Tag: spiritual abuse

This is part three in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read parts one HERE and two HERE.

People Hurt Them, Not the Church

By this post, you might think, “It was people who hurt them, not the church.” That language is the fruit of the teaching I’m talking about. That phrase reveals a lack of accountability by the people involved in the abuse. It also reveals the congregation’s refusal to hold the leader(s) involved accountable. Because the church represents God, when people in the church hurt someone, the church is directly hurting that person. Let’s assume that saying suggests that “People hurt them, not God.” While that’s true, the person experiencing the abuse has likely been taught not to question their “spiritual authority.” Or that they are incapable of understanding or interpreting scripture on their own.

In that setting, it is easy for a victim to connect a pastor’s words and actions to those of God. Because of that, it’s excruciatingly disorienting for a spiritual leader to teach about God (His love, mercy, gentleness, goodness, confession, repentance, etc.) and then continually violate his teaching. This contradiction makes it even more difficult for the victim to believe they should speak up, let alone report, what they initially understood as spiritual abuse or harm. Sadly, it’s common for those who are hurt and victimized to distrust the validity of God and Christianity. This distrust can significantly complicate their healing process. 

Leaders, Stop the “Grooming”

So, what do we, as a Church, do about this? Firstly, Christian leaders and pastors must stop dismissing the demonization of entire groups of people. That begins with correcting church members who misuse terms like grooming based on their own fear, hate, and disgust. Failing to do so makes those leaders complicit in the hate and violence directed toward the Queer community. While there is no single answer, this is a leadership issue and must be acknowledged and addressed at that level. As a licensed counselor, previous pastor, and current leader in a small missional movement gathering, I’ve had the opportunity to consider this issue from various perspectives. 

A Way Forward

Healthy Conflict

From a counseling and mental health perspective, leaders need to engage in conflict in a way that repairs and resolves. I work with many couples, none of whom like having conflict in their marriage. Regardless of varying comfort levels and willingness to engage in conflict resolution, I never teach couples how to avoid it. Instead, I help them form new habits for managing conflict and how to repair it when it escalates. Pastors/leaders need to seek out and learn new tools and languages for handling conflict. This will enable them to approach congregants who misuse terms like grooming in a way that maintains relationships, promotes positive spiritual growth, and seeks healthy resolution. It may also be beneficial to consider embracing a trauma-informed approach to ministry. This will help create an environment aimed at caring for people at every level of the church.

Responsibility

From a pastoral perspective, speaking the language of responsibility is a great place to start. I once attended a marriage conference where one of the speaking pastors, with his wife sitting next to him, made a comment that compared his pet dog to his wife. He differentiated them by saying, “there’s only one thing I can do with my wife that I can’t with my dog.” He was talking about sex. The comment and session were so offensive that another pastor’s wife got up and walked out of the room. I did speak to the lead pastor of the hosting church, voicing my anger, disgust, and disappointment about the session. Later I found out that others spoke with him as well. I was hopeful that it would be addressed to the congregation or even just to those in attendance. The pastor never said a word; no email, no announcement, nothing.

All I could think about was the compounding damage that a message like that would have on those in attendance. I thought about newly married couples, wives who already struggled with the restraining and traumatizing culture of “duty/obligation” sex, and men who wrestled with communicating their desires in a way that honored their wives. Was the disgusting thing the pastor said the fault of the hosting pastor? It wasn’t. But could the hosting pastor have taken responsibility for inviting that pastor? Could he have corrected the toxic, damaging, and harmful teaching the visiting pastor delivered? One hundred times, yes.

Not only could he have addressed it, but he should have addressed it. And you might think that I can’t know if the leadership took appropriate action. I was a volunteer staff member of the hosting church at that time, so I know the church leadership didn’t address it. If the lead pastor had taken the opportunity to address it, he would have demonstrated openness, transparency, and the importance of responsibility and accountability in a way that communicated our church was safe. 

Team Leadership

From a leadership perspective, I’m currently participating in a small missional community church movement, and we are implementing pluralistic leadership. This leadership model differs from the single lead pastor supported by an elder board model in that it recognizes various leadership giftings in a way that brings us together in mutual submission to each other within a co-discipleship framework. There is no “boss,” and leadership team members are equal. This structure helps to ensure that a single person doesn’t rise to a place of unquestionable authority. It also relieves a single person from being the sole vision bearer and prevents padding elder boards with “yes men.”

