Papers by Kelly Denton-Borhaug
Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry, 2024
Purpose of Review We report critically on current debates in the field, identify significant theo... more Purpose of Review We report critically on current debates in the field, identify significant theoretical trends, highlight our own experiences, and describe our own approaches. We provide substantive recommendations for clinicians and others addressing military moral injury. Recent Findings The trauma theories of Judith Herman and Jennifer Gómez, as well as the theory of moral exploitation of Michael Robillard and Bradley Strawser, and the theory of complicity and moral accountability of Gregory Mellema, provide context for understanding, and guidance for addressing military, moral injury. Three examples of communal Review interventions illustrate how these theories can contribute to morally engaged and contextually informed care. Summary Military moral injury cannot be adequately addressed in the clinical context alone using individualized treatment approaches. Effective clinicians must be morally engaged, collaborate across disciplines, and be structurally and culturally competent.
The sharp and unforgiving suffering of the morally injured veteran cannot be fully understood, mu... more The sharp and unforgiving suffering of the morally injured veteran cannot be fully understood, much less effectively addressed, without a comprehensive investigation of moral injury’s underlying causes in American culture and society. And Then Your Soul is Gone exposes the threads of violence that tie together the naturalized dynamics of U.S. ways of war and militarization with collective practices of national distraction and self-deception. It shows how these same threads of violence are also tightly woven and sacralized in the tapestry of U.S. national identity, tragically concealing moral injury from greater consciousness, and sourcing its toxic growth in the very lives of those the nation claims it most highly esteems, our military service members and veterans. Drawing on Claudia Card’s philosophical framework, moral injury here is characterized as an atrocity, “a foreseeable intolerable harm caused by culpable wrongdoing.” These atrocities are shown to be flash-points revealing...
Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy
The Moral Injury Group (MIG) at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz (Philadelphia) VA Medical Center... more The Moral Injury Group (MIG) at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz (Philadelphia) VA Medical Center (CMCVAMC) is an example of collaborative care between chaplains and psychologists that engages religious, academic, and not-for-profit communities, as well as the media and other organizations external to the healthcare context. The intervention is primarily informed by a unique conceptualization: the moral injury (MI) of individual veterans is rooted in the unfair distribution of appropriate moral pain and best addressed through communal intervention that facilitates broader moral engagement and responsibility. MI is a public health issue that arises from the unfair distribution of appropriate moral pain and is sourced by the sedimentary layers of structural violence in US institutions related to war, and US war-culture. Preventing veteran suicide and promoting public health requires a larger social analysis and more broad-based, collective and collaborative understanding of, and response to, US war-culture, extending responsibility for MI care and prevention beyond individual veterans in health care institutions and clinical settings to US society.
The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 2014
12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable... more 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} In this paper we examine the relationship between mindfulness, memoir, and critical pedagogy. We propose that memoir links critical pedagogy and contemplative practice, furthering the goals of both. This proposal is rooted in an analysis of three years’ worth of memoirs prepared by students in a Peace and...
Lutheran Theology and Secular Law
What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices?... more What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices? What would we say about Jesus’ life and death if we did not associate the gospel narratives with a cosmic framework of sacrificial self-giving? The “the necessity of sacrifice” operates as an electrical exchange between the institutionalization of “war-culture” in the United States and the understandings and practices of popular Christianity. This leads to an important and difficult question: is there any way to rehabilitate understandings of sacrifice for Christianity without at the same time aiding and abetting war?
Focusing on viewer response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, this article interroga... more Focusing on viewer response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, this article interrogates the process of viewers' absorption of the film's dominant atonement images, penal substitution, christus victor and sacrifice in order to more deeply understand just how these images operate in popular culture, how they influence values, practices and beliefs, and to question the social impact of the discourse of violence and redemptive dynamics imbedded in the religious images themselves. This article is available in Journal of Religion & Film: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol9/iss1/10 Called a "Rorschach test," what is most revelatory about The Passion of the Christ is the fascinating array of contradictory responses its dissemination has induced in the American religious/social/political landscape. Popular and professional response to the film has been voluminous and wildly conflictual. Digging beneath one's first impression of a deeply polarized re...
