Hostname: page-component-6565fbc58-sjvkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-11T07:59:05.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distorting Concepts, Obscured Experiences: Hermeneutical Injustice in Religious Trauma and Spiritual Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2020

Michelle Panchuk
Michelle Panchuk*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Murray State University, 102 Curris Center Dr., Murray, Kentucky, 42071-3312
*
Corresponding author. Email: mpanchuk@murraystate.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between hermeneutical injustice in religious settings and religious trauma (RT) and spiritual violence (SV). In it I characterize a form of hermeneutical injustice (HI) that arises when experiences are obscured from collective understanding by normatively laden concepts, and I argue that this form of HI often plays a central role in cases of religious trauma and spiritual violence, even those involving children. In section I, I introduce the reader to the phenomena of religious trauma and spiritual violence. In section II, I describe the role normatively laden concepts play in shaping our social experience. I then elucidate how they can contribute to HI. In section III, I provide a brief overview of the history of some significant identity prejudices in the history of Christianity and argue that children can properly be understood as victims of HI within some religious communities. I then return in section IV to the examples of religious trauma and spiritual violence offered throughout the article and demonstrate that HI plays an important causal role in each of them. HIs sometimes constitute spiritual and religious harms; at other times they create an epistemic environment conducive to spiritual abuse.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 2020 , pp. 607 - 625
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abramson, Kate. 2014. Turning up the lights on gaslighting. Philosophical Perspectives 28 (1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th edition. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Anderson, Pamela Sue. 2004. An epistemological-ethical approach. In Feminist philosophy of religion: critical readings, ed. Anderson, Pamela Sue and Clack, Beverly. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anderson, Pamela Sue. 2012. Re-visioning gender in philosophy of religion: Reason, love, and epistemic locatedness. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas. 2009. The summa theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume II, PrimaPars. Q. 65–119. NovAntiqua.Google Scholar
Attiah, Karen. 2014. Why won't the US Ratify the U.N.'s child's rights treaty? The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/11/21/why-wont-the-u-s-ratify-the-u-n-s-child-rights-treaty/?utm_term=81e37147a7f6.Google Scholar
Augustine. 1993. City of God. New York: The Modern Library.Google Scholar
Baklinski, Thaddeus. 2012. Parents could face jail for spanking under proposed Mississippi law: HSLDA. Life Site. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/parents-could-face-jail-for-spanking-under-proposed-mississippi-law-hslda.Google Scholar
Barnes, Elizabeth. 2016. The minority body: A theory of disability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, Gary. 2018. Children and testimonial injustice: A response to Burroughs and Tollefsen. Episteme. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.34.Google Scholar
Baucham, Voddie. 2007. Sermon: Child training. https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2015/01/12/transcript-of-voddie-bauchams-child-training-sermon-at-hardin-baptist-church/.Google Scholar
Baucham, Voddie. 2011. Family shepherds: Calling and equipping men to lead their homes. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.Google Scholar
Berenstain, Nora. 2016. Epistemic exploitation. Ergo 22 (3): 569–90.Google Scholar
Boethius, 1999. The consolation of philosophy. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Bohache, Thomas. 2008. Christology from the margins. London: SCM Press.Google Scholar
Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Parker, Rebecca Ann. 2001. Proverbs of ashes: Violence, redemptive suffering, and the search for what saves us. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Burroughs, Michael, and Tollefsen, Deborah. 2016. Learning to listen: Epistemic injustice and the child. Episteme 13 (3): 359–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, R. T. 2007. Racism and psychological and emotional injury: Recognizing and assessing race-based traumatic stress. The Counseling Psychologist 35 (1): 13–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). n.d. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/acestudy/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fviolenceprevention%2Facestudy%2Findex.html.Google Scholar
Child Maltreatment. 2014. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children, Youth and Families Children's Bureau. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2014.pdfGoogle Scholar
Cockayne, Joshua, Efird, David, and Warman, Jack. 2020. Shattered faith: The social epistemology of deconversion by spiritually violent religious trauma. In Voices from the edge: Centering marginalized perspectives in analytic theology, ed. Panchuk, Michelle and Rea, Michael. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cone, James. 2004. Theology's great sin: Silence in the face of white supremacy. Black Theology 2 (2): 139–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Courtois, Christine A., and Ford, Julian D.. 2013. Treatment of complex trauma: A sequenced, relationship-based approach. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
