Category: healing | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Giveaway: Take Back Your Life by Janja Lalich

This is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

This is your chance to receive a new copy of Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich. This is not the latest 3rd edition, but is the second edition.

Take Back Your life is a revision of Captive Hearts Captive Minds which was released in the 1990s. We have given away well over 50 copies of that book through the years.

Lalich is very knowledgeable and her book can help you in your recovery from unhealthy groups or cults.

Janja Lalich is also the co-author of Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over, Crazy Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work? and Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, and the author of Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults.

On our YouTube channel, we have a partial list of Janja Lalich’s interviews and speaking engagements.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on November 14, 2024 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Be sure to check back to see if you have won as in the past some people have not responded after winning and so a new winner had to be drawn. You will then need to email me your mailing address if I do not already have it, so be sure to watch your email and check the spam folder. If I know your Facebook profile, I will message you there.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

Watch each month for our upcoming giveaways! We’ll be ending 2024 with a December giveaway of a new copy of When the Church Harms God’s People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded. by Diane Langberg, which is her latest book.

In 2025, we’ll be giving away one copy of each of Thomas Fudge’s books on the UPCI/Oneness Pentecostalism (Christianity without the Cross: A History of Salvation in Oneness Pentecostalism, Heretics & Politics: Theology, Power, and Perception in the Last Days of CBC, C.H. Yadon and the Vanishing Theological Past in Oneness Pentecostalism), plus The Uncomfortable Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid: A memoir by Ronna Russell and hopefully more. You may want to subscribe to the email notifications of new blog posts in order to not miss these. While we try to share about our giveaways on social media, those platforms often do not show the posts to many people.

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Giveaway: The Uncomfortable Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid

This is only open to those with a USA mailing address. There is absolutely no cost to enter.

This is your chance to receive a new copy of The Uncomfortable Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid: A memoir by Ronna Russell. This is the second release of her book, from 2023.

Ronna had a childhood filled with fear of her father’s quick temper, being lost, and being left behind in the rapture. Ronna is a survivor and her story should be heard. Will you listen?

Ronna, one of Donald Fisher’s three daughters, shares her painful and lonely upbringing in the United Pentecostal Church. She longed to belong and fit in somewhere and not feel suffocated by her father’s rules and control. Some people envy PKs, thinking they have life great, yet many do not and reading this memoir will cause you to reconsider such a thought.

The late Donald Fisher held license for many years in the United Pentecostal Church. He worked in the Youth and Foreign Missions Divisions and was the founder/editor of Word Aflame Publications. He was a vice-president of the Jackson College of Ministries and a president of Conqueror’s Bible College. Don started their national Bible quizzing program. His influence on the United Pentecostal Church cannot be denied, yet at the same time his influence on his children was something quite different, so much so that Ronna has never missed him since his passing in 1995.

This book is more than just her experiences being brought up in the UPC. It is about how she struggled and overcame many years of loneliness and obstacles in her life.

Some might also want to read Heretics and Politics: Theology, Power, and Perception in the Last Days of CBC by Thomas Fudge. Ronna was interviewed for it and it covers, in part, about her father. Other books by Fudge that are United Pentecostal Church related are Christianity without the Cross: A History of Salvation in Oneness Pentecostalism & C.H. Yadon: and the Vanishing Theological Past in Oneness Pentecostalism.

This giveaway is a drawing. To enter, just leave a comment to show you wish to be included. The drawing will close on September 18, 2024 at 6pm (eastern time), after which I will draw a winner.

Don’t be alarmed if your comment does not immediately show as it may require approval.

Watch for our next post on October 16, when we’ll be offering a new copy of Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians by Lucy Peppiatt.

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Easter?

I just wasn’t feeling it today. Maybe I missed the memo. It’s Easter. I should be excited. But like Thomas I’m just not quite there yet. And like Thomas, when others are saying, “Look, there’s hope! Here’s joy!” I’m asking to see it and feel it first. Before I celebrate, I want to know there’s really a reason because images and sounds of all the reasons not to are still too fresh in my mind. Or maybe I know there will be a time when I can celebrate again, but I’m not so sure that time is now.