Furthermore, the addition and prioritization of women and people of color within the leadership structure allow for differing perspectives, thereby extending the team’s ability to recognize potential harm and abuse that may or is occurring. Does that mean that the team will always remain approachable by the congregation? Not necessarily, but it extends the checks and balances further; hopefully, it also serves as a visual representation of healthy mutual submission and helps develop a mutuality practice throughout the community.

Go Ahead, Go.

Lastly, if you attend a church that doesn’t allow for questions or negative conversations, consider why those things aren’t allowed. While your leaders may not overtly prohibit you from asking questions or offering critique, these restrictions may unintentionally cultivate an environment that enables spiritual grooming and allows abuse to occur unchallenged and unquestioned. If that’s the case, and you’re dismissed or told that you “misunderstand,” you may want to consider leaving.

        While these are not the only solutions to this issue, they may be a good place to start growing your awareness about what grooming is and how particular teachings and behaviors can unintentionally be spiritual grooming and cultivate an environment that allows and enables spiritual harm, abuse, and trauma.

If you’re unsure if you’ve experienced spiritual harm or abuse, you can find more information through the research of Dan Koch and take his self-screener.

If you or someone you know has experienced spiritual harm, abuse, or religious trauma, you can find help and resources through the Reclamation Collective. 

This is part three in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read part one HERE and two HERE.

This is part two in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read parts one HERE and three HERE

Divisive Heretics

In the growing wave of people deconstructing their faith, I’ve heard many pastors speak against It. They’ll typically frame it as a trend that’s a general danger to your personal “faith” and the Church at large. They warn their congregants that asking questions and pointing to problematic issues is being “too critical” of the Church. Part of their warning might involve telling congregants not to ask questions or not to point out negative issues. Sometimes it can involve promoting a culture verbalized as “focus on the good, not the bad.” Many of these critiques and questions involve how Christians have historically handled and responded to serious cultural issues. Issues such as racial injustice, the LGBTQIA+ community, and abuse can easily get you labeled as distracting, divisive, and/or heretical.

Ironically, those same pastors have no problem criticizing and critiquing those very same people who are “deconstructing.” They accuse those “deconstructing” of being indoctrinated by the “godless left” to become progressive Marxist communists. When challenging Christian leaders about these issues, it is not unusual for many leaders to dismiss the calls for acknowledgment, accountability, and repentance. Often, they also ignore and reject those echoing God’s continual call for justice (Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18, Matthew 18:6, and Romans 13:10) as heretical disruptors. All the while, church congregants continue to embolden and support these pastors and leaders with nods and hand-lifted “amens.” This is part of why Christians will co-opt words like grooming to use against people whom they don’t like.

Spiritual Grooming

My intention is not to justify deconstruction or critiquing the Church; no one needs permission to do those things. I aim to address pastoral practices, such as teaching and culture building, that promote only “seeing the good.” By dismissing genuine concerns, they are ultimately employing elements that resemble grooming and enable abuse. As a reminder, I’ll continue to refer to this as spiritual grooming. And to be clear, it’s not that I don’t want to “see the good.” Believe it or not, I’ve always been hopeful about the church; it’s why I’ve stayed connected to it and worked on staff for so long.

Unfortunately, in my practice as a professional clinical counselor, I hear so many people dismiss their traumatic abuse. They’ll say things like, “…but I’m not a victim,” “I’m not supposed to live in a victim mentality,” “In my suffering, I’ll receive a blessing,” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” because they’ve been taught to dismiss it. I’ve also heard clients dismiss a clearly abusive situation by suggesting that they couldn’t trust their feelings. Or, they excuse their pastor’s behavior because they were told they misread the situation and know he couldn’t do “that” because he’s a “good man of God.”

Often, they received a teaching that told them they were not victims and that their feelings weren’t facts. They were often encouraged to embrace suffering, like Jesus, or to submit to those in spiritual authority because it was “biblical.” In some cases, the teaching reminded them that God desires their holiness more than their happiness.

Authority & Submission

         This brings us back to the concept of grooming and how spirituality introduces implicit trust between the victim and the pastor. There can be serious consequences when a spiritual leader, who is communicating unbalanced messages about authority and submission, occupies a position of authority in their congregant’s life. The consequences are compounded when the leader becomes the sole arbiter for defining and affirming hurt or abuse for victims. If we consider the definition, as previously stated [HERE or HERE], these circumstances create fertile ground for abuse within our churches. And this isn’t hyperbole. Remember, for every instance of sexual abuse reported, about two more go unreported. And that’s sexual abuse, a type of abuse that we clearly know how to define.

