Day 3 : Why should those who haven’t been hurt care about this issue? What do you wish you could tell those who want to help but weren’t close enough to know or see your situation? What do you wish every pastor knew before starting ministry? What would make the church a safe space for you?
Image by Dani Kelley, http://danileekelley.wordpress.com/
I write here is because it’s my way of processing, owning my story. I write so that other people’s narratives don’t drown out my own. One of my coping mechanisms with stress is to block out emotions after something’s happened, so accessing the memory becomes just actions and no feelings. So writing my story and writing how it’s affected me emotionally and spiritually has been a huge part of reclaiming it for myself as my experience, not just something I was there for but allowed others to narrate for me.
This has become a place of healing for me. It may always be necessary, but it shouldn’t.
Pastors, you bear a heavy burden of responsibility. You have good intentions.
Parents, you bear a more intimately heavy burden of responsibility. You have the best of intentions.
But we’re still writing. Spiritual abuse is still something that we need to raise awareness about. We still have to forge for ourselves emotional permission to speak up about how we hurt.
This past week has been all about that. Giving ourselves permission to tell our stories. In a way, we’ve been writing with ourselves as the audience.
But we’re writing for you, too. We started Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week to try to open the discussion about what we’ve lived through in a way that doesn’t frighten those who haven’t been hurt. Reading about spiritual abuse is scary for those who haven’t lived it or seen it. It scares you into second-guessing your church and your parenting: could this be us? no, it couldn’t–could it?
The unfortunate truth — and one thing that I really hope you will remember — is that it could. It could be you. It could be your church. It could be anyone. The best intentions and good doctrine don’t necessarily protect us against our own human impulses to control and dominate others.
Here’s some basic things I’d encourage parents and pastors to try to be aware of in hope of ending this cycle:
Study the Shepherding Movement and how they used religious guilt and shame to control people. American Evangelicals have pretty much all been influenced by this movement in one way or another.
Watch your legalism. Being right and being “good” never, ever, ever trumps Jesus’s love for his own, exactly as they are. No one is your personal project. If you ever feel that way, back off now.
Watch your Gnosticism. Separating feelings/body from the mind/spiritual is dangerous and heretical. Don’t push people to act one way in hopes their feelings will follow.
Create and respect safe places. Boundaries are good. Intimate community is good, but it’s protected by healthy boundaries and respecting each other’s limits.
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Thanks to everyone who participated! If you wrote for this week and didn’t get to link up, please connect me to your post(s) in the comments!
Elora and I have been discussing making a free ebook available with a collection of all the posts — this would serve as a resource and a reference tool for those writing about this or interested in learning how spiritual abuse works and how to prevent it. It would also help educate the Church about the needs of survivors. If you have a strong preference either way, please let us know. We’ll be in touch with those who have posted to solicit permission to use the materials. If you have something you’d like to submit to this in the spirit of this past week’s synchroblog, feel free to get in touch with either of us to discuss that option further. Thank you!
When Brian contacted me on Monday offering to guest post, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I was in for a treat and so are you. Brian’s a good storyteller and doesn’t have his own blog, so I’m delighted to be able to share his testimony of surviving spiritual abuse. We need more men willing to speak up, and it’s encouraging to find some who are giving voice to their experiences.
Also, my apologies for not posting yesterday — I’ll lump the two posts together on Friday, but sometimes shit happens and there’s not much you can do about it. Tomorrow’s link-up will be hosted by Shaney!
What is your story? Share your experience – showing the details without going into specifics about places or people involved. What made the environment spiritually abusive? Was it language, unspoken social codes, beliefs, assumptions, expectations? How did these factors enable the abuse? How did you eventually leave, and why?
When I was in college, God saved me in my freshman year on Halloween in 2004 – no joke! The first church I went to was a great Bible-believing church; but when I attended another church before the end of freshman year, there was something irresistible about it. I concluded that God was calling me to be a part of that local church to grow, thrive, and disciple. During college breaks, I would attend another church that took an hour to get to – yes, that was the closest church. Members admired my sacrifice to attend their church and hear God’s word preached.
Upon arriving back during my sophomore year in college, one of my friends on campus continued to disciple me, and I greatly benefitted from his investment and example. I continued attending the church I started going to at the end of my freshman year and there was a specific unspoken expectation of having to attend every church service and small group meeting regardless of any legitimate excuse; otherwise you would be in sin. Because of giving my life to the church, of course other members at the church appreciated that! I was so drunk on the Kool Aid. Then I noticed that some of my friends there haven’t been keeping in contact with me; consequently, I would call them out in the name of fellowship and use Hebrews 3:12-13 as a rod and beat them over the head with it. Since I had to confess my sin, they must do likewise. It was also a time of when I was personally walking through some times of doubt, but couldn’t mention doubt because it was sinful to doubt. Regardless, I was holding prominent positions at my pharmacy school’s campus ministry and felt hypocritical because of these doubts. Eventually, the doubts subsided and God re-established my grounding in Christ. After graduating from college, I moved up to Altoona, PA for my first post-grad position and I noticed the bad and ugly of churches.
I attended one church there and noticed that the demographics were very polarized – either parents or kids; no college-aged students or young adults. As a single man desiring to get married, that was a problem! Additionally, the environment was so inclusive; outsiders were forbidden to enter their circle unless if they would drink the Kool Aid. In order to compensate, I went to Penn State Altoona’s campus ministry and there met my eventual wife. Shortly after we met, we started dating without jumping through any of their “courtship hoops” and abiding by their regulations. The pastor there had a problem with that and specifically hated my girlfriend because she was an independent, rational, educated thinker. The small group meetings were so awkward; it was the same pastor and we learned nothing from there.
Fast forward a few months into our relationship. We hit some relational problems, and the pastor wanted me to see him to “discuss some matters”. I wanted to voice our interest in membership, but he rebuked me for not leading and going through the hoops of how to conduct a courtship. He also wanted me to pass on some information to her and I was thinking, “Why can’t you tell her directly?” Oh well…
So the whole “courtship” paradigm presented was (and is!) utterly stupid, controlling; in a word – unhealthy.
My girlfriend and I continued discussing other issues within the church. Besides the environment full of everyone forced into the same mold, the preaching was nearly the exact same every week; something to the effect of a 5 minute presentation of the gospel, and “God’s grace is amazing” peppered throughout the message. Boring… Also, with their talk about evangelism – there really wasn’t a whole lot of that going on. I personally had a significant struggle with that, considering that the pastor’s main focus was to concentrate efforts on children’s and youth ministries (considering college ministry wasn’t there besides my girlfriend and me!). I remember him berating me about a Facebook status I genuinely posted about how to continue investing in a church with skewed demographics but also being able to fellowship with other college-aged/young adult Christians. It was disturbing and we finally had a last chance to either hop on board with them or leave. He even said, “You’re free to go! But be careful out there…”. Bullshit. Next morning, we found another Bible-believing church in the area that all age groups were well represented, Christ was exalted, and (gasp again!), they held outreach events and maintained solid partnerships with other solid churches throughout the region!
Shortly after my girlfriend and I got engaged, I landed a position 3 hours east of Altoona, thus requiring me to move to the Hershey region while she finished up her semester at Altoona (while planning a wedding!). With the recent damage inflicted upon us at Altoona, we were very cautious about joining a specific church in the Hershey area. Same problem: inclusive environment, little evangelism taking place, everyone was the same (e.g. true statistic from the pastor: 95% of the families homeschool their kids). Since we were different and not following the prescribed “gender role” marriage (i.e. husbands must lead and wives must submit unconditionally), on the fringes we were. Months later, the pastor there mentioned that a 40-page document about their organization’s former leader was “long” and twisted the report to “guard” us from uncorrupt speech and relationships. Again – awkward…
With one of the pastors being forced to step down and other bad experiences we had, we left and joined another church just outside of Harrisburg. Christ is exalted from this church with members from 22 different countries – a very unique treat and gift from God indeed!
How has your experience affected you? What has it done to you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.? What has your journey been like? How have you gotten where you are today? Do you feel you’ve healed? What do you still struggle with?
I’ve been more raw and brash in my communication. Spiritually, I sometimes feel burned out. Disinterested in Christ, no desire to read the Bible, still feel disconnected. Relationally, I lost some meaningful friendships in the process and struggle with loneliness, even as a married man. As far as close friends go, I can count with my fingers the numbers of friends I have left. Simultaneously, our marriage has never been better. I still struggle with bitterness, anger, and fear, and have been seeking professional biblical counseling for that. I am still taking medication for depression and anxiety to enable me to better handle my emotions biblically. Somehow, I know God is using this for good, but am not sure how just yet; heck, I probably won’t find out until after death or Christ’s return.
Why should those who haven’t been hurt care about this issue? What do you wish you could tell those who want to help but weren’t close enough to know or see your situation? What do you wish every pastor knew before starting ministry? What would make the church a safe space for you?
For those who haven’t been hurt, you’re fortunate and I wish I could be in your shoes. Alas, God works in wondrous ways. Let me address the men and women as individual groups.
Men, don’t be ashamed to share your hurts and struggles. Sure, it may make you feel more masculine, but there’s a way to take your thoughts and feelings captive to the obedience of Christ. Example: Psalm 42. “Why are you downcast?… Hope in God.” Nothing sinful about acknowledging feeling downcast, but it’s how the psalmist responds to feeling crestfallen. Hope in God. If you’re married, you better allow your wife to fully express her perspective on issues. She’s called a helpmate for obvious reasons; sometimes it’s to deflate your ego as “the leader” and let God control the marriage instead of you.
Women, you’re much more than glorified incubators. Being a stay-at-home-mom and homeschooling your kids is not all God has for you. He’s given you a mind to use, analyze, think, and apply. As a husband, there’s no greater disservice you can do to your husband (if you are married) than to unconditionally support him. Sure, that may boost his ego, but your input is so vital in making sure he guides you both as a team.
For those who want to help, I’m very appreciative. It’s okay that you haven’t experienced the same hurts we have. If someone is sharing their story and is still walking through their pain, you don’t even need to say anything initially. While reading Job, I’ve often wondered how the book of Job would have been written if his friends just sat there with Job and sympathized with him instead of attempting to rationalize the cause of his suffering. Like in Pilgrim’s Progress, every Christian needs a Faithful and Hopeful. Point them to who they truly are in the Lord Jesus. That’s what has been helping me when joining a men’s group. Nothing else is more efficacious than to realize the worth a human being has in Christ.
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Born in New Jersey, adopted into Virginia, transplanted to Pennsylvania, and am en route to move back to the greater DC region. Majored in Pharmacy, active member of the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association, and patient advocate. God saved me when I was 18 and has been molding me into the image of Christ for the past 8 and a half years. Happily married for the past 15 months and am expecting to adopt a foster dog by the end of this April.
Image by Dani Kelley, http://danileekelley.wordpress.com/
SPIRITUAL ABUSE AWARENESS WEEK, DAY 1: My story
I can’t find a way to make this a short post.
I’ve been a little loath to answer this specific question since I started blogging. I prefer to tell vignettes and talk about the big picture of spiritual abuse in the church and use my story in bits and pieces to show examples of how certain authoritarian or legalistic ideas trickle down to affect people in real life.
The reason I’ve been hesitant to tell my story is because it’s not just “I was in this one church for 10 years and it was really messed up” – my whole life has been touched by spiritual abuse and I’m only now in a place where I can begin to feel safe.
I started blogging under a pseudonym because my dad felt like I was slandering him online. My “disclaimer” post happened because my mom got a call from an old friend saying: “how do you feel about being smeared on your daughter’s blog?” and that was both inappropriate and upsetting.
Here’s the thing: my parents are just as much survivors of spiritual abuse as I am. Their active engagement with certain parenting theories, their church choices, and their reasons for homeschooling altogether made us as a family incredibly vulnerable to spiritual abuse. They are still dealing with the aftermath just as much as I am.
The point is: it’s not their fault. As their child, I am stuck in the tension between talking about what spiritual abuse looked for me and being honest about that and being mature and compassionate toward my parents as well-intentioned, kind people who didn’t know what they were getting into, even though their choices directly caused me to grow up the way I did.
And of course it wasn’t all bad. I’m not trying to paint a bleak picture of life with my family — there is a lot of sweetness and light there.
But, it’s still true that trying to become an adult with independent ideas in my family (and in anyQuiverfull family, I will add) is a harrowing journey that can require the young person to either hide their new adult self, suppress their new adult self, or confront the emotional control impulses in QF parents with honesty and risk fracturing the relationship.
And that is a decision that no child should have to face.
So, if you’re a friend of my parents and you’re reading here, please, please understand me: I am not slandering my parents. Slander is telling falsehoods to attempt to smear a person’s reputation. I have no vendetta against them, I crave for them healing and freedom, not condemnation and guilt. I’m not trying to shame them or rebuke them. I’m just telling my story and please don’t tell me how I should tell it. You didn’t live it.
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My parents chose to create their family culture around the idea that they could try to get things right where they thought their parents had failed. They saw their children as their Christian legacy, and while they never really engaged the “have more Christian kids to have more arrows in our quiver for God’s army so Christianity can reform and redeem American culture” philosophy which defines a lot of “Quiverfull” families, we were still very much a Quiverfull family.
From an early age I knew that dating was wrong because it was “practicing for divorce” and that I would court to find my husband, that grace was like if mom took my spanking for me when I deserved it instead of her, that I was responsible to behave rightly so that I wouldn’t cause my younger siblings to follow my example and sin/make bad choices, that I was homeschooled because that was the way God wanted parents to raise their kids, according to Deuteronomy. I was taught that I had to be sure I was saved, that rebelling against my parents would be as bad as practicing the sin of witchcraft (and the story of Saul was a byword for that happened if you were okay with witchcraft). I believed that people with mental health issues probably had demons, and that Jesus was coming back soon and I would be held responsible for the lives of sinners I was close with and hadn’t preached the gospel to.
I went up for altar calls three times after I initially prayed the sinner’s prayer with my parents at age 5 or so, because I knew I was often angry with my sister for being annoying, and God’s word said that if I hated my brother I couldn’t love Jesus. I was terrified that I would disqualify myself from a relationship with him because I didn’t know how to love my siblings.
Initially, my family was the only one of its sort in the churches we attended. We’d be the only homeschoolers, the only big family (that was when there were only 5 of us kids), the only ones who didn’t “believe in youth group” and didn’t watch a lot of popular movies and weren’t allowed to listen to “secular” music. But we did find likeminded people in the homeschooling community, some who were as “fundamental” as we were, some who were less strict but still passionate about raising their kids to honor God.
That’s how benign it started. These parents all just wanted to raise their children in a way that would please God and help their kids avoid making “the same mistakes we made” in their teenage and early adult years. But the difficulty with this is that it turned “pleasing God with my life” and “raising my children to honor God” into a formula. Insert One Child, separate from The World, remove Temptation and Rebellion, bake at Christian Community 24/7 for 18 years, and presto! happy Christian heritage passed on successfully to offspring.
If you read the literature my parents and their peers read—Mary Pride, the Pearls, Gregg Harris, Jonathan Lindvall, Bill Gothard, etc.—you’ll see that these people meant well. You’ll see them reacting to abstract cultural issues that disturbed them, and reacting against their own childhoods to try to do better than their parents’ generation. But you’ll also see a heck of a lot of bad handling of Scripture, straw man fallacies, fear-mongering manipulation of idealist motives, and youthful arrogance. Their teachings directly influenced my parents’ decisions and those of many others like them.
I went from a loud, imaginative, inquisitive child to an insecure, fearful teenager who forgot how to make friends or empathize with people because of the legalism embraced by my parents, church, and myself. I became a queen at legalistic self-censure and unintentionally pushed friends away with my self-righteousness in this black and white formula Christianity where I had it all figured out.
I spent a lot of lonely nights in late middle school and high school crying on the couch to my mom about how I felt so unwanted by the girls I counted as my friends, and she’d rub my back and hug me and tell me that it was their loss, and I’d be a wonderful friend.
But what I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t all just “different seasons of life” where they couldn’t relate to my busy life full of housework obligations for my family, my parents’ restrictions on curfew, getting a job out of the house, internet, movies, music, etc. It wasn’t just my academic aspirations in a peer group of wannabe stay-at-home-moms/future pastors wives. My “dry spell” with friendships was, perhaps in part, due to my stuck-up legalism that pushed people away.
