Religion

Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week: After-Image

I wasn’t able to participate in the first day of Spiritual Abuse Awareness week due to other demands on my time. I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything today, either. My experiences are mild compared to the horrific things friends and fellow bloggers have shared, and I believe those people who have survived need safe space to heal. That sometimes includes people like me, who only feel it like the residual tremors of an earthquake, remaining quiet and letting others tell their stories. But I had an experience that reminded me that everything has consequences, even if we don’t realize it at the time. So here is my story about the aftermath of dealing with spiritually abusive people and how deep it can make us bleed.

Last Sunday, the pastor asked to speak to us about our son.

I was on my way in alone; I was playing my violin during the service and had arrived early to practice with the choir. My husband and children were driving separately. The pastor stopped me on my way up to the choir loft and said,

I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes in my office after church, about your son.

I must have looked surprised, because she added that it was about his baptism, which is scheduled for the Sunday after Easter. I nodded and told her that was no problem. But inside, I was panicking.

That’s not really a healthy response to a conversation with a pastor.

I need to say here that our pastor is a lovely woman. She is kind and gentle and delivers fantastic sermons. She has been nothing but loving and warm towards our family, our children in particular. My daughter warmed to her immediately, which is fairly miraculous–she has discriminating taste in people. So there are no circumstances under which I should feel threatened or intimidated by this pastor. Even if I had committed some grave error, I suspect she would handle it with grace.

And yet.

My immediate reaction to anyone in spiritual authority asking to speak to me has become one of fear. I have learned to expect rebukes rather than positive conversations. When I realized what had happened, that my response was out of proportion with reality, I was puzzled. Where in the world did such feelings come from?

I knew that it wasn’t really the result of my experiences as a teenager. I was a little afraid of the pastor of that church, but I don’t believe that I thought of him as genuinely in authority over me. I had no sense of church politics or hierarchy; I was in a bubble of Christian youth culture (as much as there actually was back in the late ’80s/early ’90s). And it certainly didn’t come from the ten years my husband and I spent at our first church as a married couple. That pastor and his family were like an extension of our own. We were close, and we remain in touch to this day despite the 3000 miles separating us.

I’m sure you can guess where this is going. I am not going to sit here and say that I was spiritually abused by our church or the leadership*. That would be lying, and it would be hurtful to those who are still involved. But I will tell you this: There were people in authority there who absolutely, unquestionably used intimidation tactics on me and on others. I was spoken to multiple occasions about my writing, particularly in regard to my feminism and my unwavering stance as an LGBT ally (and once or twice about my parenting). I was never told I shouldn’t blog or use social media, but I received subtle threats about it more than once. Additionally, there were a few adults who used my children for the purpose of coercion and “correction.” (Nothing makes me go all Mama Bear faster than church people using my kids as weapons.)

None of that may sound particularly bad; and perhaps it isn’t. But taken as a whole, it damaged my sense that pastors and leaders are safe people. They may not overtly threaten or shun or shout from the pulpit, but they hold power over the people–in large part because they (or the church structure) dictates that they do. When leaders wield their authority inappropriately, it undermines people’s faith that they can trust them.

This is exactly what happened to me. I believe that over time, I can–and will–regain my ability to trust, because it wasn’t damaged beyond repair. But there are others for whom the same cannot be said. This is unacceptable–not because it’s unacceptable to be non-religious or non-churchgoing, but because the reason for being non-religious or non-churchgoing should never, ever be because it was literally or figuratively beaten out of you.

By the way, the reason the pastor wanted to talk to us was so she could set a time to come to our house to speak to our son about what will happen when he’s baptized, physically and spiritually. We met last night, and it was good–exactly as I should have expected.

I hope you will read the other stories about spiritual abuse this week. There are some remarkable survivors out there. Take the time to get to know them through their words. And if you have been spiritually abused, please read this excellent post by Caleigh on self-care. Meanwhile, I’m going to spend some time praying for the strength to trust again.

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*That is not to say that I wasn’t exposed to abusive beliefs or teachings; I’m speaking specifically here about being directly abused, harassed, threatened, mistreated, intimidated, etc. by pastors, elders, and other leaders in the church.

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For more posts on spiritual abuse, visit these web sites:

Wine & Marble: Spiritual Abuse Day 1

Joy in this Journey: Spiritual Abuse Day 2

Guest post: Thirty seconds of silence, take two

Guest Post, Questions, Religion

Today I am privileged to have the amazing Daisy Rain Martin guest posting for me. We met online by chance, through writing for Provoketive. She is a talented writer and all-around fascinating woman. I hope her words speak to your heart the way they do to mine.

I Was Silent for a Whole Thirty Seconds

A few months ago, I wrote a smokin’ article for Provoketive e-magazine that addressed the slew of anti-public school trash talk that followed the Newtown tragedy in the name of Jesus. You can read it at your own risk here: (That last paragraph was a doozy, let me tell you…)

http://provoketive.com/2012/12/17/thirty-seconds-of-silence/

I got mixed reviews, to say the least. Many people understood my angst, but others, whom I love and cherish and would never hurt to save my life, were less inspired. Insulted would be closer.

I’m not looking to rehash the argument of the public school system being to blame for our societal ills. Public schools have never inhibited a student’s freedom to pray freely and it is not the Great Satan. I don’t need to take that discussion further with people who will never see it any other way. I do believe, however, that the discussion that followed on that thread was amazing and begged some great questions:

What’s a girl to do when she sees that a portion of the church adheres to paradigms that she knows in her knower aren’t true? What’s a girl to do when it feels to her that the church has taken that collective paradigm and seemingly created a mini “subculture” of thought which makes her feel as if she’s in the wrong if she pushes up against it? What’s a girl to do when she’s accused of being (let’s see… how many have I heard?) insensitive to the Holy Spirit, deceived by the father of lies, shaped by the world, or just straight up simple-minded. I have questioned those subgroups and voiced my opinions, sending the saints screaming into their prayer closets on my behalf, while I scratch my head and try to shake it off. I’d love some wisdom on this.

But you know what? I’m also falling in love with the church again. I see Christ’s body acting with patience and compassion all the time. I was Episcopalian for a day and fed the homeless a beautiful meal (which they do all the time—it wasn’t just a one-day shot) with some beautiful friends. A lady in my church is starting a support group for people who have been abused and just can’t seem to love themselves no matter what. She has a cure! I speak at churches whose members just can’t seem to hug me tightly enough when I tell them my story. They even let me sell my book with the f-word in it! Sweet, conservative, God-lovin’ folks who have read the book—all the words—still put their hands on my cheeks and say, “Bless you, child. You went through so much, and we can see that God has brought you from a mighty long way.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

I’ve underestimated the church. I’ve overestimated the church. When is it ever going to feel ‘jussssst right’?

Carlo Carretto captured my quandary when he wrote, “How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go?”

Indeed. Where would I go?

About the author (from her web site):

The juxtaposition that is Daisy Rain Martin stems from being born and raised in a show business family in the bright lights of Las Vegas while trying to navigate her way out of an abusive, ultra-conservative, religious home. [read more about Daisy here]

You can find her books here and here, and you can read her blog here.

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Please join me tomorrow when I will be reviewing Daisy’s book Juxtaposed. Full disclosure: She sent me a (signed!) copy late last fall, but it was not in exchange for a review–favorable or otherwise. I read the book over the winter holidays, and I decided that the review and her guest post would fit together nicely.

Holy Hand Sanitizer

Culture, Religion, Social Justice

Have you ever been somewhere and needed to clean your hands but were unable? Perhaps you were in a public restroom and the soap had run out. Maybe it was in church last week when you passed the peace and shook the hands of twelve strangers. You might have been in the park and picked up some stray trash. If you’re a parent, you’ve surely experienced the same thing with your kids–they tend to get their hands on a whole lot of disgusting stuff, and there’s not always a bathroom nearby.

