After writing a blog post twice or three times a week for the past three months, I realised that there was a limit to the material that I could pull out of my memory to place in front of those who follow the blog. So from this point on my blogs will change direction somewhat. The material that I will be sharing will more likely refer directly to material on my book-shelves and especially to ideas that I have found helpful at some point in the past. Thus the reader of the blog will be travelling with me on a journey as I look back to books and ideas that I have found useful over the years. I hope my readers will want to travel on this journey that will help all of us to understand better the phenomenon that we call abusive religion.
One of the problems of trying to write a book on abusive fundamentalism as I did some 15 years ago, was getting a handle on the subject matter. There were of course lots of books on fundamentalism but they took a whole variety of approaches that varied from the biblical to the theological , from the psychological to the political. It was with some relief that I found a particular book which for the first time gave me a place on which to stand and find an overall perspective from which to look at the whole topic. The book was entitled Righteous Religion: Unmasking the illusions of Fundamentalism and Authoritarian Catholicism by Kathleen Ritter and Craig O’Neill. Part of the attraction of the book was that it spoke about psychological themes without becoming too technical. This tendency of books about psychology to be extremely technical has been something which has constantly plagued my attempts to understand the dynamics of cultic churches. This book on the other hand had the ability to say something quite profound with no danger that the reader, new to psychology, would be overwhelmed by the jargon.
The thesis of the book is a deceptively simple one which can be outlined in the space of a single blog post. The first principle of the book is that attendance at a church of whatever kind has the attraction of reactivating in the individual the experience of belonging to a family. Everyone has such a desire for the safety and security of a human family built into the genes. A church can or should provide for its members the various positive aspects of the birth family, including safety, acceptance, support and meaning. The parallels between the needs of a young child in a family and that those of an adult belonging to a church are obviously far from exact but the same basic needs are there in both stages of human growth.
Righteous Religion then distinguishes between the healthy family and the toxic one. At the risk of over-simplification, the normal family is seen as one where the love offered is unconditional. However good or bad the child is, the parent never ceases to love the child without limit. The child grows up with that security built into their awareness. Even though misbehaviour has to be dealt with the child is never allowed to doubt that the parents’ love is solid and dependable. In contrast to such a family there are other families where the message given is different. We call the love in these families conditional love. Any affection offered comes with subtle strings attached. The message is given ‘I will show you care and affection if….’ The conditions that are laid down normally concern the parents’ status and well-being. ‘I will love you if you bring credit to this family by your achievements and your efforts’. This most damaging form of conditional love is one which places on the child the need to succeed, to make the parents proud. If for any reason success is not achieved the child is made to feel worthless as a human being both for his/her failure at the task but also for failing to receive adequate affection and love from the people he is dependent on. The child is doubly betrayed by this toxic environment.
Ritter and O’Neill present the authoritarian church as being the equivalent to the toxic family that only cares when its expectations are met. Acceptance and approval are only handed out to those who believe the right things, give sufficiently of their means and generally conform to the norms of the group. Because the church has often succeeded in activating quite powerful mechanisms of need, these toxic churches are able to continue to exercise a powerful controlling and ultimately harmful hold over individuals. Dissent is not tolerated. The member of an abusive church or cult will be reluctant to leave the group in the same way that the abused child will find it hard to let go of the toxic family. Belonging is a stronger instinct even than the desire to avoid harm and abuse.
I have spoken in a previous blog post about the power of induced fear. In the toxic family the child lives with the threat of being cast out into a nothingness, losing any familiarity that he has known, the sheer terror of being alone. The toxic church has a similar trump card. It deals in the currency not only of belonging but also claims to have the power to threaten its members with the terrors of being lost for all eternity, in a place apart from God, a place of eternal torment. No doubt thinking about the possibility of hell evokes childhood memories of separation and terror in the adult. This will always be a powerful tool of control.
Using the model of the church as a family is useful up to a point. In the last resort it is a useful metaphor and the limitations of linking the two will become apparent quite quickly if the metaphor is worked too hard. But Righteous Religion did help me at an early stage in my reading grasp one aspect of the way that one can assess the healthy and the unhealthy in church life. It also helped me to understand how the vulnerabilities of people are taken advantage of and made the tools of control. Frightening people into the Kingdom may make for ‘successful’ and full churches but ultimately such churches cannot necessarily be said to be healthy. The important question that has to be asked of any church congregation is whether it is healthy. By healthy we mean that the people have the opportunity to grow, feel affirmed, love and be loved as well as be free from fear. The same questions can also be asked of a human family. Most of us know what makes for a healthy environment for children to grow up in. The least we can ask for members of our church families that they are allowed to exist with the same underlying values of acceptance, tolerance, freedom to think and be heard. Part of the glory of a human family is that children are normally allowed to grow up different in character and ability. Why on earth should we expect the members of the church acquire a monotonous similarity of character and belief with one another? Long may difference and even disagreement flourish in the church just as it does in the human family!
Hmm. I’m familiar with the familial blackmail, “I will only really love you if you pass your “A” levels.” But I’m left wondering what on earth I have to do to make the church love me! Competence doesn’t work, I’m perfectly competent, and I know of others who are not who have done well. I’m intelligent and well educated, and again I know of others less so who get on fine. In fact I’ve rather come to the conclusion that some people prefer those who aren’t too clever. Similar theology to those in power, yes, but as they never talk to me, how would they know? I know of one person I’m positive got the job because a certain person fancied them. Well, there’s no accounting for taste! But there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about that! At least if someone sets you a target (do well in this exam) you can try to achieve it. If there is absolutely no hint as to what you are supposed to do, you’re just left floundering. I’ve twice been told to come back after a specific length of time, two years in each case. When I did, I was not rewarded with the second chance I had been promised. It was plain the people concerned were simply irritated, the promise had been made insincerely to get rid of me, was promptly forgotten, and therefore broken. Twice. Where do you go from there?
Hi English Athena. I find your post profoundly disturbing. Without your being more specific, I can’t tell quite what you’re describing, though it seems to have some resemblances to some things I’ve known. But isn’t this the whole problem Stephen is outlining: “what on earth I have to do to make the church love me!” If you feel you have to do things to make them love you, then unconditional love isn’t there.
Of course in reality any church is composed of sinful humans and individuals at different places on their journeys, so it would be unrealistic to expect total unconditional love from everyone all the time. Yet I think we need to feel there is something of that there in the culture, and that we experience it some of the time with some of the people at least. Is there an alternative possible church available to you?
People can have all kinds of spiritual blindness and prejudices, which mean they will never appreciate the worth of certain others, or not until they’ve moved a long way. It’s very helpful to be clear about that, and not hurt yourself looking for the approval of people who are programmed to withhold it from you.
This post is most helpful to me. It just rings so true. The problem is that some of us seem to be programmed to control by means of withholding love and acceptance, and I do believe all of us need proper “christlike” loving relationships. In a context of right behaviour and grace when we fail.
This is what church is meant to be in my opinion. But we get so hung up on orthodoxy. Whether it is an “evangelical”, “liberal”, or whatever.
English Athina, I think I would want to say that just because a non-abusive church might want to fulfil the role of an accepting, listening group in the model of a ‘good’ family, it does not often achieve this. In fact it is downright difficult to find this model fulfilled in Britain. The book is American and maybe they have better luck there. Meanwhile as a tool of analysis it is still useful because it give us a benchmark through which to compare the degrees of awfulness and those of success in the churches we know. Sadly as most of us who have looked at abusive churches know, there are many churches that play the conditional love model as a means of control. The ones at the other end may be rare indeed and the sort of tricks you recall may be commoner than we think. Let us go on being sensitive to these dynamics as at least we can learn from them.
Yeah, I think they are common. I have also seen these kinds of bullying relationships in various work places (not always my own!). The problem is the vast majority of people say nothing. About anything! Not just abuses (in the broad sense) This places a huge burden upon those who can make a difference to be willing to do so. Because they are going to be few in number.
As a lay minister, I have often had people say to me ‘your job is to point out where people have erred and strayed’. I think that’s where the problem starts. Personally I see myself as a human who is every bit as sinful as any other, and how do you judge others without being hypocritical and/or exercising power in an inappropriate way? To me, it is for God to judge. It is for the rest of us, including those who are in authority in the church, to reflect God’s love to others as best we can manage, which is often not well enough. I know that many would regard this as ‘wishy-washy’.
James. There seem to be various things going on here. If people are urging you to name the ‘guilty’, it may be because they get some sort of frisson from having other people being seen as more wicked than they are. You may be being used as a tool to accomplish this. It is the old projection process. Person A can feel better because his darkness has been dumped on to Person B. It is, I believe, possible to strike a balance between condemning others all the time and never doing it at all. Good preaching about how to inform a conscience will help because ultimately it is the conscience that has to decide if the individual has done wrong. Most people know the difference between right and wrong without too much prompting, one would hope. If consciences do not operate properly you have got a problem. Some abusive churches find it expedient to suppress the normal operation of conscience (eg encouraging lying, suppression of memory of events etc) for their own purposes. The leader (if not involved) can usually do something to check this kind of corruption before it becomes terminal. If you are an ordinary member of such a church and the leaders are initiating it, the exit door is the best place to go.
Thanks Stephen, I didn’t go into detail, but the ‘urging’ that took place was in the context of a discussion by a visiting priest with an evangelical background. My own church, I’m delighted to say, has an enlightened attitude about such things and I’ve certainly not been a victim, but I’ve seen people elsewhere who have.
Rightly or wrongly, I take the view that those who come to our church are by their very presence there more likely to have a conscience and the last thing they need is for me to add to their feelings of guilt. I don’t judge individuals, but as you say, I do preach about what is expected of us in our dealings with other people. I remain amazed that people can read the same New Testament as me and yet reach an opposite conclusion of what Jesus’ teaching is all about.