Trauma Informed Care & Ministry

Unit 2 offers a sustained framework for reading Scripture through a trauma-informed lens — starting with the theological and pastoral motivations behind the method, then a close-reading practice for identifying traumatic events, responses, and signs of reconciliation in the text. You'll trace this lens across the Hebrew Bible's histories of violence, war, sexual exploitation, displacement, and generational family fracture, then follow the arc into the New Testament — trauma in the incarnation, Jesus's ministry, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the experience of the post-traumatic apostle.

Unit 3 turns to trust itself — how it forms developmentally, how communities become a foundation for it, and what happens to a person's assumptive world when trust is broken. You'll work through Feltman's dimensions of trust, the science of trauma in the body, and why boundary violations happen, before turning toward repair: forgiveness, coping skills, and a theological anthropology grounded in the Imago Dei. The unit closes by considering how a pluralistic world of faith traditions can still lead people back toward trust.