Christian Weeds in the Garden of Love Traumatically Choking Beauty

Was there a cultural shift in Christianity in the 80’s? Did this shift hurt women, queer people, abuse victims, and children? Is it time to have a conversation about it? Yes.

This is the beginning of a limited series about Religious Trauma, mostly at the hands of Christianity. A lot of you did not grow up in church culture. Most of the material on this topic is either meant for the echo chamber or paints a picture too simplistically leaving this important conversation lost as it is used as a prop for a ‘gotcha’ moment against the most extreme of Christians.

In this first installment I want to give a very high level view of what Religious Trauma is. Most of what I am saying is from three articles published by CBT Today (CBT is an acronym for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).

RTS (Religious Trauma Syndrome) is not in the DSM or part of the ICD9 at this time, but it is growing in respected peer reviewed journals and gaining adoption by licensed mental health practitioners. RTS is a trauma response to 2 different series of events. The first is prolonged abuse and indoctrination by a religious community. The second is a trauma response to leaving a controlling and abusing religious community.

Some Common Experiences

Normal childhood and adult social development are stunted and suppressed. This affects the ability to have normal and healthy cognitive, social, and emotional growth. With dysfunctional beliefs and restriction of independent thought people experience damage to their ability to process information intellectually and emotionally.

In an enforced hierarchy the knowledge you have has to be imparted to you by deities and religious leaders. Self is not to be trusted as self is sinful and unworthy and untrustworthy. Outside data is considered to be from “the world” and may be satanically influenced designed with misinformation to tempt you away from ‘truth’.

In Christianity there was a shift in the 80’s. There began in many churches a stronger emphasis on patriarchal control along with encouraged physical and emotional abuse to children and wives and an alarming rate of sexual abuse and manipulation in which victims are blamed and shamed while predators are enabled.

Effect and Symptoms

On the emotional front victims struggle with loss of meaning as they experience difficulties with pleasure. Along with that is also untreated depression and anxiety with unhealthy expressions of anger and grief.

On the social front there’s a common limited social network with intense social awkwardness. There is often a delay in developmental abilities that affects task management. And healthy sexual views and enjoyment of sex will be difficult for many.

The cultural impact is sometimes seen in the comments of our articles. Some who comment on Gen X Watch articles relating to pop culture were in this subculture I am writing about. There is, in many cases, a fundamental lack of experience and understanding with the secular world. These gaps of understanding of evolution, art, music, pop culture, science and history are more than just not knowing. This fish out of water feeling can lead to isolation and create a difficulty belonging and foster an environment of disinformation and misinformation that can unintentionally have the person harm others.

This is the tip of the iceberg super high level overview. Get ready to hop in my time machine as we speak to what this looks like.

Between 2008 and 2013 I was a senior pastor of my own church in the Chicago area. During that time I would evolve a little and my career would advance.

I would move into a progressive expression of Christianity that was more accepting and affirming to queer people and women’s rights, but was still toxic. I thought I was the antidote and I was a leader. In that time I became the Midwest director of my denomination and was a local leader for the local clergy alliance, a group called the Outlaw Preachers, and something called the Emergent Church Movement.

I was speaking in venues across the U.S. and collaborating with well known Christian speakers and authors and theologians. We thought we were changing the world. We were deluded.

During that time I received a call from a woman I have known in youth group culture since we were 16. Her and her husband were attending the church I used to be involved with. It was the church I was raped in by a youth leader, molested by a music minister, and served my first assignment as a youth minister in. It was also the church I was attending when I felt the call of ministry.

This was, and still is, a toxic church.

The Problem

Her, her husband, and some friends were seeing deep problems in the church culture and leadership. They had been meeting in secret with other congregants about options. Change the culture there? Leave? Even though they had positions of responsibility and authority in the church, the meetings had to be done in secret as there would be repercussions if these thoughts were known.

I was asked to come to one of the meetings, listen, and give any insights or opinions I had. In my mind I thought I was being invited to a meeting where we would talk about weighing pros and cons of administrative change or exit strategies for personal well being.

What actually happened was a dystopian trigger fest of fuckery conducted by men who imagined themselves to be Commanders in Margaret Atwood’s worst nightmares set in Gilead.

I walked into the living room of a home of one of the disenfranchised and was immediately on guard. My friend and her husband did not know it but I knew some of the other adults in the room.

One was a wife who was meeting with an org I was part of that helped women plan their escape from abusive marriages. She had been forced into having children she did not want to have by her controlling husband. Sex was not always optional for her but a biblical duty to her husband.

I had been away from the culture of the Assemblies of God for over a decade. I was suddenly reminded of how twisted it was. This is not a cult in a commune in a small rural area. This is the largest mainstream charismatic evangelical denomination in the U.S. that currently has more than 60 million members. Familiar feelings of dread and fear came over me.

I cannot remember most of the details of the meeting because the triggers clouded it. There was one point I felt the meeting was taking a dark turn about the toxicity of the pastor’s wife into general recriminations against women in leadership and women who suffer mental illness. I spoke of Jesus’ compassion to a woman about to be stoned to death for adultery. At risk to his own life, according to the Bible, he stopped a mob of men from stoning her to death by standing by her and challenging them to only throw a rock if they are without sin.

One of the husband’s emphasis was only on one part of the story. Jesus telling the women to sin no more. At some point I realized we were in a strange dominance dance in a theological pissing match. I backed down in the hopes we could have a productive conversation about the issue at hand. That was not going to happen.

Jezebel

Shortly after that interaction, conversation went back to the toxic pastor’s wife. One of the men looked very thoughtfully and intellectual as he rubbed his chin and said, “She has the Jezebel spirit in her.” The other men were suddenly terrifying caricatures of the Commanders in the book “The Handmaid’s Tale” as they thoughtfully agreed as if a great mystery had been unveiled. You could almost see them all in suits in an ornate study with a large fireplace as the discussions transitioned into spiritual warfare and demons as opposed to a toxic woman who was diagnosed as bi polar that was enabled by her religion to declare herself healed and stop taking medication and seeing a therapist.

Triggers and Time Travel

The rest of the conversation was lost in the shadows of my trigger.

Jezebel Spirit.

It was no longer 2010-ish and I was no longer present in that room.

Jezebel Spirit.

Cassie.

Trauma.

Jezebel Spirit!

I was no longer in the home. It was no longer the 21st century. It was the 80’s and I was in a church office with a nationally known pastor, another pastor, and the powerful rapist of my girlfriend, Cassie.

(from part 2 of the Fem Friday Cassie Trilogy)

The young adult pastor reminded me of the Apostle Paul’s words in the bible, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” He then told me that this is spiritual warfare and God had great plans for me. And Satan would use anything in his power to take all of that away from me. I needed to guard my heart and embrace the truth of the Holy Spirit. He reminded me that I have not been in any of the youth or young adult stuff in a long time.

Satan was using a woman with a Jezebel spirit to tempt me away from God. He told me that young woman I was dating was being used by the devil to try to tempt me from God the same way she tried to tempt Daniel. We were the victims. I should not be yoked with a non believer because God has a Godly woman for me and a perfect plan.

He said he, the senior pastor, and Cassie’s rapist had intercessory prayer for me and it was time for me to make a decision. God’s perfect plan or the temptress. They said I had to make a choice, now.

Then I am in a hospital screaming Cassie’s name as she is taken off to a mental institution and police officers are preventing me from being with her.

We were 18. Children. There were no demons, she was not part of a satanic plot to drive me away from God. She was a victim and we were kids.

After losing her I would feel lost and feel like I needed God’s comfort because that was the trauma response I had been conditioned to. I could no longer go the church the office scene happened in. The church I had attended before that and had been molested in had a new youth pastor. Perhaps I could seek refuge there.

The new youth pastor offered me a clean slate, acceptance, and belonging. My rapist was still there, but I could navigate around him and keep my mouth shut this time. I needed a space to belong, to find hope. I would comply.

One day while working at Silverman’s, a men’s clothing store in the mall, in the Summer of 1989 the youth pastor came to see me at work. He said he was doing some shopping and wondered if he could buy me lunch. I asked my assistant manager if I could take my lunch, she said yes.

This was new and I felt special. He asked me how things were going and I had told him that the regional manager at Silverman’s had met with me yesterday and interviewed me to be an assistant manager trainee! Silverman’s felt I was showing great engagement with customers, natural leadership ability at work, and a great acumen for sales. I was excited about the possibility of a career and tuition reimbursement to go to junior college. But I held back my broken heart for the lost love of Cassie. I was trying to move forward while burying the pain.

He told me this was exactly why he wanted to talk to me.

“Pat,” he said, “God gave you natural gifts and even they can see it. And I believe God has a great purpose in your life.” Affirmation! Gifts! Purpose! This was amazing. This was what I needed. Then he continued.

“Which is why it would break my heart to be shopping in this mall ten years from now and seeing you working a menial retail job when you can be so much more! There’s a teen and young adult camp in southern Illinois. A camp like this helped me find the direction God had for my life years ago. If you say yes, I’ll pay for it. I already told them about you and they would make sure you’re not lost in the crowd. What do you say?”

I said yes and right after our lunch I requested the time off work. God had a plan for me and a pastor told me I was special! I made the right decision by coming back to that church. It must have been the Holy Spirit guiding my heart and my path. That is what we were taught.

Believing that Cassie happened for a reason made me feel that everything that happened to her was part of God’s perfect plan and we would both be guided to better lives in the refining fire of trials and tribulations. Yes, that is what I was programmed to think. That is how more Christians that you realize believe about traumatic events. They teach children this.

In a few weeks I would be tortured, but believe that I was called into ministry.

My bag was packed and I was ready for youth camp. I remember the bus ride with other teens and young adults that took hours to get to a Christian owned camp site with a lake, cabins, trails, and even ruins of what looked like a castle. In my bag was cigarettes and pain killers that I had become addicted to after I lost Cassie. In the right dosage they not only took away physical pain, but emotional pain. Not completely, but it took the edge off enough to get through the day.

During registration an adult woman asked me about the smell of cigarettes on my clothing. I told her I lived in a house with smokers hoping that would be enough. It wasn’t. Her and a man escorted me into a room and inspected my bag. They found the pills and the cigs. They told me it was okay to tell them the truth.

I told them that I was a smoker and I took the pills to feel better. They asked me what I wanted to feel better from. I told them I had a girlfriend who went to mental hospital and her aunt wouldn’t let us see each other anymore.

They asked me how I would feel about God delivering me from that pain and my addictions. I told them I would like that.

They laid their hands on me and prayed over me aloud asking God to guide my path and heal and deliver me from addiction and pain into His perfect love. They then told Satan and his demons that they were bound by the name of Jesus to leave me alone while God forms and shapes me into the perfect plan laid out for me.

I was told that I would be in a small cabin away from the other teens and young adults. I would be able to join them for missions work detail and chapel services. But this would be a time of intense prayer and fasting for me with counselors taking shifts to ensure I was never alone and I would pray and fast constantly.

For a week I would only be allowed water with a cup of broth every day. Missions work detail was hard labor in unsafe working conditions clearing an overgrown brush area that was going to be a site for a new large church construction project. My constant time of prayer would involve me being woken up often so I could pray in a prone position on my knees with my face on the ground. If I feel asleep I would feel a cane strike me or a hard shove me to wake me to keep praying.

This was god’s love to help me be cured from addiction and pain.

But let’s look at what it really was. Addiction withdrawal, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, starvation, and hard labor in a weakened state while isolated from others. This was torture. It was brainwashing.

Is it any wonder that a week later I would be in the cabin praying in strange tongues of languages that did not exist and believe I was literally hearing God’s voice telling me to go to Bible College and become a minister?

It was that revelation that would earn me a meal and brought up to a stage in front of the other teens and young adults to be celebrated for my dedication to prayer, fasting, and hearing God’s call to be the most special among them as I move on to a path of a minister and a shepherd of men.

A reward for compliance after torture.

If you were not a part of this mainstream expression of Christianity in the 80’s and 90’s this may seem fantastic and extreme. But I know countless other survivors who escaped this culture. There are also countless people I know who are still in it. Today it is even worse, but this was the beginning of the new era.

We were taught everything in secular culture was demonic and we were on a mission to save people from eternal damnation and hell. Invisible angels and demons were everywhere. Satan was out to consume us. The end of time was soon approaching and the antichrist was soon to rise. The liberal agenda was part of that. Abortion, queerness, women’s equality were a threat to society and it toppled other empires. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians all fell accepting these ideas.

Scientist lied to us and were out to diminish god by teaching evolution instead of an earth that was 6,000 years old. Hospitals and doctors and therapy? Pray for god to heal and deliver you from the demons first! Can’t find a good parking spot? Fucking pray and give the glory to God when you get a good spot. Problems in your life? A test from God or opportunity to learn of hidden sin.

Oh, and the music that gives you peace, the distractions and community you find playing D&D and other games and even hobbies and passions like photography? All demonic idols to keep you from god.

This is what religious trauma is. It took decades away from me. Even after I finally left that world it changed me. It almost killed me.

I am not the only one. We are many and the wounds are deep.

I hope you will continue reading on Wednesdays while this limited series tells the stories.

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