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<p>Biblical narratives featuring women continue to shape moral imagination and pastoral responses in contemporary faith communities. In pastoral, clinical, and spiritual care settings, these texts may influence how suffering, obligation, endurance, and forgiveness are understood, particularly among women navigating coercive or abusive relationships. In these contexts, interpretations of Scripture may shape understandings of duty, family preservation, safety, and agency. Yet interpretive traditions can sometimes flatten complex biblical narratives into simplified categories of obedience or resistance, virtue or transgression, or victimhood or agency. In doing so, they may obscure how agency operates under coercion and unequal power and unintentionally reinforce spiritualized suffering and self-blame within religious contexts. This article proposes a trauma-informed, intersectional hermeneutic for reading women’s constrained agency in Scripture, with particular attention to how sacred texts are interpreted, embodied, and negotiated within contemporary religious life. Drawing on trauma theory, pastoral psychology, intersectional scholarship, and interdisciplinary work on religion, intimate partner violence, and spiritual abuse across multiple faith traditions, the article examines the narratives of Tamar (Genesis 38) and of Sarah and Hagar (Genesis 12, 16, 20–21) and the intergenerational accounts of Bilhah and Zilpah (Genesis 29–30). Rather than treating agency as exercised outside of power, these narratives reveal forms of survival that emerge through negotiation, strategic compliance, concealment, moral risk, and silence under coercion. This article challenges readings that sanctify obedience, silence, or endurance while minimizing trauma, coercion, and structural inequality. Instead, constrained agency is understood as a meaningful form of survival within oppressive relational systems. The article therefore argues for more trauma-attuned engagement with sacred narratives across pastoral care, psychotherapy, spiritual care, and theological education, where interpretations of sacred texts shape understandings of coercion, survival, and agency in lived religious life.</p>

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Constrained Agency in Biblical Women’s Narratives: Trauma-Informed Hermeneutics for Clinical Pastoral Practice

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月20日

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  • Lauren Kalvari

摘要

Biblical narratives featuring women continue to shape moral imagination and pastoral responses in contemporary faith communities. In pastoral, clinical, and spiritual care settings, these texts may influence how suffering, obligation, endurance, and forgiveness are understood, particularly among women navigating coercive or abusive relationships. In these contexts, interpretations of Scripture may shape understandings of duty, family preservation, safety, and agency. Yet interpretive traditions can sometimes flatten complex biblical narratives into simplified categories of obedience or resistance, virtue or transgression, or victimhood or agency. In doing so, they may obscure how agency operates under coercion and unequal power and unintentionally reinforce spiritualized suffering and self-blame within religious contexts. This article proposes a trauma-informed, intersectional hermeneutic for reading women’s constrained agency in Scripture, with particular attention to how sacred texts are interpreted, embodied, and negotiated within contemporary religious life. Drawing on trauma theory, pastoral psychology, intersectional scholarship, and interdisciplinary work on religion, intimate partner violence, and spiritual abuse across multiple faith traditions, the article examines the narratives of Tamar (Genesis 38) and of Sarah and Hagar (Genesis 12, 16, 20–21) and the intergenerational accounts of Bilhah and Zilpah (Genesis 29–30). Rather than treating agency as exercised outside of power, these narratives reveal forms of survival that emerge through negotiation, strategic compliance, concealment, moral risk, and silence under coercion. This article challenges readings that sanctify obedience, silence, or endurance while minimizing trauma, coercion, and structural inequality. Instead, constrained agency is understood as a meaningful form of survival within oppressive relational systems. The article therefore argues for more trauma-attuned engagement with sacred narratives across pastoral care, psychotherapy, spiritual care, and theological education, where interpretations of sacred texts shape understandings of coercion, survival, and agency in lived religious life.