The present outbreak of covid-19 has been an unremitting tragedy for many families across the world. But there has been, indirectly, one tiny glimmer of new light for an existing group of sick patients -those suffering with chronic fatigue syndrome or ME. What has happened is that a significant number of those recovering from the covid virus have fallen prey to symptoms identical to ME sufferers. This emergence of ME symptoms among this highly studied group of ex-covid patients has helped finally to extinguish the old notion that ME is a psychological complaint, amenable to cognitive therapy. It is beyond doubt a physical post-viral condition. It needs, and is now receiving, the attention of serious researchers every bit as much as for any other physical illness. ME sufferers can no longer be treated as malingerers. This was sometimes their cruel fate until recently. The psychological treatments formerly on offer for ME must have felt wildly inappropriate to patients lying exhausted in bed sometimes in extreme pain and with debilitating muscle weakness.
Covid-19 has had this indirect effect of finally establishing beyond doubt that ME is a genuine physical illness and not something conjured up by the mind. Something similar has also happened in the legal world. Until recently, violence against women (sometimes men) in the home was recognised to exist and offenders were sent to prison because of it. But to prove the offence, the violence had to be physical. There was no understanding in law of other forms of psychological violence behind closed doors. Bullying, gaslighting, harassment, financial control and humiliation did not constitute offences that could be challenged and punished with the weight of the law. In short, nothing could be done unless there were broken bones or black eyes. Once again it was a case of ‘if we can’t see it or define it, it does not exist’. Finally, in 2015 there was introduced into the law of the land the notion of ‘coercion and control’ to describe cases of psychological violence against a partner in the home. Suddenly police and lawyers were permitted to punish a behaviour that had always been there, but not hitherto properly named or recognised.
For the Church there is a similar reticence over the concept of ‘spiritual abuse’. Definitions of this idea are being offered by a variety of writers and researchers, but the Church is still reluctant to commit itself to outlawing any of the range of behaviours that would come into this broad category of description. Physical violence in the church is rare. The case against John Smyth in England and Zimbabwe was exceptional and extraordinary. It goes without saying that his behaviour and that of sexual abusers is clearly against the law of the land and will meet the sanctions of imprisonment when proven. Spiritual abuse is, however, difficult to define. Also, some Christians find the expression offensive since it might suggest that certain practices extracted from Scripture could be harmful. But before we get into the question of objections to the idea, we need to look at some up-to-date Church documents where the reticence for the term is revealed.
A recent attempt by the Church of England to describe the range of abuses which it wants to outlaw, is found in a document published in June 2019. This is the one that provides the guidelines for the Past Cases Review (PCR2) process at present under way. PCR2 is a massively expensive process which hopes to uncover, by examining all church records, a full picture of the abuses which took place in the past but were never dealt with. In the Protocol and Practice guidance, the document states These behaviours may include physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect, discrimination, theft, fraud and financial exploitation. There is no separate mention of spiritual abuse. This would lead one to conclude that Church of England is not yet ready to commit itself to any definition of such an idea. It is thus all too easy for the Church to proceed on the basis that if we have not identified it or named it, then perhaps it does not exist.
It hardly needs saying that if spiritual abuse as a category is left out of the PCR process, one massive area of pain and suffering among victims is going to be ignored. The scrutineers trawling through hundreds of documents in diocesan and central offices are effectively going to be closing their eyes to a dimension of suffering that, for many, is more significant than the physical or the sexual.
What is this spiritual abuse which survivors speak about? There is one recent book by Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphreys which sets out the case for this category of abuse being a reality. They see it as a genuine and acute cause of suffering even if some involved in professional safeguarding, together with many church leaders, would prefer to proceed as though there were no such thing. What is this spiritual abuse which the Church of England authorities are reluctant to accept? Oakley and Humphreys realise that there are problems that make it difficult to offer a watertight definition. The broad description speaks of an abuse event where manipulation, coercion or control take place within a church/spiritual setting. In the book by Alan Wilson and Rosie Harper, there is one memorable turn of phrase which captures the way that human and spiritual facets are sometimes combined. The authors speak of an abusive episode ‘outsourced to God’. An individual is maybe forced to endure a punishment like enduring ostracism from an entire congregation. Perhaps a Christian is forced to do something against their will. Those in charge manage to dress up the unpleasant experience as being an obligation due to God or to the words of Scripture. What are in fact taking place are, in reality, human power games which have become cloaked with the supposed authority of the divine. These obtain their capacity to wound and harm individuals precisely because they appeal to deep seated spiritual beliefs and loyalties held by the victim.
A failure to have any secure or even working definition of this area of harm we call spiritual abuse, weakens the PCR process. The Church has access to a great deal of expertise in this area and this surely is sufficient to produce an interim definition suitable for the ongoing process. It is perhaps fear of theological conflict with those on the powerful conservative fringes of the Church that has created this reticence. Many have become accustomed to exercising ‘spiritual authority’ in ways that easily slide over into abusive practice. These practices would include the physical (biblically ordained!) chastisement of children, dramatic and terrifying exorcisms and so-called conversion therapies practised on members of the gay community. The wide-spread use of fear techniques in ‘biblical’ preaching to encourage conversion and financial giving is also ethically questionable. When a Christian meets such ‘coercion and control’ techniques within a church setting, they should question whether they are encountering spiritual abuse rather than the Christian good news. The use of fear-laden language within church life can quite often be an exercise in bullying abusive power under the guise of bible teaching.
