Religious manipulation in the church….

M has (unfortunately) some experience with spiritual abuse in “churches”. (note the air quotes!) You have heard a small piece of that in a Podcast, but unfortunately that was not the only time. Something that appeared to be a house of God was not.

And last week I talked to John. John lives in a different country, in a different culture than ours, but was spiritually shaken because some things had happened in the church he attended. He described what was happening, and all the red flags came up in my mind, I recognized things… that weren’t right. What he described was spiritual abuse in his church. Very subtle at first glance, but if you looked a little further… there was no escaping it. Something was going VERY wrong there, and John was the victim of something terrible. So, what is spiritual abuse in a church and how to recognize is? I can use plenty of words, but why do that when somebody else explained it way better than I can ever do. Watch the video below:

Spiritual abuse in a church is not something to be taken lightly, and (unfortunately) it should be a topic that needs to be discussed. If the subject is not discussed, let alone not allowed to be discussed (because we all love each other anyway, don’t sow divisions in my church blah blah) that is a terrible sign…. We are all sinners, says the Bible, and if there is sin in the church it should be able to be addressed. If not: another HUGE red flag….

There is a study done aimed to ascertain the percentage of adults living in the United States who have experienced religious trauma (RT) and what percentage presently suffer from RT symptoms now. After compiling data from 1,581 adults living in the United States, this study concludes it is likely that around one-third (27‒33%) of U.S. adults (conservatively) have experienced religious trauma at some point in their life. Wow. So yes, we need to talk about it. Sadly….. 🙁

There are more different ways that spiritual abuse takes place / can take place in a church. These are just a few and I want to encourage you, if you find yourself in this situation you should consider getting out of that situation. But before you do, I highly recommend that you pray how you can confront that leader about this wrong behavior. Those leaders may have huge blind spots and may not even realize that they are letting their pride lead them and that they are abusing their authority by controlling, manipulating and dominating. I pray for you that you have the courage to fight that and get out of it.

And if you are a church, worship, spiritual leader, elder, reading this and this text touches you, I want to pray that you take that to God and strongly reconsider how you are, your church, and whether you should lead people…. And whether you are the shepherd as God intended.