Shame, Religion and Spirituality

Thrane argued that the Western Christian tradition has put exaggerated emphasis and attention on guilt and sin at the expense of shame. Thomas and Parker referred to John Hick who “attributes the church’s emphasis of guilt over shame to the extraordinary influence of Augustine.” According to them, “Hick particularly notes that the Augustinian interpretation of the creation story in the first three chapters of genesis is one that emphasizes guilt.”⁵⁵⁰ The “traditional” interpretation of the Bible story of the Fall of Eden in psychological and psychoanalytic research is told from the perspective of shame, not guilt.⁵⁵¹ Thomas and Parker argued that in Genesis, at first, Adam and Eve were not ashamed of their nakedness.

After eating the forbidden fruit the awareness of their nakedness was awakened which gave them the experience of new emotion, “that of being ashamed.”⁵⁵² Bradshaw analyzed the Fall of Eden as follows:

The Bible describes shame as a core and consequence of Adam’s fall. In Hebrew Adam is equivalent to mankind. Adam symbolizes all human beings. The Bible suggests that Adam was not satisfied with his own being. He wanted to be more than he was. He wanted to be more than human. He failed to accept his essential limitations. He lost his healthy shame. The Bible suggests that the origin of human bondage (original sin) is the desire to be other than who we are … to be more than human. In his toxic shame (pride), Adam wanted a false self. The false self led to his destruction. After Adam alienated his true being, he went into hiding. “And the Lord God called unto Adam … where art thou?” And Adam said, “I heard thy voice in the garden and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:9-10). Before the fall the man and the woman were both naked and “were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Once they chose to be other than what they were, they became naked and ashamed. Nakedness symbolized their true and authentic selves. They were who they were and they were okay with it. There was nothing to hide. They could be perfectly and rigorously honest.⁵⁵³

Schneider noted the absence of shame in religion and he argued that

The Western Christian tradition in the postbiblical period has neglected the phenomenon of shame, and has failed to give it sustained reflection. The Western Church has thought more in terms of guilt than shame, and has tended (notwithstanding the Reformation) to lapse into conceiving of sin in

548 Horton, Bleau & Drwecki 2006, 359-370.

549 Tracy & Robins 2003, 58.

550 Thomas & Parker 2004, 176.

551 Kinston 1987, 230.

552 Thomas & Parker 2004, 177.

553 Bradshaw 1988, viii.

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terms of moralism and specific wrongdoing, rather than as a failure of trust and a break in a relationship. Contemporary theology perpetuates this inattention; only Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to my knowledge, has considered the religious importance of shame.⁵⁵⁴

Talking more specifically about the theological aspects of shame Pattison argued that shame is almost totally ignored in both general and pastoral theology. The Western Christian tradition has focused on salvation, guilt, offences, and forgiveness.⁵⁵⁵ Thomas and Parker argued that in the spiritual context shame and guilt have not been adequately distinguished which “has produced confusing and ineffective care for those suffering from shame.” They added that “often such people are counseled toward confession and forgiveness, which are appropriate responses to guilt but premature or ineffective responses to shame.”⁵⁵⁶ Capps stressed also the importance of the theology of shame while stating that “our theologies of guilt are inadequate, and that we desperately need a theology of shame to take its place alongside theologies of guilt.”⁵⁵⁷ Fowler emphasized the need of the theology of shame in the next paragraph:

For those in the church, a hermeneutics of shame must begin by unmasking the dynamics of shame in our inherited traditions and theologies and in our present practices. When we do not acknowledge and deal with the shaming occurring in our face-to-face relations and in our communities, including the church, we learn to ignore and bypass shame in relation to broader issues of injustice and environmental degradation. Then we suppress the honest shame we ought to feel in the presence of outrageously shameful conditions.⁵⁵⁸

Capps studied the connection of sin, narcissism and Christian laity and clergy.⁵⁵⁹ He referred to those studies while he states that “Christian laity and clergy have conceptions of sin that are generally congruent with a theology of guilt, whereas their actual experience of sinfulness—of a deep inner sense of wrongness—is more relative of the psychodynamics of shame.” The studies showed that shame has taken the place of guilt “as the experience that causes individuals to feel bad about themselves, to feel that something is seriously wrong with them.” Those individuals “may not use religious language to describe it or be fully aware that through their sense of shame they are experiencing humanity’s sinful nature.”

According to Capps, it is a fact that “something has changed, perhaps radically, in the way that we today experience a sense of wrongness—wrongness in our inner selves, wrongness in our relations with other persons, and wrongness in our relations with God.” This wrongfulness seems not to be experienced because of guilt, but shame dynamics. Thus, a meaningful and relevant talk about sin concerns the experience of shame, “not only, not even primarily, to the experience of guilt.” Capps argued that this will require the reformulation of sin.⁵⁶⁰

Albers claimed that in pastoral practice “many people are separated from grace by their shame-based identities.”⁵⁶¹ He described the effects of shame as follows:

554 Schneider 1977, 113.

555 Pattison 2000, 12, 190.

556 Thomas & Parker 2004, 176.

557 Capps 1993, 86.

558 Fowler 1993, 819.

559 Capps 1989; Capps 1992.

560 Capps 1993, 3, 39, 41.

561 Albers 1996, 350-351.

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“The reality of disgrace shame stands as a significant barrier to the hearing and appropriation of the words of forgiveness. These people, like everyone else, need forgiveness, but before the words of grace can convey their liberating power, the people must first deal with the disgrace shame.”⁵⁶²

