I sat in the counselor’s office physically shaking. I’d left the church eight years before, but remembering it… I still physically shook as I described what had happened. And I barely mentioned most of it. I’d been stalked in the church. I didn’t mention that the stalking had been accepted, even laughed about. Or that no, it actually wasn’t the first time I’d been stalked in church… it was just the first time that I was concerned for my physical safety.
I’m beginning to realize that the church is still silencing me.
“Don’t talk bad about the man of God.”
“You wouldn’t want to be a bad witness.”
“We have to protect the truth.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt them.”
It’s difficult to shake those thoughts even after leaving, and I still think about them even while knowing that I must speak out, in private or in public. I’m still careful. I don’t want to shake anyone’s faith. I don’t want people comparing our stories and thinking theirs wasn’t ‘bad enough.’ Every story is valid, and every story should be heard.
Silence doesn’t stop molestation, stalking, backbiting and gossip, authoritarianism, or narcissism. It doesn’t stop favoritism, judgmentalism, threats, blackmail, negative peer pressure, or manipulation. It doesn’t help people who are hurting, who think they are alone – the only ones, surely, who’ve been hurt by an entity acting in the name of God. And it doesn’t prevent more people from facing similar situations… again, and again, and again.
How many people have been affected by spiritual abuse? We can’t know for sure. The church is silent.
When churches silence, part 1
When churches silence, part 2
When churches silence, part 3
When churches silence, part 4
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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