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    Is There a Heaven for a “G”?: A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence
    Is There a Heaven for a “G”?: A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence
    Is There a Heaven for a “G”?: A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    Is There a Heaven for a “G”?: A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence

    By Danielle J. Buhuro, Sharon Ellis Davis and JoAnne Marie Terrell

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    About this ebook

    The moment the pager rings, all hell breaks loose. Across the pager appears the words, "Code Yellow ER: Gun Shot Wound." A chaplain at a Level I trauma center can dread these words. These words mean it's gonna' be a long night. These words mean somebody is probably fighting for their life right now. How does a hospital chaplain provide pastoral care to gang member patients? What are the systemic factors that contribute to gang violence? How does the American culture contribute to gang violence? What is the church called to be and do? Where is the hope? These are just some of the questions that this fast-paced, energetic book tackles, ultimately leaving one to theologically grapple with the question: Is There A Heaven For A 'G' (or Gangster)? Buckle up and get ready for this adrenaline ride. One thing is for certain, after engaging this book, readers won't view gang violence in the same way ever again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateJan 30, 2017
    ISBN9781532608520
    Is There a Heaven for a “G”?: A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence
    Author

    Danielle J. Buhuro

    Danielle J. Buhuro is a certified Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor at Advocate South Suburban and Trinity Hospitals in Chicago. She is also senior pastor of Lincoln Memorial UCC in Chicago.

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      Book preview

      Is There a Heaven for a “G”? - Danielle J. Buhuro

      9781532608513.kindle.jpg

      Is There a Heaven for a G?

      A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence

      Danielle J. Buhuro

      Foreword by JoAnne Marie Terrell

      Introduction by Sharon Ellis Davis

      11766.png

      Is There a Heaven for a G?

      A Pastoral Care Approach to Gang Violence

      Copyright © 2016 Danielle J. Buhuro. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0851-3

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0853-7

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0852-0

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. March 14, 2017

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Foreword

      Introduction: From Domestic Violence to Gang Violence

      Prologue: All Hell’s about to Break Loose

      Chapter 1: In Between a Rock and a Hard Place

      Chapter 2: A Dream Deferred

      Chapter 3: Connection Is Key

      Chapter 4: Holding Accountability and Educating Gang Member Patients

      Chapter 5: Ending on Empowerment

      Chapter 6: What about Me?

      Chapter 7: Where Do We Go from Here?

      Bibliography

      To my maternal grandmother, who now rests with the ancestors, Agnes Haymon.

      She inspired me to always write because writing unleashes the soul.

      Foreword

      The World Health Organization defines interpersonal violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against another person, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.¹ It may include abuse, bullying, dating (or relationship) violence, sexual violence, youth violence, and gang violence.² In all its forms, interpersonal violence has profound psychological, social, and spiritual effects on individuals, families, and neighborhoods, as well as on the larger communities in which neighborhoods are situated. Unquestionably, the problem of interpersonal violence has serious consequences for institutions within communities, including schools and, especially, religious organizations, for it begs of the synagogue, the temple, the mosque, and the church the question of how each faith’s scripture, beliefs, and practices propose to remedy the tragedy and disruption interpersonal violence wreaks in so many lives. Christian scripture asserts that such violence has its seed in unchecked thoughts that find harbor in all of our (all-too-human) hearts, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matt 15:19) against each other as individuals and, most infelicitously, as the collective body of Christ. Violence is unneighborliness, and like cancer cells in a vital organ, its affected cells replicate, break away from their point of origin, and metastasize, manifesting in other vulnerable sites in the body. Indeed, interpersonal violence is a public health crisis, a virus of pandemic proportions.

      I picked up the manuscript for Is There a Heaven for a G? with the thought in mind that it would be an academic—if pastoral—treatment of gang violence and perhaps other associated forms of interpersonal violence. The author, Danielle Buhuro, is a Christian chaplain working the trauma unit in a hospital situated in a major metropolitan area, Chicago, Illinois, the epicenter of a recent uptick in murders³ in spite of a downward trend in violent crime across the United States.⁴ The book is instead a poignant memoir of Buhuro’s priestly, prophetic, and noble efforts to provide pastoral care among, with, and for those embroiled in the complex web of gang violence. Buhuro shares the insight she has gained from her interaction with victims felled by violence and those who survived it. Her fresh approach challenges ministers, chaplaincy corps, and medical staff who are shocked by the ways of the world and wearied by caregiving, to rehumanize our connections to surviving victims of gang violence by understanding the contexts of risk they have to negotiate for identity, status, and belonging. In her role as prophet and priest, Buhuro challenges family members of felled victims and survivors, survivors and our friends, to see ourselves as human beings and, therefore, as having a moral imperative to know and relate to the Divine Reality within ourselves and others. For it is in the joy of being human—realizing our purpose, coming to know and refining our desires, gifts, callings, and relationships, and actualizing all of this—that we experience inchoately what the hymnodist Frances J. Crosby describes as a foretaste of glory divine,⁵ what theologians call the eschaton, and what lay Christians, and countless folks from other faiths, imagine as heaven.