Give me time. It’s OK to hang back, to want to be sure, or not to take others’ word for something that sounds too outrageous to be true. After everything that’s happened those saying it’s all OK could be a bit delusional. Or maybe not. Giving it time is OK. If Christ is risen, he’ll still be risen in a few more hours or a few more days. There will be time to celebrate. But maybe not yet.

I don’t think anyone was angry at Thomas that day. No one said “shake yourself out of it!” I’m not sure anyone even pressured him to take their word for it. Surely no one was frustrated because Thomas wasn’t on their timeline, their schedule. They were still pretty surprised themselves. Whispered stories. “Did I imagine it?” “No, I heard Peter…” “Yeah, and Mary said…” “Cleopas was on this road and…”

Did he eat? Did he touch you? He just appeared — the doors were locked! A ghost? A vision? Are we crazy?

Yeah, there was excitement, but I suspect it was still hushed and that there were more than a few doubts even among those who’d seen Him. So I don’t think anyone was bothered by Thomas’ statement that he’d need to see Jesus himself and touch the wounds — to experience joy, he would need to see a reason for hope but also fully experience the pain. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s actually a pretty wise thing to do.

And the thing is, when Jesus did appear, apparently Thomas didn’t need to touch him anymore. But Jesus was willing to go as far as necessary for Thomas’s hope and joy to be restored. May we all find that kind of resurrection in our own lives.

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Purity Culture isn’t just a Christian thing

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on October 26, 2015.

I spent my teenage years immersed in purity culture, in both evangelical and fundamentalist Christian circles.

If you were homeschooled, went to youth group, or wore a purity ring, you probably know what I’m talking about.

Purity culture was an ideology, a movement complete with books like Dannah Gresh’s Secret Keeper, promoted in concerts by Christian artists like Rebecca St. James and single women’s retreats, like the one I went to that was organized by Biblical Discipleship Ministries and hosted at Bill Gothard’s ALERT Academy in Big Sandy, Texas. (Note: Bill Gothard has been accused by at least 10 women of sexual abuse and the court case was featured in Amazon Prime’s docuseries Shiny Happy People in June 2023.)

A conservative Muslim man who added me on Facebook several months ago often posts religious memes or quotes from the Quran. This week, he shared a few memes that seemed oddly familiar, because they echoed many things that purity culture taught me.

Here they are, along with their Christian counterparts.

1. You will only find a partner as you grow closer to God.

Purity culture seemed to almost guarantee that we’d find The One (TM), if we obeyed all the rules. Following the formula would supposedly bring you closer to God and, by default, closer to that one person chosen to be your life partner from the beginning of time.

Eric and Leslie Ludy, authors of When God Writes your Love Story, said, “Girls, if you will learn to wait patiently and confidently for God to bring a Christlike man into your life, you will not be disappointed. And guys, learn to treat women like the Perfect Gentleman, Jesus Christ, If you do, you will not only be promoted out of ‘jerkhood,’ but you will then be worthy of a beautiful princess of purity who is saving herself just for you.”

Islamic teachings seem to be nearly identical, except you might be waiting for The One[s], depending on which sect you belong to.

2. Wives should obey and submit to their husbands.

This is basically complementarian theology, based on how evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches interpret Ephesians 5:22-33.

According to this view, men and women are said to be equally valuable, but serve in different roles. Men are the leaders and women are their helpmeets. Those who believe in this claim that any attempt to live outside of these scripted gender roles will result in a failed marriage.

The most spiritual women, according to this teaching, submit to their husbands and obey them even when they disagree or even when their husbands are wrong or abusive.

3. Casual dating is bad because your goal should be to find someone to marry.

Purity culture teaches that kissing, holding hands, and sex outside of marriage is disrespectful to your future spouse and stealing intimacy from any potential relationships in the future.

A sexually active woman is used and no longer desirable, like damaged merchandise or a wilted rose.

Again, this idea isn’t unique to evangelical Christianity. It’s part of other high-control religions as well.

4. Specific instructions on what clothing is modest and pleasing / displeasing to God.

Basically the more covered your body is, the better, according to people who believe this.

