Trauma-informed Missiology, Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children, and how to reduce your essay word count
Welcome to my newsletter, ‘Bible, Mission, and More’, where I share what’s on my mind as I teach, research, and write on the Bible and mission, children-at-risk in the Bible and contemporary society, Psalms and Wisdom Literature, and a range of other topics. I teach at All Nations Christian College in the UK, though views are my own.
Each Friday I’ll share something I’ve read, something I’ve written or recorded, something on learning and teaching, and a quote to take into the weekend.
Something read – Karen O’Donnell on Trauma Theology
Recent years have seen a rapid rise in the scholarly attention paid to trauma theology. There have been noted attempts to construct trauma-informed work in theology and Biblical studies but, to date, much less so in the area of Missiology. Indeed, this morning I Googled the terms, ‘trauma missiology’ and ‘trauma-informed missiology’ (admittedly a rather crude research technique) and both times received the message ‘No results found for…’ before offering a list of results for the phrases without the quote marks.
Interestingly, I did discover that this very week the Association of Professors of Mission–Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education is holding a conference with the theme Trauma-Informed Witness: Transformation of the World in Light of the Gospel. The call for papers suggested the following set of questions:
How do we discern the missio Dei today as we recognize the reality of trauma?
How is God calling us to become prophetic witnesses to trauma within and outside the church?
How do we theologize and teach practices of trauma-informed evangelism and mission?
How can we speak honestly of church-related trauma for a more trauma-informed witness?
What is the role of lamentation or other similar practices in evangelism and mission?
How do we authentically share the joy of the Gospel while recognizing trauma in our cultures?
How might a trauma-informed, pneumatologically empowered spiritual theology inform our witness to the Gospel as professors and practitioners, formators and scholars?
What sorts of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or intradisciplinary lenses might add to our theologizing of Christian practice for our various publics of the academy, church, and the larger society, especially as related to trauma-informed witness that transforms lives?
What does it mean to live into our vocations as professors of mission and/or evangelism today?
I expect the next five years will see a necessary and welcome integration of trauma studies and Missiology. To be honest, we are lagging behind many other disciplines and this needs to be addressed. I will be especially interested to see how trauma approaches might also be integrated into missional hermeneutics.
By way of a beginning, I would recommend Karen O’Donnell’s 2023 introductory article on Trauma Theology in the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. This is a freely available and up-to-date orientation to the topic with a helpful bibliography. Here is the abstract:
Trauma theology is a theological discipline that seeks to both do theological justice to traumatic experiences and also to reimagine theologies in the light of such experiences. Whilst suffering has always been of interest to Christian theology, trauma theology distinguishes between suffering and trauma, noting the specific impact trauma has on the embodied life of trauma survivors. Envisioning trauma experience as an earthquake that shatters theological landscapes, trauma theology sees its work as that of construction of reimagined theologies in the wake of these experiences. This article outlines the development of the discipline, its primary approaches and methodologies, alongside the key areas of discussion and debate.
You can read the whole article here: O'Donnell, K. (2023) Trauma Theology. In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TraumaTheology [Accessed 14 June 2024].
Something written – Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children: Shaping A Church Response
The Sundays before and after 20th June are designated as ‘Refugee Sunday’. A while ago I co-wrote (with Mark Walley from Home for Good) an ‘Ethics in Brief’ document for the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (now the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology). The briefing is called ‘Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children: Shaping a Church Response’. Some of the data is a bit dated now (it was originally written in 2017) but the general issue and theology is, of course, still current. Here is the opening paragraph:
The phenomenon of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) has featured prominently, at times, in press coverage and political debate around the current refugee crisis in Europe. When engaged, the national mood seems to have ranged from deep pity to suspicion and hostility. But how should the UK church respond and how might the Bible play a part in shaping that response? The article gives a brief overview of the scale and nature of the situation in Europe regarding unaccompanied children, explores several biblical passages that could contribute to a church response that is both theologically informed and practically expressed, and concludes with some ways forward for churches.
You can access it for free here: Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children: Shaping a Church Response
Learning and teaching – how to reduce your essay word count
One of the most painful parts of writing an essay is when you have overshot your word count. It can be frustrating when you know how much time and effort it has taken to produce all that writing, so the last thing you want to do is take any of it out!
However the truth is, your essay question was shaped carefully to make it possible for you to fit in (a) enough of the right points in (b) the right depth.
I remember a tutor in my undergrad degree commenting on our first assignment, which was very short. She said it was like someone writing to you with the opening words, ‘I’m sorry I am writing you a long letter, I didn’t have time to write you a short one.’ The point is, short assignments force you to decide what is really important to include, and force you to write concisely.
So what do you do if you need to cut down your words? Here are a few things to bear in mind:
Is everything here relevant to the specific question? Yes, that old chestnut – answer the specific question you have been set.
Could I reduce or reword any quotations? Perhaps you don’t need the whole quote and can make the point with a smaller excerpt; or, perhaps better, you could put the key point into your own words (while still citing the author, of course!).
Should I reduce the number of points I am making? Perhaps the essay only requires four main themes/points but you are trying to cram in eight. You need to decide which are the most relevant/important. This is part of the scholarly decision-making the essay is trying to encourage.
Could I write more concisely? Consider your writing style and whether you are using more words than is necessary. For example, I could say: ‘In my view there are three ways in which this author’s argument could be improved’ (15 words). Or I could say, ‘This argument could be improved by…’ (6 words).
Be brave, be ruthless. I remember spending days on a particular issue in my PhD that ended up as just a footnote. It can be hard to cut material when you know how much it took to write it. But you are writing an essay, not trying to account for all your work. Nothing is wasted. Even if you can’t show it in your essay this time, that effort has still formed you in ways you may not even realise. You don’t owe your essay anything; it is doing a job for you. As a friend of mine would say, rather exaggerating to make a point, ‘The only good essay is a finished essay’.
Quote
‘Doing theology with children will cause us to wrestle, to create, and to open up innovative spaces in which real children are present offering their real voices, questions, struggles, and hopes’
Shantelle Weber, ‘Biblical and Theological Response: Beyond Welcoming to Engaging Children for God’s Kingdom,’ in Rosalind Tan, Nativity A. Petallar, and Lucy A. Hefford, God’s Heart for Children: Practical Theology from Global Perspectives (Carlisle: Langham, 2022) 176-186 [183].
Thanks for joining the journey and see you next week,
Tim