Lost Faith, Broken Trust: A reflective listening practice

Lost Faith, Broken Trust: A reflective listening practice

Join us for a day of deep reflection and connection at Cohen Quad, Exeter College. This event is a safe space for individuals to share their experiences of spiritual abuse and religious trauma while practicing active listening. Come together with others who understand and empathize with your journey.

Confidentiality is assured. It is not the responsibility of the facilitators to engage in any form of mediation between those sharing stories of religious trauma, and those who caused it. We can only advise and refer you to the appropriate agencies.

LOST FAITH, BROKEN TRUST

For Students.

This is a student led initiative, arising out of religious trauma, spiritual abuse, loss of faith, alienation, rejection of faith, and the bewilderment, grief, and the shock this can cause. We recognised too, there can sometimes be a vast generational, cultural, and communication gap between students, and care providers. This project’s sole objective is to listen to students, andstudents and learn from them. To better understand the values they cherish, the language they choose and use to negotiate their lives in an Anglican Christian Foundation University, when they come from many different faith backgrounds or none.

It is consists of a short session of reflective listening, through the medium of sharing our stories and facilitated conversations. We will write up the results of the sessions and submit to each student for their approval and any amendments. The following term we will submit these stories to any chaplains and welfare officers who are interested in learning from the project, this which can be done either anonymously or by name.

We aim through this project, to enrich student life in the university, heal wounds, and bridge the torn gaps in an ever increasingly polarised world of extremes and alienation, and contribute to a university culture of deeper mutual understanding where all can flourish.

For Chaplains and Welfare Officers.

We live in a world where culture cultural change is often happening faster than we can understand the reasons behind the change. The language of faith, religion, and spirituality is no exception, its boundaries and sacred values are shifting ever more away from institutions totowards more individual priorities, yet our chapels and chaplains remain vitala places and people of calm in the storms that can blow through university life. Listening sensitively to students informs all our pastoral care and welfare, and is something chaplains excel in, and yet despite our best efforts misunderstandings, hurt, and alienation can still occur.

How can we more fully love and serve students, without transgressing the sacred boundaries of personal faith, and loss of faith, when we may not fully understand where they lie, how they are formed, or what the pre-eminent values of emerging spirituality are? The most grievous times of our ministry are when we have wounded without intent, the most vulnerable of all, and they that can happen to all any of us.

The temptation for us to ‘fix’, ‘heal’, or even try and ‘restore’ faith is real, but the reality is students may not want our faith or religion, they simply need someone they can trust and confide in, and their doubts, fears, and questioning, are as valid as our certainties. Through listening to student’s stories, and to each other, with vulnerability, trust, and empathy, can we can enrich our understanding and ministry in an age when the generational and cultural gaps between students and chaplains can seems stretched wider than ever before.

Facilitators.

Chrissie Chevasutt has lived and worked in Oxford with students since 1990. For the last four years (insert pronoun here) has been Outreach and Development Worker with Transgender, Intersex, and non-binary People, for St Columbas URC. Chrissie was one of the Pastoral Leads for the Oxford University Student LGBT Societies, ‘Oxford Safe Churches Project’. Chrissie provides ongoing pastoral support to many students who have suffered spiritual abuse and religious trauma. Chrissie is a member of the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire’s Shrieve.

Dr Ariel Kahn is a visiting fellow at Exeter College, Artist in Residence at Exeter Chapel, and an Associate Artist at the Woolf Interfaith Foundation at Cambridge University. He initially trained for three years as a rabbi in Israel, before shifting direction to creative writing. As a result of his religious and academic training, he has a deep commitment to the culture and creative practice as drivers of empathy, insight and mutual understanding. Ariel is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Middlesex University, and Director of Programmes for the BA in Creative Writing and Journalism and the BA Theatre. He is a key member of the award-winning MDX Interfaith Network. His novel Raising Sparks (2018) was shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and focused on the ways faith can create connections between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the contemporary Middle East.

Both Ariel and Chrissie are published authors with a passion for the healing power of story-telling. Both have suffered extensive spiritual abuse and religious trauma, and share sensitively in their vulnerability and weakness, in a way that elicits trust and confidence in those they work with and for.

This project is sponsored by St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Exeter Chapel, and the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, whose commitment and vision for this year is ‘Listening to the Unheard Young People’ in the shire, with the objective of making positive changes for their flourishing.

Thursday 29th May, for Students.

Reflective listening. Two sessions, 10-12am, Lunch together, 1-3pm. Students welcome to choose either or both sessions, which will cover similar materials and processes but be an evolving process, that results in the two sessions deepening the work done in the morning session.

Friday 30th May, for Chaplains, Ministers, Welfare Officers.

Reflective listening. Two sessions, 10-12am, Lunch together, 1-3pm. People are welcome to attend one or both sessions. We aim to cover similar material and processes, but hope the second session will evolve and deepen the work and listening done in the morning.

Confidentiality is assured. It is not the responsibility of the facilitators to engage in any form of mediation between those sharing stories of religious trauma, and those who caused it. We can only advise and refer you to the appropriate agencies.

We hope, if successful for this pilot and pioneering project to be an ongoing process over successive terms and years.

Info: Students are welcome to choose either or both sessions, which will cover similar materials and

processes but be an evolving process, that results in the two sessions deepening the

work done in the morning session.

Info: Provided at Cohen Quad.

Info: Students are welcome to choose either or both sessions, which will cover similar materials and

processes but be an evolving process, that results in the two sessions deepening the

work done in the morning session.

Info: People are welcome to attend one or both sessions. We aim to cover similar material and

processes, but hope the second session will evolve and deepen the work and listening

done in the morning.

Info: Provided at Cohen Quad.

Info: People are welcome to attend one or both sessions. We aim to cover similar material and

processes, but hope the second session will evolve and deepen the work and listening

done in the morning.

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