ABSTRACT
Religious beliefs and spiritual practices have traditionally been an avenue by which people develop a sense of what it means to be human including values, hopes, dreams, and purpose in life. These meanings are often shattered by the experience of trauma (Weaver et al., 2003). Much of the clinical literature on trauma makes reference to the concept that traumatic experiences often engender a kind of “crisis of faith” (Herman, 1992) and that spirituality and/or religion can help heal this shattering by “providing a sense of purpose in the face of terrifying realities by placing suffering in a larger context and by affirming the commonality of suffering across generations, time, and space” (McFarlane and van der Kolk, 1996, p. 25).
