BY

MONICA A. COLEMAN

A Senior Project

submitted to Vanderbilt Divinity School

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the Master's Degree of Divinity

Nashville, TN
March 1998

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Renita J. Weems

A SAFE PLACE:
ADDRESSING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A THEOLOGICAL AND COMMUNAL CRISIS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Invocation
Introduction: A Safe Place? Page 1
Part One: Safe Place Theology Page 5
Chapter One: Sexual Violence is a Sin of Alienation Page 5
Chapter Two: Body-Self Alienation and Incarnational Theology Page 13
Chapter Three: Community Alienation and Covenant Theology Page 21
Chapter Four: Alienation from God and a Theology of Divine Presence Page 30
Chapter Five: Alienation from Offender and Kairos Theology Page 42
Part Two: Creating a Safe Place Page 53
Chapter Six: The Dinah Project Page 53
Conclusion Page 60
Benediction Page 61
Appendix i
Bibliography xvii

INVOCATION

Oh God!

According to The U. S. Department of Justice, somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes.
One in twelve boys are victims of sexual assault or rape.
One in two rape victims are under age 18; one in six are under age 12. (Child Rape Victims, 1992. U. S. Department of Justice.)
Approximately one-third of all juvenile victims of sexual abuse cases are children younger than 6 years of age. (Violence and the Family, Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996.)

Only 25% of rapes take place in place in a public area or in a parking garage.
70% of female victims reported that the offender was known to them prior to the assault. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice, 1994) 68% of rapes occur between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
In 47% of rapes, the victim sustained injuries other than rape injuries.
75% of female rape victims require medical care after the attack.

In 1994-1995, less than one in every three rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement officials (National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice, 1996).
An overwhelming majority of rape service agencies believe that public education about rape, and expanded counseling and advocacy services for the rape victim, would be effective in increasing the willingness of victims to report rapes to the police. (Rape in America, 1992, National Victim Center with Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center.)

These numbers are people with lives. These numbers are people with hopes and dreams, joys and possibilities, despairs and frustrations, terrors and nightmares. These numbers are people with mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, sons and daughters. These numbers are children and elderly, young adults and the middle aged. These numbers are people and places all around us. These numbers are the children of God.
Amen.

A SAFE PLACE?

This church was not a place for me. I could not feel safety or find peace in a place where the innocent cry inwardly with despair and the perpetrator is uplifted. I was convinced I could never feel safe within the walls of this church.
--a survivor of sexual violence

Sexual violence is the leading violent crime in America today, and yet even the most socially active churches fail to address the crisis of sexual violence. Perhaps, it is a fear of discussing any issue pertaining to sexuality. Perhaps, pastors, clergy and congregations feel ill-equipped to address this crisis. Perhaps, churches feel as though it is not their place to address this issue. Perhaps churches believe that their silence on this issue is harmless. Whatever the reason, the church must respond. Because there is no church void of the victims of sexual violence and those who love them, the church must respond. Because sexual violence affects every aspect of our communities, including our religious and spiritual lives, the church must respond. Because silence is a response of tolerance, the church must respond. This paper is an insistent call to churches to respond to sexual violence, and to do so in community.

Currently, there is little church response to sexual violence. One reason for this silence is a misperception of sexual violence. Sexual violence is often perceived as a female problem. The church believes it is a crime that only victimizes women. The term "sexual violence" tends to conjure images of the woman who is raped in a parking lot by a stranger. Many rape and sexual abuse crisis centers are operated by those with explicit feminist ideologies. By and large, white feminist scholars and activists are the primary advocates for victims in the recovery process. In addition, sexual violence is often considered a social ill. As a crime, law enforcement officials must respond to sexual violence. As a crime involving physical injuries, medical personnel are equipped to respond. Even as we recognize the emotional effects of sexual violence, it is left to the psychological community to address these issues. Sexual violence is seen as a crime that rips into the fabric of the social order. There is an inaccurate ecclesial understanding of sexual violence as a female social problem that some other agency will address.
There is a need for an explicitly theological response to this crisis of sexual violence. This response is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, there is a large amount of biblical ambiguity about sexual violence. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah does not condemn the attempted gang rape of Lot's visitors. The story of Dinah's rape involves vengeance, but it does not mention Dinah outside the fact of her rape. The story of Tamar's incestuous rape encourages Tamar's silence. Some Levitical rules condemn rape, others do not. The story of Potiphar's wife and Joseph leads many to believe that women often lie about being raped. Some biblical passages seem to support the unconditional submission of children to parents regardless of abuse. The list continues. If one were to look for a univocal biblical response to sexual violence, it could not be found. These passages need attention and interpretation in the context of the pervasive extent of sexual violence. Secondly, there are numerous theological effects of sexual violence. Many victims of sexual violence question God's presence and agency as they deal with extreme suffering in the context of their faith. For the Christian victim of sexual violence, concepts of forgiveness and evil arise in new ways and must be addressed. Although there are legal, medical, and psychological personnel to respond to many aspects of sexual violence, only the church is trained, equipped and permitted to address issues from a theological perspective.

Addressing sexual violence in the church demands that we understand sexual violence as both a communal issue and a theological issue that necessitate a communal and theological response. As a theological issue, sexual violence must be understood as sin. There are two primary ways of understanding sexual violence as sin. In Abuse of Power, James N. Poling identifies sexual violence as a sin involving misuse of God-given healthy relational power. In Sexual Violence, Marie Fortune classifies sexual violence as a sin against the ethical norm of right relation. This paper, however, will operate from the theological understanding of sexual violence as a sin of alienation.

Considering sexual violence as the sin of alienation acknowledges the sense of alienation common to victims of sexual violence. Psychiatrists Judith Lewis Herman, Ann Burgess and Lynda Holstrom identify a sense of alienation as one of the primary symptoms of the post-traumatic stress disorder that afflicts victims of sexual violence. Herman writes that sexual violence creates disconnection in all human relationships. Victims feel alienated from their families, their communities and, oftentimes, their own bodies. The experience of sexual violence creates a sense of alienation that is perpetuated by society's silence about sexual violence in general. The church response to sexual violence must seek to surround the victims with love, compassion, and wholeness.
Considering sexual violence as a sin of alienation suggests a communal response to sexual violence. It is not sufficient to reserve the church's response to sexual violence to merely the one-on-one pastoral counseling session. This approach not only perpetuates the secrecy and silence that shrouds the experience of sexual violence, but it refuses to acknowledge the communal effect of sexual violence. Sexual violence does not just affect the persons who are violated. It also affects the violator, all those who love them, and the entire church community. Sexual violence betrays the community's sense of trust and safety. The church response to sexual violence seeks to include the church community in the experience of mourning, struggling and healing. In Embodiment, James Nelson writes: "Alienation is the root experience of sin. It is always an experience and manifestation. It involves alienation experienced within the self . . . it also, and necessarily, involves alienation from the neighbor. And most fundamentally, it is alienation from God." In agreement with this assertion, this paper will examine four dimensions of the alienating sin of sexual violence:

1. Alienation from body-self.
2. Alienation from/ of community.
3. Alienation from God.
4. Alienation from violator.
For each alienation, there will be a suggested four-fold theological response:
1. An incarnational theology that undermines spirit-body dualistic thought.
2. An emphasis on the covenantal dimension of church communities.
3. A portrayal of an ever-present compassionate God in the midst of theodical issues.
4. A kairos theology that honors the time needed for forgiveness to occur.

This paper suggests that these theological responses be addressed in the church community. The methodology of Christian education allows for a community-inclusive forum for identifying the sin of sexual violence and responding to it in God's love. This response will take the form of Bible studies, workshops, and community worship services.

The information used in the Christian education component is also being developed for The Dinah Project at Metropolitan Interdenominational Church, of which I am the Project Coordinator. The Dinah Project, named after the biblical victim of sexual violence, is an organized church response to the crisis of sexual violence. The Dinah Project, and my conviction for this paper, arises out of my own experience of being raped. I actively pursued assistance during the recovery process and found that there were legal and psychological personnel equipped to meet my needs. Yet, the first several ministers I approached for counseling underestimated the trauma of my experience and made comments that were theologically and emotionally oppressive. Ultimately, I found healing in community--in a community of others who have experienced sexual violence, in a community of others who were outraged about the evil of sexual violence, and in a community of others who are dedicated to maintaining and wrestling with Christian faith in the face of adversity. Addressing sexual violence within church communities has become a personal, professional, and scholarly passion. This paper is one dimension of that passion.
Although The Dinah Project deals explicitly with the crisis of sexual violence, the constructive theology is established in such a way that a church may embrace the theological assertions, even if it chooses not to talk about sexual violence in a specific manner. I believe that the type of theology that is outlined in the following pages creates a "safe theological place," so that persons who experience sexual violence, and those who love them, are not further alienated by the church, but rather feel embraced by God and community.

SAFE PLACE THEOLOGY
Chapter 1: Sexual Violence is a Sin of Alienation

Sexual violence is a crime of violence that can be understood in the theological category of sin. Some scholars assert that sexual violence is a sin because it violates an ethical norm--either of right relation or appropriate use of power. This paper asserts that sexual violence is sin because sin is alienation. Not to be confused with understanding sin as "estrangement," the concept of sin as "alienation" implies that sexual violence is a communal crisis that necessitates a communal response. This section will also introduce the way in which the experience of sexual violence and its ensuing effect of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are alienating.

Defining Sexual Violence and Other Assumptions

Sexual violence, in its broadest sense, includes nonconsentual and some seemingly consentual relations. Sexual assault is non-consentual, non-penetrating sexual violation such as touching, groping, undressing, sucking, kissing, and the coercion to look at sexually. Rape is non-consentual vaginal, anal or oral penetration with a penis, finger or other foreign object. Acquaintance rape is rape by someone known; stranger rape is rape by someone who is unknown; date rape is rape by someone with whom there is an ongoing relationship; gang rape is rape by two or more persons; marital rape is rape by a spouse. Incest is sexual assault or rape by a family member. Child sexual abuse is sexual assault or rape of anyone under eighteen. Seemingly consentual sexual relations of unequal power dimensions are also sexually violent. Examples of this type of violation are military rank, teacher-student, employer-employee, counselor-client, attorney-client, clergy-parishioner, and the like. All of these definitions fall under the rubric of sexual violence. This paper will focus almost exclusively on nonconsentual sexual violence, giving special attention to the fact that eighty-five to ninety percent of the incidents of sexual violence are committed by persons who were known, loved or trusted prior to the assault.

Sexual violence is a crime of violence. This seemingly simple statement can be credited to the work of feminists who have worked to show that sexual violence is not just a sexual act. Rather, sexual violence is a violent crime that uses and abuses sexuality to assert power and control. Some feminists even assert that rape is a form of political control that subordinates women through terror. This paper takes a broader approach that the last assertion acknowledging that sexual violence occurs to girls, boys, and men, as well as women.

This paper is also grounded in the psychological understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its relationship to the experience of sexual violence. PTSD is the psychological response to great trauma. Trauma is not just the effect of sexual violence; it is the purpose of sexual violence. Sexual trauma, by its very nature, produces trauma.

