| |
| author |
Mia Hash Sloan
| | title |
Religious Trauma: How Religious Trauma has unjustly silenced Black women living with HIV in the Southeast Region of the US South and how religious trauma affects relationships with their faith communities
| | abstract |
HIV remains an epidemic within the Black community most pervasively in the US Southeast Region. This paper provides an opportunity to explore fundamental and historical causes as to why this virus remains an epidemic within the Black community. There are several factors to this matter. Historically this virus has always been stigmatized. In addition to it being stigmatized, it quickly became racialized. Due to HIV being racialized, health inequity and inaccessibility resulted in extremely high mortality rates for Black persons living with HIV/AIDS. This public health crisis was quickly stigmatized as a moral crisis. Many were unjustly marginalized. Black faith communities remain a cornerstone within the Black American diaspora community. Therefore, in the early 1980s the CDC developed faith initiatives for Black faith communities to begin to be a resource for HIV prevention and education. Over the years Black faith communities who lived into their prophetic witness became instrumental for persons living with HIV to find out their status and to be a resource that provided link to care. HIV remains stigmatized and persons living with HIV are deeply traumatized as a result. In addition to the stigma, Black women living with HIV have disproportionately become marginalized, invisible, and silenced in HIV advocacy and within their faith communities. This project aims to highlight how religious trauma is one of the root causes for the stigma and bias that persons living with HIV are contending with. The source of this collective religious trauma can historically be traced back to colonization. Colonization weaponized religion and used it as a tool to debilitate the Black psyche. Consequently, the spiritual and psychological impact and effect has caused a great divide within Black faith. This project aims to be a tool and guide to address the collective, unconscious religious trauma that Black diasporans contend with. Therefore, this project focuses on how Black women's ministries are powerful spaces to heal the collective intergenerational trauma that most unconsciously live with. A customized curriculum was created with inclusive pedagogical practices that will collectively heal Black women and amplify the voice of Black women living with HIV.
| | school |
The Theological School, Drew University
| | degree |
D.Min. (2024)
|
| advisor |
Angela Yarber
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| committee |
Meredith Hoxie Schol
Althea Spencer Miller
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| full text | MSloan.pdf |
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