I recently spoke at the Restore conference in Chicago where around 200 attendees gathered to hear speakers share their expertise related to spiritual abuse in the church, but equally and arguably more impactfully to meet other survivors in person in order to find healing in sharing stories together. There were speakers such as Dr. Wade Mullen, author of the book “Something’s Not Right,” which gave many spiritual and psychological abuse survivors, including me, the language to help us define our abuse. There were others such as Dr. Phil Monroe, a psychologist and trauma expert, Naghmeh Panahi, an abuse survivor whose story made global news, and Lori Anne Thompson whose story of abuse by a world-famous apologist is still covered by an NDA.
The speakers were insightful, impactful, and spoke directly to each survivor and advocate, and yet it was the fireside conversations with survivors staying at the Sonesta hotel, the lunch conversations in the Judson University Cafeteria with advocates, the meeting people who have DMed me on Twitter over coffee in the lobby, and deep conversations in the speaker lounge with survivors who were also speakers that are what impacted me the most.
The stage is powerful, enlightening, and insightful, but if it is just a stage, it is empty. My spiritual abuse occurred by a couple of celebrity pastors whose stage personas charm, enthrall and endear, but the green room conversations and 1:1s in their offices are a truer picture of who they are and the impact they have. I have little ability to be captivated by speakers anymore based on how prominent of a crowd they draw. Once you have seen behind the curtain of someone whose church has 56,000 members, but whose abuse has caused trauma in individuals and families that may far exceed that number, you can’t fall for the show anymore.
Abuse is never contained to just the individual harmed one-on-one. Instead, it seeps into the lives of relationships and communities in incalculable ways like a contagion that can’t be tracked. It causes many to be unwell, and its effects aren’t easily healed. Much like COVID, abuse gets out of control quickly. You can deny it all you want, but while you are in denial, it’s busy spreading and taking people out one by one.
“Abuse is never contained to just the individual harmed one-on-one.”
Restore was a space to speak freely with others who, without having to say much, just knew. For, although abuse takes various forms from emotional, verbal, sexual, psychological, physical, financial, narcissistic, or labor abuse, the one that we all had in common at this conference was the conversation about spiritual abuse. It was in that conversation that although the details may change, the pattern was the same.
If you or someone you know is a victim-survivor of spiritual abuse, please center their story. Listen to them as many times as it takes. Bring them meals. Pay for their therapy. Offer to help them with logistics in the first year as trauma inhibits the ability to initiate. Encourage them to do self-care practices that support their body's healing process by shaking it off (literally), curling up by a fireplace with a cozy blanket, or sitting by the ocean. The body really does keep the score, and trauma healing takes time and effort- especially when so many who experience spiritual abuse by church leaders are bombarded by the Forgiveness Monitoring Committee. The spiritual abuse from church leaders is often followed by retraumatization and mobbing by those from the faith community who take it upon themselves to craft a narrative that restores an appearance of harmony so that those who are experiencing the uncomfortable brief moment of cognitive dissonance can return to the much more comfortable faux reality of betrayal blindness where their celebrity pastor or church leader is one they can continue to worship once again.
“The body really does keep the score, and trauma healing takes time and effort- especially when so many who experience spiritual abuse by church leaders are bombarded by the Forgiveness Monitoring Committee.”
A sacrifice has been made, and a person labeled “collateral damage,” must be observed until that sacrificial lamb forgives the abuser. That is why the Forgiveness Monitoring Committee keeps watch and keeps pestering the victim-survivor to forgive because they know deep down that the abuser will not do the right thing at the right time- which is to repent. So their only hope is that the victim will forgive, and just as the abuser used any means necessary to get what he wanted, those who have been discipled in his narcissistic ways will too because after all, if there’s anything spiritually abusive environments all agree upon, it’s that the ends justify the means.
Therefore, it is imperative that to find true restoration, those of us who are co-healers do the opposite. Instead of the Forgiveness Monitoring Committee, we need the Predator Accountability Committee. Instead of the incongruence of who we are on stage and who we are in the green room, we need to be people who reject masking and persona in favor of congruence and character formation. Most of all, we need to stop viewing image bearers of God as “collateral damage,” for a grandiose cause of church “growth” that only means butts in seats, baptisms, bucks, and buildings. We need to reject that the ends justify the means, and embrace that each child of God is worthy of care in the beginning, the end, and especially in the inbetween.