Centered in pastoral theology, my dissertation engages multi-sited and arts-based qualitative research with LGBTQ+ people who have experienced homelessness in order to reassess the norms of trauma theology. Specifically, I conduct ethnographic research with a non-profit organization that works with LGBTQ+ homeless youth (Lost-n-Found Youth), and a local Baptist congregation that has a large number of LGBTQ+ members (Park Ave Baptist Church). Through resiliency-focused interviews and arts-based focus groups, I evaluate the effects of partnership models between non-profit organizations and the North American local church, offer a picture of LGBTQ+ spirituality beyond its typical association with trauma, and retheorize trauma and resilience from the lived perspective of LGBTQ+ folks.

The central insights of my dissertation are: (1) all humans have an inherent resiliency; and (2) LGBTQ+ folks experience trauma in ways that are more material, bodily, racialized, and queer than traditional trauma conceptions. In response to this distinctly queer trauma, I develop a concept of “queer resiliency” as a way to think about the subject and as an ethical norm for care that responds to trauma without centering, pathologizing, and naturalizing it. As a pastoral norm for trauma-sensitive queer theology, resiliency generates intercultural care models that prioritize the resources, connections, and wisdom of bodies and communities.