Signs of Religious Abuse, Part 2

It seems that the list of signs of religious abuse build on each other to a degree, or at least they did for me. They did throughout my 19 years in Pentecost, but most could be seen to some degree in the first months I was there, beginning with the first visit. One of the first things I heard was how they had The Truth, how they had something that other churches didn’t have, and that I could have too. This appealed to my 18 year old self. I could be something special and could have something special, and if I would just pull away from my family and friends and focus on the church, they would see my light and my good witness by being separate from them and would start coming to church too. This, I was told, was being a good witness. In fact, it was isolationist.

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.

During this time, just 2-4 months in, I began noticing more and more that there were all the members of the church and then there was the ‘inner circle,’ those closest to the pastor and pastor’s wife, who were most often called on and most ‘used’ in services — they were the ones who sang solos, led parts of the service, and were given as examples of how to live and praised during the preaching or in smaller group settings. My goal was to somehow join the ‘inner circle,’ to be one of the pastor’s favorites. I’m not sure who was coercing me at this point, the church or me. I craved praise and recognition and was hopeful that I could be deserving of it and would obtain it. I developed a long list of what I could and should do in order to do so. And yet I began having more and more fears that I couldn’t be ‘good enough,’ that I’d somehow miss an opportunity and never have that chance again. My pastor at that time taught (or at least I thought) that if we felt God wanted to do something through us and we resisted, God would withdraw that offer and we would never have that gift.

In all of this I was conforming to the group and developing a legalistic mindset. I didn’t see this as fear of being ostracized or shamed, but simply as a desperation to belong fully; yet the very fact that I knew I wouldn’t belong if I didn’t do certain things shows that the fear of ostracism was there. It was strongly linked to the elitism that was still being fed to me, so I saw it as a positive at the time. In fact, though, I was losing my own identity. I stopped swimming and biking. I changed my hair style and clothes dramatically. I became very self conscious about my body and became convinced that I was not (and should not be) physically attractive, and I started doubting the decisions that I’d spent 18 years wishing I could make (while I grew up). At the same time I began more and more to feel condemned for the strangest things — Was wearing yoga pants under my skirt so that I could bike modesty wrong? No one else was wearing their sleeves so short. Did the pastor just look at me oddly for wearing that barrette? What might I be missing? What should I be doing better?

I left my first church after seven years there. I had hoped to go to Bible College. The pastor had said no. I wanted to do more with missions and was finally given permission (yes, permission) to go on a missions trip. The church barely acknowledged I was going. I’d been pressured to testify how great the women’s retreat was or the youth conference, but suddenly I wasn’t asked to say a thing… instead I was actually asked to stop talking about it.  I’d wanted to go on a missions trip since I was 13 or 14 years old, and finally after more than ten years, my dream was coming true, but no one asked me about it and instead I was asked to stop ‘bragging’ about it, since no one else was going. Still, through all of that, I didn’t recognize that there might be anything wrong with The Church. I’d been groomed well. I thought there was something wrong with me. Still, I hoped by moving and going to a different church, with the pastor’s approval, of course, that things would get better. And so I moved and started this exact same story again in a more conservative group.

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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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Of ends and beginnings (Easter)

It’s Good Friday. I didn’t go to church tonight. I thought about it, but church websites described the services tonight as solemn and focused on the crucifixion in a way that disturbs me.  And so instead of going to church, I walked, and I considered some of the reasons that the focus of various churches at this time of year bothers me so much.

Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no Law.
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us walk in step with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22 talks about the fruit of the spirit, but that fruit is in direct opposition to the condemnation and self-loathing that I was taught should be a part of any Easter season. And even though verse 24 talks about crucifying the flesh, it doesn’t mean beating our souls to a bloody pulp at least once a year with a focus on how terrible we are.

Which leads to a new thought: when we are focused on our sin or our supposed smallness or weakness, we cannot really be focused on God. Or at least I can’t. If my thoughts are on how I don’t deserve grace, should go to hell, should die in my sin, or something of that sort, though I’ve thought I was considering how big and wonderful God is, but if I was at all, it was through a lens of condemnation and shame that skewed my perspective of him. Maybe it’s not that way for everyone. Some people seem to see through the condemnation and the gore of the crucifixion to something beautiful beyond it, but I get stuck. And I know I’m not alone in that.

Which led to another thought: what if Calvary wasn’t about how bad we were? Yes, Calvary was about hope, but what kind of hope? What if part of it was hope that no matter what happened and no matter how bad things get, Jesus has already been there and will be with us through it? What if it’s about that no matter what anyone does to us, God is still in control, and there is still hope if we are in him? What if it’s about that no matter how hopeless things seem, there is still hope, there is still a new beginning waiting for us just a few days later, even if that hope seems dead and buried… and guarded by soldiers and an impossibly large stone? What if it’s not so much about death, but about the life beyond it?

It may not be an Easter message that makes much sense to most people, and it may not be the one that makes most hearts sing. But it brings a new hope to mine. And isn’t that what this season is about?

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From Faith to Fear

Remember how happy you were when you first started attending your unhealthy group? Were you afraid of hell, either before or after your conversion? I mean, not just because you were saved, but all surrounding that time, both before and after your conversion?

When I first attended a Pentecostal church, I was happy. I was happy that I’d found a place to belong, people to talk about God with, and a church to worship with. I was not for one second afraid of hell. It didn’t figure into my attending and it didn’t figure into my conversion at all. For months after joining I had no thought of going to hell. I didn’t start going to church to avoid hell, and I didn’t stay to keep from going there. Hell was actually pretty far off my radar when I started attending church. I went to get closer to God, not to avoid hell. And so I wasn’t afraid of hell at first. The fear crept in slowly.

For me, I think the fear may have started with end times discussions. “Be careful, or you’ll be left behind!” That and prayers for “lost loved ones.” Then some friends that had started going with me suddenly stopped going. I still wasn’t afraid they’d go to hell, but I was VERY concerned that I’d ‘lose out,’ that I’d ‘backslide‘ and stop attending church. I loved it so much, I was terrified of leaving. The thought of leaving made me very insecure. The church, I thought, was there to protect me, to help me, to lead me. And in my mind at that time, these things were good. I had a group of people I could identify and trust, whether I knew them specifically or not. They were Pentecostal. They had the Holy Ghost. So they were good. And I wanted that safety desperately as a young adult on her own for the first time. Still, at that moment, nine months after I’d started attending, I don’t remember being afraid I’d go to hell.

In time, I was exposed more and more to teachings on hell, and my fear of hell grew as I heard those. I moved to a different church when I was in my late 20s. The church I started attending was a very different kind of church than what I’d been in for the first seven years. In the new church, there were not only sermons about hell, but people seemed to enjoy giving graphic descriptions of what hell might be like (and the rapture, and leaving, and many, many other things). The sermons there left me with less and less hope. They sapped my joy. And while I thought at the time that I was getting closer to God by being driven to stay through fear, I had never been in danger of leaving even without the fear. And so the fear sapped my joy and my faith. Over time of hearing these things repeatedly, I began to see God as judge rather than Father. I no longer wanted to pray or study. I felt I had to, but I didn’t want to. Fear ended up pushing me away from God, even though I trusted the pastor who told me it would drive me closer to him.

I don’t believe teachings on hell are used very well in Pentecost. After all, as we grow in God, should we have more and more faith, peace, love and joy… or more fear? I ended up with more fear. How about you?

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How can you be a Christian and [do a certain thing]

A couple years ago a friend posted on Facebook, “How can anyone call themselves a Christian and [do a certain thing]?” If I named the ‘thing,’ it would cause an argument even now. The Bible is silent on the matter she was referring to.

Her statement upset me. I’d left a church where you were “backslid” if you did or even thought certain things. And suddenly I was hearing the same type of thing again, from people who were supposed to be healthy Christians. “How can you be a Christian and wear stretch pants?” “How can you be a Christian and not tithe?” “How can you call yourself Christian and not go to church every Sunday?”

I’d heard eerily similar things in my former church, though there they were statements: “You’re backslid if you wear pants.” “You’re backslid if you don’t tithe and give at least 5% offering.” “You’re backslid if you aren’t in church every time the doors are open.” They were overly judgmental statements meant to control by fear. Fear of losing out with God, of being a bad witness, of being declared not good enough. And so when I started hearing similar statements from mainstream churches and Christians, I was angry.

The questions are not, “Why do you think like that? Why do you do that?” in a way that would lead to open discussion and consideration of other perspectives. The questions are meant to shame, to shut down the other person, and to draw into isolation or polarize. The questions are not healthy… they are actually abusive.

I do not want to be a part of that abuse anymore. I don’t want to be abused by it and I do not want to be the abuser. I will not draw lines in the sand that indicate who is and isn’t Christian based on perspectives on stretch pants or skirts or tithing or church membership. Definitely not politics or social stances.  What makes a person is no more or less than whether or not the person believes and has put their faith in Jesus. That is Christianity. Other things have to do with denomination, theology, philosophy, or maturity, perhaps, but not Christianity.

I was asked on a survey if I was a Christian… and I hesitated. Christianity has come to be tied to some pretty bad things for me. And above all, the question rang in my mind, “How can you call yourself Christian and…” My belief in God and my faith in Jesus hasn’t changed. But in my mind, the term “Christian” has.

Someone stated half-jokingly recently that she was not a Christian, but a Jesusian. I like the term. I’m no longer a Christian. I’m a Jesusian, too.

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