Fuller Theological Seminary is an ecumenical seminary in Pasadena, California, with regional campuses in the western United States. It is egalitarian in nature.Fuller consistently has a student body that comprises over 4,000 students from 90 countries and 110 denominations. There are over 41,000 alumni Fuller is broadly evangelical among faculty and student body. Some affirming to conservative evangelical views such as unlimited inerrancy while others hold liberal evangelical sentiments such as limited inerrancy which views the Bible as true on matters of salvation but contains error in its recording of history and science.
ABSTRACTDeeply ingrained cultural beliefs shape how HIV is framed and stigmatized, particularly among rural minoritized communities such as the Yi-Nuosu of Liangshan, China. This parallel-convergent mixed-methods study investigated the sociocultural formation and determinants of HIV-related stigma among Yi-Nuosu minorities. We conducted qualitative interviews with 19 Yi-Nuosu participants to understand local beliefs about the HIV-illness course and perceptions of people living with HIV (PLWH). We then administered an online quantitative survey to Yi-Nuosu (n = 221) and Han-Chinese (majority group; n = 109) residents of Liangshan to examine the relationships between HIV etiology beliefs and HIV-related stigma. Qualitative results indicated that prevailing fear of "unclean blood" and its perceived threat to communal harmony and familial lineage perpetuated stigmatization and exclusion of PLWH. Quantitatively, endorsement of traditional spiritual explanations of HIV, attributions of HIV transmission to unhygienic practices and casual contact with PLWH were associated with higher levels of stigma towards PLWH for both groups. Collectively, these findings underscore the importance of HIV stigma-mitigation interventions that integrate biomedical and traditional belief frameworks that challenge fears of proximal engagement with PLWH and reify intra- and inter-familial support for PLWH - a core cultural value within Yi communities.
Faced with multiple simultaneous adversities that extend beyond traditional adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including systemic oppression and family separation due to detention or deportation, children of immigrants, a growing segment of the US population, face a public health crisis necessitating immediate attention. Experiencing these potentially traumatic events during the critical period of young childhood, especially in the absence of protective resources, can yield substantive short- and long-term developmental problems. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for evidence-based strategies for responding to ACEs and immigration-related adversities in young children of immigrants. This systematic review synthesizes literature indexed in PsycINFO from 2000 to 2025 on programs aimed at addressing ACEs in young children of immigrants in their natural settings (n = 15). Eligible studies were screened following PICOTS inclusion criteria requiring programs to address ACEs or trauma exposure among young children of immigrants and be deliverable in early childhood education or faith-based settings. The review is framed by three interrelated core protective systems identified by ACE researchers as important for the prevention, detection, and intervention of ACEs in children: (1) building children’s individual strengths; (2) developing attachment to nurturing caregivers; and (3) building a protective community (Sciaraffa et al., 2018). From this perspective, we present evidence-based strategies and programs that address one or more of these protective systems, can be implemented with young children in early childhood education and care centers (ECEC) or faith communities, and are appropriate for addressing immigration-related adversity.
This paper explores whether white Americans experience moral distress or injury (VanderWeele et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1–11, 2025) by participating in the historical construction and maintenance of a white supremacist society. The authors suggest that witnessing or perpetrating racist incidents could potentially prove to be morally distressful or injurious. If so, we consider how white Americans might reconcile their race-based moral injury through embodied rituals of lament and through interrogating the causes of suffering. Doehring and Cowen (2025) propose a spiritually respectful process of lamentation for those experiencing spiritual struggles and moral distress arising from witnessing climate crises. They define moral distress and injury using VanderWeele et al.’s, Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1–11 (2025) moral trauma spectrum, which ranges from moral distress to moral injury across roles of witnessing, perpetrating, and being harmed. We review the literature on moral injury and then on racial trauma and find that the extant research on moral distress and injury and racial trauma seems to indicate the possibility of race-based moral distress and injury within white Americans. We then theorize white moral distress and injury, which serves as the paper’s argumentative hinge, before reviewing practices and principles for processing trauma that may successively inform a framework for addressing hypothetical white moral distress and injury. The conclusion addresses Christian pastoral implications and offers suggestions for further research.
Several challenges for Christian spiritual formation in our current context can be traced to unintended consequences of the Church Growth Movement—in particular, its emphasis on numerical growth as the primary metric of ministry health as well as its approach to cultivating this numeric growth through homogenous congregations designed to serve only one kind of people. In the years ahead, the spiritual formation movement needs to globalize to speak to and reflect the current and future distribution of Christians throughout the world. Last, in light of the ongoing global mental health crisis, it also needs to more robustly develop the interrelatedness of the spiritual life with the emotional life without replacing union with Christ with psychological well-being as the telos of the Christian faith.