Sexual Violence as the Violation of an Ethical Norm
James Poling

In Abuse of Power, James Poling asserts that religion serves to define the nature of power and its legitimate uses. Sexual violence is one test for understanding how the nature of power in both its destructive and creative potential. Poling has a process-relational view of power that states that power is the ability to act in effective ways with the objects and people that make up our perceived world: "When power is seen as the energy of the relationship web itself, then power can be understood as the ability to sustain internal relationship and increase the power of the relational web as a whole." In its ideal form, power is nearly identical with sexual energy, and is directed toward communion and enlarged freedom. The abuse of power, committed by individuals, social institutions and ideologies, is motivated by fear and arrogance and leads to domination: "The power that is intended by God for everyone who lives is used to destroy relationships in exchange for control." Thus, sexual violence is an abuse of power.

Poling sets up a phenomenology of power and then relates it to theology--God's will and a normative understanding of power. Poling's philosophy states that sexual violence is a violation of an ethical norm. In his description of the relationship between power and the experience of sexual violence, he refers to psychological, social, and religious issues. He does not assert that all issues that arise from the experience of sexual violence are theological in nature.

Marie Fortune

In Sexual Violence, Marie Fortune states that, all too often, the sin of sexual violence has been attributed to the victim rather than the offender or the community. The prevailing belief is that the victim is sinful. That is, the victim is either (1) being punished by God for a previous sin; or (2) provoked that violence by somehow being unrighteous (e.g. the individual was dressed in a certain way, etc.). These positions have been supported by church leaders from Augustine in City of God to contemporary clergy and laypersons who restate similar opinions. For this reason, Fortune defines sin as the rupture of relationship which may be experienced psychologically, physically, spiritually and socially.

This rupture of relationship is bodily sin, relational sin, social sin, and sexual sin. Fortune defines sin as "the violation of right relationship which results in alienation, brokenness, and mistrust between the two people and suffering for the one who is violated." Right relationship is the meeting of agape love and justice. Agape love is the "love that moves persons to seek union with God and each other;" justice is mutuality, equality, shared power, trust, choice, responsibility, and respect of bodily integrity. The cornerstone of Fortune's description of right relation and therefore sin is her use of the term, bodily integrity. Beverly Harrison describes bodily integrity as "the right to control one's own body and to establish personal physical boundaries." Sexual violence, then, is sin against the victim, the offender, the society, and the body because it is void of the conditions for right relation: "It is sinful, not because of its sexual nature, per se, but because it is an exploitative and abusive violation of the victim's bodily integrity. It denies and violates the personhood of the victim." Although Fortune maintains the language of sin for speaking about sexual violence, she still describes the violence as an act that violates an ethical norm: bodily integrity (right relation). In doing so, she collapses the concepts of brokenness, estrangement and alienation into one category. This paper makes distinction between estrangement and alienation and states that sexual violence is sin simply because it is deeply alienating.

In Thinking About God, Dorothee Solle describes three historical trajectories for understanding the theological concept of sin. All definitions of sin view sin as "separation from God." In orthodoxy, sin is defined as disobedience, pride, arrogance, rebellion against God or the desire to be like God. All sins are ultimately committed against God. The liberal tradition defines sin as a lack of love. This definition is amenable to many modern persons because it allows for a conscious realization of personal fault: "I can realize that love is always greater and requires more than what I am and do. I do not live up to it. My lack of love expresses my remoteness from God."

Lastly, there is the liberation theology definition of sin: sin as structural systems of alienation and oppresion. Solle writes that this understanding od sin involves more than our relationship to God and to ourselves. We lack in relationship "to ourselves, our neighbors, to creation and to the human family." Sin is both actual and participatory:
We are divided from God in our living relationships. By living, working, dealing with one another and with creation, we act as the enemies of God ... We are aliens, alienated, not only as those who have been carried off by sin, but also in the sense that we have gone along with it, that exile has not become tolerable, that we have organized ourselves in it.

Estrangement versus Alienation

Estrangement
This paper advocates the position that sin is alienation. The liberal tradition often refers to sin as "estrangement" or "isolation," whereas liberation theologies explicitly uses the term "alienation." Since isolation, estrangement and alienation are similar concepts, this section will take some time to explicate the difference, and the importance of that difference, for understanding sin.

Soren Kiergegaard understands sin as the deep despair or guilt one feels existentially not to be oneself. This despair is existential and universal to the human condition:
Just as the physician might say that there lives perhaps not one single [human] who is in perfect health, so one might say perhaps that there lives not one single [human] who after all is not to some extent in despair, in whose inmost parts there does not dwell a disquietude, a perturbation, a discord, an anxious dread of an unknown something, or of a something [s/he] does not even dare to make acquaintance with, dread of a possibility of life, or dread of [oneself], so that, after all, as physicians speak of a [human] going about with a disease in [him/her], this [human] is going about and carrying a sickness in the spirit, which only rarely and in glimpses, by and with a dread which to [him/ her] is inexplicable, gives evidence of its presence within.

All sin is sin against God inasmuch as the individual feels as though s/he exists before God: "Sin is: before God in despair not to will to be oneself, or before God in despair to will to be oneself."

Charles Strain distinguishes between the concept of sin as alienation and the sense of sin as estrangement or despair which are articulated by existentialists Kierkegaard, Dostoevski, and Camus. This "estrangement" comes out of the "dark and irrational depths of the anti-hero [estranging themselves from] the self and . . . a worldly anchorage. According to Solle, the greatest weakness of this understanding of sin is that "sin appears as an individual deficiency, as failure, as remaining in egoism, but not as a structural power which dominates us and destroys us." Sin as estrangement is a universally individual phenomenon.

Alienation
This understanding of sin as alienation has gained popularity in the last three decades. In The New Handbook of Christian Theology, James William McClendon, Jr., defines sin thusly: "Sin, in Christian understanding, is whatever act, attitude, or course of life that betrays the divine intent for created being. Sin alienates from God, divides the sinner from God's community, disorders the life of the sinner, and in that measure, disorders creation itself."
Charles Strain states that alienation is different from a concept of estrangement. Alienation is more like a social malformation. Alienation is not a secularized version of the concept of sin, rather it is a "strikingly modern way of defining evil as it infects the entire social order ... [which] inevitably has religious implications." In Phenomenology of the Spirit, G. W. F. Hegel presents alienation as "a necessary and recurrent moment in the self-realization of both finite and Absolute spirit." Strain identifies five traits that are common to theories of alienation after Hegel:
1. Alienation is rooted in its historical setting. These alienating malformations are a product of human action and can be transformed. For this reason, theories of alienation are always accompanied by a theory of liberation.
2. Theories of alienation involve a vision of the truly human which stress agency and self-determination as central to human life.
3. Alienation is an evil that is not present as a social problem that can be compartmentalized, but as a malignancy of the whole.
4. Those who are alienated experience a perceived loss of self.
5. Theories of alienation are "critical reflections of praxis;" that is, they discern within the present crisis, the possibilities for world-transforming action.

Strain states that the concept of alienation is "an indispensable vantage point for addressing modern embodiments of evil."
In A Theology of Liberation, liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez articulates sin as alienation in a particular context:
But in the liberation approach sin is not considered an individual, private, or merely interior reality--asserted just enough to necessitate a "spiritual" redemption which does not challenge the order in which we live. . . [rather] sin is evident in oppressive structures, in the exploitation of [human] by [human], in the domination and slavery of peoples, races and social classes. Sin appears, therefore, as the fundamental alienation, the root of a situation of injustice and exploitation. It cannot be encountered in itself, but only in concrete instances, in particular alienations.

This paper suggests that sexual violence is one of those particular alienations about which Gutierrez writes. Understanding sin as disobedience, pride or arrogance in relation to God takes the sin of sexual violence out of the community setting and privatizes it to an issue between the individual and God. Understanding sin from an existential perspective denies the sense in which sexual violence affects relationships to God and to community.

The Experience of Sexual Violence Produces Alienation:
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In the early 1970s, Ann Burgess and Lynda Holmstrom conducted a medical and psychoanalytic survey of rape survivors. From this study, they articulated rape trauma syndrome as the aftermath of the experience of sexual violence. Burgess and Holstrom consider rape trauma syndrome in acute and long term phases:
The immediate response within days or weeks of the event elicits the following responses: expressed (anger, fear, anxiety, tearfulness) or controlled (masked, hidden, calm, composed) emotions, physical symptoms of pain, sleep disturbances, emotions of fear, humiliation, degradation, guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-blame, anger, revenge or irritability. The victim may try to block the remembrance of the incident from memory, or continually rethink how [s/he] might have avoided the situation. The long term process may take from months to years. The victim may change lifestyles by interrupting [his/her] routine, turning to family or friends, getting away, moving, changing locks or phone numbers. Dreams and nightmares may persist. The victim will have sudden pronounced fear of crowds, being alone, or to odors of things associated with the rape. The victim may be paranoid or suspicious of close friends or the world at large. Relationships will be disturbed by fear of six, decreased sexual desire, feelings of loneliness and uncertainty with men about future relationships.
In Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman describes the aftermath of sexual violence as a disorder known as PTSD. (See Appendix A for a brief description of PTSD.) Although Herman is not a theologian, she understands the ways in which post-traumatic disorders affect both the sense of community and concepts of theology. The experience of sexual violence alienates the victim from self, community and the faith system:
Traumatic events call into question basic human relationships. They breach the attachments of family, friendship, love and community. They shatter the construction of the self that is formed and sustained in relation to others. They undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They violate the victim's faith in a natural or divine order."

The experience of PTSD demonstrates the way in which sexual violence is a communal and theological crisis.

Conclusion
This paper does not seek to contradict Fortune's or Poling's understandings of sexual violence as ethical violation of right relation or abuse of power. This paper does not seek to discuss current or historical theological concepts that contribute to the perpetuation of sexual violence. This paper does assert that the experience of sexual violence has theological implications and ramifications. This paper does assert that sexual violence is a theological crisis (the sin of alienation) and that ecclesial communities can address this crisis by providing theologies that are not alienating. The next section will examine four particular alienations within the sin of sexual violence, and identify suggestions that can be liberating and healing for individuals and communities wrestling with these issues.

Chapter 2: Body-Self Alienation and Incarnational Theology

Persons who experience sexual violence experience profound alienation from their body-selves. The nature of sexual violence is an invasion of the body. Yet it also affects the spirit, the self. The sense of coherence, integration and control between self and body is fragmented in PTSD. Some theologies assert that a body can be violated, while the spirit is left intact. This type of spirit-body dualism is particularly destructive for the victims of sexual violence because their reality contradicts this philosophy. An incarnational theology that undermines the spirit-body dualism is necessary to begin to address this particular alienating experience.

Alienation of and from Body-Selves
Before I knew it, my body began to tell the story. I became desperately ill and was hospitalized. The accumulated trauma of incest and rape numbed my ability to feel. I was ill and in pain, yet I could not recognize it or feel it.
--survivor of sexual violence

By its very definition, sexual violence is an assault on the body. This assault is alienates the body from the spirit. Marie Fortune describes sexual violence as a sin against the victim's bodily integrity: "The assault humiliates, dominates, degrades, overpowers, and violates a person through the most vulnerable dimension of self, the sexual self." Herman also describes the assault on the body as the most humiliating aspect of the trauma: "The body is invaded, injured, defiled. Control over bodily functions is often lost; . . . this loss of control is often recounted as the most humiliating aspect of the trauma." This violation of the body is humiliating precisely because the spiritual self is violated along with the body.

On the one hand, it is impossible to assert that the body is violated and the spirit is not. In this sense, the body and spirit are united together and violated together. On the other hand, the normal sense of integration between body and spirit is corrupted in PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder alienates the body-self of the victim in two distinct ways. Firstly, PTSD destroys the integrated sense of self and the control over the body. Secondly, it begins a painful dialectic of intrusion and constriction as the victim tries to cope with the overwhelming threat of fear and danger.

Fragmentation
Persons with PTSD often experience flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia and other psychosomatic responses to the trauma of the sexual violence (see Appendix A). A victim of sexual violence often loses control over when, where and how a flashback may occur. Anything from a particular smell to the sight of the violator may cause the victim to relive the trauma invoking a very real bodily response. The normal integration of the body and spirit is destroyed: "Traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of their own. This kind of fragmentation, whereby trauma tears apart a complex system of self-protection that normally functions in an integrated fashion, is central to the historic observations on post-traumatic stress disorder." What Herman calls the "complex system of self-protection," Fortune refers to as the ethic of right relation. Sexual violence fragments the integrated self which everyone has and needs for a healthy life. Not only does the violation cause a loss of body-spirit integration, but it does so in a disturbing dialectic between the overwhelming awareness of the violence, and an emotional detachment from the same violence.

The Dialectic of Intrusion and Constriction
Intrusion
In the process of intrusion, the victim is unable to control the way in which the memory of the violence affects him/her. The victim is always on guard for the threat of danger. "The average person" walks through life with the calm knowledge that anything can happen at any time to anybody. For the victim of PTSD, each moment feels as though it literally could be his/her last:

They [sufferers of PTSD] do not have a normal 'baseline' level of alert but relaxed attention. Instead, they have an elevated baseline of arousal: their bodies are always on the alert for danger. They also have an extreme startle response to unexpected stimuli, as well as an intense reaction to specific stimuli associated with the traumatic event. It also appears that traumatized people cannot 'tune out' repetitive stimuli that other people would find merely annoying; rather, they respond to each repetition as though it were a new, and dangerous, surprise . . . . The traumatic events appear to recondition the human nervous system.

The physiological system within the human body is altered because the violation and the assault on the body continues after the "actual crime" has occurred. One victim writes, "I felt there was danger everywhere because I realized that any man, any time, could and would hurt me or even kill me."

Constriction
On the other hand, many victims experience "constriction." In this phase of the disorder, the victim loses an emotional connection to the bodily assault: "Events continue to register in awareness, but it is as though these events have been disconnected from their ordinary meanings." According to Herman, many victims of sexual violence automatically constrict as the only coping mechanism available in the face of a horror too great for the consciousness to handle.
For many victims, this process is one of dissociation whereby the spirit seems to actually leave the body and watch from a distant locale. One rape survivor describes her dissociation from her body in this way:
"I left my body at that point. I was over next to the bed, watching this happen . . . I dissociated from the helplessness. I was standing next to me and there was just this shell on the bed . . . These was just a feeling of flatness. I was just there." Constriction allows the victim to live through the trauma. It prevents the victim from pain that is greater than the psyche is prepared to handle. Although, this must be a temporary survival strategy, it can continue for years after the violation has occurred/ ended.

Dialectic
For many victims of sexual violence, the two responses of intrusion and construction oscillate back and forth. This dialectic of opposing states is the most characteristic feature of PTSD. This oscillating rhythm is a subconscious attempt on behalf of the victim to reestablish control and balance in his/her life:
Since neither the intrusive nor the numbing symptoms allow for integration of the traumatic event, the alteration between these two extreme states might be understood as an attempt to find a satisfactory balance between the two. But balance is precisely what the traumatized persons lacks.

The dialectic of trauma of trauma is self-perpetuating. For this reason, many victims become strangers to themselves as well as to those around them. Victims may feel as though they no longer knows themselves, or how they will feel or react in any setting. The violence has affected every aspect of the self: "All the psychological structures of the self--the image of the body, the internalized images of others, and the values and ideals that lend a person a sense of coherence and purpose--have been invaded and systematically broken down."

Perceived loss of self
The experience of sexual violence also alienates the self from the self. That is, the sense of self is shattered by the trauma of sexual violence. Victims lose trust in themselves, other people, and in God. Their self-esteems suffer from feelings of humiliation, guilt and helplessness. The ability to be intimate is impaired by feelings of need and fear: "The identity they have formed prior to the trauma is irrevocably destroyed." One survivor of sexual violence describes her experience of PTSD in this manner: "There's no way to describe what was going on inside me. I was losing control and I'd never been so terrified and helpless in my life. I felt as if my whole world had been kicked out from under me and I had been left to drift all alone in the darkness ... I was convinced I was going crazy, and I'm still convinced I almost did."

Difficulty with future sexual relations
Because the sexual self is violated in the assault, the sexualities of those who have been sexually violated are dramatically affected. In I Never Called It Rape, Robin Warshaw describes the long and short term effects of sexual violence on sexuality: "Many victims experience sexual difficulties caused by physical injuries or emotional worries about their partners' reactions. They suffer a range of sex-related problems--the inability to relax, diminished arousal, sexual disinterest or discomfort." These symptions may last for as little as a few days or as long as several years.

Nearly all victims of sexual violence experience difficulty reestablishing a healthy relationship to their sexualities. Some victims will not go out with men who have some of the same physical characterisitcs as their assailants. Some people choose to be celibate after the trauma because of a fear of sexual intimacy. Others choose sexual promiscuity. One woman writes: "After I'd been raped, that changed, I just didn't care, my values changed. My mum always said to me, 'You shouldn't sleep with a man unless you love him.' But now that didn't count, I was sleeping with anyone. I think it was also that I was afraid to say 'no' to any man in case it led to violence again.' " There is a reactionary response to one's own sexuality that lacks the integration intended between sexuality and spirit.

The Violator
Marie Fortune reminds readers that the alienation of body and self is not particular to the victim of sexual violence. The violator is also caught up in this alienating sin: "Sexual violence for the offender is a sin against the self. It is a denial of one's selfhood, a destruction of relationship with another, and a distortion of one's own sexuality." It violates not only the victim's control of his/her own body, but the way in which the body should be understood as integrated with the entire being. In this way, sexual violence corrupts the sexuality of both the violated and the violator.

A Theological Proposal--Incarnational Theology
Theology must do all within its power to subvert thinking that supports a split between the body and the spirit. In the experience of sexual violence, the violated has become painfully aware of the connection between body and spirit. As the body is violated, so is the rest of the victim's self. On the other hand, the victim has difficulty reintegrating the body and the spirit. For both the victim and the assailant, a healthy relationship with one's own sexuality and the sexuality of others has been debased. One way to liberate the violated, the violator (and many others) from this alienation is to promote a philosophy and theology that unites the spirit and the body.

The Body-Spirit Split
The Christian tradition contains both elements of spirit-body dualism and the material for spirit-body unity. In Body Theology, James Nelson identifies spirit-body dualism as one of "seven deadly sins" in Christian history. Spirit-body division ("spiritualistic dualism") presents itself in both the gospels and the Pauline material of the New Testament. Although most of Jesus' words and actions are those of unity and love, some statements support the separation of body and spirit. Paul is ambivalent about the connection between the spirit and the body. At times, he asserts spirit-body unity (1 Cor. 6:12-20). Other times, Paul's preference for the single state and interpretation of marriage as human weakness, an unavoidable remedy for the highly sexed", (1 Cor 7) indicates that the body and sexuality have a lower status than "the life devoted to God" (1 Cor. 7). In addition, Christian ascetic traditions support the belief that the immortal spirit is a temporary prison in a mortal body and spiritual elevation is sought through the subjugation, denial, and at times, mutilation, of the body.

On the other hand, there lies within Christian and biblical tradition(s) a source of hope against spiritualistic dualism. Nelson states that pre-Christian Hebrew life exhibited a minimal amount of body-spirit dualism: "The Hebrew Scriptures show little reticence about human bodies and their varied functions. Neither do they divide the person into parts or locate the core of personhood in some disembodied spirit. They take for granted the created goodness of sexuality, and at times display lyrical celebrations of the delights of robust, fleshly love." Nevertheless, body-denying influences crept into Judaic understandings about sexuality-- and the New Testament writings.

Radical Incarnational Theology
Two aspects of the Christian tradition lend themselves to establishing a unity between the spirit and the body. Radical incarnational theology and bodily resurrection theology are two such approaches. The Christian embrace of an incarnational God helps to connect the body with the spirit. In a theological sense, Christianity is incarnational:

Christian faith is an incarnational faith, a faith in the repeatable and continuing incarnation of God. God is uniquely known to us through human presence, and human presence is always embodied presence. Thus body language is inescapably the material of Christian theology, and bodies are always sexual bodies, and our sexuality is basic to our capacity to know and to experience God.

Through the prophets and Scriptures, God becomes embodied; yet it is the event of Jesus Christ that truly speaks to this incarnation of God.
The Fourth Gospel describes Jesus as the Word or divine Logos which becomes flesh (Jn 1:14). Although the Docetists were declared heretics for denying the actual unity of the divine and the human in Jesus, the church has tended to present Jesus as sexless. A radical incarnational theology reminds us that in Jesus, the divine and the human are united. In Jesus, God has bodily functions like hunger, thirst, the need to urinate and sexual urges. Our fleshy experiences are important to our experience of God. God is embodied in our experiences of sweating, lubricating, menstruating, ejaculating, defecating etc. A radical incarnational theology understands the presence of God as embodied not only in humanity but in all of creation. With a radical theology of incarnation, we take seriously the unity of the divine and the human, the spirit and the body.

The language of Paul can connect Christianity with the concept of the body. John A. T. Robinson writes in this manner of Paul's subtle body theology:
It is from the body of sin and death that we are delivered; it is through the body of Christ on the Cross that we are saved; it is into [Christ's] body the Church that we are incorporated; it is by [Christ's] body in the Eucharist that this Community is sustained; it is by [Christ's] body that its new life has to be manifested; it is to a resurrection of this body to the likeness of [Christ's] glorious body that we are destined.

An emphasis on this link between the body and many tenets of Christian theology gives value to the body and to the spirit which are split and denigrated in the experience of sexual violence. The language of body is often used in liturgies and homiletical exercises unconsciously as part of our understandings of our experience in Christ and in community. A more conscious usage and explanation of these terms liberates the alienated body and spirit.

The Bodily Resurrection
Affirmation of the resurrection of the body can be particularly helpful in establishing the unity of the body and the spirit. The resurrection of the body specifically counters the belief in a disembodied spirit. Jesus was resurrected in the body, and we, believers, will be resurrected in the body at the eschaton: "We do not have eternal souls awaiting their release from mortal bodies. The body-self lives and the body-self dies. Death is real and total. But the resurrection promise is that death is not the final word." The promise of the resurrection is the hope of the Christian life. It is the promise that although one is suffering from the experience of PTSD now, new life is possible. The bodily resurrection helps to unify the body in life, death and in resurrection. The spirit and the body are kept always together.
We are able to move past spiritualistic dualism and experience what Nelson calls a "resurrection of the body-self." A theology of incarnation and bodily resurrection allow for Christian theology to reclaim the unity of the spirit and the body. The Christian tradition can experience a body-self resurrection for humanity. We can declare loudly, "I really am one person. Body and mind are one; my body is me as my mind is me!" Thus the alienated spirit and body are liberated in unity.

