Church hurt may be defined as a negative social interaction or doctrinal difference that takes place between co-religious individuals or within religious communities, leading to interpersonal religious and spiritual struggle. Operationalizing, studying, and analyzing experiences of church hurt provide insight into an individuals' motivations for affiliating or disaffiliating from their religion. We created the first church hurt cscale and utilized it to measure experiences and transgression-related motivations. The findings of this study give implications for how these transgressions affect belonging and identity in a faith. Secure and internal faith is positively associated with overall wellbeing, and experiencing church hurt can impact the dimensions of religiosity that contribute to flourishing. Exploring church hurt as a unique construct can inform what scenarios, experiences, and perceptions lead to a severing of religious safety, and how faith institutions, mental health practitioners, and co-religious people can address these experiences and their impact on others. This presentation introduces the concept of church hurt, presents the creation and validity of the Church Hurt Scale-40, and discusses the benefits of discussing church hurt as a promotion of healing and flourishing.
Book of Abstracts
Understanding Church Hurt and its Implications for Flourishing