Webinar by Brian Powers: Penance in light of moral injury

One of the critical markers in many suffering from moral injury is the ongoing presence of negative moral emotions that can lead to a broken social trust in belief systems, frameworks of meaning and institutions we expect to uphold moral values. 

Often coincident with this ‘loss of meaning’ and a moral scaffolding through which one can evaluate one’s own actions, those who have experienced moral injury also can come to make a global self-judgment on their own character – seeing themselves as ‘bad people’ rather than people who have committed a ‘bad act’. 

Recent research in psychology has suggested that grounding ourselves in a narrative of moral growth and changed identity can allow us to contextualise past misdeeds and make peace with them. 

This webinar will explore the practice and rite of penance in the broad Christian tradition, with the tacit idea that the church’s concepts of penance, repentance and reconciliation – fraught with historical abuses, failures and prejudices though they are – may hold a novel capacity to mediate a transition from self-blame and condemnation to a sense of self-worth that may enable those suffering from moral injury to find solace and even begin to restore social trust.

Brian is the Executive Director of the ICMI and the inaugural Bernard William Vann Fellow in Christianity and the Armed Forces at Durham University. A systematic theologian and a veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has written and spoken extensively on the importance of worldview, ethics and religious dialogue in rebuilding moral frameworks through which morally injured persons may find meaning and solace, both in American and British contexts. He is the author of Full Darkness: Original Sin, Moral Injury, and Wartime Violence (Eerdmans, 2019).

To receive the link to join the webinar, please register on the event page. If after registering you don't receive the confirmation email in your inbox, please check your junk mail. This webinar will be hosted on Microsoft Teams but you don't need Teams installed on your device in order to join the webinar.