Radical incarnational theology has the power to affirm the experience of sexual violence. This theology validates the spirit-violation that occurs in the sexual assault. This theology encourages a reunion of the disintegrated body and self. This theology asserts that body violation is also spiritual violation. Incarnational theology is the first step to restoring unity to the alienation created by sexual violence. It not only tells us that the spirit and body are one, but asserts that the divine indwells individuals and communities. The fragmented community needs to feel this divine presence. The next section discusses community alienation and the ways in which covenant theology can continue to emphasize wholeness.

Chapter 3: Community Alienation and Covenant Theology

The experience of sexual violence is not an individual experience. The victim of sexual violence feels alienated from the community, and the community feels alienated from itself and the society in which it lives. The church needs to promote a theology that continues to bind community together despite the forces that threaten to tear it apart. Understanding Christian community as persons who are in divine covenant with one another is crucial to maintaining a sense of unity and wholeness in the midst of separation, doubt, and brokenness intrinsic to the experience of sexual violence.

Alienation from Community
The Violated

"You feel so isolated, so alone in the world"
--a survivor of sexual violence

This survivor's statement about rape is one of the most succinct ways to express the alienation felt by those who have been sexually violated. The last chapter discusses the ways in which the trauma associated with sexual violence affects the self. Herman continues to say that "the damage to relational life is not a secondary effect of trauma, as originally thought; traumatic events have primary effects not only on the psychological structures of the self, but also on the systems of attachment and meaning that link individual and community." The nature of trauma causes all victims to feel abandoned. The situation of terror causes individuals to spontaneously seek out a source of comfort or protection. Often persons call out for their mothers or for God. When this cry is not answered, the victim feels abandoned:

Traumatized people feel utterly abandoned, utterly alone, cast out of the human and divine systems of care and protection that sustain life. Thereafter, a sense of alienation, of disconnection, pervades every relationship, from the most intimate familial bonds to the most abstract affiliations of community and religion.

The victim is alienated from the entire community because the sense of trust and safety has been damaged. Herman argues that every individual needs to feel an elementary level of trust and safety in her or his environment: "Originating with life itself, this sense of trust sustains a person throughout the lifecycle. . . . Basic trust is the foundation of belief in the continuity of life, the order of nature, and the transcendent order of the divine." Sexual violence eradicates this fundamental sense of trust and security.

Because the sense of self is built in community, it can only be rebuilt in community. The victim needs renewed connections with other people. The need for community is heightened because the need to feel safe is so immediate and paramount: "The survivor who is often in terror of being left alone craves the simple presence of a sympathetic person. ... [S/he] needs clear and explicit assurances that [s/he] will not be abandoned once again." Survivors of sexual violence need a community of people to help reestablish trust in the societal order.

Unfortunately, many survivors of sexual violence do not find the community support they so desperately need. Despite feminist efforts to establish sexual violence as an act of violence, power, anger and degradation, and not one of sexual desire, much of society still blames the victim for the violation. Oftentimes victims feel as though people will negatively judge them and therefore refrain from sharing the experience of sexual violence. One rape victim writes: "For a couple of weeks after [the rape] I wouldn't go to school because I was so embarrassed about what happened to me ... I felt like people would say, 'Look at her. She's been raped,' and they'd look at me like I was some kind of whore." This sense of shame and fear of sharing is even greater for male victims of sexual violence.
Oftentimes, this reluctance to share is justified by negative responses from family and friends. Robin Warshaw states that the most logical place for rape survivors to seek support is from their families: Unfortuntely, many communities are unhelpful: "In part, that's because parents and other relatives often reflect religious, cultural and social values that are unsympathetic to rape victims." Because eighty-five to ninety percent of sexual violent acts are committed by persons who are known, loved or trusted prior to the assault, a survivor is often telling family and friends about the violent act of someone that they, too, know, love or trust. Many parents and friends refuse to believe that the survivor is telling the truth and proceed to "choose sides" with the violator rather than with the one who has been violated. One rape victim describes her pain a conversation with her rapist, "No, not everyone believes me! My mentor took your side! She said that you probably didn't mean tp hurt me. She was my mentor and she took your side. So don't talk to me about how everyone believes me."

This need for community, and yet repulsion from community, causes those who are violated to enter into a push-pull relationship with those around them. There is a need to be surrounded by a community of friends and family; a need to feel safe and protected. Yet there is often a legitimate fear of unacceptance; a fear of trusting anyone else with body and spirit: "The profound disruption in basic trust . . . foster[s] withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to another." One survivor of sexual assault expresses this feeling: "I was terrified to being with people and terrified of being alone."

Despite the alienation that pervades the relationship between community and victim, the victim needs the community to recover. The victim needs the community for that sense of safety, and also for understanding in the PTSD experience: "The survivor needs the help of others who are willing to recognize that a traumatic event has occurred, to suspend their preconceived judgments, and simply bear witness to her tale." The more the community understands the effect of PTSD on the victim, the more understanding it can be in relationship with this person. In the midst of the despair of PTSD, what sustains the survivor is "the smallest evidence of an ability to form loving connections." Oftentimes, the community must reach out to the violated to help them form these connections.

The Violator
Just as the victim and community are alienated, there is also alienation between the offender and the community. Marie Fortune writes that congregational responses to offenders are ambivalent and difficult. There tend to be three primary responses: (1) support of the offender's denial of responsibility; (2) belief that the offender is guilty and ostracism of the offender completely; or (3) denial of whole issue altogether. None of these responses are satisfactory. If the community ignores the evidence of violation and participates in denial, then the community has participated in the alienating sin of sexual violence--even aided and abetted it. Yet when the community ostracizes the offender, the offender becomes unwelcome in the community of faith. The community has established a hierarchy of sin by accepting some "sinners" within its midst, and alienating others. Fortune concludes that these responses do not help the offender or any efforts to make justice and reconciliation possible.

The offender who is confronted with offense by the violated party, the legal system, the congregation, friends or family is hurt by additional ostracism. The violator, too, needs community for recovery:

A group of people who are willing to be supportive, to strengthen [his/her] resolve to stay in a treatment program, to be present with [him/her] through the process of change is what is most needed. Ostracism is punishment which does not bring change. To be present in love to the offender is to bring a supportive and firm hand to bear in order to enable repentance and possible reconciliation.

Alienation within Community
The Community's Trauma
The experience of sexual violence is a communal experience. Although sexual violence affects the violated, the violator and those that love them differently, it does affect them all:

Anyone with whom the victim has a significant family relationship (partner, parent, sibling, etc.) and with whom the victim has shared some information about the rape, will experience some degree of family reaction to the news. Sometimes physical and emotional reactions mimic those of the victims, e. g. sleeplessness, headaches, loss of appetite, excessive fears.

Other times community members will feel extreme anger and try to seek revenge on behalf of the victim. This is also true for those close to the violator. If they admit the actions of the violator, they may feel shame and guilt on his/her behalf.

The community has also lost its basic level of trust. While it is commonly known that the presence of a serial rapist can put an entire community in a state of dis-ease and fear, isolated incidents of sexual violence also remind the community that their environment is not as safe or protected as they previously believed it to be. The community, too, needs a restoration of safety, trust and protection. The community, too, needs to mourn the losses that they have suffered in their empathy with the violated and violator. The community, too, needs statements of reassurance that they did not fail to protect their own members and loved ones. Herman provides a poetic conclusion to the need for group solidarity in the crisis of PTSD:

The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts [her/him]. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores [her/his] humanity.

This paper asserts that the Christian community of faith is precisely the community that should bond together in solidarity.

A Theological Proposal--Covenant Theology

The church is not just a gathering of people, a local parish or a congregation. Church is community. More than community, church is a moral community, a faith community, a fellowship community. Church is community that is in covenant with God and itself through and because of God. This is the essence of covenant theology.

There are many forces that threaten to tear apart community. The oppressive forces of racism, sexism, classism and heterosexism are just a few. Political perspective, religious doctrine and individual personality also threaten the cohesion of a community. Existential doubts and societal alienation manifest themselves in a variety of ways dividing and separating members of the Christian faiths from one another. Sexual violence is just one of the experiences that alienates the necessary unity of the church.

The concept of covenant emerges from the Judeo-Christian tradition and serves to bind together the church in solidarity and accountability: "For the Christian therefore the concept of covenant must be regarded as the foremost of a number of such concepts by which the theological, as distinct from the purely literary or historical, value and meaning of the Bible are to be understood." The Hebrew Bible is full of the imagery of covenant. Although R. E. Clements argues that the centrality of the covenant metaphor was not established until the canonization of the Hebrew Bible, its lasting effect stresses the binding relationship between YHWH and Israel. Clements argues that it was because the Hebrew Bible in particular, and Judaism in general, was already understood as a covenant between God and Israel, that the Christian church could understand itself as comprising a "new covenant":

So far as the New Testament is concerned it is certain that the interpretation of the events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as constitutive of a new covenant, with its consequence in a new understanding of the people of God, has arisen as a direct reflection of the fact that these events were seen to bear a unique relationship to the Old Testament.

Understanding the Hebraic understanding of covenant will, therefore, aid in the Christian metaphor of covenant.

According to Jon Levenson, the ancient Israelites were in a covenant with God that can be likened to the suzerainty treaties of their time--there is an element of contract and exchange. The difference between the YHWH-Israel covenant and suzerainty treaties are the love that binds YHWH and Israel. At the core of the covenant relationship is love: the mysterious love of YHWH for Israel and the less baffling love of Israel for YHWH, her benefactor: "Covenant love is mutual; it distinguishes a relationship of reciprocity." God is obligated to fulfill the promise to the patriarchs. Israel is to realize her love to God by observance of the "law conceived in love." Secondly, the covenant relationship is not polar, rather it is triangular: "At the top stands God, and at each of the two angles of the base stand Israelites. Each of them relates to his neighbor through norms decreed by God ... In Israel, covenant becomes a basis of social ethics." Thirdly, the covenantal relationship is not static--it can be renewed. It is not imposed, but accepted: "Life in covenant is not something merely granted, but something won anew, rekindled and reconsecrated in the heart of each Israelite in every generation. Covenant is not only imposed, but also accepted. It calls with both the stern voice of duty and the tender accents of the lover."

The Christian covenantal relationship can be understood in the same way. The relationship is contractual involving elements of promise and exchange. Nevertheless the primary human obligation to God is to love: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Mat 22:37-38). The covenant with God also extends to the rest of creation: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mat 22:39). Likewise, the Christian concept of covenant is not compulsory. We voluntarily enter into the commitment. We renew this covenant in eucharist and worship settings.

In order to combat the alienation that plagues community, the church must embrace a radical covenantal theology. This means to take seriously our responsibility and accountability to one other. Patricia Wilson-Kastner writes of our need to remember the unity of church. She concludes that "If we take these images even with moderate seriousness, the very occurrence of one act of sexual violence is an affront to the community. It raises serious questions about our responsibility for each other."

James Nelson warns against an overemphasis on the covenant metaphor for the church. Nelson states that there are two primary metaphors for emphasizing the communal nature of the church. The "organic metaphor" reminds us of the ways that the church is like an organism made up of more than the sum of its parts. (One example is the way in which the New Testament refers to the church as "the body of Christ.") This "organic metaphor" provides an ideal of integration, harmony and wholeness. The "covenant metaphor," on the other hand, conveys the relationship of promise and response between God and God's people: "It suggests the ongoing conversation between the covenanting parties, the freedom of personal beings to interact with one another." Both the organic metaphors and the covenant metaphors are equally important and complimentary: "Without the covenant, the organic understanding leads to the imperialism of group over individual; without the organic understanding, the covenant can become little more than a contract assumed to be created by the promises and interests of its members." Although Nelson's reluctance to overemphasize covenant is legimated by the danger of losing individuality, the profound alienation caused by sexual violence calls for a radical covenant theology that draws upon all language of the Christian tradition that promotes unity and responsibility for one another. Patricia Wilson-Kastner writes:

To assert that we are members of one another, joined together in the body of Christ, is not simply a metaphor but the expression of a profound reality. We are bound to one another because of our common relationship to God through Christ in the life of the Spirit of God. We form one interdependent whole, the body of Christ, the communion of saints . . . This language underscores the closeness of the interrelationships and the responsibility we have for one another: the hand for the eye, one member of the team for another.

We are bound to each other. God will not give up on creation. Creation must not give up on God. We cannot give up on each other.
We must remember that we are all children of God and we are called to be each other's keepers. In a radical covenant theology, we do not ignore the problems of our sisters and brothers: "If we are children of God, we are also responsible for one another's well-being; we are our brother's and sister's keepers. That is, if we share a common life, we are also called to live in ways that do not harm others and actively protect and nurture them." We do not isolate or ostracize. We do not insist that this is someone else's problem, rather we make it our problem as well. One person's joy is the community's joy. One person's tears evoke the community's grief.

One gospel passage illustrates the concept of covenant theology excellently. Jesus tells the parable about the king that commends those for feeding him when he was hungry, providing drink when he was thirsty, welcoming when he was estranged, clothing when he was naked, caring when infirmed and visiting when imprisoned. When the righteous reply that they do not recall seeing the king in these depraved states, the king replies, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me" (Mat 25:40). This passage is often used to encourage parishioners to engage in outreach ministry, yet it also tells us about the core of the covenant relationship. In caring for community, we care for Jesus. When we do not care for community, we are deficient in our relationship to God. As a covenant community, the church is called to feed the spiritually and emotionally hungry in its midst, to nurture those who thirst after righteousness and justice; to welcome those who are feeling alienated and ostracized.

Covenant theology means that we are bound to the victim and the perpetrator. In covenant, we give balm to the wounds of the violated, and issue accountability to the crimes of the violator. In understanding the covenantal bond for each others, the church robs sexual violence of its isolating power. Covenant theology allows the faith community to struggle together. Together, the community struggles to regain a sense of safety, intimacy, and trust. Coveant theology serves as an entree to the issues of alienation from God. In the perception of alienation from God, the community struggles together with issues of theodicy.

Chapter 4: Alienation from God and a Theology of Divine Presence

The experience of sexual violence inevitably forces the theodical question: If God is all-good and all-powerful, then why is there suffering? This is a question that only the church can address. The church needs to cease providing easy answers to this question, and begin to wrestle with different responses to this issue. Regardless of the theodical response, it is crucial that the church emphasize the overwhelming omnipresence and compassion of God in the midst of the suffering of sexual violence.

Alienation from God
I wasn't mad at God. I just had nothing to say to Him.
--survivor of sexual violence

One of the most explicitly theological responses to sexual violence is a sense of abandonment by God. The previous chapter speaks of the way in which sexual violence destroys the human sense of trust in the environment, safety, the social order. For the religious community, the sense of trust in God is also affected. There is often a sense of distance from God in the midst of the profound suffering of sexual violence.

One reason for this distance is the belief that God, Godself, contributes to the abuse. In Facing the Abusing God, David Blumenthal encourages sufferers to acknowledge that Hebrew Scriptures present a God who is abusing: That is, the metaphorical language portrays a God who is the abusive husband, the humiliator of the oppressed woman, the One who strips the unfaithful wife naked, and One who encourages gang rape. This acknowledgment will cause some spiritual dissonance:

Further, we must begin by admitting that, read inter-textually with the lives of abused persons, the impact of such Scriptures is devastating. Reading parts of the Bible, if one is abused, is traumatic; it is re-victimization. All this is hard to hear; it is difficult to absorb. Our deepest psychological and theological instincts move us to denial; our deepest spiritual sense rebels against this idea: It cannot be so, God cannot be an abusing parent, God cannot be an abusing spouse.

Although this imagery is difficult to accept, Blumenthal asks sufferers to linger in the place of separation from God. In this sense, he takes very seriously the depth and injustice of suffering. Unfortunately, his schemata does not seek to reunite the sufferer and God.

More profound than the abuse of theological metaphor and biblical language is the loss of trust in God's presence and benevolence. Those affected by violence want to know: Where God was in the midst of the assault? Why God didn't stop the assault? Where is God now in the suffering of the healing process? If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there suffering? In her description of PTSD, Herman identifies this problem of theodicy:

Survivors of atrocity of every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage: Why? The answer is beyond human understanding. Beyond this unfathomable question, the survivor confronts another, equally incomprehensible questions: Why me?

Although a psychologist can note the problem of understanding suffering, for the Christian community, the question is specifically theological. According to Marie Fortune, the sense of abandonment by God is directly related to one's understanding of God and God's nature in the world:

If a person believes God to be omnipotent, loving and rewarding of righteousness of good Christians, then suffering is either a sign of God's disfavor or a realization that God does not play by the rules. Either interpretation can lead to the feelings of being abandoned by God . . . . If a person believes that the sign of God's presence is protection from suffering, the experience of suffering logically indicates God's absence.

The theology with which one enters the experience of suffering determines the way in which one responds to the question of suffering.
According to many process theologians, the belief in a perfect omnipotent God is the theological fault. Wrestling with the question of suffering and evil necessarily leads to a sense of abandonment by God. In David Griffin's description of the problem of evil, the experience of suffering in conjunction with a theology of a perfect omnipotent God can only lead to a theological crisis. Griffin states that the logic follows this pattern:

(1) God is a perfect reality; (2) A perfect reality is an omnipotent being; (3) An omnipotent being could unilaterally bring about an actual world without any genuine evil; (4) A perfect reality is morally perfect being; (5) A morally perfect being would want to being about an actual world without any genuine evil; (6) If there is genuine evil in the world, then there is no God; (7) There is genuine evil the world; (8) Therefore, there is no God. In Griffin's account, the problem of evil not only leads to a sense of abandonment by God, but a type of atheism.

Whether there is a sense of abandonment or a newfound atheism, the sufferer, and anyone else asking the same questions, feels alienated from God. Because the previous belief system about God does not seem to match up with experience, there is alienation from God. Because God did not intervene and end or prevent the violence, there is alienation from God. Because Scripture is replete with abusive images of God, there is alienation from God. Because there are no readily available and satisfactory answers to the questions about God's role in the violence, there is alienation from God. As the victim from the introductory quotation states, if there is not explicit anger with God for the perceived absence or betrayal, there is often a deep and empty silence in the face of sexual violence.
To ask the theodical questions: "Why do I suffer?" and "Where is God in my suffering" is to attempt to come to terms with oneself in relation to God and the universe. For those who have experienced sexual violence and the communities that love them, those questions are often asked in an aching separation from God and within a multivocal cacophony of biblical, hymnodical, homiletical and theological suggestions.

Wresting with Theodicy
In Philosophy of Religion, John Hick states that the resolution to the problem of evil tends to take three forms: (1) rethinking of the nature/ purpose of evil; (2) rethinking the omnipotence of God, or (3) questioning God's existence. To these options, there is a fourth option--questioning God's goodness or righteousness. These four theological propositions have deep roots and many nuances. In the midst of these options, there are some common ecclesial responses to the problem of suffering and evil.

In Preaching to Sufferers, Kent Richmond identifies these six themes that are often heard in church communities. Richmond calls these insufficient theodical options, "answers that are not." The first of these "answers" is that suffering is a mystery. He believes that this response tends to increase the alienation between sufferers and God: "The inability to understand the reason for suffering frequently leads persons to dispose of the problem by saying, "Well, it's God's will." When this is said to people who have passed through a time of intense pain, it is not uncommon for them to reply, "Well if that was God's will, then I want nothing to do with [God]."

The second "answer" is that evil is a product of dualism wherein evil is the result of a seductive outside force like Satan. In this scheme, evil is not defeated until an eschatological cosmic battle (Armageddon). This response does nothing to alleviate the pain of the present suffering. The third "answer" is that suffering is a help in perceiving goodness. It is said that we never fully appreciate goodness without evil, or good health without suffering. Some people, however, fail to see any good that can emerge from intense evil and lose faith in all goodness. The fourth "answer" is that suffering is divine punishment for sin. This proposal falls short in the face of the fact that not all suffering can be traced to sin. A belief in the divine punishment option also leads to a greater sense of divine-human alienation: "Furthermore, when suffering is seen as a punishment for sin, it often produces guilt in the most undeserving persons, if it has not already led to an outright rejection of God."
The sixth and easily embraced response is that suffering is a means by which God tests us, teaches us and strengthens our characters. To this "answer" is often added the reassurance that God does not give anyone more than s/he can bear. According to Marie Fortune, this type of response implies that God is responsible, and can only serve to further distance the sufferers from God. This position is also very dangerous because it leads to notions of redemptive suffering. Theories of redemptive suffering do not always account for the differences between voluntary and involuntary suffering. Sexual violence is always a situation of involuntary suffering. Fortune states that sexual violence is "unjustifiable under any circumstances; it should never happen." The awareness that painful experiences such as sexual violence can be a catalyst for social justice or personal spiritual and emotional growth must always come from the victim.

This paper does not attempt to wrestle with a viable theodicy, but it does demand that church communities do. Far too often, church communities intentionally give some of the earlier "answers that are not" in responses to situations of great suffering, without pushing these theologies to their logical conclusions. On the other hand, churches unintentionally breed multiple theodical responses in the use of various hymns and songs, liturgies and selections of biblical texts. Richmond reminds readers that every "answer that does not" has support from biblical and experiential sources. Rather the criteria for selecting a theodicy must be "its ability to speak to the pain and questions that are brought into the lives of those who suffer."

Wendy Farley believes that there are no adequate theodicies: "The radicality of human suffering is such that any justification of it must inevitably trivialize evil." In "Theological Perspectives on Sexual Violence," Patricia Wilson-Kastner agrees with Farley: "Why does God let this happen? The only honest answer is, I think, that we don't know ... Evil is ultimately unintelligible. We know what happened, and sometimes even how it happened, but not why." Yet she sees this belief in the existence of evil as one of the best contributions the Christian tradition has to offer to sufferers. Christianity has never denied evil. We are assured that evil is not an illustion of a product of our imaginations or a misjudgment about others.

