He hadn’t said much that night. The other two had played the bad cop/good cop routine on me, while he sat at the other end of the table listening. R had led the meeting, file folder and notepad in front of him like the police detective he was, laying out the evidence against me, while K had asked questions in a slightly more gentle manner.
The air in the church basement was thick with fear, and not mine either. I was filled with anger. How dare they call me before them again as if I were a criminal on trial? How dare they try to turn my husband against me?
Before we had descended the stairs, I had pulled Scott aside. “You have my back, right? I need to know before I go into this that you are on my side.” I was shaking, eyes full of angry tears, demanding an answer.
“Joy, of course I’m on your side. But Joy, how can you be so defiant? I’d be peeing my pants if it were me. But you are angry and ready to fight. Please try to calm down.”
Now we sat at the long white plastic table, the three church elders on one side, Scott at the end, and me on the other side. Just like the interrogations on tv, but without any slamming fists or physical torture.
G finally spoke. “You wrote a post criticizing my seminary last week.”
I looked at him. “You mean the post about the conference?”
“Yes. That’s led and hosted by my seminary. Do not criticize them.” I hadn’t seen him angry before, but he was angry now.
I repeated it, hoping they would hear just how ludicrous this was. “You are telling me not to critique a conference that your seminary is connected to… on my own blog?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
It was like having the door slammed shut in my face. They wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t try to understand or see things any other way. There was no reasoning with them. There was no compromise possible. They were right, the arbiters and gate-keepers of Truth, and I was wrong. For months I had felt like they saw me as poison or cancer, but I had dismissed those impressions as paranoid. Now I knew it for sure. They had to shut me down or get rid of me.
John wrote in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
They didn’t love me. They couldn’t love me, because they were afraid of me.
I walked out of that meeting with the only resolution possible in that circumstance: I took myself out of the church membership. To remain required me to affirm theological statements which I could not honestly affirm. To remain required me to put myself under the authority of fallible men who thought they were infallible and who believed they had authority over every aspect of my life, including my personal blog and Facebook. To remain meant subjecting myself to church discipline for daring to express my doubts and questions about faith and church and celebrity pastors.
Even though I was no longer a member, I still attended that church for several more months. I couldn’t bring myself to leave without the rest of my family, and my husband wasn’t ready to consider it a lost cause. They barely looked at me after that, I wasn’t asked to help in any way (except on occasion in the nursery – apparently I couldn’t lead the babies astray), and they didn’t call me into any more meetings. I was no longer their responsibility. They had washed their hands of me. I was a problem that they had gotten rid of.
We finally left, along with several other families, after they took the intimidation, false accusations, manipulation, and fear to whole new levels with a dear friend of ours who dared ask questions to a man who had given an obscenely inaccurate and unscientific presentation on the age of the earth to the church.
That was two years ago, but I’m still trying to recover from the experience. This space, this safe place to be honest about our pain and our questions? I did my best to make it safe for you, while at the same time knowing that it wasn’t safe for me at all. To be completely honest, it still doesn’t feel safe for me. Every time I receive an email or letter or phone call from someone at our new church, my stomach knots and I wonder if it’s happening again. I don’t broadcast that I have a blog to people I meet in my kids’ schools or at church or in our community. I have only friended one person from our new church on Facebook.
I don’t want to be afraid to be who I am. I don’t want to keep everyone at arm’s length. I can’t love you if I don’t know you, and that only happens when I let you get to know me too. The irony that I’m the one who wrote for a year about living and writing life unmasked, about not pretending to be something we’re not, is not lost on me. But I have been hurt. The scars are still fresh and they still ache. And I’m a real person. I don’t want to experience that again if I can help it. So I wear my armor, I skirt around topics I would have jumped into before, and I try to regain health and strength even as I wait for the hammer to fall again.
I’ve made some tentative steps towards being more transparent again, and so far I’ve been met with genuine love and acceptance. I can tell that the people we are getting to know today genuinely care about us, and even though we all know we disagree on politics and the practical outworkings of faith, they are not afraid of diversity. That is the key, I think: love, not fear.
