As we increasingly attend to the ongoing mental health crisis, the church must raise its awareness of both psychology and trauma. Certainly, a well-informed church can contribute to meaningful healing in these contexts. But the church has also, historically, been a significant factor in traumatization. Christian teaching itself has contributed to psychological wounding on many fronts, and the church will struggle to become fully trauma-informed until it examines this reality. This presentation will discuss the dynamic interplay that can arise between religious doctrine and traumatizing circumstances, in the hope that such awareness will enable wisdom, compassion, and repentance.

Samuel J. Youngs serves as an associate professor of Christian studies at Bryan College, adjunct professor of theology and church history at Richmont Graduate University, and the Dean of the Mission School of Ministry. He completed his PhD under Paul Janz and Oliver Davies at King’s College London. His first book, The Way of the Kenotic Christ, was a major English monograph on the Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, and he has published on inter-religious topics, theology and psychology, the thought of Martin Luther, the Old Saxon Heliand, natural theology, narrative pedagogy, kenosis, and staurology.