The Trauma Healing Initiative: Preparing Seminarians for Justice

McCormick Theological Seminary’s communal legacy has always been one of response to social injustice. However, COVID-19 laid bare the intersection where injustice, human need, and suffering met and created an unprecedented need. In response, McCormick launched the Trauma Healing Initiative whose focus is to cultivate a culture and model of trauma-informed and healing-centered theological education. The MTS-THI engages a two-pronged approach in preparing students for justice-centered ministry in a trauma-saturated culture. The first prong cultivates internal will and capacity to foster alignment between McCormick’s justice-oriented mission with core principles of trauma-informed and healing-centered practice in its institutional culture. The second prong directly addresses the formation of adult learners for trauma-informed and healing-centered ministry in Chicago communities that experience interpersonal violence that is inextricably connected and influenced by historic and ongoing systemic oppression. This discussion introduces a case study about the role that theological education plays in forming people of faith to pursue social justice from a trauma-informed and healing-centered perspective, with a focus on sustaining movement toward social justice.