readers to expand their thinking about how to address trauma, with implications for practice, in a world where global injustice and climate crisis have created a baseline of existential anxiety for us all." --Pamela Cooper-White, Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor Emerita of Psychology and Religion, and dean and vice president emerita for academic affairs, Union Theological Seminary
