Post-Traumatic Jesus: Reading the Gospel with the Wounded

After twenty years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global pandemic, protests against racial violence, and frequent shootings, more Americans than ever are living with the effects of trauma. The good news is that Jesus was born and died in a traumatized world, and his story speaks forever to wounded people worldwide. Army veteran and Episcopal priest David Peters explores Jesus’ life story through the post-traumatic lens with which the Gospel writers first wrote it—as people who had seen their leader executed by the same oppressive government that had already shrouded their whole lives in anxiety and fear. Meeting the post-traumatic Jesus—the only Jesus the world has ever known—can be a balm to the wounds of modern Christians and spiritual seekers.