Equipping Clergy to Make Space for the Sacred in Response to Substance Use Issues
Moderator: Brett McCarty, Assistant Professor, Population Health Sciences, and Assistant Research Professor, Theological Ethics, Duke University
Panelists: Erin Johnston, Associate in Research, Duke University; Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical School and Duke Divinity School; A. Maria Mugweru, Postdoctoral Associate, Duke Divinity School
Substance use issues are devastating people and communities across the country – and things are getting worse. In 2020, over 90,000 people died from overdoses, an increase by nearly 30% from the year before. Opioids are a key driver of this devastation, which contribute to well over half of those deaths [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic has both intensified patterns of substance use issues and made effective treatments more difficult to access.
Religious communities have an important role to play in addressing substance use issues. People with substance use issues may turn to their pastor and religious community for support. For minority communities, churches can be especially important due to the ways in which many groups have been excluded from healthcare. Religious communities can be places where substance use issues play out in the shadows, with stigma and shame preventing these issues from being addressed openly.
This panel explores the work of one project designed to catalyze religious communities as sites for constructive responses to substance use issues, with a particular focus on Christian communities. Over the past year, a team of interdisciplinary researchers has conducted a mixed methods needs assessment of Christian faith leaders responding to substance use issues. This has occurred through a statewide survey and representative listening sessions. Drawing from that needs assessment and the wisdom of an advisory board of key stakeholders, the project is creating accessible, theologically grounded resources for Christian faith communities.
This panel aims to presents the key research findings from the project while also previewing some of the practical resources being created. The panel moderator, a theological ethicist and qualitative researcher who serves as the project’s PI, will begin by providing an overview of the work, a description of how it expands on previous research in the area, and an account of the way that the project will inform conversation about substance use in both medical and faith community contexts. This first speaker also will argue for the importance of equipping faith leaders to serve as constructive partners to clinicians and local public health workers, while describing the inherent difficulties that face both religious and medical leaders who are engaged in such work.
The second speaker, a sociologist who led the mixed methods needs assessment, will give an overview of both components of the project’s research: a survey of over 175 faith leaders and listening sessions of over 30 faith leaders. This second speaker will present several key findings from the work. These include the types of support already offered by churches, the views on substance use expressed by clergy, and the types of resources desired. Special attention will be given to significant variances present along denominational and racial/ethnic lines.
The third speaker, a postdoctoral fellow researching the intersection of religious communities and racial disparities in health care, will delve into the racial differences present in the research results. This presentation will draw particularly from the project’s eight listening sessions: two with Black faith leaders in both rural and urban settings, two with Hispanic faith leaders in both rural and urban settings, one with white rural United Methodist clergy, one with faith leaders affiliated with a faith-based harm reduction agency, one with faith leaders affiliated with a statewide mainline church organization, and one with white evangelical faith leaders in a major metro area. Given the historically racialized disparities present in responses to substance use issues (consider the contrast between the ‘opioid epidemic’ as a public health issue and the ‘War on Drugs’ as a militarized criminal justice issue), the racial differences present in our research findings take on additional import.
The fourth speaker, a physician and theologian, will delve into the normative issues raised by the research findings before turning to a description of the practical resources being created in response. This speaker will focus on the varying approaches to substance use issues that were evident within our survey and focus group data, with particular attention to different views of whether substance use issues are best described as disease, sin, or both. This speaker will highlight two contrasting and prevalent responses that either medicalize or moralize substance use issues, and they will highlight that many of our respondents refused this binary as unhelpful and artificial binary, preferring a more pragmatic synthesis of the two. Indeed, these survey results point the way to a more nuanced and biblical Christian concept of sin than is often present in conversations about faith communities and substance use. Finally, this speaker will preview several of the practical resources being created by the project, with an extended time of Q&A offered to procure feedback not only on the research but also on the shape of these practical resources.
[1] “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts,” CDC National Center for Health Statistics, October 12, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
Religious communities have an important role to play in addressing substance use issues. People with substance use issues may turn to their pastor and religious community for support. For minority communities, churches can be especially important due to the ways in which many groups have been excluded from healthcare. Religious communities can be places where substance use issues play out in the shadows, with stigma and shame preventing these issues from being addressed openly.
This panel explores the work of one project designed to catalyze religious communities as sites for constructive responses to substance use issues, with a particular focus on Christian communities. Over the past year, a team of interdisciplinary researchers has conducted a mixed methods needs assessment of Christian faith leaders responding to substance use issues. This has occurred through a statewide survey and representative listening sessions. Drawing from that needs assessment and the wisdom of an advisory board of key stakeholders, the project is creating accessible, theologically grounded resources for Christian faith communities.
This panel aims to presents the key research findings from the project while also previewing some of the practical resources being created. The panel moderator, a theological ethicist and qualitative researcher who serves as the project’s PI, will begin by providing an overview of the work, a description of how it expands on previous research in the area, and an account of the way that the project will inform conversation about substance use in both medical and faith community contexts. This first speaker also will argue for the importance of equipping faith leaders to serve as constructive partners to clinicians and local public health workers, while describing the inherent difficulties that face both religious and medical leaders who are engaged in such work.
The second speaker, a sociologist who led the mixed methods needs assessment, will give an overview of both components of the project’s research: a survey of over 175 faith leaders and listening sessions of over 30 faith leaders. This second speaker will present several key findings from the work. These include the types of support already offered by churches, the views on substance use expressed by clergy, and the types of resources desired. Special attention will be given to significant variances present along denominational and racial/ethnic lines.
The third speaker, a postdoctoral fellow researching the intersection of religious communities and racial disparities in health care, will delve into the racial differences present in the research results. This presentation will draw particularly from the project’s eight listening sessions: two with Black faith leaders in both rural and urban settings, two with Hispanic faith leaders in both rural and urban settings, one with white rural United Methodist clergy, one with faith leaders affiliated with a faith-based harm reduction agency, one with faith leaders affiliated with a statewide mainline church organization, and one with white evangelical faith leaders in a major metro area. Given the historically racialized disparities present in responses to substance use issues (consider the contrast between the ‘opioid epidemic’ as a public health issue and the ‘War on Drugs’ as a militarized criminal justice issue), the racial differences present in our research findings take on additional import.
The fourth speaker, a physician and theologian, will delve into the normative issues raised by the research findings before turning to a description of the practical resources being created in response. This speaker will focus on the varying approaches to substance use issues that were evident within our survey and focus group data, with particular attention to different views of whether substance use issues are best described as disease, sin, or both. This speaker will highlight two contrasting and prevalent responses that either medicalize or moralize substance use issues, and they will highlight that many of our respondents refused this binary as unhelpful and artificial binary, preferring a more pragmatic synthesis of the two. Indeed, these survey results point the way to a more nuanced and biblical Christian concept of sin than is often present in conversations about faith communities and substance use. Finally, this speaker will preview several of the practical resources being created by the project, with an extended time of Q&A offered to procure feedback not only on the research but also on the shape of these practical resources.
[1] “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts,” CDC National Center for Health Statistics, October 12, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm