When a church, the very institution that is mandated to teach, preach, and heal in the name of Jesus Christ, becomes an agent of destruction of the minds, hearts, spirits, and relationships of its members, truly we are facing the Adversary in the clothing of the Lamb.
Certain dynamics protect the Adversary's disguise. Evil seeks darkness and confusion, and it resists exposure. The right to religious freedom in the United States is generally upheld, no matter how dysfunctional, damaging, or crazy a religious persuasion may be. And Christians hesitate to confront other Christians' religious practices, even when we strongly disagree.
Authors Father Leo Booth, Ronald Enroth, Marie Fortune, Philip Greven, and Virginia Curran Hoffman have each done an excellent job of illuminating significant aspects of spiritual sickness and abuse within some Christian churches. With remarkable courage and clarity, these authors confront what may be the gravest evil of all: using God's name as a weapon, harming the capacity of the human heart to experience God's unconditional love.
Hoffman names insidious forms of abuse in churches that are widely accepted as normal and are therefore difficult to spot. Booth, Enroth, Fortune, and Greven name more extreme abuses that are easier to see clearly, at least from the outside.
In The Codependent Church, Virginia Curran Hoffman demonstrates that the relationship between church and member is often characterized by parent-child roles. Members surrender their own authority to religious leaders and then seek approval through codependent behaviors, for example, conforming outwardly and disagreeing in silence. Codependence with a church causes suffering for members themselves and causes them to victimize others as well.
Hoffman devotes major sections of her book to the issues of sexual abuse and abuse of power within the church. She exposes a secret in the Christian family: that St. Augustine was an abstaining, but non-recovering, sex addict, whose obsession with sex has shaped Western Christianity's ambivalent attitudes toward sex.
Double messages about sexuality cause chain reactions of sexual violence, including the determination to maintain even abusive marriages at any cost, mandatory celibacy, secretive sexual behaviors, using people, pedophilia, and homophobia. Unwillingness to deal forthrightly with sexuality causes some churches to scapegoat persons who are gay or lesbian, oppressing them with all the unresolved sexual shame and guilt of Christendom.
Churches usurp power by convincing people that the church has an exclusive franchise on revelation and salvation. The church bestows its approval on people who conform. Twin addictions - the members' addiction to security and the church leaders' addiction to power - set up ideal conditions for exploitation to occur. Having lost identity as autonomous persons within the institution, members look to religious authorities for answers and for permission to act.
Hoffman calls adults to mature co-responsibility within existing or new communities of faith. She provides examples of letters of confrontation and a plan for recovery for persons in codependent communities. Although the majority of her examples are drawn from the Catholic church, her insights are relevant to Protestant churches as well.
RONALD ENROTH delineates guidelines for discerning abusive or cultic behaviors in churches in his book, Churches That Abuse. Rigid, authoritarian communities are vulnerable to becoming Christian cults. The danger increases if they are organized around a powerful leader who is accountable to no one and who claims direct revelation from God.
In abusive churches, the leader's control over members escalates unchecked to the point where details of the members' lives are dictated and questioning is not tolerated. Bizarre practices may be introduced and accepted, and relationships within the family disrupted. Eventually members surrender their livelihood, their worldly goods, their relationships, their judgment, and often, their health. Isolation reinforces the leader's control. Intimidation, threats, shaming, and brainwashing tactics are frequently employed, making it almost impossible to leave.
An abusive church confers a sense of specialness: a special calling, a mission, a message for a select few, an exclusive way to salvation. However, as Enroth points out, the price is high: Members suffer intolerable inner conflict that can only be resolved by losing themselves. Fear, conflict, and chaos eventually erode the ability to think clearly, to trust one's own perceptions, to act on one's own judgment.
Those who do manage to leave go through a lengthy recovery process similar to that of rape victims and war veterans. Persons who have been spiritually abused are extremely vulnerable while they deal with their sense of loss, relearn how to function in the real world, and try to understand the magnitude and complexity of their experience. Enroth's book is a major contribution to prevention and healing of severe abuse by cultic churches.
When God Becomes a Drug by Father Leo Booth is a valuable, comprehensive handbook that is sure to become a classic in mapping spiritual recovery for persons who have experienced religious addiction or religious abuse. Religious addiction is a progressive disease that is both a cause and a consequence of abuse in God's name. Religious addicts use religion to numb their pain, to feel good about themselves, and to gain power and control. The rigidity, arrogance, judgmentalness, and intolerance of a religious addict are desperate attempts to gain self-worth that was robbed through a shaming theology that defines the person as basically depraved.
Booth makes a distinction between religion as a practice and spirituality as an authentic relationship with God. He lists symptoms of religious addiction, including the inability to question, black-and-white thinking, shame, judgmental attitudes, compulsive praying and church attendance, breakdown of relationships, negative or confused attitudes toward sex, and unrealistic financial contributions. He details steps to recovery, how to do an intervention, and a treatment guide for professionals.
MARIE FORTUNE confronts the disturbing issue of pastor-parishioner sexual misconduct in her ground-breaking book, Is Nothing Sacred? Using a case study involving six women who filed a complaint against their minister, Fortune explains the dynamics of vulnerability, exploitation, secrecy, and institutional self-protection. Ministers who sexually exploit their members are usually not stereotypical sex offenders, but tend to be attractive, gifted, charismatic leaders who elicit loyalty in their followers. They are trusted and they exploit that trust.
Sexual abuse of adults is often misunderstood. It is easier to protect the perpetrator, to safeguard the illusion that ministers are above reproach, and to blame the victim than to understand that the imbalance of power in the pastoral relationship rules out the possibility of consent between equals. Also, a pastor is likely to be consulted during a vulnerable time in a parishioner's life. Sometimes a pastor's attention will be experienced as flattering at first, only to become coercive when the parishioner tries to break it off.
Fortune makes clear the distinctions between consensual sex and professional misconduct. She also offers guidelines for confronting the problem and for an appropriate denominational response. This book is a must for every church library.
Some churches are proponents of physical punishment of children, citing scripture as requiring violent forms of discipline in order to break the child's will and accomplish absolute obedience. Philip Greven traces the historical and religious roots of physical abuse of children in his chilling book, Spare the Child. "The rod" might be used on a child beginning in infancy, for prolonged periods of time in a ritualistic manner, until the crying stops, no matter how long it takes. Injuries are to be expected, but are thought to be nothing in comparison with wrong attitudes and scarred characters in later life.
In extreme cases, physical punishment of children has resulted in permanent injury or death. Patriarchal ownership and absolute authority in ultra-conservative families also increases the possibility of incest. Physical violence against children as an expression of God's love and will is a contemporary issue as well as a historical one.
Spare the Child is a careful, scholarly, and stylistically readable work. I was sickened, however, by rage and grief on behalf of defenseless children, and because of the obvious long-term consequences. Violence begets violence, either turned against the self or turned against others.
All forms of abuse - physical, emotional, and sexual - constitute spiritual abuse when perpetrated by religious authorities or parents, particularly when they abuse in the name of God. The negative effects on their victims' perception of God are devastating and long-lasting. There are controlling, intimidating, self-righteous religious abusers in the Christian fold today. The confusion, anger, and pain of their victims need to be heard and to be healed.
When Christians harm one another, they injure Christ. Jesus' words reverberate through the ages, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)
Elaine V. Emeth was a spiritual guide, retreat leader, and coauthor of The Wholeness Handbook: Care of Body, Mind, and Spirit for Optimal Health (Continuum, 1991). She lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, and was working on a book on the spiritual issues in healing childhood trauma when this article appeared.
Churches That Abuse. By Ronald M. Enroth. Zondervan, 1992. $15.99 (cloth).
The Codependent Church. By Virginia Curran Hoffman. Crossroad, 1991. $12.95 (paper).
Is Nothing Sacred? By Marie M. Fortune. Harper and Row, 1989. $17.95 (cloth); $10.00 (paper).
Spare the Child. By Philip Greven. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. $22.95 (cloth).
When God Becomes a Drug. By Father Leo Booth. Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1991. $18.95 (cloth).
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