Patricia Wilson-Kastner provides a solid base for a constructive theology in the midst of suffering. We must admit that we don't know why God allows suffering. We must admit that we have some ideas, some proposals, but ultimately we don't know. We do know that there is evil, and we do know that the Christian tradition can give us some other fundamental insights by which to live in the meanwhile. This painful work of reconstruction must be done. Herman writes that every victim of sexual violence undergoes a process of moral reexamining: "In order to develop a full understanding of the trauma story, the survivor must examine the moral questions of guilt and responsibility and reconstruct a system of belief that makes sense of [his/her] undeserved suffering." This reconstruction must be done carefully. It can not be sloppy or uncritical.

The difficult work of reconciling God, suffering and evil is the work that brings the alienated sufferer back to God. This reconstructive work must be done in community. Far too often, the victim of sexual violence is left to do this reconstruction alone. This further alienates the victim. Herman also states that "Not only must [the victim] rebuild [his/her] own 'shattered assumptions' about meaning, order and justice in the world, but [s/he] must also find a way to resolve [his/her] differences with those whose beliefs [s/he] can no longer share." The entire community must wrestle with this issue, and reconstruct together.
In the communal reconstruction, the theodical question becomes more difficult. "Cheap hope" will not suffice: "We should be equally critical of cheap hope, a simple imposition of biblical verse and visions on the human predicament today as if they are self-explanatory of a bandage for bloodied souls." Cheap hope will not suffice for the bloodied souls that sexual violence leaves in its destructive path. These bloodied souls need more than a bandage, more than a transfusion; they need to once again feel the presence and the care of God. For this reason, Fortune suggests that a constructive theodicy begin by rephrasing the question for those who experience sexual violence: "The better question is 'Where is God in this suffering and what can God do in this situation?' "

A Theological Proposal--God's Compassionate Omnipresence
My feelings toward God are numb. I confess I fear God. I feel very much alone and wonder whether there is a loving God out there for me.
--survivor of sexual violence

Theology must insist on a portrait of an immanent, caring, empathetic omnipresent God. The answer to Fortune's question must be a firm unequivocal response, "God is present in that suffering with us, and hurting as deeply as we do." In the face of great incomprehensible evil and suffering, theology must insist on three images of God's character and activity: (1) God's omnipresence; (2) God's divine suffering; (3) God's compassion.

God's Omnipresence
The concept of God's omnipresence has traditionally been linked to God's omnipotence and God's omniscience. Although omnipresence is defined as an attribute of God wherein God "is actually present in all existing places and things," most understandings of omnipresence are not separated from the concept of God as omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. The New Catholic Encyclopedia defines God's omnipresence in conjunction with God's power and knowledge: "Since in God power and action are one, [God] is substantially present in all existing things through [God's] power and operation; [that is, God] is present to [creation] by [God's] essence and power, and all things are open to [God's] knowledge." Since God's presence is so closely tied to God's power and knowledge, it is difficult to extract one from the other. It is helpful, however, to separate the concepts. Whereas God's omnipotence and omniscience are highly contested in theodical debates, God's omnipresence must remain constant.

There is plenty of biblical support for the concept of God's omnipresence. God's presence is transcendent and permeating (Deut 4:39). God's presence is inescapable (Ps 139:7-10). Most importantly, God's presence is constant: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you" (Is 43:2).

In the midst of feeling abandoned, it is precisely the presence of God that must be felt. Although God's omnipotence may be under scrutiny, and God's omniscience may seem incomprehensible (that is, If God knew that this violence would occur, why does God permit it?), God's presence must remain unquestioned. Theology must portray more than a transcendent God peering down on earth from without. God's omnipresence is more than a knowledge of all that is occurring. God's presence is an actual nearness. It is intimacy. In the act of sexual violence, God is present with the violator and the victim. As the Isaiah passage states, in the most tumultuous of times, we can be assured of God's presence.

The awareness of God's presence can be liberating for those who experience sexual violence. Richmond writes that the awareness of God's presence "often serves to lend strength and courage to persons facing pain." With an omnipresent God, the sufferer can bring the pain of suffering to God. The tradition of the lamenting psalms can be very liberating for sufferers in this manner. In the psalms of lament, we witness the expression of Israel's pain. Rather than turning away from God in the midst of incomprehensible evil, the psalmist takes the pain and abandonment to God. Psalm 22 is one example of the way in which the biblical tradition speaks to the power of bringing the suffering before God, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest" (Ps. 22:1-2). This psalm describes the sense of alienation, the pain ("I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast" v. 14) and demands that God respond: "But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid!"( v. 19) This type of prayer assumes and insists on God's presence, even when the presence seems distant.

Ecclesial theologies must stress this omnipresence of God even to the point of excess. After all, it is suffering that seems to destroy the awareness of God's presence: "God is present as the power for redemption in every situation, but suffering can bite so deeply that it is impossible for people to feel its presence; [that is,] nothing separates God from the world, but suffering can be a veil that hides this loving presence." The continual presence of God during a season of pain, suffering and incomprehension cannot be overstated.

Although an emphasis on God's presence is essential, it is not sufficient. The next natural question is about the nature of God's presence. Is God aware and present in the midst of suffering and evil, and stoic? Does God care about this suffering in which God is so attendant? Does God have any feeling at all in this moment?

God's Divine Suffering
Can God feel? The answer is not obvious. An orthodox Christian tradition might argue that God does not feel. S. Paul Schilling notes that there are several propositions in the Christian tradition that argue for God's inability to suffer. Part of the Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes a transcendent God who is eternal, unmovable, immutable and unswayed by feeling. If one believes that suffering is intrinsically a form of imperfection and evil, and God is perfect and unblemished, God cannot suffer. One could argue that it is only the human side of Christ that suffers, and not the divine side, because an omnipotent, omniscient God cannot be subject to sorrow and frustration.

An omnipresent God must be immanent. A transcendent God who is omnipresent is a God who sees all, and yet cares to do nothing about what is seen. According to Schilling, God intimately interpenetrates all aspects of existence: "God does not stand over against the world, acting on it from without. Rather, [God's] creative and redemptive activity underlies, permeates, and sustains it. [God] is the matrix of all its being and becoming . . . . Inevitably, therefore, when [God's] creatures suffer for whatever reason, [God] not only knows about their suffering but concretely experiences it." The Christian belief that Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah's suffering servant gives biblical precedent for this concept of divine suffering. In the image of the suffering servant and the accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, we see a God who is bruised for our iniquities and wounded for our transgressions (Is. 53:8).

Charles Hartshorne warns against moving so far away from an unfeeling God that one ends up at the opposite extreme. We do not want to purport a God like the polytheistic view found in Greek mythology wherein the superhuman gods are capable of all sorts of emotional disturbances such as jealousy, offense, sexual urge, and yet they are immortal. The mediating view is one of divine suffering. Hartshorne writes of the process concept of prehension: "God is loving in the sense of feeling, with unique adequacy, the feelings of all others, entirely free from inferior emotions (except as vicariously participated in or sympathetically objectified), entirely steadfast in the constancy of the divine care for all."

When God suffers with and for creation, one can draw out two conclusions that help to reconcile God and the sufferer. Firstly, God's divine suffering implies that cruelty to other creatures or to oneself contributes to vicarious divine suffering. In that sense, violence against another person or aspect of creation is violence against God. God's divine suffering reminds us of the interconnectedness of our actions. When we sin against one another, we also sin against and hurt God. Secondly, God's divine suffering helps sufferers to regain their trust in God. In A Cry of Absence, Martin Marty writes, "God participates in the life of the people and suffers at their sides, thus meriting their trust." In the experience of sexual violence, trust in God is diminished. Trust in God can begin to be re-established and re-strengthened when we realize that God is not unaffected by our suffering. It is not trust that God will protect from all harm and evil. Marie Fortune writes that one victim's theology was reshaped after being raped: "Prior to the rape, she recalled that her prayers most often took the form of 'Dear God, please take care of me.' As she recovers from the rape, she realizes that now her prayers began, 'Dear God, please help me to remember what I have learned.' " This trust is the trust that God cares in every situation and is not neutral, but grieves and hurts with the sufferer.

God's Compassion
Theology must still do more than emphasize God's presence and God's solidarity in suffering. Theology must also suggest a God who hates evil and resists it. Theology also must speak of a God whose primary characteristic is love and compassion.

In Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion, Wendy Farley argues that a response to the theodical question necessitates more than a God who "suffers with." The problem of radical human suffering requires a theology of a "compassionate God." With a compassionate God, there is the possibility for redemption in the midst of suffering. Redemption requires more than solidarity with suffering, but opposition to its destructive effects: "Compassion is the intensity of divine being as it enters into suffering, guilt, and evil to mediate the power to overcome them."

Farley argues that theodicy has focused too much on the role of God's omnipotence. Instead, Christian theodicies might focus more on the role of divine love. If the power of God is understood through the grid of love, rather than sovereignty, theodicy produces an alternative paradigm--that of a compassionate God. According to Farley, "compassion" is a mode of relationship and a power that is wounded by the suffering of others, and is propelled into action on their behalf. This push to action is not physical intervention. This is why so many people feel disappointed by God in the experience of suffering. Compassion resists suffering: "The power of compassion is incarnational, interactive. It is present to sufferers as the power to resist their sufferings in whatever ways are possible within the confines of a particular situation"

God's compassion resists suffering in two ways. Firstly, it resists the causes of suffering. Farley writes that "compassion works to empower a community or an individual to resist the violation to which it is subject." This is similar to Wilson-Kastner's concept of an "invitation to new life." She believes that both victim and assailant are invited into new life after the experience of violation: "Neither are bound by inexorable laws to live as doers of evil or sufferers of its consequences . . . . Human beings are invited to . . . the living of new life at one with God and humanity." This is not a concept of redemptive suffering. There is redemption only in that God works with individuals and communities to begin life anew. This new life often involves a quest for justice. Both Herman and Fortune agree that survivors of sexual violence cannot complete a healing process until they also pursue justice. This pursuit of justice may take the form of prosecution of the offender, or concrete engagements with other survivors of sexual violence, or abstract intellectual pursuits. The common thread is that survivors are dedicated to raising public awareness. Farley suggests that this kind of resistance to suffering is empowered by divine compassion.

The second way that divine compassion resists suffering is by refusing to allow the power of suffering to dominate sufferers. Farley admits that not all suffering can be effectively resisted. In fact, "most suffering that can be resisted is overcome only after a long and terrible struggle that leaves many dead and destroyed before the victory is won." In these situations, compassion is present, as consolation and courage. With some suffering, there can be no guarantee that the suffering will end. Compassion lies in the "the capacity of the sufferer to still taste the presence of divine love even through the torment." In this sense, Farley's portrait of a compassionate God ends where it begins--with God's omnipresence.

For those who experience sexual violence and the communities that love them, the theodical question is inevitable. Experiences of pain and suffering serve to alienate sufferers from God. Even those who have not directly experienced the violence find that their understanding of God, power, evil, goodness and justice come under scrutiny as they, too, seek to reconcile God and the experience of suffering. As the violated, violators, and loved ones struggle with this question, they must be assured of the overwhelming presence of God. They must know that this divine presence suffers with creation and love enough to seek redemptive possibilities in suffering. Even in the most destructive instances of suffering, the awareness of God's presence is the locus of redemption.

Addressing theological questions insists on the acknowledgment of the experience of suffering. As the church community becomes more and more aware of PTSD and its effects, they will also realize that the healing process takes time. A compassionate God is One who takes time to suffer with creation. Forgiving is another process that necessitates a profound understanding of time. The next chapter discusses how an omnipresent God negotiates interaction with the world through time (kairos).

Chapter 5: Alienation from Offender and Kairos Theology

The most observable alienation faced in the crisis of sexual violence is between the victim and the victimizer. In situations of sexual violence, one can actually point to the locus of pain, suffering and evil. In this context, reconciliation becomes problematic for the victim, the victimizer(s) and all those who love both or either parties. While we struggle to redefine forgiveness into a functional and credible ethic, we must suggest a theology that honors the time-process of repentance and forgiveness. Understanding divine and human action as one of kairos allows the church to endure this ambivalent, yet necessary, process.

Alienation from Perpetrator
This is what he wanted from me--to forgive him? How could I even begin to forgive him? I have loved him! Like a fool, I had loved [the man] I thought he was.
--Family member of survivors and offender of sexual violence

In the crisis of sexual violence, there is a dramatic alienation between the victim and the perpetrator. Although the victim and perpetrator may have ties of family, friendship or some type of love, the violence has introduced a pain so deep that some level of hatred is inevitable. Whereas some forms of suffering seem to have no obvious source (such as disease, famine, earthquake etc.), the situation of sexual violence allows the victim to identify and the name the source of the trauma. Despite any connection between the violated and violator, sexual violence creates a deep rupture in relationship that is not easily overcome. The struggle to overcome this rupture is an encounter with the concept of reconciliation.

We must also remember that the victim is not the only party who feels alienated from and anger with the offender. When the sexual violence becomes known to the community, the community, too, must wrestle with forgiveness. Does a community forgive the perpetrator in its midst? They, too, have desires for revenge, forgiveness, compensation, denial etc. The concept of reconciliation does not remain a one-on-one dialogue. The violence has violated the entire community, and the entire community must be reconciled with the offender.

The concept of reconciliation is first recognized in the process of mourning. As long as the sexual violence is denied and internalized, neither the victim nor the victimizer are forced to deal with the concept of restoring the broken relationship. Once the violence is acknowledged (either inwardly or publicly), the anger, hatred and disdain for the victimizer is unearthed. Herman states that these feelings come to a boil in the process of reconstructing the story of the event(s) of sexual violence. As the story is reconstructed and retold, the victim enters into a period of grief. In her work with traumatized persons, Herman has noted a great deal of resistance to the mourning process. Although the pain of reconstructing the story is the initial locus of resistance, the desire for vengeance and forgiveness are primary roadblocks for healing.

Herman refers to efforts to seek revenge or to forgive as fantasies. Many survivors will initially seek vengeance with the belief that revenge will bring relief. Rather than bringing relief, attempts to seek revenge increase torment and do not alleviate post-traumatic symptoms. Ultimately, the survivor will realize that it is impossible to "get even," and may transform that energy into righteous indignation. Both vengeance and forgiveness are attempts at empowerment. In efforts to forgive, "the survivor imagines that [s/he] can transcend [the] rage and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love." Herman believes that forgiveness is a fantasy because true forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned forgiveness through confession, repentance and restitution. This contrition is rare and ties this effort to the healing of the victim to the psychological state of the violator. Herman states that survivors should not have to forgive:

[The survivor's] healing depends on the discovery of restorative love in [her/his] own life; it does not require that this love be extended to the perpetrator. Once the survivor has mourned the traumatic event, [s/he] may be surprised to discover how uninteresting the perpetrator has become . . . and how little concern [is felt for the perpetrator's] fate. [The survivor] may even feel sorrow and compassion for [the perpetrator], but this disengaged feeling is not the same as forgiveness.

Herman suggests that survivors do not even attempt acts of revenge or forgiveness because they are impediments to healing and are nearly impossible to actualize. She states that a process of grieving and mourning the losses are more appropriate approaches to dealing the with the rupture in relationship.

Herman is correct in her assessment that the trauma cannot be exorcised through hatred or love. David Blumenthal, too, asserts that forgiveness is not necessary. In the a post-holocaust, abuse-sensitive world, we must acknowledge the abuse of the perpetrator--both the human perpetrator, and for Blumenthal, God as well. He concludes, "We cannot forgive an abusing f/Father . . . unity and reconciliation are no longer the goal; rather we seek a dialogue that affirms our difference and our justness, together with our relatedness." In Blumenthal's schemata, we protest our innocence, we mourn and lament, and we maintain our integrity, yet there remains an unreconciled gap between the victim and the a/Abuser. Herman and Blumenthal honor the very real feeling of resistance to forgiving. They honor the depth of the alienation that can lead to a conclusion of irreconcilable difference. They do not, however, provide reconciling solutions to the alienation. This paper asserts that it is theologically negligent to simply eradicate the concept of forgiveness from a Christian tradition that stresses its importance and necessity.

Desiring Forgiveness
Those who feel that they have been violated in the experience of sexual violence feel a both a desire and obligation to forgive. Marie Fortune agrees with Herman that many of the violated feel that forgiving the offender will bring healing and resolution to the pain of the experience. Although forgiveness is part of the healing process, forgiving will not eradicate the pain of the trauma. In addition to an unhealthy desire to forgive, exists the Christian obligation to forgive.
John Patton identifies the Christian obligation to forgive with a work-righteousness mentality: "The understanding of forgiveness is strongly associated with the dimension of the Christian tradition that identifies salvation with individual health and that places great emphasis on the beliefs which are necessary for a person who wishes to gain that health." This belief finds expression in the thought that "forgiveness is good for you and that you ought to become forgiving as soon as possible." In this sense, forgiveness becomes an act, an ethical duty, something that one ought to do.

Christian teaching has often said that our ethical duty to forgive others is connected to God's willingness to forgive us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer states this explicitly: "God will only forgive Christ's followers if they forgive one another with readiness and brotherly affection." Patton traces this understanding to the petition in The Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Even those with cursory involvement with the Christian tradition are aware of this petition and its common interpretation:

Jesus says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others, God will forgive us; but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us . . . If we say, "I will never forget what so-and-so did to me, and then go and take this petition on our lips, we are quite deliberately asking God not to forgive us . . . No one is fit to pray The Lord's Prayer so long as the unforgiving spirit holds sway within [his/her] heart.

In the context of sexual violence, the violated can easily conclude that one must forgive, and forgive immediately, or else his/her faith becomes void and empty.
Those who feel violated are not the only ones desiring forgiveness. The perpetrator may also desire forgiveness from the victim and community. Many times, forgiveness is viewed as an immediate way to be relieved of guilt for wrongful actions. Some offenders will request forgiveness: "An offender may approach a pastor seeking forgiveness or may ask the victim to forgive. Usually these requests are accompanied by genuine remorse and promises of changed behavior." If the offender acknowledges guilt and expresses remorse, the violated's resistance to forgive is a roadblock to the perpetrator's healing as well. As persons who are familiar with not only the command to forgive, but the need to be forgiven, a denial of forgiveness can have a significant spiritual impact on the offender.

Reconstructing Forgiveness
Although some scholars reject the need to forgive despite the overwhelming desire for forgiveness, other scholars have chosen to uphold the Christian principle of forgiveness. These scholars seem to approach the reconstruction of forgiveness in the same way: by redefining what it means to forgive. Two elements are consistently repeated in their deconstruction of popular notions of forgiveness: (1) how forgiveness occurs, and (2) when forgiveness occurs. This paper asserts that "the how" of forgiveness is an ethical issue of justice and the restoration of particular norms. "The when" of forgiveness, is a theological issue of patience and demand centered on Paul Tillich's understanding of kairos.

The How--Redefining Forgiveness
Marie Fortune is the only scholar in the study of sexual violence that consistently examines the struggle to forgive. She does this in two ways. Firstly, she redefines forgiveness. Secondly, she establishes criteria for forgiveness. Fortune and Patton (and many others) share the view that forgiveness is not an act. Forgiveness is not an act that tries to forgive and forget. Forgiveness is not automatically trusting in or returning to fellowship with the offender. Fortune asserts that forgiveness is an attitude: "Forgiveness is letting go of the immediacy of the trauma, the memory of which continues to terrorize the victim and limit possibilities; ... [it is] putting the memory into perspective so that it no longer dominates one's life."

Fortune asserts, with biblical support, that there are prerequisites to forgiveness. In Luke 17:3-4, Jesus is recorded as making this oft-quoted statement on forgiveness: "Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you several times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive him." Based on this passage, Fortune finds three preconditions for forgiveness which she calls "justice": (1) Confession--acknowledgment that harm has been done to one person by another; (2) repentance--a fundamental change which necessarily requires more than good intentions, but time, hard work and therapy; (3) restitution--the responsibility of the abuser to provide materially for the restoration of those who have been harmed

Fortune does acknowledge the fact that the offender may never come to stages of confession, repentance and restitution. She does assert that the community (church, legal system, family and/or friends) can make justice. If a community does the following things, it is providing justice for the victim: (1) Acknowledges the harm done to the victim; (2) breaks the silence about sexual violence; (3) hears and believes the experiences of the victim thereby standing in solidarity with the victim; (4) and protects the vulnerable.

These steps are necessary. Only after some justice has been made, can reconciliation occur. Reconciliation is what happens when the offender repents and the injured forgives. To reconcile is "to bring together that which should be together in right relationship, to renew a broken relationship on new terms, and to heal the injury of a broken trust which has resulted from an offense inflicted by one person on another." This ethical restoration is wholly dependent on the making of justice. Without justice, forgiveness is empty. Chris Servaty echoes this comment when he critiques the idea of "forgive and forget" and concludes, "The victim always has the right to deny forgiveness to the offender."

Fortune's understanding of forgiveness is susceptible to Herman's critique of forgiveness: it ties the victim's healing to the offender's process. Although Fortune extends her understanding of justice-making to community, the survivor may still be unable to forgive if s/he does not have exist within a community that is responsive to the crisis of sexual violence. For this reason, Patton asserts that forgiveness is not an act, nor is it an attitude. For Patton, forgiveness is a discovery.
In Is Human Forgiveness Possible?, Patton understands forgiveness as a characteristic of the kingdom of God or basileia. Forgiveness is not found in trying to forgive or being instructed about the process of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a discovery of the divine-human and human-human relationship that is not realized fully until the basileia. To forgive is to discover that we are more like those who have hurt us, than we are different. In Patton's redefinition of forgiveness, "the how" of forgiveness is an awareness, acceptance and embrace of God's offer and humanity's shared experience. Forgiveness must occur in community and, ultimately, it occurs in the eschatological kingdom of God. Therefore, forgiveness has an already and not-yet dimension to it. Rather than advocate Fortune's or Patton's descriptions of how forgiveness occurs, this paper focuses on the timeliness of forgiveness.

