Transforming Shame: A Pastoral Response

by Jill L Mcnish, Richard L. Dayringer

Explore shame's revelatory and transformative potential within Christianity and the Church

Learn to understand shame to allow for positive change in your clients and parishioners. This book explores psychological, spiritual, and theological aspects of shame and shame's transformative potential. It will help pastoral care givers and mental health workers to identify shame issues and become agents of healing. By examining shame in the gospel accounts of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus, it shows that shame is a vital part of what defines us as human, and how shame can draw us into the mystery of our relationship with God.

From the This book develops the thesis that shame is a necessary and ontological part of the human condition. Shame can become pathological, undergirding and dominating the entire personality, making it impossible to feel oneself either part of the collective or an individual in one's own right. Transformation of shame is a large part of the psychic meaning of the Christ event, what Christianity is about. Transformation of shame is the experience of grace. The great saints and icons of Christianity have used the Christ event to transform shame and experience grace. The more completely they have done this, the deeper their experience of unity with God.

With Transforming A Pastoral Response, you'll With practical examples drawn from pastoral ministry and a thoughtful, interdisciplinary approach, this book will help you understand both the psychology and the spirituality of shame and make the essential connections between the two. Extensive references and a handy bibliography point the way to further reading on this fascinating subject.

Genres: Nonfiction, Counselling

270 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

In some ways I would have liked to give the book a higher rating. The author is a very liberal Christian pastor and a very bright woman. She is trying to combine depth psychology and the Bible to explain and work with shame. She makes some very insightful observations about shame, but because she is not a believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, she sees everything through the lens of psychology. There is very little mention of sin, substitutionary atonement, or salvation as a release from the bondage of sin and thus freedom from shame. So, though she has done a lot of good work, because her starting point is based in very atheistic thinking, she has no where to go but further down. I pray that some day, before she dies, she meets the Lord Jesus Christ and submits to him in a salvific way. But to do so she will need to get rid of her presuppositions and read the Bible in its own context.

[Lilly Pittman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a great job of communicating between key voices from psychology and theology. I appreciated and learned many things from this book. I think this is a book that hints at what is needed in the church in terms of grace and acceptance around shame, but only offers a place to begin thinking. So much more work needs to be done, especially around associating the body with the work of acceptance and shame transformation.