Page 253 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

222 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

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Religious congregations provide sacred space where daily lives are cele-
brated and mourned through familiar liturgy, ritual, and sacred stories.
Whether it is daily prayer, weekly worship, or holiday attendance, whether
a bris or baptism, the joining of individuals in marriage, the welcoming
of new congregants into the fold, or the celebration of a life now past, reli-
gious institutions provide familiar frame and structure to recognize life’s
transitions and facilitate transformation.
This is precisely why, in response to trauma, religious attendance
increases dramatically and the walls of religious institutions nearly burst
with attendees seeking succor and orientation in times of fear, suffering,
and disorientation. Much like the grounding effect of a lightning rod to
a lightning strike, religious institutions offer a “grounding effect” in the
midst of trauma. The theologian Paul Tillich refers to the ground of being
as that which wards off nonbeing. And, it is the fear of the undoing of
“being” that is challenged during trauma. It is no wonder that political
figures promptly call on clergy when disaster occurs. When there is an
“offense” on community whether a natural disasters, riot, terrorist, or
domestic attack, clergy are among the first to be mobilized by politicians.
In order to assure that the salient roles of clergy and clinicians are opti-
mally used to assist in disaster care, we have developed the COPE model,
which provides guidance to clinicians and clergy on how to optimize their
collaboration before, during, and after disasters (see Figure 16.1). Two
central ideas guide the COPE program. The first is that clergy (with their
discrete expert knowledge about religion as well as their community) and
clinicians (with their discrete expert knowledge about mental health care)
can better help a broader array of persons with emotional difficulties and
disorders through professional collaboration than they can by working
alone. The second idea, which we emphasize in all programming, is that
to perpetuate collaboration, clergy, and clinicians must find their work
eased by COPE One must design programs so that they result in burden
reduction for each group. The objective of COPE is to improve the care of
individuals by reducing the care-giving burdens of clergy and clinicians
through consultation and collaboration.
For clinicians, COPE elucidates the significant roles of clergy and reli-
gious communities in the day-to-day efforts by humans to find meaning
and purpose. COPE advises clinicians on how to encourage clergy to refer
congregants in clinical distress for professional treatment and then advises
clinicians on how (with congregants’ consent) to maintain communication