The When--Kairos
Perhaps more alienating than figuring out how to forgive is trying to discern how to forgive in a short period of time. Immediately after an assault, or even the remembrance and mourning of the assault, the anger, pain and hatred are raw and intense: "The longing or obligation to forgive is superseded by the subjective sense of not feeling forgiving." This subjective sense is exacerbated by the usually-external pressure to forgive. Marie Fortune strongly rebukes those who would pressure a survivor to forgive: "An act of forgiveness by a victim cannot be hurried; nor can it be orchestrated by those on the outside. To expect people to move quickly from their pain to forgive those who are responsible for it is insensitive and unrealistic."

Forgiveness is the last step in the process of healing. Forgiveness must be carried out according to the victim's timetable: "The choice on the part of the victim to let go only happens when she/he is ready to let go. When the healing is sufficient and the victim feels strong enough, she/he will be ready to forgive and can make that choice. Even then, it is not easy to let go." Those attempting to forgive will note that it is God's grace and the Holy Spirit that empowers and makes forgiveness possible. It will feel less like a conscious decision to forgive, but more like the time for forgiveness has come.

We must not allow the chronological passage of time (chronos) to regulate forgiveness. We must conceive of time in a different way. The Greek term, kairos, provides an alternative to the chronological understanding of time and divine-human activity. In Greek philosophy, kairos connotes the "a period of crisis within a temporal experience at which the person concerned is summoned to historical decision." In the Greek New Testament, kairos is used to speak of the appointed time in the purpose of God. In twentieth century theological interpretation of kairos, there appear to be two distinct, yet related, understandings which are applicable to the concept of forgiveness: (1) an in-breaking into history, and (2) an opportunity that is offered and must be seized.

The first understanding of kairos is discussed by Paul Tillich in the third volume of his Systematic Theology. Kairos is an outgrowth of his discussion on revelation, the kingdom of God, Jesus as Christ and the doctrine of the Spirit Presence. Ultimately, kairos finds expression when speaking of the movement of God within history. Tillich critiques the traditional understandings of salvation history (heilsgeschichte) by asserting that the history of salvation should not be understood as identical to revelation, human creativity, world history, suprahistory, the history of religion or the history of the churches. On the contrary, "saving power breaks into history, works through history, but is not created by history." Saving power breaks into historical processes, having been prepared by these processes for reception, and changing subsequent historical processes to enable the efficacy of salvation. Together with measured time, historical causality, a definite space and a concrete situation, "salvation history" is better understood as manifestations of the kingdom of God in history, or kairos.

Although Tillich discusses the reception of Jesus of Nazareth as the unique and universal kairos, the center of history, he also understands kairos in a general sense. The general sense of kairos is born from the unique sense. In the unique sense of kairos, humankind had to mature to a point in which Jesus Christ ("the center of history") could appear and be received as that center. In the another sense, kairos continues: "The central manifestation of the kingdom of God in history is, therefore, not restricted to the pre-Christian epoch; it continues after the center's [Jesus Christ's] appearance and is going on here and now." The kairos which continues after the Jesus-event is known as Tillich's general sense of kairos. The general sense of kairos is defined as every turning point in history in which the eternal judges and transforms the temporal.

The general kairos simply means the fulfillment of time. The kairos moment is one which requires patience. Tillich asserts that the chronological understanding of time, chronos, is quantitative, but kairos is qualitative. Kairos is "pregnant with new understandings of the meaning of history and life." There is always preparation for the kairos. The preparation is a process of growth in maturity. Tillich describes kairos as "the moment in history, in terms of a concrete situation, [that] mature[s] to the point to being able to receive the breakthrough of the central manifestation of the kingdom of God." Kairos is that moment of maturity.
Kairos breaks into history in a particular way. Kairos cannot be observed, planned, coerced or calculated. Awareness of kairos is a matter of vision and involved experience. It is issued in by God. Tillich takes the problem of historical evil very seriously. He admits that there are contingencies, surprises and perversions of Christian symbols that lead to devastating moral and physical evils. For this reason, we must have an enlarged understanding of divine providence in history. God does not have a "divine design" which is now running its course into which God sometimes interferes miraculously. On the other hand, the kingdom of God is always present. The experience of its "history-shaking power" is not. The kairos occurs when God breaks into history:

The mark of the Spiritual Presence is not lacking at any place or time. The divine Spirit of God, present to [hu]man's spirit, breaks into all history in revelatory experiences which have both a saving and transforming character . . . . [Human]kind is never left alone. The Spiritual Presence acts upon it in every moment and breaks into it in some great moments, which are the historical kairoi."

Kairos gives us the promise of providence in spite of all the visible facts to the contrary. It shows us God's promised actions which develop out of the contradictions of the present.

The second understanding of kairos is more evident in Tillich's earlier work, The Protestant Era. The special sense of kairos signifies a time in history (usually this present time) at which an opportunity is offered by God which must be seized/ received. This understanding of kairos is often embodied by liberation theologians. The famous South African Kairos Document defines kairos as: "a special moment of time when God visits [God's] people to offer them a unique opportunity for repentance and conversion, for change and decisive action." This time is urgent and must be arrested: "It is a time of judgment. It is a time of truth, a crisis . . . It is a dangerous time because, if this opportunity is missed, and allowed to pass by, the loss for the Church, for the Gospel, and for all the people of South Africa will be immeasurable."

The special sense of kairos states that this present time is decisive for the coming of a new view of the kingdom of God on the soil of a secularized and emptied culture. From the contextual reflection of the events leading to the second world war, Tillich writes that an awareness of kairos is found in the work of those calling attention to the opportunity for transformation: "It can be found in the passionate longing of the masses, it can become clarified and take form in small circles of conscious intellectual and spiritual concern, it can gain power in the prophetic word, but it cannot be demonstrated and forced; it is deed and freedom, as it is also fate and grace." This kairos cannot be forced, but it does judge.

This understanding of kairos demands. It emerges out of a struggle for a new social order. Although this struggle cannot force the in-breaking of the kingdom of God, it states that, at a particular time (kairos), particular tasks are demands as one particular aspect of the kingdom of God. "It appears as a judgment on a given form of society, and a norm for a coming one." Gustavo Gutierrez borrows the term, kairos, to refer to the prophetic call of Latin American liberation theology. He asserts that the situation of oppression in Latin America is kairotic making the present time a time of solidarity, martyrdom, prayer and salvation. This kairos asserts that the time has come to insist on justice.

How does kairos relate to forgiveness in the context of sexual violence? The process of forgiveness takes time. We must honor that time with the patience-dimension of kairos. The time cannot be forced, coerced or predicted. A kairos theology honors that time, and waits for it knowing that there are processes of growth, maturation, and healing, that are occurring. By rejecting chronos, kairos honors the indirect nature of healing. That is, healing from the trauma of sexual violence does not occur in the sequential order that many theorists describe. It is spiral, and the stages in the healing process are revisited as the survivor comes to a fuller and fuller integration. The process is a slow one. Kairos asks us to be patient before that moment of forgiveness breaks into history.
Kairos does not allow for the quick forgiveness that can lead to cheap grace. Tillich writes that maturity is waiting: "Maturity means not only the ability to receive the central manifestation of the kingdom of God, but also the greatest power to resist it." Marie Fortune echoes this comment in relation to forgiveness when she writes: "Withholding forgiveness and absolution from an offender until certain conditions have been met may be the best way to facilitate a permanent change. Waiting patiently with the victims until they are ready to forgive may be the most charitable and compassionate act the church can offer." In kairos, the offender waits, the church community waits, the survivors waits--all not rushing that which cannot be rushed.

Kairos also demands that the community to work for justice. Kairos states that this crisis of sexual violence is the time, the opportunity, which the church community must seize to assert a norm and a theology of healing. The crisis of sexual violence is the kairotic moment in which the church can name the sin and begin to make the justice which Fortune states is imperative for forgiveness. Justice-making does not usher in or create the conditions for the forgiveness kairos. Forgiving is still a work, an attitude, a discovery that necessitates the power and grace of God. Kairos judges the sin of sexual violence and calls attention to the opportunity for transformation available in the midst of this crisis.

This entire theological proposal is concerned with honoring the painful alienation of those who experience sexual violence, and honoring the process of recovery. A theology of kairos is the culminating and integrating feature of "safe place theology." Kairos begs for patience and understanding while maturity occurs. Yet kairos also demands that churches cease their participation in structures of alienation and injustice, and judge the crisis of sexual violence as a sin that will not be tolerated.

CREATING A SAFE PLACE
Chapter 6: The Dinah Project

We believe that the church and the community of faith should be a safe place to mourn and to heal from the tragedy [of sexual violence] in the world.
--Project Coordinator of The Dinah Project

The Dinah Project
The Dinah Project is an outreach initiative of The First Response Center at Metropolitan Interdenominational Church. Founded in May 1997, The Dinah Project interprets Genesis 34 in this way: "Genesis 34 describes the rape of Dinah, Jacob's daughter. Upon learning of the rape, Dinah's brothers were outraged. They later avenged their sister by killing Dinah's rapist, Shechem, and his family. Like Dinah's brothers, we understand sexual violence to be the problem of the entire community. Rather than seeking vigilante violence, we believe our righteous indignation can promote awareness, prevention, and healing of sexual violence in our midst."

The Dinah Project offers several forums for ecclesial discussion of sexual violence. The Dinah Project conducts clergy, adult and youth lay education workshops and in-services about sexual violence. The Dinah Project serves as a referral service for those seeking additional assistance in confronting the crisis of sexual violence. The central feature of The Dinah Project is a series of three community worship services that are conducted within the time span of one year. The worship services focus on the themes of community recognition, forgiveness and healing.

Metropolitan Interdenominational Church (MIC) has embraced The Dinah Project as an integral part of its vision of ministry. All of the outreach ministries of MIC are motivated by the brokenness and healing of the worshippers of God. In addition, MIC has always been committed to filling gaps in ministry. The pastoral staff of MIC has pledged itself to the following guidelines with The Dinah Project: (1) Teaching about sexuality, violence and appropriate relationship to prevent further violation in our communities; (2) taking collective responsibility for the crime, prevention and healing of sexual violence; (3) addressing the spiritual and theological crisis of sexual violence that few professional currently provide; (4) believing that the church should be a safe place to heal this tragedy in the world. This paper will focus on the community worship services hosted by The Dinah Project. It will also include curriculum material from clergy education workshops and adult lay education workshops that have allowed for a community setting in which to dialogue about the theological and biblical issues of sexual violence.

Metropolitan's theological environment
The ministry of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church can be marked by its intentionality. Each Sunday's worship service begins with a period of musical devotion and prayer followed immediately by a litany. There are four litanies that are used frequently during the worship experiences of MIC. These are particular examples of the theological milieu that is proposed in Part 1 of this paper. Beneath each litany, is listed the aspect of "the safe place theology" that is represented (See Appendix B). "The Gathering" expresses MIC's openness to all persons. The "Congregational Prayers" admit the experiences of suffering and subsequent patient need for God's rejuvenating power. "Jesus" and "The City" portray Jesus as a God who is immanent and radically incarnational in our everyday situations.

The Worship services
Community Recognition
The first worship service took place on June 1, 1997. The focus was the "community recognition of sexual violence." The service featured two dramatizations, moments of reflections, two testimonies from survivors of sexual violence--both ministers, one male, one female--a sermon, the invitation and the Eucharist. This section will focus on the two dramatiz