In a letter to a survivor, which I have been shown, a senior safeguarding official promised that a definition of spiritual abuse was under active consideration at the national level. Can I suggest that as long as there is no working statement about spiritual abuse and a determination to stamp it out, it will leave the PCR process half-done. It will also allow the Church of England to keep their eyes averted from the huge range of suffering individuals who have met spiritual abuse in one of its varied expressions. A failure to identify an evil when it comes before you is a serious matter. The medical profession was blind to the pain of ME for decades; the legal profession/courts for a long time refused to acknowledge women emotionally battered by their partners who used the tools of psychological torture. Is the Church going to join in this tradition of wilful blindness by refusing to see the incidence and severity of what we are describing as spiritual abuse?
Thank you Stephen for this excellent article. With the NST consistently saying they wish to ‘hear a range of survivors voices’ it would be good if, in seeking to define, spiritual abuse they asked for survivors help in the matter but it seems, like other areas of their work at the moment, those for whom the issue has the greatest impact will be denied a voice.
Anyone who feels they have suffered spiritual abuse can make representation to PCR2 via their diocesan safeguarding adviser or NSPCC helpline and hopefully by speaking out it will force the church to recognise that spiritual abuse is not only real but devastating.
One of the reasons the medical profession has been slow to recognise genuinely awful conditions, is our cousins in the USA and their insurance industry. Cost, in other words. UK practice tends to follow suit. In short, if you recognise something as wrong you have a duty to stop it, and the cost of putting it right.
Cost also is behind the tardiness in recognising the concept of Spiritual Abuse. I don’t mean cost in purely financial terms, although that will inevitably figure, but because its recognition would mean a huge upheaval in the way church is done. And once you acknowledge what needs to change now, you have a massive caseload of back cases. Some will require putting right.
We’ve discussed endlessly here how abuses have taken place. But how do we define Spiritual Abuse? The wider the definition, the more difficulty there will be in getting recognition for it.
Just by way of trivial example in financial abuse of congregations, is the practice of putting bank notes In the collecting buckets (yes) to “encourage” (shame) people to put more in. I hate this. Others will be quite happy with it.
More serious examples occur in the “prayer ministry”. Repeatedly I’ve heard the announcement that “this is a safe place” and representations that God will heal you. This can be highly damaging. At best it is delusional. Yet the practice is widespread in Charismatic congregations. Boundary violations which would incur immediate disciplinary action if carried out by a professionally registered psychotherapist, are happening routinely.
Again, many would disagree with my brief analysis above, but not so much the people hurt by these church activities.
But here’s the problem: there are many practices which are standard operating procedure in church life. There will be considerable attachment to working like this, and significant resistance to change, never mind the cost. If I’m right about this, we will be proposing removing some of the pastor’s toolkit.
This is an another important area to write on, Stephen, and I’m proposing narrowing down the specific areas of spiritual abuse and calling them out for attention.
You make some good points, Steve.
At Billy Graham’s evangelistic rallies, the ‘counsellors’ (who would lead to Christ those who went forward at the invitation) were always seated among the congregation, dotted about. When Billy invited people to ‘get up out of your seats’ and respond to Christ, the counsellors would go forward. Graham thought that if people saw others responding (as they thought) it would help motivate them to go forward also. It worked.
Worse were those evangelists who told everyone to bow their head and close their eyes while those responding to Christ put up their hands. In some cases they would keep saying, ‘Thank you, I see that hand’ when no one had their hand up. It gave them a reputation as an effective evangelist and kept the donations coming in, but didn’t do much to build the kingdom of God.
After half a lifetime among a certain kind of evangelical and charismatics, I developed a distinct allergy to emotional and psychological manipulation. But where do we draw the line between manipulation and effective technique?
Thanks Janet. I do feel we need to examine the tension between gifting and integrity of character. Where we see gifted people, those with a talent for “making things happen” in an assembly, we immediately start turning a blind eye to character flaws.
Many a large “successful” church/movement has been seriously derailed by failing to monitor this tension. Eg Willow Creek, New Wine.
Most organisations have growth as a goal. In business this is often the specific responsibility of the sales department. I’ve worked in sales (it was called “business development”) and there are indeed many ethical challenges. I was once told: “you’ll never make a good salesman, because you’re not a very good liar”.
However I do believe there are wholesome ways of promoting the gospel. In commercial terms I believe people actually want to “buy”. In religious terms I believe people still want to believe in a god despite some of our best efforts to put them off.
Many thanks, Steve.
Since in the UK it is the government that is, generally, the insurer of first and last resort, is the reluctance of health professionals to recognise non-visible (mental and neurological conditions) not a function of pressure being placed by the Treasury upon the DHSC, PHE, NICE and, therefore, upon hospital and primary care trusts, to resist new bases for expenditure? The NHS was strongly rationed from the outset (I will not go into the history); GPs are, increasingly, the Treasury’s first line of defence. New conditions will therefore be recognised and treated only where a sufficient head of political steam has built up which forces the system to overcome its innate niggardliness out of sheer embarrassment.
Who, then, is the culprit? Why ourselves! Whilst I am not an owner occupier myself, I know enough of them to be aware that most of them will not accept higher taxes, either on their incomes or their unearned capital gains (theft from the next generation), even as they whine about inadequate social services.
The government has been bludgeoned by the crisis into recognising that spending on the NHS has to increase (yet incredibly, few, if any, promises have been made with respect to social care, despite it being in the eye of the storm). The DHSC faces formidable obstacles towards increased spending: (i) the presumption that the wave of debt must be redeemed and quickly (though not of course by those best able to pay); (ii) resistance to higher taxation (many Tory backbenchers will fight this, and a weakened Johnson does not have enough ‘red Tories’ behind him); and, above, all (iii) the view that the only acceptable spending in a quasi-war economy is for investment in profit generating built capital, plant and machinery – spending on human welfare being deemed to be a form of financial dissipation (which it is, after a fashion).
Moreover, conditions for all forms of credit and insurance are tightening. Banks and insurers alike have become painfully aware of their vulnerabilities. Credit is liable to be rationed; policyholders will pay higher premiums and loss adjusters will be more aggressive; governments will impose ‘financial repression’ (a combination of higher prices and lower interest rates in order to redeem debts). All this will exacerbate the tendency to redistribute capital from the poor to the rich. Naturally, the Church has nothing to say about any of this.
We should not therefore presume that a major crisis will be sufficient to overbear existing tendencies to fiscal restraint. Nothing in the international political economy has changed: surplus countries are continuing to pile up ever greater balances, stiffing debtors (like the UK) in the process. Private creditors will still want their pound of flesh, and will threaten bond strikes, if they are not propitiated.
Our national motto is not so much honi soit qui mal y pense as ‘I’m alright, Jack’.
James
To continue, the Church is complicit in the rent seeking that is the central feature of our political economy.
How? Although the precise composition of the Commissioners’ investments are unknown, they are ‘long’ on global equities and are thick with private equity. PE has flourished in recent years by dint of high yield asset classes, typically bonds issued by developing countries with high coupon payments (very few asset classes these days generate significant yields). Ask yourself when there is the next developing country debt crisis whether you can really be confident that the Commissioners do not have any interest, whether direct or indirect (via their private equity portfolio, in the outcome.
The reluctance to recognise ‘novel’ modes of abuse, the psychological damage and, therefore, the potential liability which results, is all part of the wider defensive strategy played by the Church as a whole in an increasingly hostile political environment: (i) maximise income; and (ii) minimise outlays (unless they are investments which are liable to generate returns). Survivors are a sunk, dead, cost – a write-off. The nuisance value they represent is not proportionate to the risk of admitting liability and its implications for the future.
The authorities will always say that the concept of spiritual abuse is malleable and incapable of plausible definition. How can any agency be expected to insure against something so diffuse, so variegated, so vague? Moreover, to query the manner in which a church performs its tasks in this way risks exposing the wider question: what if most collective religious activities are an intrinsically manipulative species of thought control and are, as such, ipso facto abusive? It is the fact that religion *is* a form of control which helps to explain why it is often so unpopular these days.
The Church might make concessions with respect to frauds or sexual abuse committed by its members, but I suspect that it will be anxious to fight expansive definitions of spiritual abuse, using ‘floodgates’ arguments.
Thanks Froghole. We can’t necessarily right the wrongs of the whole system, but we can address what’s right in front of us individually.
We can give of what we have, be it money or ability or time, to others. Our offerings may not always be appreciated, but sometimes that’s all we can do.
To address the over broad “Spiritual Abuse” in our midst will be an iterative process. We can start with specific areas we care about, and go from there.
In the way the Established Church manages its money, many of the concepts are opaque to a majority of the people. I must admit it’s an area that fascinates me, but it’s a lot of work to translate the subject into English and it does impinge on this area.
To me, there are secular equivalents. So in secular life, we now have the concept of corporate responsibility, which to us is institutional sin. In secular life courts will recognise the idea of betrayal of trust, as in by a teacher or doctor. I’m not necessarily talking about sex abuse here. So to a degree, that is what spiritual abuse is, all kinds of bad behaviour which happens in a church context. That would be a start. The church is of course behind the Times here!
Not Times, just times!
Thank you for the blog Stephen and all the comments.
It seems as if coercion has always been a part of religion but has never been recognised or punished. This is a worrying form of control which is prevalent in a few churches with I imagine, poor, desperate leaders. It would be difficult to find but general church practices need tightening up.
Perhaps the genuine, prayerful sowing of seeds, albeit on rocky or fertile soil is the work of the best leaders.