For times like that, I keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse. It’s not ideal, even though it says on the label that it will kill the germs. I don’t know about you, but I never feel quite clean enough. It’s better than nothing, but I nearly always think, I can’t wait to get home and just use water and real soap.

The church can be a bit like that hand sanitizer in the way we treat people and the issues in their lives. This morning, I read this excellent piece by Jennifer Luitwieler on the ways in which our culture promises happiness is the reward for skinniness. Now, this was about the wider society, not the church, but a thought struck me: Inside the church, we do exactly the same thing, but we dress it up in Jesusism.

I read a blog post a couple of months ago in which the writer claimed that being fat wasn’t okay with God. It was my opinion then, and it remains so now, that the writer was projecting her own beliefs and insecurities on other Christians. The truth is, God is not sitting up in heaven policing our bodies and demanding that we be thin. There is absolutely no command in the Bible about being thin. We could have a conversation about gluttony, but we need to keep in mind that fat and gluttonous are not synonyms. What’s really going on here is that the cultural pressure to be skinny has seeped into our churches. Instead of being counter to society, we’ve appropriated societal norms and bent them to a Christian worldview.

Body image isn’t the only way the church has done this. We’ve done it with parenting, money, leadership, and even sex. We don’t look for our actions in the persistent call for justice that runs like a river throughout the whole of Scripture. Instead, we’ve merely taken what’s happening in the world at large and tried to write new rules that conform to our interpretation of the Bible:

Culture says skinny is good/fat is bad; the church says God wants you to be a “healthy weight” through “biblical principles.”
Culture provides fertile ground for arguments and attacks on parenting style; the church says there is a Biblical way to parent, which is different based on which interpretation of Scripture one uses and looks remarkably similar to secular styles.
Culture bombards us with investment opportunities and encourages spending; While the church may not encourage consumerism (though this is debatable), it does encourage investment, savings, and tithing (which may or may not actually help those in need, and a portion of which funds the church itself).
Culture has standards for “excellence” in leadership and one can find books and seminars almost everywhere; the church not only encourages the same principles used in business, but often looks to secular leaders for advice.
Culture provides sex without context; the church provides context without sex. Neither encourages having both.

You may be thinking one of two things. First, if you believe we once were a Christian nation, you may be thinking that I have it backwards–it’s the world that has corrupted these biblical principles and the church is merely trying to redeem them. Second, you may be thinking that there is nothing wrong with using the things that have value, so long as we don’t lose sight of God’s truth. Both lines of thinking are flawed.

First, there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Even if there was a time when most people at least nominally believed, by the very nature of who Jesus is there cannot be a Christian government. Jesus effectively silenced any notion of that in the way he ran counter to both the Roman authorities and the religious ones. We have no business linking God and human rule. We also have no business–for much the same reason–linking Jesus and culture.

Second, there isn’t anything wrong with making use of good sense. It is indeed wise, in our society, to save money for retirement. But that isn’t a biblical principle! That’s an entirely secular one. By biblical standards, we should be making sure that our poor and our elderly and our children and our infirm are cared for–without expecting that they’ve “planned” for it. There is nothing wrong with having healthy bodies, but we simply cannot get carried away to the point that we use junk science to support our theories and then call that “biblical.”

In other words, there is no problem with being part of our culture, as long as we don’t become confused and think that what culture says is biblical. We ought to take our cues first from the calls to love and justice in the Bible, rather than attempting to use the Bible to whitewash the culture. The problem is that the church has mostly been in the business of sanitizing worldly principles. Instead of making a commitment to this,

But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream! [Amos 5:24]

we’ve tried to apply the Bible like a Band-Aid to what the wider culture says. We haven’t committed to helping people find healing and wholeness. We’ve rather criticized them for what we believe are “poor lifestyle choices,” which are remarkably similar to what secular culture calls “poor lifestyle choices.”

I would love to stop reading blog posts and listening to sermons on the Ten Ways We Can Improve Our Lives. I don’t need another podcast with five points all starting with the letter P. I don’t need a workshop on becoming an effective leader. I need opportunities to love my neighbor, feed the hungry, and care for the oppressed. Jesus doesn’t care which seminars I’ve attended, he cares which people I’ve served.

When are we going to stop turning church functionally into hand sanitizer? When will we reach for the cleansing soap and water and really wash ourselves clean?

Why we need to speak up

Bullying, Religion

By Adamantios, via Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, this post received a lot of attention. The author, Lore Ferguson, urges Christians to focus more on their local congregations and less on what big-name pastors like Mark Driscoll are saying or doing:

I don’t go to Mark Driscoll’s church. I don’t have to concern myself with how he teaches the book of Esther or how Mars Hill handles church discipline or how threadbare his tshirt is.

I don’t go to Rob Bell’s former church. I don’t need to worry about how progressive the service or teaching is there or how cool his glasses are.

I don’t go to John Piper’s church. His hand motions don’t affect me and the size of his congregation doesn’t bear on me.

I don’t go to Rick Warren’s church. I’ve never read The Purpose Driven Life and the main purpose of my life is drink more coffee, so that’s good enough for me.

I go to my church. I am covenanted in there. I am knit there. I seek theology first in the Word and second from my pastors. I trust there. I am trusted there. They rightly have the most influence on me and I trust that even with all the influence I might have elsewhere, the most influence I have is there. At my church.

To a point, she is correct. We absolutely need to make sure that our primary connection (if we attend a church) is to the one in which we serve locally. However, she is wrong that we don’t need to concern ourselves with what well-known leaders are doing or teaching.

The first thing that it’s important to note is that Lore attends a church that is part of the Acts 29 Network. I believe she should have put a disclaimer on her post stating such. While Mark Driscoll is not the president of the Network, he is still affiliated with it and it was originally his baby. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the theology of an individual church within the Network differs significantly from that of the Mother Ship. One would hope that the abusive practices of Mars Hill have not trickled down, but there are definitely some teachings that are concerning.

The other problem that I have is that Lore seems to be unaware of the influence Pastor Mark has on church leaders across the country. The practices at Mars Hill are indeed being implemented at smaller, local churches. People are looking to Pastor Mark for guidance and reading his books. This is not a good thing. I would not suggest that every word he’s ever written is terrible, but the overarching themes in his books, sermons, and comments are all of the same variety. If we want to stop the poison from spreading, it is absolutely our responsibility to inform people before they walk into a book store to purchase one of his texts. Local pastors need to be aware of the underlying hostility and abuse.

I am distinctly uncomfortable with Lore’s assertion that “God has this, He’s on His throne, His eyes on His children. He’s got this.” It sounds to me like a bit of magical thinking. I’ve heard this one before–we don’t have to do anything except pray, because God will take care of it. Now why does that sound so familiar? Oh, yes. It can be found in James:

Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? [James 2:14-17, The Message]

It most certainly is our job to do something. Anything else is merely an attempt to assuage our discomfort and avoid getting our hands dirty.

The fact is, real, live people are being hurt and abused directly and indirectly by Mark Driscoll and his teachings. Speaking out is not “gossip” any more than speaking about rape or child abuse or domestic violence or hate crimes is “gossip.” The only way to prevent more people from suffering is to name the abuse and affirm that it is wrong. We need to ask ourselves why there is an entire web site devoted to people sharing the ways they have been harmed by leaders at Mars Hill. We need to read the stories of abuse and shame and we need to get angry that someone who claims to be speaking God’s truth is getting away with actively harming people.

There are two other things we must do. First, we need to examine why we feel uncomfortable when we hear stories of deep hurt coming out of churches. If we conclude that it’s because we don’t like “bad-mouthing” leaders, then we need to go back and read Jesus’ words to the Pharisees–and lather, rinse, repeat until we understand that it is not the hurting that Jesus called out, it was those who claimed to speak for God. If we conclude it’s because those people must have “wrong” theology or that the abuse they suffered was somehow their fault, then there are bigger problems we need to work out about victim blaming and our own personal doctrine.

Second, we need to stop defending Pastor Mark (and others like him). We need to stop saying things like, “Well, he’s just cashing in on his shock value–it’s what he does” and start realizing that this is not a healthy way to spread the Gospel. I’m not going to stop pushing back on this. I refuse to sit here in silence, even though I don’t attend a church remotely related to Acts 29 and even though I can’t fathom a reason our pastor would ever pick up one of his books. There are people I know personally (including myself) who have been deeply wounded in one way or another by the implementation of Mark Driscoll’s abusive teaching. I will not sit idly by and watch more people’s lives be destroyed.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. I am angry that we have let this go on too long. If I can do anything–anything at all–to stop this from continuing, then I will. I will speak until I have no voice and write until I run out of words, but I won’t stop or back down as long as anyone is allowed to continue to spiritually abuse people in the name of my God.

Anger is not hate

Religion, Social Justice, Women

The conversation from last week about Emergence Christianity and the shifting tides is still continuing. I’m glad to see that. There is a lot that has broken open here, and I hope that it’s a sign of good things to come. I don’t mean in terms of the movement; I mean in terms of the living out of Christian faith. My hope is that this is another way in which we can find ourselves reaching out to one another to dismantle the system that enables the silencing of people’s voices.

That said, I want to talk again about one of the ways in which the system contributes to the muting of so many people across Christianity. I like to call it “Be-Niceism.” There is a school of thought that equates non-violence with non-anger. It dictates that we must never use harsh words or direct criticism. In fact, even we who are willing to push forcefully against the system have resorted to using the word “critique” rather than criticism because the latter word has become so connotation-laden.

I see this phenomenon in just about every Christian circle. The gentle souls are often upset by what they perceive as angry ranting and resort to reprimands that we won’t get anywhere if we “stoop to their level.” Yesterday, when Pastor (I use that term loosely) Mark Driscoll tweeted,

Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe in to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.

There was a lot of anger over the tweet, as there should have been. It is not only a problem because of the assumption about the condition of President Obama’s heart, but because it honestly doesn’t matter whether he is a Christian or not. Using that as a measure of whether or not he can be a decent person or a decent President is inappropriate at best. Anyway, my concern isn’t really about Pastor Mark’s tweet; it’s about the response to the responses.

When Shaun King replied with a series of very angry tweets in which he made brilliant use of the word “motherfuckers,” the outrage directed at him was disproportionate. He had made an honest, impassioned plea for people to stop judging other people’s faith—and promptly had his own called into question for being angry. I don’t know what Bible these people have been reading, but mine has Jesus doing pretty much the same thing Shaun King did, including the name-calling. And it wasn’t the ordinary people who Jesus called out, it was the religious leaders of his day.

Not much has changed, has it?

My point is that while I understand the desire for everyone to get along with each other, that is simply not a reasonable expectation. Even Paul (the big favorite among Evangelical types) alludes to that when he says to live at peace with one another insofar as it is possible. That means that it isn’t always going to be possible.

Which leads me to what I really want to say here. It makes me absolutely infuriated when I see the damage that people like Pastor Mark do to Christians and the Christian faith. It’s not just a matter of “he doesn’t speak for all of us.” It’s that he and others like him are personally responsible for harming vulnerable people. He and others like him are directly responsible for creating an environment which is sex-negative, patriarchal, and trans- and homophobic. If we are against any of those things, then we have a right—and, I would argue—a responsibility to stand up and say, “Enough.”

Fighting back with our words is not “stooping to their level.” It is a wise way to express the anger we feel at injustice. It is not wrong to protest. It is not wrong to say we are angry and we don’t want to take it anymore. It is not wrong to openly speak against Pastor Mark and his ilk, even using words that may shock or offend. We need people who are willing to do these things. What would be wrong would be to resort to physical violence, illegal means, or psychological warfare in order to force these men (yes, men) to change or step down.

I see this problem all the time among feminist Christians. As much as I love the writings of some of these women, I have grown weary of seeing so many of them congratulate each other on not being bitchy. They also tend to either pick apart or ignore women who are tougher, sometimes in really passive-aggressive ways: “You were so awesome! You responded in love, unlike that other nasty, angry feminist over there.” This is another way of silencing our voices based in the patriarchal notion of what it means to be a good woman, thinly disguised as “this is what it means to be a real Christian.”

I have nothing against anyone who wants to take a more gentle approach. I believe that’s rooted in personality, however, not in faith or in Scripture. I’m not going to apologize for being bitchy sometimes; nor do I want anyone else to apologize for being gentle. We just need to understand that this is a matter of style, not a matter of sin and not something that requires a good/bad dichotomy.

I’m going to continue to train my critical eye on the -isms that plague our culture, especially among Christians. I still have some residual ire from last week’s nuclear fallout from the Emergence conversation. After reading President Obama’s words from yesterday’s inauguration, I know that I need to keep working toward those goals. Every day, I remind myself that I am not making room at the table for anyone else. Rather, I’m choosing to see that they have always been sitting there and I need to stop isolating myself in idle chatter with those who perceive themselves to be at the head of the table.

The myth of godliness

Religion

I’m not a fan of people believing that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. I could probably spend several blog posts outlining why that isn’t true. I could point to a number of scholars who have done some actual research into the history of the U.S. and the Founding Fathers in order to determine that fact—including many who are Christians themselves. But that isn’t my real problem with the claim that we used to be a nation of God-fearing people.

No, my real problem with that belief is that it is so chock full of privileged bullshit that it’s hard to unpack it all. There was never a time in United States history when the majority of people behaved in a way that resembles genuine Christian faith.

Oh, sure, we had a time when people at least had the semblance of living in a way approved by twenty-first century evangelicals. Men worked, women tended hearth and home, and people dressed modestly and didn’t talk too openly about sex. People owned Bibles and attended churches (if there were any nearby). But that’s pretty much where it ends, in terms of an overall code of conduct.

While some people may actually have been living out real faith, other people were busy hunting witches, killing natives, owning people, and preventing women from voting. (You could try to argue that slavery isn’t forbidden by the Bible or that slaves in the U.S. weren’t all treated badly, I suppose, but I’d like to see you try to argue that one race owning another race is okay even by the Bible’s standards, or that there haven’t been lasting consequences of chattel slavery.)

Maybe we should move forward in time to the twentieth century. You know, the idyllic times of the first half of the century, before the 1960s ruined everything. You know, the time when we put Japanese people in internment camps, stuffed our cities full of immigrants, made people with brown skin drink out of separate fountains, and hunted ~~witches~~ communists. Oh, wait.

When the things we’ve done wrong catch up with us and creep into our quiet, “good” suburban neighborhoods and schools, we sit up and take notice. We think that we’re going to hell in a handbasket, unlike all those previous generations who were blissfully unaware of where we went wrong. We’re sure this is because more and more people are identifying as something other than Christian, an obvious sign that we’ve collectively abandoned Jesus.

None of that is remotely true. The reason it seems so bad now isn’t that we’re less moral or less Christian than we used to be. We’re just a hell of a lot more honest about ourselves. It’s time to stop living in the past. It doesn’t help anyone to demand to return to the “Christian values” of yesteryear. That does nothing to make the world a better place. Instead, we need to find ways to live our faith that don’t just come off as moralizing. We need to actually right the injustices in the world, rather than pointing out what we think are other people’s moral failings.

When are we going to live what Jesus says in Matthew 25?

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

Guest post: Thirty seconds of silence, take two

Why we need to speak up

The myth of godliness

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