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A Guide to Spiritual Abuse in the Church


sawasdee

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https://graceportland.org/2017/04/30/spiritual-abuse-in-the-church-a-guide-to-recognition-and-recovery/

This is a doctoral dissertation by Pastor Ken Garrett.

In it, he describes how to identify spiritually abusive christian churches - which he does not hesitate to call cults - how to identify spiritually abusive pastors, and the difficulties for those trying to extricate themselves.

He describes his own family's experience, as well as including many interviews.

It is fascinating and heartbreaking.

And many of those we follow have many of the identifiers he names - Gothard, DPIAT, Doug Wilson, to name but a few. The last particularly seems to qualify on all counts.

It's long - took me over two hours to read - but oh so worth it. (I didn't read the sermon...)

 

 

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Many thanks, @sawasdee.

The link to this dissertation was originally posted by Julie Anne at https://spiritualsoundingboard.com/ and is being discussed there too.  Pastor Garrett is a friend of hers.  Thanks, Julie Anne, for posting the link.

As I said in the other thread, I haven't finished the dissertation yet but I think it is very informative.

I see it as a must-read for professionals (secular and Christian) and clergy who counsel survivors of spiritually abusive churches.  There is not enough information out there on the subject.

I could probably shoot a few holes in the methodology if I really, really, wanted to, but I don't.

I'll be back when I've read the whole thing.  It is a difficult read due to the subject matter, but it is extremely well written.

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Thanks, that was very insightful and helpful to me. I have friends who spent time in one of the mentioned cults, and I sometimes worry about my own evangelical setting as somewhere that might be a little close to the line of fundie-lite. It's great to have some actual criteria and data on the phenomenon of spiritual abuse.

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I was a victim of spiritual abuse in the Christian school I worked at for six years. It took me a long time to understand that that is what it was. Garrett's work was interesting, but perhaps a bit general. There are huge parallels between what I experienced in that school at the hands of administrators and affiliated pastors. 

I stopped believing most of what they believed a few years in. And I never believed some of it (the right wing politics in particular). So I strongly identified with this line in his dissertation: 

Quote

Spiritual abuse survivors have been forced to close off their genuine selves and build a pseudoself in order to survive in the abusive environment

That is what I did for around four years. I left about a month before I turned 29 and truly did not know who I was anymore. 

I still have trigger points that make me want to literally run years later. At our kids' confirmation retreat this spring (husband and I teach confirmation class in our parish) the retreat leader played a worship song over and over and pushed the kids to sing along and move and dance to it. The song was a favorite at Christian school chapel where students and teachers were constantly told that if we didn't sing loud enough or raise our hands high enough or do whatever to prove how into the music we were, we weren't worshipping and God would find us unworthy. When the woman played that damn song at the retreat and begged the kids to dance, I was right back there being told I wasn't good enough. At one point, I left the room and hid out in the bathroom. These are things that you can't even really explain to anyone (my husband included) in a room full of cradle Catholics. Dancing to that music was just supposed to be fun. 

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10 hours ago, louisa05 said:

Garrett's work was interesting, but perhaps a bit general. There are huge parallels between what I experienced in that school at the hands of administrators and affiliated pastors. 

I'm sorry you went through that, @louisa05.

The dissertation is what I would have expected from Western Seminary, which is regionally accredited but very Gospel-centered, evangelical and conservative.  I would call it too narrow rather than too general, but he is writing for a specific audience - and an audience that needs this book.

 I would have expanded his bibliography a bit to include more research into other cults and more recovery techniques developed by secular sources, but we can't have everything.

I think it is really important because he doesn't hesitate to label these spiritually abusive churches as cults, talks about the resistance to calling "Christian" churches cults, and really nails the cult leader characteristics and methods of control.

He is talking in language that survivors of these churches understand too.  It doesn't mess with their essential faith in Christianity.  It points to how these cult leaders twist and cherry pick the sources of that faith in highly destructive ways.

I skipped the sermon too. 

 

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