If a friend told me about the boy she was crushing on I’d frown, thinking of the boy I was currently trying not to crush on (because it was wrong, duh), and offer a “correction” about how we were just 16, so we shouldn’t be thinking about boys, really.
If a church acquaintance was hanging around with guys after church and wearing a tight top, I would pull her aside and offer the “observation” that it seemed like she was flirting and to watch out for form-revealing tops that might be too “inviting” for “our brothers in Christ” and might “make them stumble.”
If my friend told me she was frustrated with her younger siblings, I would murmur empathy, and then launch into a sermon about how we’re called to serve our families, how it’s practice for our life-long roles at home as women, how we can’t love God if we’re not loving our brother, and Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do To You. I’d tell her that mom made us memorize that verse so we could remember to love each other and suggest that she memorize it, also.
Basically, I was a goody-two-shoes who didn’t observe or have compassion for how my friends felt, because I had been raised (by my parents and my churches) to believe that the kindest thing one Christian could do for another was to call each other out on their sin. That was having grace for each other—correcting each other by “speaking the truth in love.”
In reality, there was no grace, there was no concept of love, and the truth I spoke was condemnation rather than healing and hope. And I was just parroting what I saw around me, living out “the right way to do relationships” with other Christians.
If I did that to you and haven’t been able to apologize to you for treating you like that: I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me.
You can’t love someone if you think that showing love means looking for their weaknesses and exploiting them to make them feel guilty (“pursue holiness”).
I discovered this for myself the hard way. When I started branching out intellectually and becoming an adult thinker, my dad started withdrawing his affirmation of me as his favored child and challenging my ideas. It wasn’t the sort of casual dinner table discussions of various “grey area” issues you sometimes see between thoughtful teenagers and their parents. It was more of a white-knuckled intellectual hazing—I had to defend my position to him on his terms in order to keep my place in his mind as a fellow Christian.
It started with little things. We’d agree in our discussions of how our SGM church’s polity was hurting people and setting itself up for the pastors to have too much power. But then it’d shift into other things: I’d argue for why ballroom dancing wasn’t too much temptation for me, why I thought I should be allowed to wear shorts instead of cutoffs, why I thought that I should be allowed to go to my friends’ houses on Saturdays when he thought I should stay home and help the family instead.
But then it shifted into larger issues as my world expanded through college, and we found ourselves in arguments where I defended the worth of studying Derrida and he’d accuse me of moral relativism. I’d argue that my boyfriend’s student loans weren’t a moral failing, and he’d tell me that the Bible says that those who borrow are fools.
The watershed moment when I realized our relationship had fundamentally shifted when he and my mom confronted me for kissing my boyfriend without asking their permission, almost a year after we’d started dating. It was moving too fast, they said. It was asking for us to fall into temptation, they said. I was rejecting dad’s authority over me and choosing the path of rebellion.
That morning, when they put me in the car and drove for a couple hours, locking the doors and not letting me leave until I had “confessed” to them my potentially sexually immoral relationship with my boyfriend, was when I realized that my boyfriend had been right when he said that my dad was inappropriately controlling and didn’t respect me as an adult person.
I had thought I had done everything right, that I’d figured out what was right and wrong, that my dad and I were practically best friends, that I’d never have a bad relationship with my family.
But that morning I realized that I wasn’t free, he didn’t treat me like a spiritual or moral equal, that my relationship with my parents was inappropriately codependent, that the world was muchmuchmore saturated with gradients of grey than I had ever dreamed, and that I didn’t have anything figured out.
I was morally and emotionally infantile, asymmetrically maturing in my fluency in Pharisee, successful passive-aggressive social manipulation, intellectual irrationality through simplistic logic, and unable to name for myself my own feelings, experiences, loves, fears, passions. If something about me wasn’t acceptable to the world of SGM and my parents’ approval, it didn’t exist as a valid reality.
