Why is the Church Hurting? Exploring Moral Injury in the Church
Newcastle Cathedral
Tuesday 13th May 2025, 10.00 – 17.15
Registration will open in January 2025.
Please contact Maggi Creese (m.creese@newcastle.anglican.org) with questions.
Conference Programme
10.00 Registration opens
Tea and coffee available on arrival
10.40 Welcome and Introduction
Canon Dr Maggi Creese
11.00 Opening liturgy
With a reflection on Psalm 51 from The Rt Revd Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, Bishop of Newcastle
11.15 Session 1
Dr Sarah Troughton, Dr David Creese and Mr Peter Locke
Jagged Edges: Exploring the Gospel Passion narratives through the lens of moral injury caused by church-related abuse
Revd Dr Rhona Knight
Treasures of darkness: finding hope in unexpected places?
12.15 Tea/coffee break
12.30 Session 2
Revd Dr Aaron Fuller
Moral injury and Church decline
Revd Dr Brian Powers
Moral injury, broken social trust and the role of theology in recovery
13.30 Lunch
14.30 Session 3
Opportunity to view Jagged Edges and/or participate in a self-guided ritual which engages with the exhibition
15.30 Tea/coffee break
15.45 Session 4
Break-out groups
In small groups, attendees will be invited to consider and discuss questions related to the topics covered in the morning sessions. These questions will encourage us to explore ways in which the moral injury caused by the institution of the Church and its systems can be addressed in and by the Church.
17.00 Closing Prayers
With an invitation to make a commitment to do something to address moral injury in attendees’ own context
17.30 Choral Evensong
Paper Abstracts
Dr Sarah Troughton, Dr David Creese and Mr Peter Locke
Jagged Edges: Exploring the Gospel Passion narratives through the lens of moral injury caused by church-related abuse
Church-related abuse can cause moral injury not only to the victims, who may feel betrayed by their faith, but also to others in the Church who may have failed to respond in accordance with their own moral values. Both victims and bystanders have also been betrayed by those in positions of authority who have perpetrated abuse or covered it up. How can we begin to address these injuries in church communities? One part of the life of the Church that may provide an effective approach is ritual. The Gospel Passion narratives lend themselves to an exploration of moral injury in this context, and as commonly held stories (Jones 2009), they already provide the contents of communal, performative rituals that help participants engage actively with Jesus’ suffering. In this paper, three survivors of church-related abuse will introduce the pieces they contributed to a project entitled Jagged Edges: a new Stations of the Cross, drawing meaningful connections between the shared narratives of Jesus’ Passion and the lived experience of individuals harmed in Christian churches. Jagged Edges will be exhibited in Newcastle Cathedral, and during the afternoon session conference attendees will be invited to take part in a ritual designed to promote healing and reconciliation.
Revd Dr Rhona Knight
Treasures of darkness: finding hope in unexpected places
Numerous high- and low-profile cases concerning church-related abuse continue to fill our papers and screens. The impact on direct and indirect victims of this abuse is significant. Behind many of these narratives is a disbelief that the Church or its ministers could act in such a way. For many, the expectation is that this organisation, and those serving in it, are called to model and behave in a better way than we so often hear. Informed by my research into trauma in curacy in the Church of England, this presentation will explore how the institution of the Church of England can be seen to be morally injurious in its structural norms, through the compromising of human dignity and by perpetrating acts of betrayal. In the noticing and naming of these morally injurious ways of being, we will consider how we might together begin to navigate this complex area in a constructive way. Might we find hope in unexpected places?
Revd Dr Aaron Fuller
Moral injury and Church decline
Where have all the people gone? The decline of religious participation and those willing to serve as clergy is well-documented in North American and European contexts. Struggling with the end of Christendom and its status within society, the Church has enacted several ways to address these declines. However, these efforts assume that external forces are the causes, and rarely does the church critique its own institutional culture as reason for the decline. Specifically, there are longstanding problems with how the Church deals with issues of misconduct and religious trauma, leading to what Janoff-Bulman identified as people’s ‘shattered assumption’. In the case of the Church, rather than derived out of people’s core beliefs, it is when the Church violates its explicit core values and theological assumptions as a moral and ethical institution. Drawing from Wiinikka-Lydon’s and others’ work on moral injury leading to critique of culture, structure, and systems that perpetuate harm, this paper will identify systemic issues within the Church that are causing its decline, and suggest ways for the Church to enact moral repair that leads to the Church re-becoming a place of safety and belonging for all people.