As I work to overcome the deadening effects of spiritual abuse on my faith and my creativity, I have found tremendous encouragement in the journeys of others. I want to leave you with these words from Michael Gungor in “The Crowd, The Critic, and the Muse: A Book for Creators
The crowd has its rules, and it will be very loud and adamant about these rules because without rules, the crowd’s culture couldn’t exist. But sometimes there are rules that ought to be bent or broken.
An argument could be made that you are not producing good art until you infringe upon some of your culture’s rules and expectations. Perhaps artists in a culture are like prophets in ancient Israel, calling for society to repent and re-imagine itself. Artists like question marks, like incarnated doubt in the faith of a culture–keeping that culture fluid and growing.
All great human achievement or cultural advancement comes from people stepping out of the traditional and expected courses. The music that many of us love today never would have been created had not composers like Beethoven or Wagner broke the rules that had been set for them. This is how innovation works. Somebody breaks a rule and steps outside of the expected box. Eventually, that unexpected action becomes the new norm, the new box, until someone else comes along and breaks the new set of rules. The role of the creator is an inherently precarious one. Somebody had to be the first person who proposed trying to build a ship that would fly to the moon. Walt Disney had to tell someone his dream of starting an empire based on a cartoon mouse. At some point in their lives, our most innovative creators get laughed at. They are scorned as fools, wastrels, or heretics. [emphasis mine]
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IMAGE BY DANI KELLEY, HTTP://DANILEEKELLEY.WORDPRESS.COM/
Day 2 of Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week: Your journey and consequences of spiritual abuse
How has your experience affected you? What has it done to you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.? What has your journey been like? How have you gotten where you are today? Do you feel you’ve healed? What do you still struggle with? Add the direct link to your stories below.
Every day this week, Elora Nicole will be hosting anonymous survivor stories on her blog as part of her Rebel Diaries project for those who aren’t free to speak up publicly yet. In addition, Rachel Held Evans will be highlighting spiritual abuse on her blog.
Don’t forget: the hashtag for Twitter discussion is #ChurchSurvivors
“even though we all know we disagree on politics and the practical outworkings of faith, they are not afraid of diversity. That is the key, I think: love, not fear.”
That is it, in a nutshell. thank you.
Thank you, Thank you for sharing. For being bold and for seeking truth.
That sounds eerily similar to my story. I was told that as a “leader” in the church (I taught Sunday school and volunteered with the youth) I should be “careful” about what I write. Which sounds like fluffy bunnies, because it was couched in sticky-sweet words. The problem was that those words were used to drive a wedge between my closest friend and me. Fortunately, she and I have been through enough that we knew better. I knew enough to ask why she went to church leaders about my blog (she actually didn’t) and she knew enough to tell me that they were manipulating us both. But it was still a frightening meeting.
man, i am right with this. almost my experience to a T.
i leave challenged toward transparency, cuz my gut still aches, too, when i get those emails. thank you for your story. and for the courage you inspire.
Great post. I identify, but in a different way than most responders. I identify as a pastor finding himself potentially on trial within his community of pastors and leaders and, of course, his own church members. I am a challenger of the religious/evangelical status quo. What I find is that my “observations and teachings” on a faith life is “fresh air” and “encouraging” to the least of these. But, they don’t pay the bills. (Now, we’re getting down to it, aren’t we). Follow the money and you find the protective motivation of leadership. If you loose people, you loose their bucks. If you loose their bucks, you loose significant portions of your salary…and the (faux) respect of your community. Well, I’ve chosen to let God provide as more than a faith “sound byte.” He is and does, but I continually find myself being critical of the Pharisee…and discovering…the Pharisee is more me than I want to believe. Again….GREAT POST!
The word “transparency” caught me in both post and comment.
I recently (finally!) finished Lewis’s Abolition of Man, and his observation about transparency caught me, b/c I use the word all the time, and authenticity is important to me.
The gist of it is that we are not looking for “complete” or “ultimate” transparency.
Not really.
Because full transparency is invisibility.
The goal of the the best transparency is to “get out of the way” if there’s something blocking what we really want others to see.
I’m not even thinking here about Jesus, necessarily.
It made me think of what I want people to see– what’s the “real me” I want them to interact with. That’s the kind of transparency I want to learn. I’ve been reminded I teach people how to interact with me, so if I’m feeling fragile, or I *want* to be handled with kid gloves, I need to figure out how to do that…
I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe you’re doing everything right already: You’re controlling your space and moving as slow as you need to.
