Rambo draws on contemporary studies in trauma to rethink a central claim of the Christian faith: that new life arises from death. Reexamining the narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the middle day-liturgically named as Holy Saturday-she seeks a theology that addresses the experience of living in the aftermath of trauma. Through a reinterpretation of "remaining" in the Johannine Gospel, she proposes a new theology of the Spirit that challenges traditional conceptions of redemption. Offered, in its place, is a vision of the Spirit's witness from within the depths of human suffering to the persistence of divine love.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. The book, which features profiles of working chaplains, positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. The book, which features profiles of working chaplains, positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. Featuring profiles of working chaplains, the book positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

The Gospel of John's account of doubting Thomas is often told as a lesson about the veracity and triumph of Christian faith. And yet it is a story about wounds. Interpretations of this Gospel narrative, by focusing on Christ's victory in the resurrection, reflect Christianity's unease with the wounds that remain on the body of the risen Jesus. By returning readers to this familiar passage, Resurrecting Wounds expands the scope of the Upper Room to the present world where wounds mark all of humanity.Shelly Rambo rereads the Thomas story and the history of its interpretation through the lens of trauma studies to reflect on the ways that the wounds of race, gender, and war persist. Wounds do not simply go away, even though a close reading of John Calvin reveals his theological investments in removing wounds. This erasure reflects a dominant mode of Christian thinking, but it is not the only Christian reading. By contrast, Macrina's scar, in Gregory of Nyssa's account of her life and death, displays how resurrection can be inscribed in wounds, particularly in the illumination of her body after her death. The scar, produced in and through a mother's touch, recalls a healing, linking resurrection to the work of tending wounds. Much like Christ's wounds and Macrina's scar, racial wounds can be found on the skin of America's collective life. The wounds of racial histories, unhealed, resurface again and again. The wounds of war persist as well, despite a cultural calculus that links the suffering of a soldier with that of Christ. Again, the visceral display of Jesus' wounds, when placed at the center of Thomas' encounter in the Upper Room, enacts a vision of resurrecting that addresses the real harm of the real wounds of war.The powerful Upper Room images of resurrection - encounters with wounds, the invitation to touch, and the formation of a community - present visions of truth-telling and of healing that grapple with the pressing questions of wounds surfacing in the midst of human encounters with violence, suffering, and trauma. While traditional accounts of resurrection in Christian theology have focused on the afterlife, this book forges a theology of resurrection wounds in the afterliving. By returning again and again to Christ's woundedness, we discover ways to live with our own.

Offering a theology of accompaniment grounded in the lived wisdom of chaplainsChaplains meet people at the most difficult thresholds of life. In hospitals, universities, prisons, and other public settings, they accompany those facing grief, trauma, illness, uncertainty, and loss. Their work rarely offers easy explanations. Instead, it depends on attention and a commitment to remain present when suffering cannot be fixed.In Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea, Shelly Rambo turns to the work of contemporary chaplains to reconsider a central theological question: How is God present to us in the midst of pain? Rambo places the narratives of chaplains in conversation with Christian scripture and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Howard Thurman, showing how theologizing the divine from sites of care yields new ways of thinking about divine presence and the importance of spiritual accompaniment. Rather than locating the divine in dramatic intervention or certainty, Rambo finds theological meaning in the rich imagery of ancient and contemporary chaplains, pointing to, and beyond, theologies of care to depict a theology of spiritual survival and the spiritual conditioning needed to withstand collective trauma. In contrast to views of divine control and rescue, Rambo unearths images of divine laboring, brooding, and nourishing, visible to those who insist on staying in close proximity to suffering. She offers a radical corrective to long-established threads of Christian theology and resists religious platitudes and cultural pressures to cure or explain suffering.Drawing on accounts from chaplains across religious traditions and institutional settings, she shows how their meaning-making practices become a prism for reshaping theology, opening it to spiritual wisdom that emerges through encounter, vulnerability, and public care. The book celebrates the pluralistic character of chaplaincy, names the challenges chaplains face in doing this work, and reveals the power of drawing from one’s own spiritual inheritances while remaining responsive to the beliefs, doubts, and needs of others. Written for readers in theology, religion, chaplaincy studies, pastoral care, and trauma studies, Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea speaks to practitioners as well as anyone asking how faith might meet suffering with honesty, compassion, and endurance.

