Ecclesiological Support for Veterans Suffering from Moral Injury: A Phenomenological Study

For many military service members, the cost of their service is through the psychological, physiological, emotional, sociological, and spiritual scars from the trauma of conflict. This trauma is most associated with the diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Moral Injury (MI). Existing literature primarily focuses on a humanistic underlying philosophy to symptoms and patient care or uses a non-specific definition/categorization of religion/spirituality (e.g., Ames et al., 2019; Hill et al., 2000; Sharma et al., 2017). Studies have addressed psychological, physiological, emotional, and sociological healing (e.g., Åkerblom et al., 2020; Drescher et al., 2011; Gray et al., 2012; Nash & Litz, 2013; Gandelman et al., 2022), but as of 2024, the specifically Christian ecclesiological support offered for MI lacks robust investigation; especially for evangelical Christianity. The spiritual avenue of healing for service members suffering from MI is theological in foundation and could be addressed through a uniquely Christian doctrinal lens. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceived success of the actions of evangelical Christian churches in support of veterans’ spiritual and religious recovery upon returning from service in a war zone with MI. Consideration of spiritual recovery and service provided by churches were generally defined by the research subjects experiencing the symptoms and their symptoms’ subsequent improvement/degradation. The guiding theoretical foundation is based on the link between MI and a Christian theological lens (Powers, 2020).