Grains of sand will build a beach.
I sure hope we can sit down at the same time and place one day. With alcohol. 🙂
Ugh. Gary, you have brought up a HUGE problem with the way churches and pastors are supported. I wrestled with this myself — the temptation to withhold our donations when the church leadership treated us badly was great. In fact, we did stop giving after they persisted in treating their people badly. I didn’t want to be that way, but I couldn’t justify giving them my money when I didn’t trust their decision-making and didn’t support the things they were doing (or not doing) with the money they were given. I don’t know how to fix that, though. You are right — I keep finding the Pharisee in me.
Joy, please know that there was no critical comment toward you or this article in my comments. I believe that it’s not appropriate to support (financially or otherwise) a group that is clearly abusing their power. My emphasis was on the fact that I don’t hold to the status quo in the living out of my faith and practice. Pastors (and I’ve been around the church world long enough to know motives) don’t want things “shook up” because it potentially affects the bottom line. They typically won’t admit that. But, come on now…it’s bottom line reality. As a pastor that pushes the boundries, I run practical risks. From what I’ve read in the past three weeks of your blog, you’d be a lady more than welcome in my church.
“They didn’t love me. They couldn’t love me, because they were afraid of me.”
This is just so apt, and sums up a situation I escaped from. I didn’t act like many of the other women in church; I openly disagreed with the elders on many matters, actually spoke openly as well (shock horror! women shouldn’t speak!), as well as the fact that my closest friends were single Christian AND non-Christian men. I ended up being rebuked, but in a very insidious way, by the end of which I was unsure whether my opinions were correct:
“Everything we’re suggesting to you, is suggested in love. If you disagree, then you aren’t living in love, you’re living in sin and following the evil one. Your opinions may be flawed.”
After being told to stop taking anti-depressants (I did eventually, but on doctors orders) immediately if I wanted to stay involved in the church, and being told I needed to be intensively ‘discipled’ as my beliefs were ‘flawed’ in many areas, I left. No-one there speaks to me any more.
That isn’t done in love, that is fear, fear of change, perhaps. Thank you for your story, and helping me to see that I’m not alone!
Really good post today Joy. I think it is so sad when we are judged and condemned because we don’t see things exactly the same way as someone else. I am sad when I hear what those church leaders did to you. I am sorry that you had to endure that. I have my own problems in church, but it is not with the leaders. Instead it is with the members trying to drive me out. I finally had to decide that I was not going to let people I don’t respect dictate how I would worship. I go, I serve, I do, and I go home. I miss having the comradery in church that I used to have, but I am there and that is what matters. I am making new friends, and I am surviving. I hope you find a place that becomes home to you and your family. A place that welcomes you and loves you just as you are. You are amazing.
Thank you so much, Joy for hosting 🙂
Wow, they actually did that to you in that church! Crazy…. and sensitive too. What was their deal? Seems to many people can’t handle straight up disagreements or criticism. Btw Joy, I really appreciate your writing and thoughtful posts. I’ve been reading now for just a couple weeks, agree with a lot of what you say. And if I disagree, I’m sure there would be a better resolution than your story above 🙂 Just curious, this isn’t a blog for women and pastors only right? Looking through the comments I wonder if (outside of pastor Gary) I’m the only guy who reads? lol
Hi Seth! No, you aren’t the only guy who reads. 🙂 Men comment now and then, but not as often as women do (though it depends on the topic — when I wrote about sex I had lots of comments from both men and women. Go figure. 🙂 )
Thank you, Gary. I didn’t take this as a criticism of me. You brought up something that has been bothering me for years. You are exactly right that the bottom line means something, whether we want it to or not. I have seen people use money in a passive-aggressive campaign to drive pastors out of their church instead of facing the issues head-on. It’s UGLY. The only thing I’ve come up with to try to check that tendency in myself is to diversify my giving. We give to our local church, but we also give elsewhere, despite some pastors’ insistence that the tithe is to the church and any other giving should be over and above. *shrug*
I would like that very much. 🙂
“Full transparency is invisibility.” Thank you so much for this — I had never thought about it this way before (obviously that is a book I haven’t gotten to yet), but wow. Such a good mental picture for me. Revealing the things that need to be seen… I’m going to chew on that for awhile.