      Even though (perhaps, because) I have taught a course on AIDS and Violence at Chicago Theological Seminary for more than twenty years, I had not anticipated that Is There a Heaven for a G? would trigger the trauma of the interpersonal violence I experienced over my lifetime. Reading the manuscript took me back to the life-changing event of my mother’s murder in 1973. Not to the shocking, tear-filled, and seemingly unreal, immediate aftermath of her death, but to the caregivers who accompanied me as a child struggling to understand the emotional storm I was enduring. These included police officers who came to let my elder sister and me know what had happened, one of whom allowed me to cry in his arms (I still remember the strong smell of his leather jacket); my grandfather, whose very presence was certainty that things would be alright, eventually; and my aunt and uncle, who became my guardians, who bore patiently with me, taught me to make myself useful in the church, and put me on a path to becoming. I am genuinely grateful for the comfort and love I received in those woeful days of my violently interrupted youth.

      I never received, though, the blessed assurance that there was a heaven for my mother, neither from my grandfather, who was a pastor, teacher, and planter of churches, nor from my uncle and late aunt, a pastor and missionary. The sad thing is, I do not think I asked, because, though I was a child, I knew intuitively that the prevailing evangelical theology could not concede that much grace to my mother, who was presumed a sinner because when she died, she was addicted, unchurched, and living in sin, that is, with a man to whom she was not married, the same man who took her life. Even though I could not name these then, I privately resented the theological implications of the church’s capacity to withhold the assurance of pardon from those who need it the most because of their private anguish and their inability to get or remain on a path of becoming, for whatever reasons, and to reserve it for those who say they are saved but continue to abuse the privileges of a relationship with Christ. This simplistic moral theory fails to take into account the psychological, social, economic, and political context of struggle, gender oppression, sexual repression, and racial interdiction in which my black mother tried to navigate her life but was ravaged instead by intra- and interpersonal violence.

      Forty years later, for African Americans, the context of struggle remains largely unchanged. Is There a Heaven for a G? does an admirable job of situating the historical context out of which gang violence emerged as an attempt on the part of disenfranchised folks to create agency in their lives. The author also critiques the church and the role of evangelical religion in the buttressing of our violent context through its limited hermeneutics, vigorous promotion of pietistic faith and the idea of individual responsibility for sin, and its practice of condemning perpetrators, felled victims, and surviving victims of violence, without a concomitant condemnation of the violent society that produces them. In that sense, the book seeks to remedy and not perpetuate the violent theologies that have not only wreaked havoc in people’s lives, but also left the church in the unenviable position of losing ground in the fight to win souls⁶ because it has ignored the reality and context in which those same souls—the addicted, the unchurched, those living in sin, and those embroiled in interpersonal violence—are engaged.

      The Reverend JoAnne Marie Terrell, PhD, LHD

      Chicago Theological Seminary

      1. Dahlberg and Krug, Violence: A Global Public Health Problem, in World Report on Violence and Health, edited by Krug et al. (Geneva: WHO,

      2002)

      ,

      1–21

      .

      2. Interpersonal Violence, http://us.reachout.com/facts/factsheet/interpersonal-violence.

      3. Park and Patterson, Chicago: The Shocking Numbers behind the Violence, CNN.com, August

      30, 2016

      ,

      http://www.cnn.com/

      2016/08/29

      /us/chicago-violence-shootings.

      4. Ehrenfreund, We’ve Had a Massive Decline in Gun Violence in the United States. Here’s Why, Washington Post, December

      3

      ,

      2015

      , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/

      2015/12/03

      /weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why.

      5. Blessed Assurance, lyrics by Fanny Crosby (hymn,

      1873

      ).

      6. Cf. Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids: Baker,

      2012

      ).

      Introduction

      From Domestic Violence to Gang Violence

      Making the Connections

      In this introduction, I was asked to reflect on the question Is there a connection between domestic violence and gang violence? My answer to this question is an unequivocal, Yes! This introduction seeks to give a larger response to a simple Yes! My personal and professional experiences, having served as a police officer (31 years), pastor (25 years) and public theologian/ethicist (10 years), a professor (26 years), a pastoral care provider (20 years), and a parent (for over 45 years), are derived from a plethora of contexts of which I have attempted to locate meaning as they inform my ministry. Making meaning is a lifelong and necessary task to enable society to develop effective strategies and tools for intervention, prevention and healing.

      Domestic Violence, also known as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), has, as its root cause, the need to assert power and control over another person. This violence can manifest itself as physical, emotional, financial, or sexual. Yet, in

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