Revd Dr Brian Powers
Moral injury, broken social trust and the role of theology in recovery
Many that experience moral injury as a breach of social trust and a violation or betrayal of ‘what’s right’ can lose their personal faith alongside their trust in religious traditions and institutions. Somewhat paradoxically, the conceptual language of religion – the symbol systems and frameworks of meaning held in theological traditions – can uniquely engage key aspects of moral injury and open pathways to recovery. This talk will discuss the theological aspects of the Christian faith that can hold a particular explanatory power and facilitate recovery. It will discuss the ways in which a careful and thoughtful rehabilitation of doctrines of lament, sin, the Imago Dei, and eschatological hope in light of the betrayal and violations experienced by morally injured persons is critical in order to best engage with those who have experienced a profound loss of meaning.
Speakers
Canon Dr Maggi Creese serves as the Lead Officer of the Chaplaincy to Survivors in the Diocese of Newcastle and as a Non-Residentiary Canon at Newcastle Cathedral. She has personal experience of supporting someone close to her who is a survivor of church-related abuse and of the impact abuse has on the families of the victims. She has a PhD in Classics and has worked as a Latin teacher, Classics lecturer and specialist copy-editor for an academic publisher. She is currently undertaking a postgraduate course in Chaplaincy Studies at the Luther King Centre in Manchester and is conducting research on the models of chaplaincy best suited to addressing personal, communal and institutional moral injury in the context of church-related abuse.
Dr Sarah Troughton is a wife, mother and psychiatrist who has personal experience of church-related abuse. This includes not only the initial abuse, but also further abuses through poor responses from the Church and its members. She is fortunate to be thriving in the main, rather than surviving. She has worked with others with similar experiences on several projects, including If I Told You, What Would You Do? and Jagged Edges. She has been a member of the steering group for Safe Spaces and sits on the Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panel. She uses art, particularly linocut prints, to express what she can't say in words about her experiences in the context of her faith.
Dr David Creese is a Visiting Fellow in Classics at Newcastle University. He has personal experience of church-related abuse and of moral injury caused by institutional betrayal. He is a Hellenist, a writer and a musician, who worked for many years as a lecturer in Classics. He composed You Are Worth More Than Many Sparrows for the If I Told You, What Would You Do? project and more recently has contributed to projects on moral injury in the workplace with TICA (Trauma Informed Community Action).
Mr Peter Locke is an organist and composer, who has personal experience of church-related abuse.
The Revd Dr Rhona Knight is a member of the College of Chaplains at Launde Abbey. She is a theological educator, pastoral supervisor and spiritual director and is the author of a number of books and resources on discipleship and spirituality. She is researching trauma in curacy in the Church of England.
The Revd Dr Aaron Fuller (DMin) serves as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and as a Chaplain in the United States Navy Reserve. In his current role, he works as a Global Missionary in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Slovakia and Hungary. Prior to becoming a pastor, he served for 9 years as a Commissioned Officer in the United States Navy’s submarine force.
The Revd Dr Brian Powers is the inaugural William Bernard Vann Fellow in Christianity and the Armed Forces at Durham University in the United Kingdom, a former Special Operations Weather Team officer in the U.S. Air Force and a veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He holds a Ph.D. in theological studies from Emory University, is a systematic and constructive theologian and author of Full Darkness: Original Sin, Moral Injury and Wartime Violence. He has written and presented extensively on the resonances between Augustinian doctrines of sin and moral injury at international gatherings of religious and anthropological scholars and has published several articles in academic and religious journals arguing for the applicability of theological doctrine in situations of moral trauma resulting from wartime violence. He also serves as the executive director of the International Centre for Moral Injury, an academic research centre dedicated to deepening the understanding of moral injury internationally and exploring, cultivating and sharing sources of recovery. Brian is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).