Sanctuary or Sacrilege? The church and spiritual abuse
When I was a kid, I used to love going to church. For me, church was a place of safety and the hub of my social life—my friends were there, along with adults who supported me and nurtured my potential. Beyond the obvious spiritual formation, I had opportunities to develop musical and leadership skills, and I felt like I mattered there. And when I was really young, the sanctuary was a great place to play hide-and-seek while my parents conducted choir rehearsals on Wednesday nights.
My experience of sanctuary drastically changed when I pursued higher education for a career in ministry. My timing could have been better, as the student dormitory of a Southern Baptist seminary was probably not the best time or place for me to realize that I was gay. Because of the church’s teachings against (and hatred toward) any kind of sexual practice outside the restrained married life of one man to one woman, there was no celebration of my discovering something new and beautiful about myself. Quite the contrary, in fact. The stakes felt enormous for me then—had I been outed, I risked public humiliation, removal from the school, loss of my job, and potential alienation from my family and entire support system. As it was, my secret remained mostly safe, and so I was “merely” consigned to many years of private shame and self-hatred and a lot of costly therapy bills.
By definition, sanctuaries are supposed to be places of safety, nurturing, and protection. The word originated as a container for keeping something in—and most often referred to protecting holy things, or perhaps cherished people. And of course, the term more broadly refers to a refuge for endangered animals, plants, and people. We commonly think of “sanctuary” as a place of worship, and the word itself officially dates back to the Greek and Roman empires. But the concept of offering “sanctuary”—places of refuge and protection—likely is many years older than that. Anthropologists have identified the practice of offering sanctuary, or refuge, in almost every religious tradition and in a wide variety of geographies. The Hebrew Bible’s reference to “cities of refuge,” and the Bedouin idea of nazaala (“taking of refuge”)—indicate the practice was commonly observed in Ancient Near Eastern and North African societies. Many indigenous tribes, including in the Americas, also honored customs of protecting strangers fleeing persecution.
Unfortunately, the Church has a less-than-stellar track record at offering sanctuary. In fact, the church has sometimes condoned or perpetuated great harms to those it was entrusted to protect, making a twisted mockery of the term “sanctuary.” Although this phenomenon of spiritual abuse is known to be present across religions, time periods, and cultures, I only have an intimate knowledge of the ways Christianity has abused its power and caused harm for vulnerable people, so that will be my context for sharing with you today.
Spiritual abuse occurs when a person’s religion or spirituality is used to exert control over them and/or to cause them harm. Also known as religious trauma or church trauma, this abuse occurs when a person’s religious experience is punitive, degrading, dangerous, abusive, or damaging, and when those experiences harm or threaten to harm someone’s physical, emotional, mental, sexual, or spiritual health and safety. These terms have exploded on social media and in religious and psychological literature since the early 1990s. I believe it is safe to say that religious trauma is pervasive in our society, and some of us have first-hand experience with at least milder versions of its expression.
Given the pervasiveness of this problem, you all likely already have some ideas in your mind about what spiritual abuse looks like. The phenomenon actually manifests in a lot of different ways. I will share some examples, most of which have been shared with me directly by virtue of my role as hospital chaplain:
· A woman who was experiencing domestic violence sought support from her pastor, who told her that divorce is a sin and she must stay in the relationship and should try harder not to make her husband angry.
· A friend of mine was born and raised in the High Country and went to the same church all her life until one day when someone found out she was lesbian: a group of deacons hauled her up to the front of her church, publicly shamed her, and told her she was unforgiveable by God or them unless she renounced who she was.
· A man in his late 40s who was trying to turn his life around after a history of substance use was shunned and shamed by his church rather than being offered support and compassion.
· A mother brought her 9-year-old child to therapy to address night terrors that commenced after their church hosted a “hell house” on Halloween, using gruesome scenes and threats of torment in a literal attempt to “scare the hell out of people.”
· A family lost all their savings and their home because they believed a charismatic and deceitful cult leader who assured them he was ordained by God to manage their money for them.
· A boy with a troubled home life was taken under wing by a priest who offered material and emotional support. After gaining the boy’s complete trust, the priest began sexually molesting him.
· Parents were arrested after their young child died because the parents believed God would heal her and she didn’t need that blood transfusion.
· A grandmother is tormented by the suicide of her grandson because the pastor told the family he had committed an unpardonable sin and would be punished in hell for all eternity.
The common denominator in all these experiences is that they result in diminishment of another person’s sense of self. This type of abuse is particularly profound, because our spiritual beliefs are about ultimate concerns. This abuse doesn’t just make someone question their marriage, or their belief in the goodness of humanity, although those would be terrible enough. The stakes are particularly high for spiritual abuse because they involve the underpinnings of what gives meaning to life, and often feel like they have eternal consequences.
