Souls in the Hands of a Tender God

Starred review from March 10, 2008
For decades Rennebohm, a Protestant pastor, has walked the streets of Seattle, making contact with mentally ill homeless people and slowly drawing them into “circles of care” so they can find safe housing, receive medical and psychological help and rejoin the human community.In this collaboration with Paul, Rennebohm interweaves themes of the Spirit working in desperate lives, the unshakable dignity of human souls and the necessity of companionship for healing as he vividly portrays the lost people he encounters.Always recognizing that medical treatment of mental illness is an essential part of the movement toward spiritual wholeness, Rennebohm is also sensitive to the vulnerability of the mentally ill to disordered religious ideas.The book’s title, a response to Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” reflects Rennebohm’s approach of gentle compassion toward people others reject.His call to find a better path leads him to Europe to study community-based approaches to treating mental illness and to initiate these in Seattle.As well as a guide to how others can help be healing presences to the mentally ill, this hopeful book is a meditation on faith in a broken world.