This book examines the dilemmas and contributions of African American women struggling with Eurocentric disciplines, students, faculty and administrators in predominantly white institutions.

Trauma theology remains a rapidly growing field, considering as it does the impact that embodied experiences of trauma have on theological discourse. In this book, leading trauma theologian Karen O’Donnell turns her attention to the impact that trauma has on spiritual practice, and considers the ways that trauma might require a wholesale reimagining of spiritual practice into something more suitable and sustaining for trauma survivors.

This writing is not meant to replace any legitimate doctors care, and you are free to share this information with any professional that you feel has not been so energetically affected by alien spirit to where their judgment would be too compromised to benefit you. Surely a doctor can find even more possibilities other than what I have found helpful to work with consistency in this writing; otherwise, this writing could prove to be a beneficial supplemental aid to the unusual energetic alien operations happening among us and hopefully help bring more of a balanced (or removal to any imbalanced) energy trying to engage you with the ability to ritually cause sickness and/or disease.

Unspeakable probes the relationship between trauma theory and Christian theology in order to support preachers in the task of crafting sermons that adequately respond to trauma in the pews and the world at large. How might sermons contribute to resiliency and the repairing of wounds caused by traumatic experiences? This book seeks to provide a theological lens for preachers who wonder how their ‘beautiful words’ can address suffering amid traumatic wounding. Preaching is a healing discourse that proclaims gospel, or good news. Gospel is a complicated reality, especially in the face of trauma. Drawing on various theologies and insights from trauma theory, Unspeakable challenges the notion of a triumphant gospel, seeking an in-between perspective that honors both resurrection and the trauma that remains despite our desire to get to the good news. It builds on images of the preacher as witness and midwife in order to develop homiletical practices that acknowledge the limitations of language and imagination experienced by traumatized individuals.

The powers of death are closer than we thought. Their perils appear in the forms of increased gun violence, racism, economic disparity, and global warming, to name but a few. Faced with these threats, Christians in this self-absorbed culture tend to use their faith as a kind of palliative comfort that protects them from the truths of what these powers are doing to us as a human community, and the sufferings they are inflicting on others, particularly the poor and the disenfranchised. Moreover, it is used to shield them from responding to the gospel’s call to leave survival for vocation. Using Luther’s theology of the cross and the instruction he imparts in his Large Catechism, this book asserts that in the face of the sufferings in which we are situated, the gospel news of Jesus’s resurrection is a call to stand in its hope and power to resist these devastations and the dehumanization, exploitation, and domination they inflict. The hope of God’s life-giving creativity in the face of the powers of death is given witness when Christians leave survival modes of existence to be in their baptismal vocation of loving neighbors as themselves.