Developing a Theology of Abuse with Dr. Chelle Stearns

The Allender Center Podcast

The Allender Center

Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Mental Health, Christianity, Trauma, Health & Fitness, Theology

4.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we’re revisiting a conversation that Dr. Dan Allender had a few years ago with Dr. Chelle Stearns, Associate Professor of Theology at The Seattle School, exploring her ongoing work of developing a theology of abuse. She believes that as a theologian, an artist, and a witness of other artists, she is called—and we are called—to hold together immense sorrow and stunning beauty. Ultimately, Chelle invites us to wrestle with how we address trauma in view of the embodied life of Christ, and how this might change the way we tend to the stories of harm in our own lives and communities.

Resources:

Watch Dr. Chelle Stearns speak on ‘Lament and Hope Through a Trauma-Informed Theology’ at The Seattle School’s Seventh Annual Stanley Grenz Lecture
Watch Rachael Clinton speak at the 2019 Theology & Trauma Conference

Read “Let the Lament Come” by Heather Stringer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Dr. Dan Allender.
0:08.5	And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen.
0:10.5	We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world.
0:14.5	And restoration for the heart.
0:17.0	Thank you for joining us.
0:18.5	Let's get this conversation started.
0:34.1	I have the distinct and so delightful pleasure to be with one of my dearest colleagues and friends,
0:37.8	Shulie Stearns. Hi, Shaliy. Hi, Dan.
0:41.6	Shaliy, we get to teach a number of things together.
0:45.1	And would it be well with your heart if you just give folks a little bit of a sense
0:48.2	of you're a very odd and quirky being?
0:55.9	I don't know.
0:59.1	Yeah, I teach here at the Seattle School, and I teach theology.
1:02.8	I'm like, how much do you want to know?
1:04.5	I want to know as much as you want to say.
1:09.2	Yeah, I teach theology here at the Seattle School, and a lot of the work that I do
1:15.1	is around theology and the arts, but more recently have gotten into how to talk about lament,
1:21.8	which has brought me into talking about trauma. But that's not the quirky part of me.
1:28.8	The quirky parts of me probably get into why it is I love artists and I love the, in
1:34.2	some ways, the wrong question to be asked because sometimes that gets us much further than
1:40.2	just always asking the same question over and over again, thinking that we're going to get a different answer.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Allender Center, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Allender Center and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.