The Body of Christ Keeps the Score ∙ A 4-Week Online Course
You've seen what's
wrong with the church.
But where did its dysfunctions come from?
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score is a 4-week learning journey through the church's hidden trauma history - uncovering how ancient wounds still shape Christian communities today, and how naming them sets us free.
For anyone who's ever been hurt, disillusioned, or just plain confused by the church and wants to understand why it is the way it is.
Starts August 5 · One evening a week · Lifetime access
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score ∙
A 4-Week Online Course
You've seen what's
wrong with the church.
But where did its dysfunctions come from?
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score is a 4-week learning journey through the church's hidden trauma history - uncovering how ancient wounds still shape Christian communities today, and how naming them sets us free.
Starts August 5 · One evening a week · Lifetime access
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
You know the symptoms - the fear, the shame, the control.
But nobody's told you the whole story.
Maybe you’ve already stepped back from church. Maybe you left. Maybe you still go, but you’ve distanced yourself. Maybe you're reading the books you were warned about, asking the questions you were told not to ask.
You know it wasn’t rebellion. It was just honesty. You have watched the church choose control over compassion…over and over again. And something in you finally said enough.
But this distance has also brought disillusionment. A grief you can't quite explain to people who haven't lived it. Anger that flares at things others shrug off. A strange lostness - not sure what you believe, where you belong, or what to do with a past that shaped everything about you.
Here's what I want you to know: you're not broken. You just grew up in a family with a history. A 2000 year family history of wounds, fears, and survival strategies that got passed down as "just the way things are.” A culture you absorbed as normal long before you could question it. An ancestral line.
You couldn't see it from inside. Almost no one can. But once you do see it, everything starts to make a different kind of sense, including you.
"It has helped me put things into context. I now see the why behind the what."
-Scott A, past participant
You know the symptoms -
the fear, the shame, the control.
But nobody's told you the whole story.
Maybe you’ve already stepped back from church. Maybe you left. Maybe you still go, but you’ve distanced yourself. Maybe you're reading the books you were warned about, asking the questions you were told not to ask.
You know it wasn’t rebellion. It was just honesty. You have watched the church choose control over compassion…over and over again. And something in you finally said enough.
But this distance has also brought disillusionment. A grief you can't quite explain to people who haven't lived it. Anger that flares at things others shrug off. A strange lostness - not sure what you believe, where you belong, or what to do with a past that shaped everything about you.
Here's what I want you to know: you're not broken. You just grew up in a family with a history. A 2000 year family history of wounds, fears, and survival strategies that got passed down as "just the way things are.” A culture you absorbed as normal long before you could question it. An ancestral line.
You couldn't see it from inside. Almost no one can. But once you do see it, everything starts to make a different kind of sense, including you.
"It has helped me put things into context. I now see the why behind the what."
-Scott A, past participant
The church isn't just a set of ideas. It's a body. And bodies keep the score.
We usually treat the church's problems as thinking problems - bad theology to be debated, bad doctrine to be corrected.
But the church is not primarily a set of ideas. It's a community of human beings who have carried real experiences -persecution, plague, war, collapse - in their actual flesh, and passed that imprint down through generations.
It's like an autoimmune disorder. Once upon a time, the church's defences were protecting it from genuine threats. But then the threats passed, and the defences never stood down. Now the same protective reflexes attack the body itself - its own members, its own health, its own future.
The rigidity, the fear, the reflex toward control? These aren't character flaws or intellectual errors. It's not "just sin." These behaviours are survival adaptations that outlived the danger they were built for.
But thankfully what was learned can be unlearned. What is named can finally be set down.
The church isn't just
a set of ideas.
It's a body.
And bodies keep the score.
We usually treat the church's problems as thinking problems - bad theology to be debated, bad doctrine to be corrected.
But the church is not primarily a set of ideas. It's a community of human beings who have carried real experiences -persecution, plague, war, collapse - in their actual flesh, and passed that imprint down through generations.
It's like an autoimmune disorder. Once upon a time, the church's defences were protecting it from genuine threats. But then the threats passed, and the defences never stood down. Now the same protective reflexes attack the body itself - its own members, its own health, its own future.
