Responding to Substance Use Issues Through Relationships,Vulnerability,and Particularity: Theological Reflections on Empirical Research

Over the past 5 years, the Churches Promoting Recovery project has conducted listening sessions and a survey of clergy responding to substance use issues across North Carolina, building off earlier research in southern Appalachia. This article reflects theologically on three themes that have emerged from this work: the need for a better balance between educational and relational responses, the reality that substance use issues reveal some of the worst and the best of Christianity, and the recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all faith-based response to substance use issues. Through theologically sensitive approaches tailored to particular contexts and their relational networks, together clergy and lay leaders can pursue a vision of redemption that is personal, communal, and cosmic in scope.