Struggling with God: Mental Health and Christian Spirituality: Foreword by Justin Welby - Paperback

by Christopher C. H. Cook (Author), Isabelle Hamley (Author), John Swinton (Author)

'Remarkably beautiful and pastoral' JUSTIN WELBY, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

'Brimming with wisdom and humanity' DAME SARAH MULLALLY, DBE, BISHOP OF LONDON

Struggling with God gets right to the heart of a great predicament for many Christians. When it feels as if our struggles are overwhelming - and our capacity for faith and hope and love is diminished - how is it possible to maintain, never mind nourish, our relationship with God?

The truth, as this deeply compassionate volume reminds us, is that Jesus came alongside people wrestling with mental health problems. Many familiar conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and more severe ones, including bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia, are addressed by the authors here. Dispelling common myths and misconceptions, they explore the impact such mental health disorders can have on individual Christians, Church and society..

Each chapter includes biblical reflections relevant to its theme, prayers, questions to facilitate individual/group study, and pointers to further reading. In short, the book presents a Christian vision of spiritual and mental wellbeing through prayerful struggling with God.

Author Biography

Christopher C. H. Cook is Professor of Spirituality, Theology & Health at Durham University. He worked as a psychiatrist in the NHS for over 25 years before retiring from clinical practice, and was ordained as an Anglican priest in 2001. He ministers in a small rural parish in the Yorkshire Dales. His books include Spirituality, Theology and Mental Health (2013), Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine (2018), and (with Isabelle Hamley) The Bible and Mental Health (2020).

Isabelle Hamley is Theological Adviser to the House of Bishops and was formerly Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. She has long been concerned with questions of justice, mercy and restoration, having been a probation officer before ordination and ministering subsequently amidst the diversity of parish life. Her books include (with Christopher C. Cook) The Bible and Mental Health (2020), and Unspeakable Things Spoken (2019) and Embracing Justice: The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2022.

John Swinton is Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care and Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen. For more than a decade John worked as a registered mental health nurse, then as a chaplain alongside people with severe mental health challenges who were moving from the hospital into the community. In 2004, he founded the University of Aberdeen's Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability. He has published widely within the area of mental health, dementia, disability theology, spirituality and healthcare, qualitative research and pastoral care. John is the author of a number of monographs including Finding Jesus in the Storm: The spiritual lives of people with mental health challenges. (Eerdmans 2020). His book Dementia: Living in the memories of God won the Michael Ramsey Prize for excellence in theological writing.