Category: unhealthy churches | Page 2

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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I overheard a church discipline meeting

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on November 30, 2018.

So last night I was closing up for the night at the coffee shop where I work, and there were these people sitting at a table who go to an evangelical-ish hipster church in my community.

I’ve seen some of their events advertised on Facebook and I talked to them when they were part of a protest this fall. Working two jobs means I encounter many people in different spaces and sometimes it overlaps because I live in a small community.

I had mostly good feelings about them. They’ve been very friendly with me and easy to talk to when they come into my store.

But I didn’t like the tone of this meeting. They told one of their worship team members that everyone is trying to make their lives less busy and more “intentional” and he needed to be off the worship team for a few weeks.

I have no idea what sin he allegedly committed. It’s probably not sexual, because usually the punishment would be longer than a few weeks. Maybe he didn’t read his Bible often enough.

The whole thing felt off and not good.

The leadership woman who’s about my age was confronting the guy with the pastor sitting beside her, and they got him to sign this paper about church discipline.

I thought I heard her tell him, “Now this doesn’t mean stop coming to church, because then you’ll never play on the band again.”

“For me to get on the platform and sing, there’s certain requirements I have to meet,” she said.

I just kept mopping around them, silently, slowly losing more and more trust for them. The words they used were harsh and I didn’t feel like they valued him. They kept making it seem like they were the spiritual ones and he was not.

I couldn’t hear the entire conversation, and I don’t know everything about the situation. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s a story I know all too well.

They told him over and over the pastor was there for him, and if he needed to talk to him during this period to please reach out, but that it was his job to seek help like he was this bad, lost person.

It felt like a total power trip. This poor guy was sitting there all shame-faced trying to survive this awkward situation, like he had no idea what they had planned to talk to him about. Like he’s just trying to not lose his community.

I’ve been in his spot before.

It’s disorienting to feel like your people are making you feel like you’re not a part of them for some perceived spiritual failing.

It hurt a lot to see people who are supposed to represent Christ treat another human this way. This is not what Jesus would do.

Note: After this happened, I asked two pastors that I trust if they would ever consider having a church discipline meeting with someone in a Starbucks. They both said they thought it was unethical and possibly humiliating to the person to have a meeting like that in a public place.

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Dear Church

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on May 1, 2017.

This was originally posted by my friend Travis last year on his Instagram.

It’s a moving letter, explaining how a lot of people in the LGBT community feel about the church, loving it and just wanting to be loved and embraced in return.

// // //

dear church,

there are millions of us. millions who just want you to understand.

millions who want to belong. millions who have been turned away where faith, hope, and love are said to abound.

we are LGBT+. we have many different struggles, pasts, and paths. but yet we are still human. we want to be a part of the things you are doing. we simultaneously feel the love of a savior and the condemnation of the saved— the latter is why many of us won’t be in your building on Sunday.

as we have grown and matured, we found our way through life, broken, alone, and silent. we didn’t talk to others about our struggles. we bottled them up so we could still be a part of the joy that comes from being around others who believe the same as us… but eventually, it’s not enough. we all come to a point where we cannot hide who we are any longer. we open up and tell the masses, while at the same time, your doors close.

your eyes no longer see the person you once saw, and without saying it, we know you see someone who is unworthy of your love, time, and affection.
when we come out, there is such a relief and joy that overcomes us.

but you feel it is your responsibility to quench that. you stomp on our joy until it is no longer breathing. our newfound hope and happiness is quite literally put to death inside us.

so… many of us choose to follow Jesus on our own, without the community of believers we once had and still need. it’s lonely here, but we have a savior who still listens and wants us to live and gently teaches us how to breathe when we forget, shows us the love and compassion we need to spread, and gives us everything we don’t deserve to have.

but church… we still want to belong with you. we still want to be a part of what you’re doing. we want to be in your building on Sunday, worshiping our Creator, hand-in-hand with you.

open your doors, open your eyes, love with your hearts, and please, don’t let us stay in the cold any longer. we’re freezing.

too many of us are falling apart without you. our silent cries for help are slowly but surely tearing us apart until there’s nothing left.

so i have one question for you, church:
will you love us?

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This is a story about the unexpected

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on April 4, 2017.

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve really blogged, but I’m doing so, so much better than I was.

I’ve been back in therapy for six months now.

I’ve been moved out for almost five years. I saw three different counselors in Colorado — a Christian psychologist and two counselors at my college off and on between 2011 and 2015.

My parents wanted me to see the Christian one because they thought he would convince me that moving out was a bad idea. He didn’t. He told me to be responsible and don’t go unless I could survive on my own, but he actually encouraged me to leave.

When I told my new counselor this, while reciting my entire History of Therapy (TM) to him, he laughed and said, “backfire!”

My first counselor taught me that I wasn’t responsible for other people’s emotions, like my dad’s outbursts.

He told me that leaving would involve a risk that I wasn’t ready to take yet. I asked him what that was and he said I needed to ask myself that question.

And he showed me that I wasn’t obligated to believe religious dogma that hurt me.

One day he told me that he wanted me to “stop thinking in terms of shoulds and musts and start thinking about wants and your reasonable heart’s desires.”

I asked him if that was wrong.

I recited that Bible verse that says, “But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?”

But my counselor said, “The former is living under the law and the latter is where freedom is and where Christ wants you to be.”

I didn’t have the faith to believe him yet, but I wanted to. I was still so scared.

My second counselor was secular. I saw him through my college’s mental health services program. He didn’t really understand the pain of trying so hard not to stop believing when everything you were raised with seems like a lie, but he definitely tried.

But he told me to try new things and he asked me what would happen if I carried less in my backpack going to campus every day.

He asked me to put my backpack beside my chair, instead of between me and him. I’d barricaded myself off without realizing it. Not having something between me and him while talking about deep emotions was unexpectedly vulnerable.

My third counselor was through my college again. She happened to be Christian and had been to seminary, so she could feel my faith wounds.

She told me that my flashbacks and nightmares were part of c-PTSD. We started a type of therapy to help my brain process old memories and not freeze up.

I found her after my first breakup, in the lurch of unexpected heartbreak. When I wanted to stop breathing and not exist.

Last summer, I knew I needed to go back.

I knew I wasn’t done yet. But I didn’t know how to begin again, to recount my whole life story all over again for a stranger who I would come to know but who knew nothing about me.

But then unexpectedly — and aren’t the best things so often like this — one of my pastors was starting graduate school for counseling last fall.

He started meeting with me. He knew parts of my story already, so vulnerability was both harder and easier. But there was really no one else I’d rather tell these things to.

It means so much when someone listens with their heart. They are more than just a counselor, then, they become an anchor.

In December, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore.

I have wanted to hurt myself for as long as I can remember. Even as a tiny human, I believed that I deserved punishment and would invent penalties for myself when “getting in trouble” didn’t seem like enough.

I am learning to trust other people. I am trying not to withdraw so sharply when I am anxious.

I am healing.

And I want to start sharing some of what I’ve learned.

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