The rigidity, the fear, the reflex toward control? These aren't character flaws or intellectual errors. It's not "just sin." These behaviours are survival adaptations that outlived the danger they were built for.
But thankfully what was learned can be unlearned. What is named can finally be set down.
How a persecuted church became the persecutor...
For nearly three centuries, following Jesus could cost you everything. Christians were outsiders. They were mocked, scapegoated, sometimes killed. The early church learned, in its bones, that the world was dangerous and survival required vigilance.
Then, almost overnight, everything flipped: Constantine embraced the faith, and the persecuted minority found itself holding imperial power.
But the vigilance didn't go anywhere. The fear learned under persecution got baked into a church that no longer needed it and now had armies. Within a few generations, the formerly hunted were hunting: heretics, pagans, dissenters, anyone who felt like a threat to a body that could no longer tell the difference between danger and difference.
That's just one loop. Church history is full of them, including the Black Death, the Reformation's wars, colonization, the fundamentalist panic of the last century. Each one follows the same pattern: a real wound, a protective adaptation, and an adaptation that outlives its moment and starts wounding others.
In this course, we trace those loops - era by era - until the church's present-day dysfunctions stop being baffling and start making a terrible, freeing sense.
Starts August 5 · One evening a week · Scholarships available
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
"I really enjoyed seeing how some of our modern buzz words - like
"hyper-vigilance" - can help to connect some of the behaviours and
reactions that were encoded in Christian communities over time."
-Lena S, past participant
How a persecuted church became the persecutor...
For nearly three centuries, following Jesus could cost you everything. Christians were outsiders. They were mocked, scapegoated, sometimes killed. The early church learned, in its bones, that the world was dangerous and survival required vigilance.
Then, almost overnight, everything flipped: Constantine embraced the faith, and the persecuted minority found itself holding imperial power.
But the vigilance didn't go anywhere. The fear learned under persecution got baked into a church that no longer needed it and now had armies. Within a few generations, the formerly hunted were hunting: heretics, pagans, dissenters, anyone who felt like a threat to a body that could no longer tell the difference between danger and difference.
That's just one loop. Church history is full of them, including the Black Death, the Reformation's wars, colonization, the fundamentalist panic of the last century. Each one follows the same pattern: a real wound, a protective adaptation, and an adaptation that outlives its moment and starts wounding others.
In this course, we trace those loops - era by era - until the church's present-day dysfunctions stop being baffling and start making a terrible, freeing sense.
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
Tell me about the course
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score is a 4-week guided journey through the trauma history of the Western church.
Each week we move through one era together via live teaching, real discussion, and
space to process what this history stirs up in your own story.
Each session follows a simple rhythm:
The Familiar
We start with a dysfunction you'll recognize from your own church experience
The Historical
The travel back to the era where it took root
The Adaptation
And uncover the wound it was originally protecting
The Release
So we can ask, together: what would it mean to finally lay this down?
Tell me about
the course
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score is a 4-week guided journey through the trauma history of the Western church.
Each week we move through one era together via live teaching, real discussion, and space to process what this history stirs up in your own story.
Each session follows a simple rhythm:
The Familiar
We start with a dysfunction you'll recognize from your own church experience
The Historical
The travel back to the era where it took root
The Adaptation
And uncover the wound it was originally protecting
The Release
So we can ask, together: what would it mean to finally lay this down?
Four weeks. 2000 years.
One family story.
Week 1 - August 5th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm ET
The persecution years, Constantine's reversal, and
the vigilance that never stood down.
Recognition. "Oh...that's where it started."
Week 2 - August 12th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm ET
Rome falls, invasions rage, the Black Plague devastates,
and a terrified church reaches for control.
Grief. Compassion for our ancestors.
Week 3 - August 19th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm ET
Reformation wars, secularization, and
Christian trauma exported across the globe.
Honesty. Abuse endured and abuse enacted.
Week 4 - August 26th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm ET
Fundamentalism, purity culture, Christian
nationalism and the possibility of moving on.
Release. A healthier way forward.
Full replays always available next day and then yours forever.
Starts August 5 · One evening a week · Lifetime access
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
Four weeks. 2000 years.
One family story.
Four weeks.
2000 years.
One family story.
Week 1 - August 5th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm EST
The persecution years, Constantine's reversal, and
the vigilance that never stood down.