I read your thoughtful post last night, thought about it for two sleepless hours in the middle of the night and read it again this morning. It was a good post indeed. Your reaction to the situation you were put into by merely expressing your opinion makes me both sad and angry. How anyone thinks they can learn and grow and, at the same time, suppress those who differ escapes me.
I suspect the men you were confronting were of my generation, boomers. As such I find their reaction painful and embarrassing. The hardest biases to change are those that you have held a long time; that are held by all you associate with; and that favor you and your group. Men of my age in the evangelical church need to be aware that we are an “at risk” group to hold such biases. We need to welcome voices that challenge our assumptions. Failure to do so puts us at risk of being both spiritual abusers and colossal fools. Your voice is one I am pleased to listen to so, yes, men read your blog. Even a few of us old men.
“I don’t want to be afraid to be who I am. I don’t want to keep everyone at arm’s length. I can’t love you if I don’t know you, and that only happens when I let you get to know me too. …So I wear my armor, I skirt around topics I would have jumped into before, and I try to regain health and strength even as I wait for the hammer to fall again.”
This is so me right now. Husband and I are going in to a new area of ministry, and this is my hesitation and concern. I can’t be me. I’m going to have to mute some things. I’m so thankful for your transparency and bravery.
I missed the link-up, but SO GLAD you addressed this and hosted the link-up. The quote from Voltaire is one I will hold onto in my bag of tricks to look for the crazy people. I introduced my blog readers to my spiritual abuse story here: http://www.turquoisegates.com/2012/06/whatever-you-do-to-least-of-these.html and if you click on the “shunning” label, it will take you to a bunch more posts from various guest authors on spiritual abuse. Just wanted to share.
What really fascinates me about this behavior is how it mirrors totalitarian dictatorships on a micro level. This kind of paranoid need for absolute control seems like something you would find in Burma or North Korea. I wonder to what degree the end of the Cold War has allowed the concept of freedom of speech to wither within American Christianity. Under the Cold War, freedom of speech was a basic part of how Americans defined themselves against the communists. Freedom of speech may be a secularized value, but it’s a product of the Judeo-Christian tradition, aka “speaking the truth in love.” And Baptists have always believed in the priesthood of the believer (until Al Mohler came along).
As a pastor, I desperately need for people in my congregation to feel comfortable offering me constructive criticism. It is such a blessing when someone has the courage to say I love you, Morgan, but I think you’re wrong on this. Because when they don’t have the safety to confront me directly, they bicker behind my back and Satan fans the flames. It’s such an incredible anti-witness that a pastor would call you into a meeting to tell you what you’re allowed to write on your facebook page or blog. Honestly I am pretty shocked that this really happens. I would be so embarrassed if I ever got caught doing anything like that because it exudes such childishness.
I don’t have time to hold meetings like that. My gosh, I’ve got so many other meetings I have to go to. I’m also too suspicious of my own spiritual pride. How can you be so unconcerned about your own sinfulness that you would feel comfortable smacking somebody down like that? If someone were bad-mouthing me personally on social media, I would reach out to them and try to make peace, but I can’t imagine ever giving myself enough authority to command somebody else not to criticize me, much less criticize something associated with me via two degrees of separation.
Of course, I’ve often wondered if the reason that authoritative evangelical churches are growing while “wimpy” mainline churches are shrinking is because the commanding hubris of authoritative evangelical pastors is more attractive than the goofy “authenticity” of self-deprecating flakes like me. It kind of makes me mad to be honest. It feels like high school all over again. The abusive jerks with the motorcycles and tattoos get all the women while their girlfriends text back and forth about their relationship problems with the sensitive guys who get to be their totally platonic BFF’s. I realize that analogy isn’t fair, but that’s what it sometimes feels like from my vantage point.
I’ve been there. Boy have I ever been there before. It’s also been about two years for me….and although the healing is finally beginning to set in I struggle with how I feel about church and “church people” and have not felt at home among them since. Spiritual abuse is real. Thank you for shedding light on this swept under the rug topic.