Offering a theology of accompaniment grounded in the lived wisdom of chaplainsChaplains meet people at the most difficult thresholds of life. In hospitals, universities, prisons, and other public settings, they accompany those facing grief, trauma, illness, uncertainty, and loss. Their work rarely offers easy explanations. Instead, it depends on attention and a commitment to remain present when suffering cannot be fixed.In Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea, Shelly Rambo turns to the work of contemporary chaplains to reconsider a central theological question: How is God present to us in the midst of pain? Rambo places the narratives of chaplains in conversation with Christian scripture and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Howard Thurman, showing how theologizing the divine from sites of care yields new ways of thinking about divine presence and the importance of spiritual accompaniment. Rather than locating the divine in dramatic intervention or certainty, Rambo finds theological meaning in the rich imagery of ancient and contemporary chaplains, pointing to, and beyond, theologies of care to depict a theology of spiritual survival and the spiritual conditioning needed to withstand collective trauma. In contrast to views of divine control and rescue, Rambo unearths images of divine laboring, brooding, and nourishing, visible to those who insist on staying in close proximity to suffering. She offers a radical corrective to long-established threads of Christian theology and resists religious platitudes and cultural pressures to cure or explain suffering.Drawing on accounts from chaplains across religious traditions and institutional settings, she shows how their meaning-making practices become a prism for reshaping theology, opening it to spiritual wisdom that emerges through encounter, vulnerability, and public care. The book celebrates the pluralistic character of chaplaincy, names the challenges chaplains face in doing this work, and reveals the power of drawing from one’s own spiritual inheritances while remaining responsive to the beliefs, doubts, and needs of others. Written for readers in theology, religion, chaplaincy studies, pastoral care, and trauma studies, Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea speaks to practitioners as well as anyone asking how faith might meet suffering with honesty, compassion, and endurance.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. Featuring profiles of working chaplains, the book positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

Rambo draws on contemporary studies in trauma to rethink a central claim of the Christian faith: that new life arises from death. Reexamining the narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the middle day-liturgically named as Holy Saturday-she seeks a theology that addresses the experience of living in the aftermath of trauma. Through a reinterpretation of "remaining" in the Johannine Gospel, she proposes a new theology of the Spirit that challenges traditional conceptions of redemption. Offered, in its place, is a vision of the Spirit's witness from within the depths of human suffering to the persistence of divine love.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. The book, which features profiles of working chaplains, positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. The book, which features profiles of working chaplains, positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. Featuring profiles of working chaplains, the book positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

The Gospel of John's account of doubting Thomas is often told as a lesson about the veracity and triumph of Christian faith. And yet it is a story about wounds. Interpretations of this Gospel narrative, by focusing on Christ's victory in the resurrection, reflect Christianity's unease with the wounds that remain on the body of the risen Jesus. By returning readers to this familiar passage, Resurrecting Wounds expands the scope of the Upper Room to the present world where wounds mark all of humanity.Shelly Rambo rereads the Thomas story and the history of its interpretation through the lens of trauma studies to reflect on the ways that the wounds of race, gender, and war persist. Wounds do not simply go away, even though a close reading of John Calvin reveals his theological investments in removing wounds. This erasure reflects a dominant mode of Christian thinking, but it is not the only Christian reading. By contrast, Macrina's scar, in Gregory of Nyssa's account of her life and death, displays how resurrection can be inscribed in wounds, particularly in the illumination of her body after her death. The scar, produced in and through a mother's touch, recalls a healing, linking resurrection to the work of tending wounds. Much like Christ's wounds and Macrina's scar, racial wounds can be found on the skin of America's collective life. The wounds of racial histories, unhealed, resurface again and again. The wounds of war persist as well, despite a cultural calculus that links the suffering of a soldier with that of Christ. Again, the visceral display of Jesus' wounds, when placed at the center of Thomas' encounter in the Upper Room, enacts a vision of resurrecting that addresses the real harm of the real wounds of war.The powerful Upper Room images of resurrection - encounters with wounds, the invitation to touch, and the formation of a community - present visions of truth-telling and of healing that grapple with the pressing questions of wounds surfacing in the midst of human encounters with violence, suffering, and trauma. While traditional accounts of resurrection in Christian theology have focused on the afterlife, this book forges a theology of resurrection wounds in the afterliving. By returning again and again to Christ's woundedness, we discover ways to live with our own.

