#20: Forgiving the Church (with Carol Howard Merritt)
“People need to feel anger. They need to tell their story and own their narrative. They often need to reconnect with their body, their emotions, their sensations. When we rush people into forgiveness and ignore the process of internal reconnection, we do people a grave disservice.”
Carol Howard Merritt is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church (USA) in Spring City, Tennessee, and author of Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God after Experiencing a Hurtful Church. In this broad ranging discussion, Carol and I looked at how the church has often held up patriarchy and shamed victims of abuse, how forgiveness is a process that takes time, what love looks like amid rampant economic injustice, and how God offers rivers of healing and restoration to each one of us.
Resources:
Healing Spiritual Wounds, by Carol Howard Merritt
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