Today’s Life-Line is:

Here’s what’s interesting— when studying shame and spirituality or shame and religion there are a lot of people—or over half of the people I have interviewed over the last thirteen years have pretty deep scars around faith and religion and spirituality. The question I get asked all the time is– is there one denomination where you see that more—you see more shame history, shame-faith history than other denominations? And the answer is No. There’s not.

There are, however, commonalities within specific churches which leads me to believe that it’s not the religion itself but the expression of that religion by specific clergy. . . What I thought was more interesting than even that is that the majority of the people who had scars around their faith life growing up sought healing through spirituality. They did not abandon faith. But they often abandoned their original churches, their original denominations.

And so, what that tells me is there is an invitation two ways for those of us who are members of faith communities, and not just clergy but members, because we all have a responsibility. Right? Power with the people among the people. The first invitation and opportunity is when shame is used to control a congregation or members– that there is probably nothing more unholy than that. The second thing is you have an incredible opportunity to offer a place for healing. . .

A faith community can choose to be a place of hurt or healing. That is a binary. Those are the only two choices. There is no neutrality. There is no neutrality in a faith community. That’s it. And if you’re not healing, then you’re hurting.

~ Brene Brown

For more of this interview clip click here: