Can Christianity be a form of psychological abuse?
pablito1954
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
A personal story, followed by the question:
In the summer of 1969, at the age of 15, I regularly attended an Evangelical Church on the SE London/Kent border. In July, when I hadn't been for a few weeks, two of the Elders knocked on the door. My parents were at work. I made them tea and we sat down to chat. They told me they were very worried about me, missing a few weeks. So I got up the courage to tell them I was losing interest. That I believed in evolution and wasn't a creationist like most of them. That when I thought of the vastness of space, I didn't see the earth as being that important and there was likely life on other planets.
They mumbled between themselves saying "it's as bad as we feared." One of them then told me that I had made a pact with Satan and would surely burn in the Lake of Fire with him unless I came back to church and cleansed my soul. My parents were livid and wrote to the church warning them nor to come again. Many people may have laughed off an incident of that nature, but it had a very profound effect on me. I think I had a mini nervous breakdown over it. I would sit in the local park and sob. I couldn't see how just using my God given mental faculties could land me in hell. I hadn't done anything awful!
It set me on a lifelong quest. I vowed that I would never belong to a religion that taught eternal punishment,especially for not believing what others tell us to believe. So I did a long term private study of comparative religion to find something less ghastly! It put me off church for 30 years. I think it even contributed to me being somewhat of an irresponsible and hedonistic youth who, in the back of my mind, believed, at least in part, that I was already a lost soul.
The reason I bring this up is because I had a dream about it the other night. This is 55 years later as a 70 year old! So at last to my question. Is it psychological abuse to treat a young person to such a heavy dose of Christian doctrine? Where religious abuse is concerned, many people have suffered far worse. Murder, burnings, torture. Of the world's religions, two stand out as claiming to be the only way. They can and do use any means fair or foul to make everybody agree with them. They are Christianity and Islam and it's no coincidence that they happen to be the two religions with the most brutal history of oppression.
In the summer of 1969, at the age of 15, I regularly attended an Evangelical Church on the SE London/Kent border. In July, when I hadn't been for a few weeks, two of the Elders knocked on the door. My parents were at work. I made them tea and we sat down to chat. They told me they were very worried about me, missing a few weeks. So I got up the courage to tell them I was losing interest. That I believed in evolution and wasn't a creationist like most of them. That when I thought of the vastness of space, I didn't see the earth as being that important and there was likely life on other planets.
They mumbled between themselves saying "it's as bad as we feared." One of them then told me that I had made a pact with Satan and would surely burn in the Lake of Fire with him unless I came back to church and cleansed my soul. My parents were livid and wrote to the church warning them nor to come again. Many people may have laughed off an incident of that nature, but it had a very profound effect on me. I think I had a mini nervous breakdown over it. I would sit in the local park and sob. I couldn't see how just using my God given mental faculties could land me in hell. I hadn't done anything awful!
It set me on a lifelong quest. I vowed that I would never belong to a religion that taught eternal punishment,especially for not believing what others tell us to believe. So I did a long term private study of comparative religion to find something less ghastly! It put me off church for 30 years. I think it even contributed to me being somewhat of an irresponsible and hedonistic youth who, in the back of my mind, believed, at least in part, that I was already a lost soul.
The reason I bring this up is because I had a dream about it the other night. This is 55 years later as a 70 year old! So at last to my question. Is it psychological abuse to treat a young person to such a heavy dose of Christian doctrine? Where religious abuse is concerned, many people have suffered far worse. Murder, burnings, torture. Of the world's religions, two stand out as claiming to be the only way. They can and do use any means fair or foul to make everybody agree with them. They are Christianity and Islam and it's no coincidence that they happen to be the two religions with the most brutal history of oppression.
Comments
I don’t really think this is about religion in general or these religions in particular as much as two people being arseholes.
And yep. That toxic version of Christianity was definitely a form of psychological abuse. But looking to the thread title and the OP, that doesn’t necessarily equate to “Christianity” writ large as a form of psychological abuse.
Doublethink, Admin
I don’t think it's as simple as people being arseholes at times, although they can be of course.
Any firmly held conviction or belief, whether religious or ideological, can easily veer across into abusive territory.
I think the best we can do is to try not to be abusive ourselves or avoid situations which become abusive. This can be easier said than done. I wouldn't go as far as to describe my former independent charismatic evangelical church as a cult, but it certainly had cultic tendencies at times and spiritual abuse certainly took place.
In the historic Churches too, I can see how individual clergy or parishes can become abusive. Someone once said that there's a 'cult' hidden inside any church that could readily emerge given the right circumstances.
We have to be on our guard. These things cut deeply.
What I said was that abuse by individual Christians, even many individual Christians, doesn’t make Christianity itself a form of psychological abuse, which is what I read the thread title to say, nor is it necessarily abusive to expose a young person to “a heavy dose of Christian doctrine.” Christianity is not monolithic. What you describe doesn’t happen in every Christian church; I suspect it doesn’t happen in a majority of Christian churches, though I know it happens in way too many.
And great deal depends on exactly what that the doctrine in question is, and how it’s being used/abused. I’m not sure, for example, that it’s abusive to expose a young person to heavy, if also healthy, doses of “love your neighbor.”
I certainly believe that you were a victim of serious psychological abuse. You hadn't done anything awful. I am grateful that I never attended such an awful church.
I wish you well.
You can see it as an example of the relative power of beliefs and facts. Beliefs can give people power over their own lives, and the lives of others, in a way that facts struggle to compete with.
I see the question being more about the circumstances under which Christianity can become psychological abuse - when do the actions arising from the desire to save people's souls cross the line, and what other factors are involved?
@pease St Augustine (who is celebrated today) believed that it was right to torture heretics and unbelievers, because it's better to suffer on earth than to suffer an eternity of torment. Islamic jihadists believe the same. When a religion sets itself up as the only way to salvation from an eternal hell, anything it does can be justified by that excuse.
I'm a perennialist who believes there are many ways to God that have been revealed to humanity, and I'm a universalist who doesn't believe that anything created by a loving God could ever be lost. So I have no sympathy with torture, physical, or psychological abuse used to justify forcing others to believe what they believe, be it Christian, Islamic, or any other religion. It's a blot on humanity!
But there remain within Christianity a significant number of people who consider it an entirely justifiable part of God's will that they emotionally manipulate people, especially teenagers, in the way that you described in your opening post.
One of the more uncomfortable questions to consider is whether the perpetrators of this kind of behaviour suffer any consequences regarding their own salvation.
Paul wasn't condoning abuse. He was doing the exact opposite, suggesting that the would-be evangelizer should adapt himself to the needs of the person he's talking to--"To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some." 1 Corinthians 9:22
I'd actually rather enjoy watching Paul have a go at the people who did this disaster. I suspect we could sell tickets.
However we cut it, though, we all have a 'could do better' on our school reports.
I don't see that holding a faith position makes me intentionally setting out to be 'morally better' than anyone else.
Yes, I need to become a better person but that's in comparison with with my current state, not anyone else's whether secular or otherwise.
I wonder about the psychological effect of asking teenagers to consider their own mortality and eternal life - and of the centrality to Christian faith of knowing someone who was violently killed. At what age does it become reasonable or justifiable to be asked these questions?
Quite why this should be is a pertinent question, of course.
And there was plenty of death and destruction in the stories I read as a teenager. Tolkien comes to mind, and sci-fi doesn't exactly shy away from it. But at the same time, there was this other story that wasn't actually a story - it was (somehow) about real me and my actual death and eternal life, and one of the story's characters was real, still alive, and knew who I was and where I lived. Not fair!
Christianity takes what looks to be a story about long, long ago, and then completely turns the tables. It's potentially quite disconcerting.
This is where we're so different. Reading Mark's gospel in school RE (yes really) was a significant influence but the OT - I can't get past the horror of the face value interpretation. God's onto his first mass murder by the sixth chapter. Without Jesus the whole thing is deeply unattractive and morally - erm - extremely problematic.
Seriously, he said that. He also informed not only myself, but others in the congregation, that Certain People Who Practised Certain Things would most definitely end up in Hell.
I've heard similar Stuff in the past from other clergy, but no longer. I don't go to church any more.
Given that Jesus is where God really comes into focus, if I were you, I’d set the OT aside (and yes, I never thought I’d say such a thing, but seriously, if it’s that much of a stumbling block, you’re better off focusing on Jesus only.). I would not recommend my path to anyone else—I mean, it’s hardly ideal for a whole lot of reasons! Like two/three years spent in almost total isolation from other believers, no baptism, no communion… I tend to think of my experience as an extreme case showing what’s possible—not as a model to be preferred by any means.
Paul never mentions Hell at all, even though he has plenty of occasion to.
The doctrine of Hell is I think something that crept into Christianity from pagan ideas of the afterlife and from taking the wrong bits of Jesus's parables as nonfiction.
In any case the point of the parables that mention Hell is about how we treat other people in this life.
Terrifying children or anyone else with the idea of Hell has never been part of my experience of church, except as occasionally observed in churches I would never consider being part of.
If you mean taught in a school class on comparative religions, sure. If you mean in a catechism, church school, or teaching one’s children about the faith they’re being raised in by people who believe it to be true, that’s a different matter.
Some of us here, including me, believe it is real.
But I look forward to a day when the idea that a doctrinal hell might exist, isn't taught to children at all (or vulnerable adults) - and certainly not in any educational context. Whether adults continue to believe such things is up to them.
I find the approach suggested by Lamb Chopped's experience (framing it as a story to be read) has more going for it.
First is we see Genesis 1-2 being taken literally and then used to undermine anyone thinking about evolution. It’s used to deny science and push conspiracy theories such as scientists all lying.
We’ve seen how slave owners weaponzied it by creating slave bibles that had the messages of hope removed. Instead their Bible was used to highlight slavery being ok. I’ve seen racist people take “Jew with a jew” and force it to mean race with race.
Hell has been being discussed. Personally I was heavily influenced by the work done by Chris Date on “rethinking hell” and Edward Fudge’s book “The Fire that Consunes.”
Obviously we see it wesponzied absent the LGBT community.
Divorce and Remarriage verses being used to break up families that involved one person being remarried.
I once saw a handicapped kid, when I was also a teen, brought before the church and prayed over to walk, and after 2 hours of it slowly turn into hammering him with why don’t you have faith. The whole congregation prayed for him to have faith so he could walk again.
" The grace of the Christian gospel is inclusive of everyone regardless of race, gender, or social status. The gospel is about sin, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. None of us is righteous, and we all stand in need of the redeeming love of a righteous and holy God. The issue with the whole process of Living in Love and Faith is that it moves away from the clear, trans-Testamental teaching on sexual behaviour, marriage, and the family.
We can see this reflected in St Paul’s concerns expressed in 1 Corinthians 5-7. The key point in chapter 6 is that, whatever sins we commit (and he gives a number of examples), we can, through our acknowledgement of sin and the power of the Holy Spirit, change. We can be redeemed. This fact is confirmed by genetics that complex human behaviour is not ultimately genetically determined. If our behaviour is determined, then there is no sin, and there is no need for a Saviour.
The Revd Lucy Winkett quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s dictum that we should not be silent on a key issue. But Bonhoeffer also emphasised, in The Cost of Discipleship, the dangers of preaching cheap grace. Grace was costly. Our debt was paid painfully on the Cross".
Glad I'm not at his church!
As you can imagine, this letter upset me greatly and I'm at a loss how best it can be answered. It can't, of course, on its own terms.
Feel better, now? I don't waste time, words, or energy on anything supernatural with the kids I interact with, both at school and church.
Indeed, Christianity as it's practiced in puh-lenty of places today does, and it's not new, especially in America, and especially in the Deep South. Growing up, I heard warnings of hell and damnation at my local UMC. I heard it at f*cking Billy Graham crusades in the 70s & 80s. I remember quite clearly soe particularlfrom being dragged to "Jesus 77," a kind of Woodstock for Christ festival. We're approaching the annual high water mark of Hell preaching down here: Halloween.
However, I doubt if many people outside the C of E (or even within it!) bother to read the Church Times, so the letter won't have had a wide circulation. In any case, I suspect that much of the population doesn't give a Fig for anything *vicars* think about certain Dead Horse issues...