Faith and Fracture: Trauma and Religion in Intersectional Dialogue

Dear Colleagues,

Trauma is pervasive in many cultures. This is unsurprising when one considers individual and collective experiences in the last quarter of a century, as well as the centuries before. 9/11, the COVID pandemic, catastrophic climate crisis, mass extinctions, and ever more fractious societies place trauma squarely in the centre of modern life, including religion. Much of the work on trauma and religion has been undertaken in a white, north-Atlantic-centric context in which particular types of trauma and responses have been foregrounded. This has helped enrich understanding of lived experience, though more work needs to be done. Additionally, there is significant need for work in trauma and religion that attends to the realities of decolonisation and the imperatives of intersectionality.

We are pleased to announce this Special Issue, “Faith and Fracture: Trauma and Religion in Intersectional Dialogue”, which seeks original contributions that move contemporary debates in the field forward and seek to propose nuanced and meaningful understandings of the intersection of trauma and religion. We understand ‘religion’ as broadly construed, including both formal organised religions and less formalised patterns of faith, as well as individual spiritual practices, personal belief systems, and non-institutionalized forms of religiostity. This encompasses a wide range of experiences and expressions, from communal worship and traditional rituals to personal meditative practices, nature-based spirituality, and other individualized paths that seek to connect with the transcendent or the divine. We particularly welcome contributions that develop discourse in trauma and religion from the perspective of indigenous, (formerly) colonized, and global majority contexts. Approaches may include ethnographies, theologies, engagement with holy texts, ritual studies, phenomenologies, social sciences, and psychological contribution. We seek to offer advancing responses to basic questions as well as more critical approaches related to questions such these: How are trauma and religion connected? What role does religion play in both causing trauma and in providing pathways for remaking after traumas? Is religion a cause of trauma? Can it provide a context for undertaking post-traumatic remaking? Is trauma inherent in faith? Can holy texts be read as trauma literature? These, and many more questions, are under examination in this Special Issue.

References

Ganzevoort, R. Ruard, and Srdjan Sremac. Trauma and Lived Religion: Transcending the Ordinary. Springer, 2018.

Petersen, Brooke N. Religious Trauma: Queer Stories in Estrangement and Return. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.

O’Donnell, Karen, and Katie Cross, eds. Bearing Witness: Intersectional Perspectives on Trauma Theology. SCM Press, 2022.

O’Donnell, Karen, and Katie Cross, eds. Feminist Trauma Theologies: Body, Scripture, and Church in Critical Perspective. London: SCM Press, 2020.

Arel, Stephanie N., and Shelly Rambo, eds. Post-Traumatic Public Theology. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Kim, Alice. A Theology of Traumatic Affect: A Political and Religious Engagement. Lexington Books, 2024.

Boase, Elizabeth, and Christopher G. Frechette, eds. Bible Through the Lens of Trauma. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016.

Craps, Stef. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Springer, 2013

Dr. Karen O'Donnell
Dr. Danielle Tumminio Hansen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• trauma
• religion
• faith
• violence
• sacred texts
• spirituality