Tag: spiritual abuse
Our collection of research resources on abusive churches and spiritual abuse is one of the most-visited pages at Apologetics Index. We have now updated the links, cleaned up the page and increased the font-size.
Plus, in this entry we quote Ken Blue's observations about why otherwise sensible and intelligent people submit to spiritual abuse.
Colleen's story will help us to understand two concomitants to spiritual abuse.
First, like many members of abusive churches, Colleen had a personal history that predisposed her toward victimization.
Second, her experience demonstrates the essential need for help from competent counseling and caring Christians in the process of recovery.
The problem of not being understood is common among victims of spiritual abuse. As a result, the victims feel guilty, misunderstood, and even rejected.
Christians who want to be helpful to those who have come out of abusive experiences must be sensitive, nonjudgmental, and accepting-even if they find it difficult to understand how something so bizarre could happen to another Christian.
What aspects of authoritarian churches are hurtful? What happens to members when they decide to leave or are dismissed? Are they likely to end up in another abusive situation, or are they able to find a "normal" church? What about those who find it impossible to return to church, any church? Is it possible to break the cycle of spiritual abuse? Can people find true freedom in Christ after years of bondage in performance-based lifestyles?
These are some of the questions addresses in Chapter One of his book, Recovering From Churches That Abuse.
Recovering From Churches That Abuse highlights the stories of people who have experienced various levels of spiritual abuse and have achieved varying levels of recovery.
Chapter listing for Recovering From Churches That Abuse, by Dr. Ronald Enroth
The great value of this book lies in the fact that it a) will help victims of spiritual abuse obtain spiritual and emotional healing, and b) provides valuable information to counselors, pastors, and others who are helping these people.
Recovering From Churches That Abuse deals with the road back from spiritual abuse, healing for families who hurt, and re-entry for survivors of cults and sects. It also provides guidance for pastors and counselors.
The key to understanding the phenomenon of abusive churches is within the human psyche -- the desire to control others and to exercise power over people. That has always been a part of the human experience and it will continue to be.
All of us have been exposed to the temptation of power, whether as parent, spouse, teacher, or worker. It has been said that human nature is always ready to abuse its power the moment it can do so with impunity. It should not be surprising, then, that the will to power sometimes invades the religious realm, and specifically the church.
One of the pressing needs of the Christian church is to assist in the development of discernment skills among believers so that the likelihood of following an aberrant teacher or a false doctrine is diminished.
The stories in this book point to the need on the part of Christians for discernment. At what point does biblical authority turn into spiritual violence? When does a church cross the line between conventional-church status and abusive-church status? What are some signals or indicators that a given group is headed for the margins?
Many have described the aftermath of abusive-church involvement as comparable to that of rape victims, or the delayed stress syndrome experienced by war veterans. It is recovery from what might be called spiritual rape. You feel like something has been lost and you will never be the same again."
Dr. Ronald M. Enroth: "Virtually all authoritarian groups that I have studied impose discipline, in one form or another, on members.
A common theme that I encountered during interviews with ex-members of these groups was that the discipline was often carried out in public-and involved ridicule and humiliation."
While mainstream evangelical churches have always encouraged a life of holiness before the Lord and urged moderation in dress and other aspects of life-style, authoritarian churches demonstrate an excessive focus on such concerns. The restricted life-style and limits on personal freedom that follow are just other examples of the need to control that all abusive churches exemplify.
If life-style rigidity is a characteristic of most abusive churches, the role of subjective experience is equally crucial in understanding how such groups drift toward religious marginality.
The spiritual elitism of abusive churches can be seen in some of the terminology they use to refer to themselves:
"God's Green Berets," "God's End-Time Army," the "faithful remnant," the special "move of God." As one ex-member put it, "We believed we were on the cutting edge of what God was doing in the world. I looked down on people who left our movement; they didn't have what it took. They were not faithful to their commitment. When everyone else got with God's program, they would be involved in shepherding just like we were."
A former member of a group known as The Assembly (headquartered in Fullerton, California, and discussed later in this book) said, "Although we didn't come right out and 'say it, in our innermost hearts we really felt that there was no place in the world like our assembly. We thought the rest of Christianity was out to lunch."
Traditional evangelical churches value and respect individual differences. For the most part, they encourage people to become unique persons in their own right, not mere photocopies of someone else.
Authoritarian, manipulative fringe groups, on the other hand, encourage clones and promote cookie-cutter life-styles.
Flavil Yeakley, in his book The Discipling Dilemma, suggests that such groups value conformity, not diversity. "They tend to make people over after the image of a group leader, the group norm, or what the group regards as the ideal personality …. They are made to feel guilty for being what they are and inferior for not being what the group wants them to be."