Wear long sleeves and long skirts to demonstrate that we’re women, but you better not show your midriff or have a neckline. In fact, it’s better if you avoid any clothing even suggesting that you have curves. Shirts with V-necks are sketchy even if it doesn’t show cleavage, turtlenecks are your safest bet.

The goal is to become the least likely woman to “make your brother in Christ stumble,” which often ends up putting a lot of pressure on women in these religious communities, because it makes women responsible for men’s feelings and attraction to them.

Purity culture’s teachings have been used to blame women for their sexual assault or harassment when people ask “well, what were you wearing?”

These ideas aren’t unique or special.

Conservative Muslims say the exact same thing. Purity culture isn’t exclusive to Christianity. But in reality, we don’t have the inside track to something fabulous if we follow these teachings, and it’s not a magical life hack formula that will fix everything broken in our lives.

It’s more likely that we’re supporting an oppressive patriarchal system through these restrictive religious beliefs.

Most of this isn’t even in the Bible. Jesus doesn’t love you more if you wear the right clothing. I believe he lets you make your own adult choices.

Purity culture won’t make you a better person. It might just give you a superiority complex.

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Unfundamentalist Thoughts: What do Christians mean when they say ‘our joy is not based on this world’?

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on May 18, 2019.

It only takes a few words to send me back. Certain phrases just set me off.

It can be something simple, so common that most average Christians wouldn’t even notice it. But those words meant something else in the fundamentalist cult I grew up in.

I go to a not-crazy church now because it’s helped me heal and find peace. Last week, I slipped into the service on my lunch break. I work two jobs and Sunday mornings are a time I get to stop and breathe.

The worship pastor was talking between the songs and he said something like “our joy is not based on the things of this world.”

My stomach dropped.

This is probably not what he meant, but this is what I felt. You’re not allowed to enjoy your life. Don’t be happy with the work you’re doing. You shouldn’t be proud of the awards you’ve won for journalism. The only thing that matters is heaven.

He didn’t say any of those things. If I asked him if he meant that, he probably would have looked at me bewildered.

This is all about context.

A catchphrase that means one thing in fundamentalist and even most evangelical churches doesn’t mean the same thing to mainstream, non-extremist Christian denominations.

Those who have been through spiritual abuse, especially growing up, are not going to hear what you are actually trying to say. I’ve had many conversations with my pastors about this, and they’ve been very understanding about translating for me. I’ll ask them, so this thing you said, did you mean this or something else? If you didn’t mean the legalistic interpretation I’m used to, what did you mean?

Some Bible verses were weaponized and used against me for my whole life. I have to work to reorient myself to their actual meaning. It’s a process of rewiring the connections in my brain, trying to find new associations.

I thought about that phrase again.

I’ve been going to yoga since not long after I was kicked out of my parents’ house. Yoga teachers usually ask you to take your mind off everything you feel like you have to do and just be, just for an hour. Just exist.

They tell you that your worth is not based on what you do, and it’s okay to just breathe. Their wording is different, so it doesn’t usually have a religious connotation for me.

I kept asking myself what a reasonable, healthy person would mean if they said our joy isn’t based on this world. They probably mean that your successes and failures at work or school don’t determine your worth as a person. That you’re more than your productivity. That life is made up of both tragedy and triumph and while it’s okay and necessary to grieve and feel all those emotions, you can reach out to hope beyond the exhaustion.

It would mean encouraging mindfulness, trying to lower stress.

Basically, the idea is don’t let temporary circumstances hinder you or define you. But that’s not what I first thought.

I still don’t like the phrase.

By definition, it plays into the evangelical “not being of this world but of another world” dynamic which brings up a host of other issues because of how it’s often interpreted, but it doesn’t have to mean what I was told as a child—that you couldn’t be an active part of your own life, that you couldn’t be present, you had to dissociate from your thoughts and feelings in your own mind because you were evil from birth, that enjoying ordinary experiences was a sin.

It’s been absolutely essential for me to parse out phrases like this to break free of the chains in my mind and find a deeper healing.

Maybe it will help someone else who is raw and healing too.

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