How Can We Make Churches More Trauma-Informed? Start with These 6 Principles
To make churches safe for all, including people who have experienced previous harm in religious spaces, faith communities need a deep understanding of the concept of trauma and how best to serve people who have suffered traumatic wounds.
“We know statistically that in the United States alone, about 70 percent of people say that they have experienced an event that could be traumatic,” explains Pete Singer, executive director of GRACE, or Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, which helps Christian churches and other organizations “recognize, prevent, and respond to abuse.”
Singer, a social worker and mental health professional, wrote a recent article called “Toward a More Trauma-Informed Church: Equipping Faith Communities to Prevent and Respond to Abuse,” and spoke with us about principles that he encourages all churches to adopt to support those who have experienced trauma of any type.
In his article, Singer describes trauma as “an event that overwhelms the normal human capacity to adapt or cope.” Faith communities have a particular obligation to acknowledge traumatic wounds because “Christianity is a faith that grows out of trauma,” he says.
“The Old Testament is filled with story after story after story of trauma, whether it’s sexual assault, spiritual abuse, clergy sexual abuse, war, famine, assault,” Singer explains. “All of these are in the Old Testament, and then we get to the New Testament … and we see Jesus Christ, our savior, crucified on a cross. If that’s not trauma, I don’t know what is. When something is woven that deeply through scripture, we cannot as a church ignore it.”
Given the widespread experience of trauma, Singer suggests that church leaders approach all people who pass through their doors as if they have experienced trauma. This type of care “does not hurt,” Singer says, “and in fact it may significantly help.”
The 3 E’s of Caring for People After Trauma
Pete Singer, executive director of GRACE
Singer begins with a description of trauma from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), based on three Es. Trauma “results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening, and that has lasting effects on the person’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
To illustrate the three Es, Singer uses an example from his personal life, a time several years ago when he was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer. His church community could not prevent this traumatic event, but they worked to soften the family’s experience of the trauma, hoping to lessen its effect on their lives. This involved steps like anointing Singer with oil and praying with him and his family. Parishioners provided support by helping with childcare and laundry, preparing meals for the family, and making financial gifts that covered their bills while Singer was undergoing treatment and unable to work. “Our church made sure that our experience of the event was an experience of being surrounded by love by people who loved us as people but also as representatives of Christ,” he recalls.
Singer stresses that church communities are often better at traumas like cancer than they are with the wounds of sexual abuse. “It’s somehow harder for people to take these steps in cases of abuse,” he says. Yet he encourages faith communities to approach these wounds with the same care.
He draws his advice for churches from SAMHSA’s six principles for trauma-informed practice, each of which is supported by scientific research and scripture. Throughout his journal article, Singer cites Bible verses that illustrate the importance of these practices. Here we offer a summary of these six principles.
Principle 1 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Safety
Faith communities must make an effort to keep everyone physically safe. But they are also responsible for keeping people emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually safe as well. Singer gives the example of a young boy he once worked with in therapy, who had experienced tremendous trauma. He was only 12 years old but was already thinking about his own death, and thought God would not welcome him into heaven. “ At 12, he’s already decided that God won’t like him, that he’s a nuisance to God,” Singer remembers. “These are deep spiritual wounds, and safety involves preventing and taking care of those wounds.”
Principle 2 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Trustworthiness and Transparency
People in faith communities should work to be “worthy of trust,” Singer says. But building trust can take time, especially if a person has experienced trauma that has taught them that the world is not a good place. He encourages leaders to avoid judging survivors’ behavior, including the emotions or doubts they may express. Trust-building behaviors include compassionate listening, treating a person’s story with care, and being consistent and reliable. For example, Singer advises faith leaders to be careful in following through and doing what they say they will do, and in explaining what will happen with any information that is shared. It’s also important for faith leaders to explain what they can and cannot do and what next steps they will take.
The transparency part may involve sharing clear and accurate information with the wider faith community, if, for example, a leader has perpetrated abuse. “Remember that it’s not just about what is shared, but when and how it is shared,” Singer says. This news is likely to spur difficult feelings, but sharing the information carefully and thoughtfully may help the community start to heal. “When people see trustworthiness and transparency,” he says, “it can give rise to hope.”
Principle 3 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Peer Support
When someone is suffering from a traumatic event, it may help to ensure that their basic needs are met, Singer says. He points to the ways the people at his church generously helped his family with childcare and laundry after his cancer diagnosis. But he acknowledges that survivors may not want this kind of help from a church community. And such support may not be available.
“It’s very possible that a church is not going to have the capacity to meet all of the basic needs of all of the people who have experienced trauma,” he says. “In that case it’s very important that the church knows partners in the area.” This may involve maintaining connections to local organizations including social service agencies, domestic violence shelters, and centers that provide food, childcare, or mental health support.
It also helps to connect the person who was harmed with support groups so they can meet others with similar experiences. (For example, Awake offers Survivor Circles and other support programs to help victim-survivors of abuse.) “Shared experience is so powerful,” Singer says. It can be validating and healing to spend time with others who have first-hand knowledge of these wounds. Still, Singer cautions faith leaders that “this doesn’t mean that if you don’t have the shared experience you’re off the hook.”
He also stresses that faith leaders can set the tone in their communities by encouraging open, honest conversation about topics such as abuse. Honesty can help promote support for people who are suffering.
Principle 4 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Collaboration and Mutuality
It’s essential that people and organizations work together to help people who have been harmed. “No one person, no one organization can meet all the needs by themselves,” Singer says. “It really does take a large group of people coming together to be a whole support network.” For example, church leaders need a list of skilled mental health professionals that they can refer to if a survivor shares that they are depressed or suicidal as a result of their trauma. Pastors may need the counsel of others in the parish community, as well as experts outside of the Church in times of crisis. And it can help for parish leaders to connect with the leaders of other parishes or faith communities that have dealt with similar situations.
Principle 5 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Empowerment, Voice, and Choice
“Trauma is by its very nature disempowering and silencing,” Singer says, noting that survivors did not choose to be harmed. “So our role should be to walk alongside them as they take back some of the power and voice that has been taken from them,” he adds. This means avoiding efforts to force actions on survivors, such as asking them to forgive their abuser or urging them to meet with that person.
It also helps to acknowledge a survivor’s strengths, to ask for survivor input in safeguarding initiatives, and to promote humility as a value among community leaders. Priests and pastors might also consider preaching about power and how power imbalance plays a role in abuse, Singer says.
Principle 6 of Trauma-Informed Practice: Historical, Cultural, and Gender Factors
Singer encourages faith leaders to consider the role that history, culture, and gender may play in influencing a person’s experience of trauma. “We really need the humility to recognize, ‘I’m white. I don’t understand a lot of these other experiences,” he says. “Or I’m male. I don’t know what it means to be female. Or I’m heterosexual, I don’t understand what it means to not be this.”
He recommends that leaders educate themselves about groups whose experiences are different from theirs, but notes that it’s also important to listen closely to the ways each individual experiences their culture, rather than assuming that all people from a particular group have the same perspective.
Singer hopes that faith communities learn to make trauma-sensitivity a permanent part of church culture. This involves making these concepts part of seminary training for priests, deacons, and other ministers, covering concepts related to trauma and power in sermons and homilies, and incorporating these ideas in age-appropriate ways in religious education. Faith leaders have to be trained with particular care: “They have a special responsibility to be watchful for a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he says.
“We also have to recognize that it’s not just the leaders that are responsible for implementing these principles, and for caring for people who have been hurt,” Singer adds. “We’re all responsible.”
—Erin O’Donnell, Editor, Awake Blog