Offering a theology of accompaniment grounded in the lived wisdom of chaplainsChaplains meet people at the most difficult thresholds of life. In hospitals, universities, prisons, and other public settings, they accompany those facing grief, trauma, illness, uncertainty, and loss. Their work rarely offers easy explanations. Instead, it depends on attention and a commitment to remain present when suffering cannot be fixed.In Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea, Shelly Rambo turns to the work of contemporary chaplains to reconsider a central theological question: How is God present to us in the midst of pain? Rambo places the narratives of chaplains in conversation with Christian scripture and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Howard Thurman, showing how theologizing the divine from sites of care yields new ways of thinking about divine presence and the importance of spiritual accompaniment. Rather than locating the divine in dramatic intervention or certainty, Rambo finds theological meaning in the rich imagery of ancient and contemporary chaplains, pointing to, and beyond, theologies of care to depict a theology of spiritual survival and the spiritual conditioning needed to withstand collective trauma. In contrast to views of divine control and rescue, Rambo unearths images of divine laboring, brooding, and nourishing, visible to those who insist on staying in close proximity to suffering. She offers a radical corrective to long-established threads of Christian theology and resists religious platitudes and cultural pressures to cure or explain suffering.Drawing on accounts from chaplains across religious traditions and institutional settings, she shows how their meaning-making practices become a prism for reshaping theology, opening it to spiritual wisdom that emerges through encounter, vulnerability, and public care. The book celebrates the pluralistic character of chaplaincy, names the challenges chaplains face in doing this work, and reveals the power of drawing from one’s own spiritual inheritances while remaining responsive to the beliefs, doubts, and needs of others. Written for readers in theology, religion, chaplaincy studies, pastoral care, and trauma studies, Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea speaks to practitioners as well as anyone asking how faith might meet suffering with honesty, compassion, and endurance.

Offering a theology of accompaniment grounded in the lived wisdom of chaplainsChaplains meet people at the most difficult thresholds of life. In hospitals, universities, prisons, and other public settings, they accompany those facing grief, trauma, illness, uncertainty, and loss. Their work rarely offers easy explanations. Instead, it depends on attention and a commitment to remain present when suffering cannot be fixed.In Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea, Shelly Rambo turns to the work of contemporary chaplains to reconsider a central theological question: How is God present to us in the midst of pain? Rambo places the narratives of chaplains in conversation with Christian scripture and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Howard Thurman, showing how theologizing the divine from sites of care yields new ways of thinking about divine presence and the importance of spiritual accompaniment. Rather than locating the divine in dramatic intervention or certainty, Rambo finds theological meaning in the rich imagery of ancient and contemporary chaplains, pointing to, and beyond, theologies of care to depict a theology of spiritual survival and the spiritual conditioning needed to withstand collective trauma. In contrast to views of divine control and rescue, Rambo unearths images of divine laboring, brooding, and nourishing, visible to those who insist on staying in close proximity to suffering. She offers a radical corrective to long-established threads of Christian theology and resists religious platitudes and cultural pressures to cure or explain suffering.Drawing on accounts from chaplains across religious traditions and institutional settings, she shows how their meaning-making practices become a prism for reshaping theology, opening it to spiritual wisdom that emerges through encounter, vulnerability, and public care. The book celebrates the pluralistic character of chaplaincy, names the challenges chaplains face in doing this work, and reveals the power of drawing from one’s own spiritual inheritances while remaining responsive to the beliefs, doubts, and needs of others. Written for readers in theology, religion, chaplaincy studies, pastoral care, and trauma studies, Sustaining Spirits on an Open Sea speaks to practitioners as well as anyone asking how faith might meet suffering with honesty, compassion, and endurance.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

This book imagines new modes of religious response to trauma, moving beyond simple answers to the ‘why’ of human suffering toward discussions of profound expressions of faith in the aftermath of trauma. Engaging current realities such as war, race, and climate change, chapters feature specific locations from which theology is done and draw on the resources of Christian faith in order to respond. This volume recognizes religious leaders as first-responders to trauma and offers theological reflections that can stand up in the current realities of violence and its aftermath. The writings provide models for how to integrate the language of faith with the literature of trauma.

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes.Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. Featuring profiles of working chaplains, the book positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.