Signs of Religious Abuse, Part 1

(This was taken from a handout at a therapy group for spiritual abuse survivors at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, entitled Religious Abuse: Why, What and How to Help, by Edward J Cumella, PhD. The leaders gave us a list of definitions or descriptions of signs of religious abuse. We took one at a time and discussed them and some of our experiences related to each. I’ve rearranged them in a sense of the order I experienced them as I became further and further involved in my former group.)

Elitism
Instead of practicing and teaching humility, abusive leaders are filled with false pride and teach believers the same emotion.
“We’re the chosen ones! Everyone else is condemned!” (“We have the THE Truth! Don’t be like The World! They’re going to Hell!”
“Apostolic Identity!!!” songs like “I’m a Pentecostal“)
This false pride partially compensates for the shame and worthlessness believers feel due to other experiences in the church.
They insist that believers protect the church’s image at all costs.
There is an atmosphere of secrecy and denial of error and sin in the church.

Isolation
Instead of honoring family bonds, community obligations, and the importance of friendship, abusive leaders teach that these relationships will negatively influence the believer.
They encourage believers to minimize contact with family, friends, and the rest of the ‘outside world’.
They severely criticize the outside world as a place of egregious sin and temptation, lacking in anything positive and redeeming.

Isolation enables abusive leaders to consolidate power over the flock, removing the possible challenges to their authority.

Ensnarement
Instead of guiding their flock to Christian maturity, abusive leaders strengthen their grip on believers by promoting:
Self doubt
Guilt
Interior conflict
Identity confusion
Ambivalence

Leaders encourage followers to “earn” favor, but set the mark for achieving this so high and make it so ambiguous that it’s impossible to obtain.

Followers are confused by contradictions between conscience/reasoning and teachings.
Believers fear of condemnation, loss of direction, loss of fellowship.
It is difficult and painful for believers to leave abusive churches.

Authoritarianism
Leaders are convinced they exercise God’s authority.
They expect believers to obey them rather than God.
They expect others to support their intentions.
They discourage input and accountability.
They frequently repeat Heb 13:17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief…”

Manipulation
Instead of interpreting the Bible with the Bible, according to long-held Christian beliefs, and in context, abusive leaders manipulate scriptures so that they appear to endorse the leaders’ personal opinions.

I think there’s another type of manipulation, too… that of manipulating people’s thoughts and conscience–for instance, if you say you’re concerned about something a leader does, the leader might question your love for God or point out that you are supposed to obey/submit to him, or say, “Do you think you’re smarter than me? Don’t you think I have the Holy Ghost? If you don’t like it here [AKA don’t agree with him on everything] you can leave right now!”

Irrationality
Interpretations of scripture may contradict other interpretations, reason, and/or reality.
Leaders (or others) may claim to receive messages from God about church or individual members.
There may be self-proclaimed “healing ministries.”
Members may be pressured into dramatic confessions of sin.
There may be exaggerated professions of deliverance.
There may be little lasting effect.
Members must suspend critical thinking.

Classism
Abusive leaders are preoccupied with power and church hierarchy.
They refer to and treat people according to their titles and roles.
Those lower on the hierarchy are taught that their needs are less important than others’. (Jesus first, yourself last, and others in between, anyone? Ever been told that you were too selfish for trying to take care of yourself or take a day to rest? What other ways did you see this play out in your former church?)
Favoritism

Remember, Christ was no respecter of persons.

Coercion
Those who use coercion do not honor personal freedom and conscience, as God does.
They do not use teachings that are convincing.
They do not teach with biblical accuracy or logic.
They use any tactic to coerce believers into disregarding better judgment to meet leaders’ demands.

Those who are being coerced may often hear things like:
“REAL Christians should…”
“If you really had the Holy Ghost (or loved God, or were a Christian) you would…”
“How can you call yourself a Christian if you…”
“If you’re really a Christian, you will….”

The counselors recommended trying to take ‘should’ and ‘must’ out of your vocabulary for awhile. If you hear either of those, try to think of what words might be used in their place. They said if you aren’t saying “I get to” but rather “I have to” or “I need to” a lot… you need to consider a change. Not the attitude change I was told I needed, but a change of pace or setting.

How often have I heard it preached:
“You better pray through!”
“I’m requiring everyone to keep a log of their prayer and bible reading. I can ask for it at any time.”
“You have to pay tithes.”
“Women should wear skirts. Women should not cut their hair. You need to keep your sleeves below your elbows.”
etc, etc.

Intimidation
People who use intimidation to abuse, force submission and continued membership by threatening: punishment, disfellowshipping, excommunication, eternal condemnation.
They overlook: the covenant of forgiveness and Mt 11:30. (My yoke is easy and my burden is light.)

(I’m not sure what the “covenant” of forgiveness is, but I know that they overlook God’s type of forgiveness a whole lot.)

Conformity
The group exerts great influence over those who are inexperienced, naive, or dependent, or who are seeking a strong leader.
Followers suppress objections to leaders’ teachings due to:
-fear of being shamed or rejected by the leader
-fear of ostracism by the church or community

Abusive churches may appear unified, but there is discontent, anguish, whispering, and secrets hidden beneath the veneer of unity.
Many members want to leave (but you may not know this because they would never dare say so).

Things may be over-moralized —  If you get annoyed at someone, it’s because you’re heart is not right. If you listen to a pop song, you love the world. If you don’t wake up before dawn to pray, you don’t really love God enough. Everything is a moral issue. How you dress, what you think, when you get up, when you sleep, whether your house is clean, whether you’re a talented musician or cook or child care worker… all may be considered measures of your morality and your Christianity or your salvation, when in reality these are not moral issues at all.

Condemnation
They condemn those who leave the church.
They condemn those who have never been in the church.
They condemn everyone else they define as sinners (or even just as not as good as themselves).

They teach that believers will be condemned if they deviate from their leaders’ teachings or leave the church or denomination.

Individual church members are scapegoated when problems arise in the church.

Legalism
(This connects strongly to the earlier posted sign, coercion.)

Legalism does not offer grace.
Legalists communicate that one’s value and the amount of love one should receive depend on performance and position in the church.
Legalists expect church members to make extreme sacrifices for the church in the areas of money, time, and energy.

Exploitation
Members are asked to keep secrets.
Leaders may groom people to be manipulated.
Members may be ‘used’ to the point of burnout (always being told they are working for God but truly are benefiting the leaders).
People are told and are expected to reiterate that they owe everything to the church or the pastor. They may be asked to testify about this.
The leaders publicly announce how much certain people have been helped.
Members are asked to praise the church or the leaders, or may be encouraged to testify as to how ‘bad’ they were or their lives were before they started attending.
Leaders may exploit their position through entitlement.

Terrorism
Manipulating by fear, shame, guilt.
Overemphasizing that believers’ problems arise from their sins.
Not offering a message of redemption and deliverance through Christ.

I never thought of terrorism this way. I never thought that extreme fear, shame, and guilt were acts of terrorism. I never thought of my former pastor as a type of terrorist.

Of course, this isn’t the kind of terrorism that connects an IED to someone and blows them and everyone else up. It doesn’t mean making a ‘dirty bomb’ that’s going to injure or kill as many people as possible. And yet… they added shrapnel of a verbal sort to every sermon and in some cases every conversation. There is more than one kind of terrorism, but all are evil. And isn’t the radicalism that we see in the kind of terrorism that makes the news, reflected in the radicalism that would pray that people would get cancer if they leave the church, or to get them to start coming (to ‘bring them back to God’, of course), or that would teach that those who leave risk certain and sudden death?

Signs of Religious Abuse, Part 2

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