Recognition. "Oh...that's where it started."
Week 2 - August 12th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm EST
Rome falls, invasions rage, the Black Plague devastates, and a terrified church
reaches for control.
Grief. Compassion for our ancestors.
Week 3 - August 19th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm EST
Reformation wars, secularization, and
Christian trauma exported across the globe.
Honesty. Abuse endured and abuse enacted.
Week 4 - August 26th 2026
7:00pm-9:00pm EST
Fundamentalism, purity culture, Christian
nationalism and the possibility of moving on.
Release. A healthier way forward.
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
Full replays always available next day and then yours forever.
What's inside?
4 live online sessions with Brad. Teaching, facilitated discussion, and Q&A. Wednesdays starting August 5.
A learning community, not a lecture hall. Process this history alongside others who get it.
Private course portal: Video, audio, and transcripts of every session, downloadable.
Supplemental materials: Reading recommendations and resources for going deeper.
Yours to keep. Lifetime access to all recordings. Can't make a session live? You won't miss a thing.
What's inside?
4 live online sessions with Brad. Teaching, facilitated discussion, and Q&A. Wednesdays starting August 5.
A learning community, not a lecture hall. Process this history alongside others who get it.
Private course portal: Video, audio, and transcripts of every session, downloadable.
Supplemental materials: Reading recommendations and resources for going deeper.
Yours to keep. Lifetime access to all recordings. Can't make a session live? You won't miss a thing.
✅ This course IS:
A guided history course with heart. Rigorous scholarship delivered in plain language, joined to the insights of trauma psychology. It's for regular people, not academics. No prior history knowledge needed. Wherever you might be at with faith, you are welcome. Come with curiosity, and maybe an ache you'd like explained.
❌ This course is NOT:
Therapy, though many participants find it deeply healing. It isn't an exercise in church-bashing nor church-defending. We approach our spiritual ancestors like a struggling family: with honesty and compassion. Understanding their story is the
first step to breaking the cycle.
"Brad's compassion for our 'spiritual ancestors' is contagious and healing
without absolving us of the responsibility to do better now that we know better."
— Laura G, past participant
✅ This course IS:
A guided history course with heart. Rigorous scholarship delivered in plain language, joined to the insights of trauma psychology. It's for regular people, not academics. No prior history knowledge needed. Wherever you might be at with faith, you are welcome. Come with curiosity, and maybe an ache you'd like explained.
❌ This course is NOT:
Therapy, though many participants find it deeply healing. It isn't an exercise in church-bashing nor church-defending. We approach our spiritual ancestors like a struggling family:
with honesty and compassion. Understanding their story is the first step to breaking the cycle.
"Brad's compassion for our 'spiritual ancestors' is contagious and healing without absolving us of the responsibility to do better now that we know better."
— Laura G, past participant
Hi, I'm Brad.
I'm a historian of Christianity with a PhD from the University of Toronto, where I studied the entangled history of Christianity, colonialism, and Indigenous peoples. I also host the Freestyle Theology podcast.
But in all honesty, this course didn't originate in the archive. It came from my own body - from chronic illness, panic disorder, and the slow realization that the church's story and my story were tangled together in ways no theology class had ever explained. When I started reading church history through the lens of trauma, everything changed. The infuriating became understandable. The baffling became human. And for the first time, letting go felt possible.
I've now walked hundreds of people through this material, and I'd be honoured to walk it with you.
Questions
Do I need a background in history or theology?
Not at all. Everything is taught in plain language for regular humans. Curiosity is the only prerequisite.
What if I can't make the live sessions?
Every session is recorded, and video, audio, and transcripts land in your course portal — yours to keep. Live attendance is wonderful but never required.
I'm not sure where I'm at with faith right now. Is that okay?
Completely. Past participants have ranged from pastors to people on their way out the door to people somewhere confusing in between. Every honest place is welcome.
Is this going to be church-bashing?
No. Honest, yes — we don't look away from the hard parts. But the posture is compassion, for both the church's victims and for our ancestors who were often victims themselves before they were anything else.
How much time does it take?
One live two-hour session per week, plus whatever optional reading you'd like to explore. That's it.
What if I can't afford it?
