How Trauma Shapes Theology:
A Phenomenological Study of Sexual Assault
The number of women in the United States who have experienced sexual assault is concerningly high. As defined by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN): “sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim. Some forms of sexual assault include attempted or completed rape, fondling or unwanted sexual touching, forcing a victim to perform sexual acts.”[1] Studies estimate that as many as one in six women will have such an encounter[2] during her lifetime. Such an experience often leads to symptoms of trauma that impact a person’s ability to function normally in the daily activities of life.
Sexual assault impacts a person holistically. Different schools of study highlight particular ways a person may be traumatized by this experience. The bio-medical field emphasizes a list of quantifiable symptoms that describe the pathology that can follow a traumatic encounter. Building on this, the clinical field highlights ways that these symptoms manifest and cause difficulties for the traumatized person in the way that they experience relationships with other people, as well as the way it can rupture the way one thinks, makes sense of, and remembers what has been and what is. The challenge of living in the present with echoes of the past wreaking havoc in the individual’s life is of particular importance, which we understand in light of the heavy emphasis on the embodied aspect of trauma that many bring to light in the clinical realm.
In spite of the extensive writing on these varying emphases, there is a lack of noting the weight of the relational impact traumatic events have on a person’s relationship with God. Trauma theologians pick up to fill in this gap, using what has been constructed by those in the clinical realm. Overall, they give the most emphasis to the way traumatic encounters wound a person’s way of being in relationship, both with other people and with God. They also underline the way it shapes and changes the way a person thinks and believes. While they call attention to the way trauma happens to people in bodies and impacts those bodies, they do not draw out this detail as in depth as they do the relational and cognitive pieces.
What seems to be missing between the two is where my research focus shows up. It is around how one becomes shaped by her traumatic experience, particularly one that has occurred in and to her body? How does this change one’s sense of who one is? How does it change one’s sense of what it means to be with God / how is one’s way of being in relationship with God shaped by a traumatic experience? Beginning by exploring the lived experienced of remaining in a body that has been wounded by sexual assault and understanding how this affects the individual, what might it look like to then respond faithfully to that in a way that honors her whole self-cognitively, somatically, relationally, and theologically? What would a truly embodied theology look like taking these things into context? What has been viewed and considered primarily from a more general, systematic theological framework, even by practical theologians, has space to be studied from an embodied theological perspective. In the past decade, there has been a greater focus on the consideration of bodies and theology, particularly in the areas of women’s bodies, bodies that are disabled, and queer bodies. There remains, however, space to be filled in understanding the experiential knowing of living in a body that has been sexually assault, and the embodied theology that follows. How, then, with such understanding can the church respond more faithfully to this population?
Understanding the experience of living in a body that has endured trauma and how it impacts or changes a person’s way of being with God is the intended starting place for this work. The goal, on the whole, of this thesis is two-fold in actuality. The first aim is to bring theology more into the clinical arena, as an area that, as this chapter will demonstrate, is lacking when no space is made for considering how a person’s way of being in relationship with God is impacted by trauma. The second aim is to weigh in on current theologies trauma, contributing perhaps a different type of understanding and conceptualizing trauma theology.
Methodology:
This qualitative research study will be implemented using a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology. As Swinton and Mowat describe, qualitative research “assumes that human beings are by definition ‘interpretative creatures’, that the ways in which we make sense of the world and our experiences within it involved a constant process of interpretation and meaning-seeking. [It] assumes that the world is not simply ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered.”[3] In other words, the inner experience of the individual is as important as the external, verifiable information that can be discovered empirically. This particular approach has been chosen due to its focus on understanding what happens in the lives of the participants and what they feel is important about said experience.
Phenomenological research underlines the importance of the lived experience as the basis for how people find and create meaning. It “does not focus on generating theories or descriptions of why something occurred, rather to describe a phenomenon that occurs in the human story. Instead of trying to create a universal ‘truth’, this type of research offers “insight and understandings into the way that things are.”[4]Instead of exploring why things are the way that they are, it sets out to uncover what makes things what they are. In other words, it seeks out the essence of phenomena.
This particular type of research is ideal for my project due to a hope to explore, describe, and understand the ways in which believers live the experience of sexual assault (trauma), and to seek to find a response within a theological framework.
In order to gather participants, the researcher will share the research proposal, this document, and a brief description of the topic with various Christian therapists and pastors inviting them to share with any individuals they know that meet the criteria for the project. Interested individuals will be invited to contact the researcher via email or to have their therapist or pastor share the individual’s contact information with the researcher so that she can reach out via email to interested individuals. The researcher will also present a brief description of the research process and plans at the end of a women’s ministry gathering at a local church and invite anyone who is interested to take this information and consent form and contact the researcher by email (see below) to determine their fit for this study. Participants will be:
- Female
- 18 years or older
- Identify as Christian
- Identify as having experienced sexual assault
If you are curious about learning more about this research or are interested in participating, feel free to email Samantha at Samantha.G.Smith@gmail.com with subject of "Research."
[1] “Sexual Assault.” RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/articles/sexual-assault.
[2] “Scope of the Problem: Statistics.” RAINN, n.d. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem.
[3] Swinton, John, and Harriet Mowat. Practical Theology and Qualitative Research. London: SCM Press, 2016, 28.
[4] Swinton and Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research, 107.