Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues The Hurt, Harmed & Marginalized, Jenai Auman. Baker Books (ISBN: 9781540903914), 2024.

Summary: How God sees, loves, and pursues those hurt, harmed and marginalized by the church and offers them rest, healing, and hope.

Jenai Auman grew up as a bi-racial child in the South, so the experience of feeling marginalized or “othered” was not new to her. But the last place she expected to experience othering was on the staff of a church where she and her husband worked, a church that had been formative in her faith journey. In Othered, she describes the experience of being subject to leadership abuse resulting in a forced “transition” out of her position. She names the abuses, reinforced by the ways it was rationalized, the ways she was blamed, and forced out. But this is not a bitter book. Auman did not abandon her faith. Rather she describes how God embraced her when the church did not.

It began on her first day of work. She was five minutes late for an optional staff Bible study. She was late because her four year old son needed extra attention on the first day of camp. Rather than being given grace, she was upbraided for ten minutes for her lateness. Her executive pastor concluded, “You need to listen to me and respect me, but you also need to give me grace. I had a rough morning.” This was an example of a pattern that only worsened. That is, until Jenai spoke up. That led to her firing.

In succeeding chapters, she describes coming to terms with the abuse. First, it was important to name the abuse. In this case, it was an abuse of power and spiritual authority. Such abuse, she writes, is like the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey on her city of Houston. The winds weren’t so bad as the insidious flooding from days of rain. She describes “fauxnerability” by which abusive leadership confesses small vulnerabilities to cover up and hold onto larger ones. From a therapist, she realized the broken trust from a former friend for what it was–betrayal. Naming her betrayal helped her see why she struggled to find peace and rest. And it drove her to the God of hesed who doesn’t break trust.

But healing required going deeper into the naming of the dysfunctions in her church. In particular, she describes the love of comfort that shields congregations from seeing abuse.–things like toxic stress, triumphal Christianity, and bypassing pain. In response, Auman discovered the power of lament which names the truth and is met by a God who never outlawed the cries and the tears of the marginalized.

She describes how the longing for belonging can be used to rob a person of the sense of oneself. She learned about DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender). This gave her language to describe her treatment by elders at a severance meeting. She is able to exercise a prophetic voice against the abuse of others, having found this language for her own.

But this is a book that goes beyond naming the ways othering inflicts harm. Auman describes how God met her as she named her grief to Him. He met her, as he met many in scripture, in the wilderness. Wilderness became a space of safety to learn to trust again. She learned flourishing in Jesus who was both othered and welcome the othered to his table.

Paradoxically, repentance precedes a life of blessing others. Auman writes, “I will not become the hammer that hurt me.” We must break the cycle of trauma and sin or perpetuate it. Auman concludes by urging remembering rather than forgetting, of refusing rushed forgiveness, just as we refuse to rush to resurrection without the waiting of Holy Saturday. For Auman, honestly facing both her own brokenness and that of the church leads her to Jesus who prayed forgiveness for those who know not what they do. And behind it all is the God Who Sees and the One who is preparing for us a home.

Auman’s personal narrative of othering is powerful both for naming the evils of church abuse and offering hope for the abused. She never names her abusers in this book. I think that may have detracted from the power of naming the abuses she suffered. Instead, she describes how one may heal even when the perpetrators of harm do not repent. In this, she speaks both for and to many in similar situations who live in grief and anger. She reminds us that God especially sees, loves and pursues the marginalized–even those marginalized by the church.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program.