{"id":1491,"date":"2015-01-11T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2016-12-01T10:59:05","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T15:59:05","slug":"january-read-this-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/2015\/01\/january-read-this-book\/","title":{"rendered":"January READ THIS BOOK"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Each month, we ask a member of the Vanderbilt Divinity School faculty to recommend a book they are currently reading. Our January recommendation is offered by Phillis I. Sheppard, Associate Professor in Religion, Psychology, and Culture. <\/em><\/p>\n

A Womanist Pastoral Theology Against Intimate and Cultural Violence by Stephanie M. Crumpton, Palgrave Macmillan (2014)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This past Fall I had the pleasure of teaching the course Womanist Thought in Psychology and Religion and was absolutely delighted that Stephanie Crumpton\u2019s book A Womanist Pastoral Theology Against Intimate and Culture Violence, <\/em>was \u2018hot off the press\u2019. Stephanie Crumpton, Th.D. is assistant professor of Pastoral Theology at Lancaster Theological Seminary.\u00a0 She trained in psychodynamic pastoral psychotherapy and is an ordained clergy in the United Church of Christ denomination.\u00a0 Prior to her faculty appointments, she was a court advocate for victims of domestic violence.\u00a0 In her book she has skillfully, passionately, and pastorally grappled with the psychological and spiritual devastation wrought by the betrayal of violence in intimate settings\u2014settings where love and care are to be expected.<\/p>\n

I found her book to be a powerful ethnography where she gives ample space for these women to tell their stories in their own words. These are narratives of black women who not only share their experiences of violation but their various paths of recovery and healing that have helped them reclaim their bodies and lives\u2014and their sense of agency.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Crumpton argues that these women have been subjected to intimate violence as well as to the cultural violence committed in the broader representation of black women\u2019s embodiment. Both forms, combined, normalize the exploitation of black women, the violation of their bodies, and violence as a part of their lives.\u00a0 The healing that these women pursued required them to name their abuse but also the sources of their abuse in cultural and religious settings as well as in intimate situations. She stresses that a significant aspect of these women\u2019s recovery involved interrogating their received spiritualties, and challenging the internalized negative messages about black women.Therefore, religion and spirituality as sources of healing, care and community are not assumed but, in safe and caring settings, are integral to recovery.<\/p>\n

In A Womanist Pastoral Theology Against Intimate and Cultural Violence<\/em> we find a rich theological anthropology informed by psychology.\u00a0 Furthermore, Stephanie offers a womanist pastoral care perspective that redefines the nature and site of care to one where black women\u2019s experience is the starting place meaningful pastoral response.\u00a0 The shift from care and recovery situated primarily in the clinical or pastor\u2019s domain to care situated in community and culturally informed rituals makes this first book by Crumpton a important contribution to Pastoral Theology and to Womanist Thought.<\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each month, we ask a member of the Vanderbilt Divinity School faculty to recommend a book they are currently reading. Our January recommendation is offered by Phillis I. Sheppard, Associate Professor in Religion, Psychology, and Culture. A Womanist Pastoral Theology Against Intimate and Cultural Violence by Stephanie M. Crumpton, Palgrave Macmillan (2014) This past Fall…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1576,"featured_media":1493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[479,535,1050,324,536,540,31,1051,378],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-this-book","tag-healing","tag-phillis-i-sheppard","tag-readthisbook","tag-reading","tag-stephanie-m-crumpton","tag-united-church-of-christ","tag-vanderbilt-divinity-school","tag-vdsfaculty","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2606,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/2606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}