They didn’t mean to shape me into that person. But when you create a world that is morally immature and only black and white, you stunt yourself and those under your authority and prevent the brilliant beauty of diverse humanity and the full impact of grace on human relationships from being visible. And that short-sightedness combined with power over people is the perfect storm for spiritual abuse.
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Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week, Day 1
YOUR STORY & LANGUAGE/CULTURE OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE
Prompt: What is your story? Share your experience — showing the details without going into specifics about places or people involved. What made the environment spiritually abusive? Was it language, unspoken social codes, beliefs, assumptions, expectations? How did these factors enable the abuse? How did you eventually leave, and why?
Join up and share your story! Post on your blog, then come back and link up below. Feel free to use Dani’s image on your post, and tweet your thoughts at us with the hashtag: #ChurchSurvivors
When someone is angry about bad things that happened to them in their church, their anger is not easily accepted by those who have only had positive experiences with Christianity. Before a survivor of spiritual abuse can tell his story, it has to be worked over, combed through, and made palatable for the intended audience. And even then, we don’t always get heard or believed. These stories of pain don’t seem like they’re what the Church should be like, so it’s simpler to ignore the stories when you can’t relate to them.
Even here on my blog, I find myself prefacing my story here for you, because I see the disconnect and I see hurt and misunderstanding on both sides. And all I want to do is to speak on the behalf of those like me who have been hurt, to those in the Church who haven’t been hurt. I want to offer you an invitation to my story, my experience in a church with good intentions where abuse flourished. Walk with me? It’s not going to be easy and yes, you may realize things about your church that you don’t want to know.
But when we’re dealing with stories of children who were molested in churches, stories where their abusers were allowed to remain free because good Christian people didn’t want to believe that something like that could ever happen at our church? I think it’s now a moral obligation for us as a Church to take a long look at what we’re dealing with and where it came from, even if it is uncomfortable and heart-rending, in order to protect those coming after us.
We are the grandchildren of the suburban moderns and their scientific, reasonable placelessness. We are the children of the Jesus Movement, descended from those who craved life and connection and healing from the confines of the just-so church and the hypocrisy therein. We are the Quiverfull daughters, the homeschool graduates, the creation science crusaders, the apologetics champions, the Jesus Freaks, the summer missionaries, the WWJD generation.
And a lot of us have crippling pain that makes us skittish around traditional church, nervous about trusting religious authorities or even just a mom leading a Bible study. We love Jesus so much, or we want to if only we knew how. We see lots of irrational arguments and a lot of fear-based ideas that stunted us, but we’ve grown around the boulders our parents and pastors laid in our way and we’re seeing the sky and the sun and the vast expanse of love offered by the Jesus of the gospels, and we have so, so many questions. And we want straight answers, because love is worth living out with intellectual integrity.
So please, listen to our stories. Lay aside your concerns about our bitterness or the status of our faith, and just hear us out. There’s more to our stories than you know, and we want to invite you into our safe spaces to talk about what we’ve been through and seen.
This coming week, survivors of spiritual abuse are going to link up and talk about what spiritual abuse looks like and why it happens despite good intentions.
Day 1 (March 18th) will be hosted by me, here at Wine & Marble.
Day 1: Your story & language/culture of spiritual abuse
What is your story? Share your experience — showing the details without going into specifics about places or people involved. What made the environment spiritually abusive? Was it language, unspoken social codes, beliefs, assumptions, expectations? How did these factors enable the abuse? How did you eventually leave, and why?
Day 2: Your journey and consequences of spiritual abuse
How has your experience affected you? What has it done to you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.? What has your journey been like? How have you gotten where you are today? Do you feel you’ve healed? What do you still struggle with?
Why should those who haven’t been hurt care about this issue? What do you wish you could tell those who want to help but weren’t close enough to know or see your situation? What do you wish every pastor knew before starting ministry? What would make the church a safe space for you?
Optional, for those who didn’t do the first two days: What did you learn? What changes will you encourage in your churches, etc. in order to prevent spiritual abuse and provide healing?
In addition, Rachel Held Evans is going to be highlighting spiritual abuse on her blog and there’s bound to be some fantastic discussion going down in her comments sections.
So, come, sit at the table. Lay down your assumptions and lay down your fears. This is the house of the King and we’re calling a truce. Tell your stories.