The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Oct 13, 2014
In this paper we examine the relationship between mindfulness, memoir, and critical pedagogy. We ... more In this paper we examine the relationship between mindfulness, memoir, and critical pedagogy. We propose that memoir links critical pedagogy and contemplative practice, furthering the goals of both. This proposal is rooted in an analysis of three years' worth of memoirs prepared by students in a Peace and Justice Studies course. Our study shows that the pedagogical strategy we have employed assists students' increased self-awareness as well as insight regarding their inter-connectedness with other living beings. Both the study and contemplative practice of memoir root this awareness in the specific places, relationships, and situations that form our students' lives. Students are thus situated for deeper reflection regarding the ways their own lives are linked with the destiny of a much larger world reality, and specifically, with questions of peace and justice.
The International Journal of the Humanities: Annual Review
Journal of Religion and Violence
Journal of Religion and Violence
This article explores the potent sacrificial sacred canopy that shrouds rhetoric, practices, and ... more This article explores the potent sacrificial sacred canopy that shrouds rhetoric, practices, and institutions of post-9/11 war-culture in the United States. Analyzing examples from popular culture, presidential rhetoric, and military history, especially Andrew Bacevich's America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, I show how the depth and breadth of sacrificial rhetoric and logic result in a highly disciplined practice of framing and decision-making about militarism and war in the United States. Sacrificial linguistic patterns profoundly ignite and transcendentalize militarization and war, even while simultaneously mitigating conscious awareness, concern, and protest.
Theology and Science
I should have known, by early December, when photographs of infants with knitted Yoda caps on the... more I should have known, by early December, when photographs of infants with knitted Yoda caps on their heads began to flash across my computer screen at odd moments, that it was all downhill from there. Nevertheless, I still was surprised, as a veritable tsunami of merchandising ads for Star Wars: The Force Awakens washed this image onto my screen: "Star Wars Baby Nursery Design." So this is the latest way to welcome the new baby into the family, with a room painted black, an enormous commercial logo on the wall behind an innocent crib, a Darth Vader lamp and Chewbacca rug to complete the ensemble? Of course, it wasn't hard to guess that the nation would go nuts with the release of the latest film in the Star Wars franchise. In just two weeks the film broke all national records for ticket sales, grossing over $750 million. 1 It is estimated that the merchandising bonanza from the film will result in over $5 billion in the first year alone after the film's release. 2 From Pinterest to video gaming and blogs of every sort, from video tributes, toys, plastic gadgets of all kinds, to yes, even the way people decide to decorate their new infants' nurseries, we've sort of gone gaga, at least temporarily. Is it all just good clean fun? I'm afraid that after years of digging into ever more bizarre permutations of what I call "war culture" in the United States, this cultural moment was more than I could resist. What would aliens from another galaxy think about our absorption, our glee, this joyful willingness to slap down all kinds of money in the latest Star Wars frenzy? Is there something we can learn about ourselves by stopping to think a bit about all this? We go to movies for different reasons. Yes, we want to be entertained. We also go to movies to learn new things, and to be exposed to worlds and situations completely unlike our own lives. At the same time, sometimes we go to movies that help to dull the sharp edges of painful realities, or paint a brighter or more simplistic picture of reality than we know to be true. In addition, movies draw us in that in some way address anxieties and concerns in our lives and world. Surely, part of the draw of the latest Star Wars episode is the franchise's sheer longevity. After all, I'm 56, but when I sat in that darkened theater, and saw the block of narrative text peeling away from me on the screen, immediately I was taken back to my last year of high school, when at 17, I waited in long lines in Westwood, California, along with so many other excited young people, to see the first film. Many film critics have pointed out the careful cultivation of nostalgia in this latest production, such as Richard Brody, "[Director] Abrams plays the nostalgia factor to the very hilt of his light sabre, and the stagy entrances with which he reintroduces beloved performers is among the most identifiable elements of his direction." 3
Journal of Religion and Violence
Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 2015
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Papers by Kelly Denton-Borhaug