De Cruz, Helen. 2019. Philosophy of religion from the margins: A theoretical analysis and focus group study. In The lost sheep in philosophy of religion: New perspectives on disability, gender, race, and animals, ed. Hereth, Blake and Timpe, Kevin. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2011. Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing. Hypatia 26 (2): 236–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2012. A cautionary tale: On limiting epistemic oppression. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (1): 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Samantha. 2013. Learning the words: Love. http://samanthapfield.com/?s=Learning+the+Words.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2017. The sex/gender distinction and the construction of reality. In The Routledge companion to feminist philosophy, ed. Garry, Ann, J, Serene. Khader, and Alison Stone. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holmes, Samantha C., Facemire, Vanessa C., and DaFonseca, Alexis M.. 2016. Expanding criterion A for posttraumatic stress disorder: Considering the deleterious impact of oppression. Traumatology 22 (4): 314–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). 2001. Assembly bill 2943: banning corporal punishment. https://hslda.org/content/Legislation/State/ca/2008/CAAB2943/default.aspGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Elizabeth. 2002. She who is: The mystery of god in feminist theological discourse. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Kidd, Ian. 2017. Epistemic injustice and religion. In The Routledge handbook to epistemic injustice, ed. Kidd, Ian James, Medina, José, and Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 2011. The ethics of care, dependence, and disability. Ratio Juris 24 (1): 49–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazreg, Marnia. 2009. Questioning the veil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mary. 2013. Home is where the hurt is. Homeschooler's anonymous. https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/home-is-where-the-hurt-is-marys-story-part-nine/.Google Scholar
Medina, José. 2013. The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrick, Teri. 2020. Non-deference to religious authority: Epistemic arrogance or justice? In Voices from the edge: Centering marginalized perspectives in analytic theology, ed. Panchuk, Michelle and Rea, Michael. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. 2007. White ignorance. In Race and epistemologies of ignorance, ed. Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mizrahi, Moti. 2019. If analytic philosophy of religion is sick, can it be cured? Religious Studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412518000902.Google Scholar
Moon, Dawne, and Tobin, Theresa. 2018. Sunsets and solidarity: Overcoming sacramental shame in conservative Christian churches to forge a queer vision of love and justice. Hypatia 33 (3): 451–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panchuk, Michelle. 2018. The shattered spiritual self: A philosophical exploration of religious trauma. Res Philosophica 95 (3): 505–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panchuk, Michelle. 2019. That we may be whole: Doing philosophy of religion with the whole self. In The lost sheep in philosophy of religion, ed. Hereth, Blake and Timpe, Kevin. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pogin, Kathryn. 2019. God is not a man? In Contemporary debates in philosophy of religion, ed. Peterson, M. and Vanarragon, R.. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pogin, Kathryn. 2020. Conceptualizing the atonement. In Voices from the edge: Centering marginalized perspectives in analytic theology, ed. Panchuk, Michelle and Rea, Michael. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. 2012. Relational knowing and epistemic injustice: Toward a theory of willful hermeneutical ignorance. Hypatia 27 (4): 715–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. 2017. Varieties of epistemic injustice. In The Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice, ed. Kidd, Ian James, Medina, José, and Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Root, Maria. 1992. Reconstructing the impact of trauma on personality. In Personality and psychopathology: Feminist reappraisals, ed. Brown, Laura and Ballou, Mary. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Root, Maria. 2001. Women of color and traumatic stress in “domestic captivity”: Gender and race as disempowering statuses. In Ethnocultural aspects of posttraumatic stress disorder, ed. Marsella, A. J., Friedman, M. J., Gerrity, E. T., and Scurfield, R. M.. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Smolin, David M. 2006. Overcoming religious objections to the convention on the rights of the child. Emory International Law Review 81: 81–110.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Andrew. Alone again, naturally: The Catholic church and the homosexual. The New Republic 22: 50–55.Google Scholar
Szymanski, Dawn M., and Balsam, Kimberly F.. 2011. Insidious trauma: Examining the relationship between heterosexism and lesbians’ PTSD symptoms. Traumatology 17 (2): 4–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tertullian. 1959. On the apparel of women. In Tertullian: Disciplinary, moral, and ascetical works. Trans. Arbesmann, Rudolf. New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc.Google Scholar
Thompson, Terri-Ann, and Seymour, Jane. 2017. Evaluating priorities: Measuring women's and children's well-being against abortion restrictions in the states, vol. II. Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Reproductive Rights & Ibis Reproductive Health.Google Scholar
Timpe, Kevin. 2019. Moral ecology, disabilities, and human agency: 2018 Wade Memorial Lecture. Res Philosophica 96 (1):17–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobin, Theresa. 2016. Spiritual violence, gender, and sexuality: Implications for seeking and dwelling among some Catholic women and LGBT Catholics. In Seekers and dwellers: Plurality and wholeness in a time of secularity, ed. J, Philip. Rossi. Washington, D.C.: The Council of Research in Values and Philosophy.Google Scholar
Tobin, Theresa, and Moon, Dawne. 2020. Sacramental shame in the black church: How racism and respectability politics shape the experiences of black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving Christians. In Voices from the edge: Centering marginalized perspectives in analytic theology, ed. Panchuk, Michelle and Rea, Michael. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1989. United Nation Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspxGoogle Scholar
Walker, Alice. 1982/2003. The color purple. Boston: Mariner Books.Google Scholar
Watson, Laurel B., DeBlaere, Cirleen, Langrehr, Kimberly J., Zelaya, David G., and Flores, Mirella J.. 2016. The influence of multiple oppressions on women of color's experiences with insidious trauma. Journal of Counseling Psychology 63 (6): 656–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. 2013. Childism: Confronting prejudice against children. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar