When Christ’s Body Is Broken: Anxiety, Identity, and Conflict in Congregations

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When Christ’s Body Is Broken tells the stories of two congregations in conflict. Although these churches had very different problems, they faced similar struggles: to articulate a faithful response to their concerns and to cope with the discord that threatened to tear their communities apart. Pastoral theologian Leanna K. Fuller shares these stories as a way of exploring the sources and dynamics of conflict in congregations. She argues that at the heart of such conflict lies anxiety triggered by encounters with difference. Bringing together resources from pastoral theology, psychodynamic theory, and social psychology, Fuller offers a theological reframing of conflict through categories of diversity, vulnerability, and hospitality–categories that, she argues, can encourage human beings to sit with the anxiety stirred by communal life and remain connected across differences. This reframing provides fertile ground out of which Fuller imagines concrete practices designed for conflicted communities and their leaders.