Toward A Theology Of Psychological Disorder

How do Christians in the twenty-first century understand psychological disorders? What does Scripture have to teach us about these conditions? Marcia Webb examines attitudes about psychological disorder in the church today, and compares them to the scriptural testimony. She offers theological and psychological insights to help contemporary Christians integrate biblical perspectives with current scientific knowledge about mental illness.

How do Christians in the twenty-first century understand psychological disorders? What does Scripture have to teach us about these conditions? Marcia Webb examines attitudes about psychological disorder in the church today, and compares them to the scriptural testimony. She offers theological and psychological insights to help contemporary Christians integrate biblical perspectives with current scientific knowledge about mental illness.

Is it possible to develop such a thing as a biblical theology of mental health? How might we develop a helpful and pastoral use of scripture to explore questions of mental health within a Christian framework? This timely and important book integrates the highest levels of biblical scholarship with theological and pastoral concerns to consider how we use scripture when dealing with mental health issues.

The intention of Trauma Sensitive Theology is to help theologians, professors, clergy, spiritual care givers, and therapists speak well of God and faith without further wounding survivors of trauma. It explores the nature of traumatic exposure, response, processing, and recovery and its impact on constructive theology and pastoral leadership and care. Through the lenses of contemporary traumatology, somatics, and the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, the text offers a framework for seeing trauma and its impact in the lives of individuals, communities, society, and within our own sacred texts. It argues that care of traumatic wounding must include all dimensions of the human person, including our spiritual practices, religious rituals and community participation, and theological thinking. As such, clergy and spiritual care professionals have an important role to play in the recovery of traumatic wounding and fostering of resiliency. This book explores how trauma-informed congregational leaders can facilitate resiliency and offers one way of thinking theologically in response to traumatizing abuses of relational power and our resources for restoration.

People living with mental health challenges are not excluded from God’s love or even the fullness of life promised by Jesus. Unfortunately, this hope is often lost amid the well-meaning labels and medical treatments that dominate the mental health field today. In Finding Jesus in the Storm, John Swinton makes the case for reclaiming that hope by changing the way we talk about mental health and remembering that, above all, people are people, regardless of how unconventionally they experience life. Finding Jesus in the Storm is a call for the church to be an epicenter of compassion for those experiencing depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and related difficulties. That means breaking free of the assumptions that often accompany these diagnoses, allowing for the possibility that people living within unconventional states of mental health might experience God in unique ways that are real and perhaps even revelatory. In each chapter, Swinton gives voice to those experiencing the mental health challenges in question, so readers can see firsthand what God’s healing looks like in a variety of circumstances. The result is a book about people instead of symptoms, description instead of diagnosis, and lifegiving hope for everyone in the midst of the storm.

Overcome with mental anguish, Monica A. Coleman's great-grandfather had his two young sons pull the chair out from beneath him when he hanged himself. That noose remained tied to a rafter in the shed, where it hung above the heads of his eight children who played there for years to come. As it had for generations before her, a heaviness hung over Monica throughout her young life. As an adult, this rising star in the academy saw career successes often fueled by the modulated highs of undiagnosed Bipolar II Disorder, as she hid deep depression that even her doctors skimmed past in disbelief. Serendipitous encounters with Black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Angela Davis, and Renita Weems were countered by long nights of stark loneliness. Only as Coleman began to face her illness was she able to live honestly and faithfully in the world. And in the process, she discovered a new and liberating vision of God. Written in crackling prose, Monica's spiritual autobiography examines her long dance with trauma, depression, and the threat of death in light of the legacies of slavery, war, sharecropping, poverty, and alcoholism that masked her family history of mental illness for generations.

Mental illness is often misunderstood; Christians with mental illness even more so. Various myths and erroneous mindsets often hinder the Gospel Community from being effective in supporting those with mental illness. This book speaks to and sheds light on mental illness in three ways. Following a theological overview from Leow Wen Pin, it first presents stories from Christians who have mental illness. Their honest accounts provide a glimpse into the realities of their suffering, the words that have helped them (and the ones that haven’t), and the glimmer of hope that they find in Christ. Second, it offers testimonies from those who are caregivers of loved ones with mental illness. Their words give insight into the realities of their journey, the real questions they have for God, and, mostly, the heart that they have for those they are caring for. Third, it provides perspectives from pastors who have either struggled with mental illness or who are actively providing life-giving communities in their churches for those who do. Their practical and loving advice offers stepping stones that can guide the Gospel community into becoming a safe place for those with mental illness. This nuanced book is a necessary read for anyone who wants to catch God’s heart for the mentally ill.

In this book Johnny Bernard Hill argues that prophetic rage, or righteous anger, is a necessary response to our present culture of imperialism and nihilism. The most powerful way to resist meaninglessness, he says, is refusing to accept the realities of structural injustice, such as poverty, escalating militarism, genocide, and housing discrimination. Hill s Prophetic Rage is interdisciplinary, integrating art, music, and literature with theology. It is constructive, passionate, and provocative. Hill weaves through a myriad of creative and prophetic voices of protest -- from Jesus to W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and President Barack Obama -- as well as multiple approaches, including liberation theology and black religion, to reflect theologically on the nature of liberation, justice, and hope on contemporary culture.

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Dust in the Blood considers the harrowing realities of life with depression from a Christian theological perspective. In conversation with popular Christian theologies of depression that justify why this suffering exists and prescribe how people ought to relate to it, Coblentz offers another Christian approach to this condition: she reflects on depression as a wilderness experience. Weaving first-person narratives of depression, contemporary theologies of suffering, and ancient biblical tales of the wilderness, especially the story of Hagar, Coblentz argues for and contributes to an expansion of Christian ideas about what depression is, how God relates to it, and how Christians should understand and respond to depression in turn.