Salem was a small village, somewhat isolated from others and fairly autonomous. Churches and other groups today can be just as isolated when they distrust “outsiders.” They may also require attendance and conformity. Religion often plays a large role in every aspect of the lives of church members in such churches–the church may tell members how to dress, what to listen to and watch, what types of jobs to get, where to go to school, when to buy a home or where to rent. These are seen as decisions needing spiritual guidance. Those who do not seek their pastor’s advice may miss the will of God or even “lose out with God” and be condemned to hell.
People in these groups seek explanations for the dangers they perceive–for some, these dangers may include persecution, poverty, or the risk of being lost and sent to hell, while for others the perceived dangers may include popular culture’s influence on their children, the influx of secular thought in public school, or the introduction of thoughts that might be considered too liberal or godless. And just as in Salem, at least some of these are explained by some as acts of the devil.
When anyone in such a group does not conform to the group, there is a risk that one of two things will happen: either the nonconformist will be viewed as an outsider and meet resistance from the group, or the group may begin to seek out those within the group that might be friendly toward the nonconformist or share some of the ideas or questions the nonconformist has mentioned or is thought to have. These people are then brought in to question themselves… and a witch hunt of sorts begins.
The nonconformity doesn’t need to be pronounced to be considered dangerous; it just needs to be perceived to exist. In my case, my sin was that I hadn’t married younger and lived alone–I looked and acted as much like them as was possible; I dressed the same, spoke the same, but I wasn’t the same since I wasn’t married. Within the same church some of the others who were “tried” had other faults: one questioned the pastor’s directives on what to wear, another was less educated, another too educated. Two questioned what had happened to me, apparently, and one went to visit another church without permission. Another fell in love with someone the pastor had not approved. These are not things most people would consider dangerous, but in the minds of that pastor and that group, they were.
Perhaps because there is perceived danger everywhere, people start distrusting each other within the group, watching for anything that might be considered dangerous in those around them. In Salem, this distrust was actually encouraged by some of the leaders, and it is in some groups today, as well. As we often heard in my former church, “Be careful who you fellowship!”
Can You meet me in my room? A place where I feel safe Where I don’t have to run away Where I can just be me. – TFK, In My Room
I was like a kid on an adventure the first night in the new apartment.
The second or third night, I called Cynthia B. crying and homesick. She said it was normal and part of growing up.
Until 2012, I never spent a night away from home without my parents. Then I stayed at a friend’s house one weekend in June before leaving.
And I had no idea how to cook.
My first roommate taught me how to make ramen in the microwave.
Dad always worried I’d burn myself on the stove or slice open my finger. Or spill something. I begged them to teach me throughout my teen years. I even planned a dinner when I was 14 and brought Mom the recipes, but Dad didn’t let me.
I started seeing through the cracks, saw how much fear had controlled all of our lives.
I biked to school and rode the bus for the first three months. Then my parents gave me back part of the money so I could buy a car in November 2012.
My second roommate taught me how to live paycheck to paycheck, how to find cheap, gluten-free food when I discovered I was allergic like her.
In April 2013, I found Spiritual Abuse Survivors blog network through a friend and soon after, Homeschoolers Anonymous.
Through reading blogs and talking to friends, I learned it’s not normal to spank your children until they stop crying because crying is “rebellious” and leaving bruises and teaching your child to cover them is also considered abuse.
Most people, even those who grew up in church like me, weren’t spanked until they were 14 and threatened with a belt until age 18.
A school counselor helped me through the first year, and my Christian counselor later came out of retirement briefly and my parents and I went to group counseling summer 2013.
Because… my parents did not back down because I left.
The first Sunday after leaving, I went down the street to visit a new church.
My family drove by while I was walking down the sidewalk, rolled down the car windows, and shouted, “Just remember, Bob Jones is still available!”
My dad sent me advertisements for cars he would buy for me if I went to Bob Jones. And a deluge of letters and text messages and emails and phone calls pleading for me to reconsider the first year I was away. My parents dropped by the Science Center on campus while I was tutoring, bringing gifts and asking me to come back.
My anxiety issues spiraled, but my professors understood, giving me extensions.
Heart and brain argued on where to draw the line. I loved my parents, but I wasn’t a child anymore. I didn’t want to have to choose between my family and my adulthood.
Which is why I identified with Tirzah’s story on Homeschoolers Anonymous last week: “Only in my mom’s sad world of jumbled theology would moving out be akin to losing one’s family.”
Everyone told me that my freedom would have a price.
But some days, I ache, wishing my family understood me. Understood my heart.
Understood that I don’t write to condemn them, I write because I’m in pain. I write because I want our relationship to change and heal. I write, pleading with other homeschool parents, “Please, don’t do this to your kids.”
I’m told that blogs are biased, I’m accused of not showing both sides.
So I’m including three open letters between me and my parents and one of the more impersonal ones my sister sent. Quotes can be taken out of context, so here is the entire conversation.
Letter from my parents 11-12-2012
(After the 2012 election. I had voted to legalize marijuana in Colorado after researching studies on the chemical effects of THC.)
Letter from sister 10-27-2013 (Mostly an essay arguing that my actions require the church discipline in Matthew 18.)
Right now, my relationship with my family is inconsistent. We talk sometimes. They help in a pinch, but I fear control creeping in again.
But I know they don’t accept me or approve of me. Nothing seems to count now. Not being self-sufficient, not holding steady jobs, not graduating college this spring. Not my passion for journalism or theater.
It’s like my leaving was an earthquake, and now a canyon lies between us.
But I found others on this side of the canyon, too.