Scholarships are available — your presence matters more than your payment.
Hi, I'm Brad.
I'm a historian of Christianity with a PhD from the University of Toronto, where I studied the entangled history of Christianity, colonialism, and Indigenous peoples. I also host the Freestyle Theology podcast.
But in all honesty, this course didn't originate in the archive. It came from my own body - from chronic illness, panic disorder, and the slow realization that the church's story and my story were tangled together in ways no theology class had ever explained. When I started reading church history through the lens of trauma, everything changed. The infuriating became understandable. The baffling became human. And for the first time, letting go felt possible.
I've now walked hundreds of people through this material, and I'd be honoured to walk it with you.
I'm a historian of Christianity with a PhD from the University of Toronto, where I studied the entangled history of Christianity, colonialism, and Indigenous peoples. I also host the Freestyle Theology podcast.
But in all honesty, this course didn't originate in the archive. It came from my own body - from chronic illness, panic disorder, and the slow realization that the church's story and my story were tangled together in ways no theology class had ever explained. When I started reading church history through the lens of trauma, everything changed. The infuriating became understandable. The baffling became human. And for the first time, letting go felt possible.
I've now walked hundreds of people through this material, and I'd be honoured to walk it with you.
Questions
Do I need a background in history or theology?
Not at all. Everything is taught in plain language for regular humans. Curiosity is the only prerequisite.
What if I can't make the live sessions?
Every session is recorded, and video, audio, and transcripts land in your course portal — yours to keep. Live attendance is wonderful but never required.
I'm not sure where I'm at with faith right now. Is that okay?
Completely. Past participants have ranged from pastors to people on their way out the door to people somewhere confusing in between. Every honest place is welcome.
Is this going to be church-bashing?
No. Honest, yes — we don't look away from the hard parts. But the posture is compassion, for both the church's victims and for our ancestors who were often victims themselves before they were anything else.
How much time does it take?
One live two-hour session per week, plus whatever optional reading you'd like to explore. That's it.
What if I can't afford it?
Scholarships are available — your presence matters more than your payment.
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score
The Dysfunctional Family History of the Western Church
Here's Everything You'll Receive:
● Four LIVE Online Teaching and Q&A Sessions with Brad, including facilitated group discussions where the history gets personal
● Private Course Portal with downloadable access to all course materials - video, audio, and transcripts from every session
● A Built-In Learning Community - process two thousand years of family history alongside people who actually get it
● Curated Going-Deeper Resources - reading recommendations and supplemental materials to continue the journey beyond the sessions
● Lifetime Access to Every Recording - miss a session live, miss nothing; the whole course is yours to keep, forever
1 Payment
$197
USD
Starts August 5 · One evening a week · Lifetime access
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
For those with financial need, there are scholarships available.
Your presence is important to our learning community.
Contact me here if you want to learn more.
The Body of Christ Keeps the Score
Uncovering the Dysfunctional Family History of the Western Church
Here's Everything You'll Receive:
● Four LIVE Online Teaching and Q&A Sessions with Brad, including facilitated group discussions where the history gets personal
● Private Course Portal with downloadable access to all course materials - video, audio, and transcripts from every session
● A Built-In Learning Community - process two thousand years of family history alongside people who actually get it
● Curated Going-Deeper Resources - reading recommendations and supplemental materials to continue the journey beyond the sessions
● Lifetime Access to Every Recording - miss a session live, miss nothing; the whole course is yours to keep, forever
1 Payment
$197
USD
Enrolment closes Tuesday, August 4 at 11:59pm ET
For those with financial need,
there are scholarships available.
Your presence is important to our learning community.
Contact me here if you want to learn more.
Come unpack this story with us.
The church's past is complicated. So is yours.
And I've become convinced those two stories can't really be understood apart from each other.
So that's the invitation: join us for four weeks. Sit with a group of people who've felt what you've felt, been where you've been, and look at this messy family history together. Honestly, without flinching and without despair. Let's trace how the church's old wounds show up in our own lives. Tell the truth about what happened, share our stories, grieve what needs grieving, and then do the thing this community does best: start imagining healthier ways forward, together.
You don't have to have faith figured out to come. You just have to be curious enough to hear the story.
I'd be honoured to take this journey with you.
-Brad