Despite these significant distinctions, some researchers believe that experiences of spiritual abuse most closely mirror those of violent domestic relationships. Both of these abuse situations involve ongoing relationships of trust and intimacy that, at least in some ways, have been voluntarily chosen. Expressions of abuse in both contexts tend to include verbal, emotional, or sexual abuse; isolation; control; and thought reform.
Much of the research on this topic points to three characteristics that create a climate for religious abuse:
1. Power-hungry, unchecked leadership–Individuals lack accountability, operate in secrecy, squelch dissent, set themselves up as ultimate authorities, and consider themselves immune to laws, rules and regulations.
2. Intense intolerance–Religiously abusive systems do not allow for varying opinions, interpretations or expressions of faith, and view those who do not conform in an increasingly negative (or even evil) light. Such systems thrive on separateness and isolation.
3. Individual diminishment–Practices inadvertently or purposefully diminish self-worth, wholeness and freedom of individuals to make their own decisions and to develop their own beliefs.
While too often the Church has ignored or denied this behavior, and protected the perpetrators of this violence, lots of non-religious professionals and psychotherapists have jumped on the “all religion is traumatizing” bandwagon, claiming expertise in religious trauma, and declaring, finally, they have evidence for why religion itself is evil and should never be practiced in any form.
However, the research shows that religious belief itself is not categorically bad for you. Religion can have both positive and negative health impacts.
Henri Parens and Salman Akhtar, psychiatrists and editors of the book Does God Help?, came to the determination that “both the belief in God and the disbelief in God have normal and pathological variants,” depending on how God is understood and what behaviors such beliefs produce. Kenneth Pargament, an authority in the psychology of religion, agreed, stating, “A religion that is internalized, intrinsically motivated, and built on a belief in a greater meaning in life, a secure relationship with [a higher power], and a sense of spiritual connectedness with others has positive implications for well-being. Conversely, a religion that is imposed, unexamined, and [or] reflective of a tenuous relationship with God and the world bodes poorly for well-being, at least in the short-term.”
Research shows that while many people maintain a personal sense of faith after a spiritually abusive experience, others turn their back on anything that smells remotely religious, and some even become antagonistically atheist. Even those who want to heal their wounds and redeem their spirituality may choose to forgo attention to their spiritual health rather than risk further abuse or alienation by trying out a different faith community. How do you know who to trust after you have lost trust in such a profound way? Who could blame a survivor of this trauma who doesn’t want to risk it happening again? Even those of us exposed to a “kinder, gentler” form of religious trauma can be so turned off of religion that we never intend to darken the door of the church again. Of course, the path a survivor takes is always up to them. However, while it is quick and simple to abandon one’s previous beliefs entirely, and to cut off any connection with spirituality, doing so without the accompanying hard work of grief and integration can leave a person just as crippled as the abuse itself. In order to stand a chance of healing, survivors need to grieve the loss, integrate the experience into their life story, and move forward with intentionality and integrity, honoring all of who they are.
In my own experience, which certainly felt traumatic to me, I struggled for a long time before finding what I would call “recovery.” I stopped going to church for a while. I was diagnosed with major depression. I nearly dropped out of seminary. Immersed in Baptist doctrine, I struggled to get outside that box enough to realize there were other ways to interpret Scripture than the one that made me out to be some kind of horrible person. And yet, somewhere deep inside myself, I didn’t believe that I was really such an abomination, just because of who I loved. That seed of trust in my own inherent goodness was a key for me to begin searching for a different way to understand who I was as a person of faith who happened to be gay. Fortunately, even in the Baptist world in the 90s, there were some sermons written by brave and skilled preachers who dared to take on the “abomination” scriptures and evaluate them within the cultural context in which they were written. These sermons circulated in an underground market of sorts, and opened up a new world to me. My coursework for this master of divinity degree was already pushing me to re-evaluate everything else about theology. Why not one more thing? I love the irony that all of this coming-to-terms occurred right under the noses of seminary administrators and their hate-based doctrines.
Eventually, I graduated, and I found that hospital chaplaincy was a more progressive and protected place to do ministry than a church. You might say divine intervention, or providence, or the universe led me to an amazing group of people in my two-year chaplain residency at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, where I was finally able to accept myself, begin the coming out process, and see myself as deserving of happiness and a successful ministerial career. Shortly after that I shifted my ordination credentials from Baptist to the more welcoming United Church of Christ. Many years and two relationships later, I fell in love with an amazing woman, and finally got that wedding I thought would never happen.
In the meantime, I came out to my family, and to trusted colleagues and pastors, and found the support I needed to begin healing the wounds of my past. I don’t know how people ever do that successfully without a network of support around them. I’m pretty sure my own recovery would have been stunted and protracted, at best, had I not had supportive family and friends, and a more progressive spiritual community to embrace me.
Among the many theories of abuse and recovery, I have found Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh’s Becoming an Ex to be the most helpful texts in terms of spiritual abuse. We don’t have time to delve into those today, but some commonalities in recovery include:
1. Choosing recovery for one’s self,
2. Grieving the losses and wounds
3. Telling and retelling one’s story to others who recognize and validate it, (or alternatively, finding non-narrative therapy for healing), and
4. Forging a new identity as the old identity is integrated into one’s life and worldview.
Any person who dares to share their story of trauma needs to have their experience validated and named by another individual in order for recovery to be effective. In these situations, retelling the story of suffering can enable the individual to feel less powerless and more able to separate their identity from their experience. But as we now know, reliving extreme experiences of abuse can be counter-productive, and fortunately, other and newer methods of recovery are available.
That is where places of sanctuary like BUUF come in. A chaplain may be most likely to encounter people wounded by religion who will never again darken the door of a church. But for those who do, the Unitarian Universalists have a strong reputation for being open and accepting of a broad range of beliefs, and so may be a first stop for those who do not give up on spiritual communities entirely.
If and when this happens, a congregation should be prepared. If people entrust their story to you, believe it. Offer empathy. Provide spaces for grief expression. Individuals who have experienced unhealthy religion likely have multiple layers of loss, including loss of physical and emotional health, loss of innocence, loss of trust, loss of world view, loss of self, and loss of relationships—including a perceived loss of relationship with God. Those of us receiving those persons need to be present to the pain and provide active listening, without rushing to offer advice or trying to “fix” the situation. This may involve making space for someone who is questioning many things, who may still believe in ways that you find silly or meaningless, or who is angry and bitter. Making space for these persons requires dedicated listening, non-judgment, and open minds, while providing a safe container for the individual. And remember that active listening includes refraining from chiming in with our own stories. While sometimes it can be helpful for an abused person to know they are not alone, we don’t want to take the focus off their own story or engage in any “oppression Olympics.”
Some individuals may need education about the distinctions between religion and spirituality as well as the assurance that spirituality is not dependent on a particular religious expression in order to survive and thrive. And people need a holy, stable space in which to wrestle with previous theological understandings of concepts like sin, heaven, and hell, and how to let go of rigid doctrines without giving up a sense of spiritual depth and meaning. These are scary things to consider if your entire life had been controlled by such exclusive beliefs.
Beyond that, a congregation needs to be prepared to model healthy boundaries and an open-minded spirituality. Make sure you have a safe kids policy, and share how your congregation ensures that power is not usurped in unhealthy ways. This congregation in particular already has a jump in that category, since you have no full-time authority figure to abuse their authority. However, every person and every organization can be at risk of abusing power, and policies and protections need to be in place.
Of course, we need to be ready to refer persons who need specialized support, therapy, or other mental health services. Know ahead of time who your congregation trusts to support people in these challenging situations.
Finally, you can bear witness that religion or spirituality has a healthier, more vibrant and life-giving expression than the abusive experience the individual has left. Offering safe sanctuary to those who have suffered in these ways is sacred work. And it is desperately needed. Reducing a person’s sense of isolation and validating their experience, while assuring that your own organization has protections in place against similar harms, is a profound gift to this community.
Author and speaker Father Richard Rohr has stated that pain and suffering are inevitable parts of the human condition that may either be transmitted or transformed. Most of the time we transmit the pain—foisting it onto others, or carrying it with us and allowing it to seep out in unhealthy ways. But Rohr believes that deep suffering is one of the few things in life that also has the potential to move a person toward positive change in life. This assertion correlates well with theologian James Fowler’s six-stage theory of faith development. Fowler believed that of those who reach the mature stage five, Conjunctive Faith, few do so without first having some form of life-altering struggle or suffering experience. These concepts of suffering give hope that even after serious suffering—even in the form of spiritual abuse—an individual still may be able to transform the experience into a healthy, deeper and more meaningful spirituality. As the Sufi poet Rumi noted centuries ago, “Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.”
From my friendship and previous employment and ongoing connections with BUUF through the years, I am aware that some of you have had your own experiences with misuse of ecclesiastical power. Because of that, and because of your UU principles and the UU reputation of open-mindedness, I believe this congregation can be beautifully positioned to transform your own negative experiences and deepen your support for persons just now trying to exit abusive religion and find new life. That’s a tall order. But the need is great. If you would permit me to close with a quote from Jesus: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few…”
May we accept the challenge to be among those laborers, working to remove the circumstances that make abuse possible in the first place, and reaching out to those whose lives have been shattered, offering healing and hope.
May it be so.