Albers noted that “the primary human problem addressed by the Lutheran theological tradition is that of sin experienced as guilt.” According to him, individuals with shame-based identities, who perceive themselves without value or unworthy of grace, “cannot appropriate the gift of forgiveness because they cannot believe it is for them.” Albers criticized a former confessional service that governs one’s theological conditioning by stating: “We poor sinners confess unto thee, that we are by nature sinful and unclean.” He argued that those words make it hard to accept the assertion of human beings' “infinite worth because they owe their origin to an Infinite God who assigns eternal value to all.” In the case of a shame-based individual, the gracious words of forgiveness and reconciliation “cannot be heard, and the declaration of forgiveness may even exacerbate the sense of shame because the person now is shamed for not believing the word of God.”⁵⁶³ Fowler pointed to the need to recognize the subtle uses of guilt and shame in the service of the church. He suggested that “in sermons, prayers of confession and pastoral prayers, we should follow Jesus’ example of naming specific acts or patterns of action for which we and our people need to repent, rather than emphasizing our general unworthiness.”⁵⁶⁴

Smedes stated that individuals who come to church with loads of unhealthy shame do not get relief from their condition but instead their load gets even heavier. The unhealthy shame is the one that “keeps grace from getting through” and “the word of grace they do hear sounds more like judgment than amazing grace.”⁵⁶⁵ According to Patton, “the church’s concern with guilt, and pastors’ 'need' to hear the sins of others, has lead to an overemphasis on catharsis and confession as a part of pastoral care, often at the expense of the slow development of an empathic relationship in which shame can be expressed.”⁵⁶⁶ Thomas and Parker noted that if asking forgiveness from God or others does not bring some sense of release the dominant emotion is not guilt but shame. If the dominant emotion is shame, confession and asking for forgiveness “seem to have little effect and the person is back the next day or week or month, confessing the same sin and experiencing the same sense of his or her badness.”⁵⁶⁷ Albers emphasized the importance of the separation of the concepts of shame and guilt when ministering to the individuals who suffer from both guilt and shame.⁵⁶⁸

Thompson underlined the fact that “shame in pastoral psychotherapy may be even greater than in other types of therapy because of the symbolic significance of the pastoral psychotherapist as a representative of God, whom many experience as the Divine Judge and Shamer.”⁵⁶⁹ Albers argued that “grace for the shame-based person is not forgiveness, but acceptance.”⁵⁷⁰ Thus, according to him, in pastoral care the starting point for individuals with

562 Albers 1996, 349-351.

563 Albers 1996, 347-348, 350-351.

564 Fowler 1993, 817-818.

565 Smedes 1993, 77.

566 Patton 2001, 68.

567 Thomas & Parker 2004, 181.

568 Albers 1996, 350.

569 Thompson 1996, 311.

570 Albers 2000, 64.

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disgrace-shame is not forgiveness, but the principal theological factor, that of acceptance. For shame-based individuals the experience of God’s acceptance becomes real often through human acceptance in the faith community. Albers emphasized that “the need for unconditional acceptance suggests that the starting point for some people may not be the traditional law-gospel dialectic, but rather gospel-law.” While the law may drive some individuals “to the forgiveness offered by God in Jesus Christ, it may condemn others to the pit of despair in their disgrace shame.”⁵⁷¹ According to Goldberg, the Bible views the acceptance of shame as “the ultimate in commitment.”⁵⁷² Thomas and Parker saw the challenges of the pastoral care of shame-based individuals as follows:

In treating shame, the focus is on nurturing the emergence of the self. By strengthening the emergent self, one is able to move it developmentally toward the point where the self becomes secure enough to take responsibility for its actions. Until the self becomes stable enough to distinguish itself from its actions, the person will continue to confuse the two. … A “guilty” self no longer makes global assessments of its badness, but can assess the results of its actions, and, because it is not overwhelmed by a pervasive sense of badness, can plan appropriate reparative actions. … Thus, one comes to see that helping others overcome debilitating shame requires the caregiver to build strong relational bonds with the shamed self of the sufferer.⁵⁷³

Psychological research indicates that the clients are not the only ones who feel shame in psychotherapy, but the therapists themselves have feelings of shame in therapy, too.⁵⁷⁴ Kaufman argued that one of the reasons for the therapists’ feelings of shame is the acceptance of the fact of “ultimate helplessness to cure” others.⁵⁷⁵ Pembroke claimed that shame has also an adaptive function in pastoral counseling. He stated that “the shame feelings a pastor or counselor experiences as a result of his distorted way of being present have a potentially positive function, namely, moving him to a period of critical introspection in which he may grasp a vision of a higher capacity for genuine presence.”⁵⁷⁶ According to Smedes, “a healthy sense of shame is perhaps the surest sign of our divine origin and our human dignity.”⁵⁷⁷ Bonhoeffer declared the same as stating that “shame is man’s ineffaceable recollection of his estrangement from the origin; it is grief for this estrangement, and the powerless longing to return to unity with the origin.”⁵⁷⁸

571 Albers 1996, 349, 351-352.

572 Goldberg 1991, 65.

573 Thomas & Parker 2004, 181.

574 Goldberg 1991, 216-217, 260.

575 Kaufman 1996, 230. See also Thompson’s (1996, 311) views about the “the pastoral psychotherapist as a representative of God” which might even add to the pastoral counselor’s pressure to succeed in counseling and cause shame if the counseling is not successful.

576 Pembroke 2002, 8.

577 Smedes 1993, 32.

578 Bonhoeffer 1955, 20.

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