Friends who later asked me to help them escape their own boxes. Professors who encouraged my independence, who had life phase changes of their own in college. My pastor friend in Texas who listened to my story and made me want to try church again.
In July 2013, I told Lissi on G-chat:
You know what?
I realized something yesterday.
I don’t think my family is my family anymore.
I mean, I will always love them, and they are blood.
They are my kin.
But they are not the family I grew up with anymore. That is now changed forever.
My “family” now emotionally is more like Ducky [my second roommate], you, the two Cynthias, other close friends, and my professors.
You all treat me more like family and support me more than my own family does.
I think this realization makes me more okay with emotionally separating from my family, too.
Because at least I have you all. <3
She replied, “Ahhh… the ChosenFamilyrealization.”
Yes, the fight was worth it. Now I am free. Free indeed.
I’m not sure when or how I got a copy of the Good News Bible. It was not allowed. There was only one approved version of the Bible and don’t you dare listen to those radio preachers. So I never heard the Good News, in fact most of it was bad news. If you don’t stop or start doing you will go to hell.
I was told the gospel was Acts 2:38, those three steps to salvation: repent, be baptized every one of you in Jesus name, and receive the Holy Ghost. You couldn’t say Holy Spirit, that was new-fangled and not in the approved version of the Bible. I can still see in my mind’s eye the huge wall size poster replica of stairs I painted for my Sunday school class depicting the three steps to heaven. Why kids, do these three steps and never make a mistake and you might, if you are “perfect” and never cut your hair, go to heaven. But you’ll never know for sure. God can be awful mean sometimes.
By the late 80’s to early 90’s, I rebelled. After years of crying, praying, and never understanding why I couldn’t be good. I started listening to the radio preachers, who gave me a glimpse into the Good News. Then in 1995, I began reading in earnest my Good News Bible and learned that the gospel is not Acts 2:38 but Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection for me. This gospel or good news is what I had missed all those years. It wasn’t my effort to save myself but His effort on the cross to save me that would get me to heaven.
And now I want to remind you, my friends, of the Good News which I preached to you, which you received, and on which your faith stands firm. That is the gospel, the message that I preached to you. You are saved by the gospel if you hold firmly to it—unless it was for nothing that you believed. I passed on to you what I received, which is of the greatest importance: that Christ died for our sins, as written in the Scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life three days later… I Corinthians 15:1-4
Salem village in 1692 was small, and founded on religious principals. Everyone attended the same church. Church attendance was expected of everyone. The town was not a true theocracy, but religion played a large role in both the legal and social aspects of the village.
People sought explanations for the dangers and hardships at the time, and at least some of these were explained as the devil’s acts. Prayer, holiness, quietness, simplicity, dedication, and faithfulness were highly valued not just by a few but by the majority of people in the village.
Then some girls began to act strangely, having “fits” and “spells.” A doctor diagnosed them as being bewitched, and soon they named three women as witches- a slave, a homeless beggar, and a poor widow. The three accused were imprisoned to await trial.
The trials that took place to determine if these three really were witches were held or backed by the clergy, religious leaders of the time. Witchcraft was a spiritual problem, after all, and it was the Bible that said “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
There is a lot of speculation about why the girls started acting out. It is possible that they felt guilty for dabbling in fortune telling with the slave, Tituba, whom they later accused, and that the fits somehow were connected to this guilt. It’s also possible that there was something toxic in the water that affected them. And it’s just as possible that they were bored and tired of the controlled quiet and work that was expected of them all day every day and enjoyed the release of acting up. All of those are possible. I think many who’ve been spiritually abused might see other reasons…
In doing some research for a class project a year or two after being thrown out of a church, I came across an interactive activity enacting the trials. I sat clicking through it, stunned. I had been familiar with the trials, but I had never thought of them as closely related to my life. But here in an interactive about a bit of 300 year old history, was a reenactment of my expulsion.
Are you a witch?
Why do you torture these people?
How do you know you’re not a witch?
We know you’re a witch!
How long have you been a witch?
Don’t deny it! Why won’t you confess?
How long have you been in the snare of the devil?
Why would you laugh? Don’t you see, you’re hurting these people?
You can’t expect peace without a confession!
You would sob, but it’s too much. You stood before your neighbors, your God and your judge and spoke the truth. They saw you, they heard you, and they jailed you.
Now, all of Salem, hungry for drama, seems to have squeezed inside the courthouse…
The interactive haunted me. For the first time after I’d been thrown out, I had found an incident that was very similar to my own. Here is basically my interaction with the man who threw me out:
I feel in my spirit–you aren’t right! You’re lusting after me.
ME: “NO!”
Don’t argue with the man of God! I know you’re lusting after me, and you won’t destroy my ministry!
If you don’t get right, I’ll throw you out!
I don’t even know if you can be saved.
I knew someone was hindering revival!
You’re hindering revival! You need to repent!
He went on to tell me why he thought I was lusting. He had the spirit of discernment. He felt it in his spirit. I’d made him grab a folding chair I was sitting on and drag it around the room. I’d gone to the store at the same time he and his wife were there….
And so I identify with those tried as witches in Salem.
What happened in Salem, and why did the witch hunts and trials take place? Why were they allowed to go so far? Superstition, lack of knowledge or common sense, emphasis on the devil doing things to people, mass hysteria, toxins in the water or food, boredom, a fear of secret ‘sins’ being discovered, or guilt for those sins still hidden, the power of a few, the jealousy of others… there are many guesses as to what happened in Salem. I think it was a combination. And I think witch hunts still happen today.
