From Scripture to Self: Reclaiming Story After Spiritual Harm
Publication information:
Abstract
This 60-minute experiential workshop invites participants to explore belonging as a narrative practice for those shaped by totalizing spiritual traditions. Drawing from their shared upbringing in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jonathan Fleming and Kimberly Ternate Ding examine how spiritual texts and stories shape moral imagination, identity, and community. Through contextual reflection and a guided, trauma-informed writing and artmaking practice, participants reimagine scripture as provisional, self-authored text. Grounded in inclusive pedagogy and ethical commitments to access and care, the workshop models a study community where authority is shared, witnessing is central, and meaning is collectively and compassionately negotiated beyond inherited doctrines.
Presenter Biographies
Kimberly Ternate Ding is a writer, educator, and artist who teaches writing and public speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work explores belonging, authorship, and narrative reclamation beyond totalizing spiritual traditions.
Jonathan Fleming is a Portland, Oregon–based special education teacher and photographer. Grounded in lived experience of exclusion and loss of community, his work centers equity in education as a pathway to belonging shaped through access, care, and shared authorship. He draws on education pedagogy to design inclusive, trauma-informed learning spaces.