Imagine other types of abuse or harm that may not be as clearly recognizable. Add to that all of the misteaching around authority, submission, divisiveness, and “disrupting the work of God,” and it’s no wonder why abuse perpetuates. How many of those instances go unreported? Spiritual leaders who have made it a practice, even unintentionally, to dismiss this conversation perpetuate spiritual harm and abuse. Please hear that I’m not saying that pastors who say and teach these ideas are trying to create abusive relationships. While there are pastors and Christian leaders who do this intentionally, they’re not who I’m talking to or about.

I’m talking about pastors who, in teaching their congregation to dismiss anything negative as unnecessary criticism, subtly teaches them not to question those who have “authority” over them. In doing so, they are also teaching them to reject personal accountability and accept a lack of accountability from those in leadership. Not only does this teaching fly in the face of basic Christian teachings about rebuke (Luke 17:3), confession (James 5:16), accountability (Romans 14:12), and repentance (Acts 20:21), it provides fertile ground for abuse and creates a scenario where a victim may question or dismiss their abuse. This is spiritual grooming.

Confusion & Distraction

Spiritual abuse and harm involve complex elements that can make it difficult to define and recognize. Because of that, it is not uncommon for victims to leave the church and sometimes their entire faith system feeling as though they were the “problem.” Add to that the confusion created around the continued misunderstanding and misuse of the term grooming, and it’s easy to see how abuse continues. The accusation that Queer community and drag entertainers are grooming children not only harms those in that community but is also a distraction from the actual grooming that is occurring in our own church spaces. So, what do we do? In the last article of this series, we’ll look at some answers from different positional/role perspectives.

This is part three in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read parts one HERE and three HERE.

Over that last year, there have been numerous accounts of Christian leaders and pastors being involved in morally reprehensible abuses. Stories like Jerry Falwell Jr’s sex scandal and abusive university policies and practices, Mark Discoll’s continued bullying and unrepentant behavior, John MacArthur’s hiring and continued support of multiple pedophiles, and even Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston’s accusations of failing to report abuse and subsequent misconduct are all examples of what can happen when unchecked and unrestrained power become central to a religious institution.

On the surface, these events seem like worse-case scenarios, mainly confined to high-profile leaders with massive churches and platforms. To a large degree, pastors in that setting are more prone to these scandals. However, in May 2022, Guidepost Solutions issued a detailed report stating that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had compiled a list of 700 pastors who had been reported for varying degrees of sexual abuse over a 20-year period.

That report clarifies that this is not a “megachurch” or celebrity pastor issue. And while there seems to be an ever-growing trail of victims, my biggest question is: How is this happening? How are Christian leaders ignoring this? How have we not condemned and moved to correct this devastating issue? While many factors exist that enable this kind of abuse and make victims reluctant to report it, the spiritual element complicates the issue. While complicated, a specific rising trend within the American Evangelical Industrial Complex feeds that complexity.

“Groomers”

“Grooming” has recently become an increasingly common part of the modern American Christian lexicon. Unfortunately, its use is incorrect, unhealthy, and exaggerated, only compounding this problematic addition. The most common use of the term that I observe is as a means of expressing disgust with the Queer community, particularly with Transgender issues and toward the entertainment medium known as “drag.” Of the many issues I have with Christians hijacking this word, my primary frustrations have to do with their clear misunderstanding of the term, how its misuse diminishes the seriousness of it, and how it has been unjustly and irrationally applied to an entire group of people.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) identifies grooming as “a tool, used by abusers, of manipulative behaviors used to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse and reduce the risk of being caught. While these tactics are used most often against younger kids, teens, and vulnerable adults are also at risk.” This typically takes the form of “building a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them.”

Based on this definition, grooming is not occurring in the Transgender community. Neither does it happen during drag show performances or events like library drag story time. I’m not saying that there aren’t individual abusers who are Transgender or drag performers. But, identifying a whole community or all performers as “groomers” reveals a profound misunderstanding of this tool of abuse, the Transgender community, and drag as entertainment. It also reveals your implicit rejection of an entire people group as divine image bearers and a willful refusal to understand the issue in a nuanced way.

Real Grooming

Alternatively, we do see, in the previously mentioned examples, literal and rampant grooming and sexual abuse within the Church. We see Christian leaders and pastors, typically straight white men, building trusting relationships and then perpetrating horrible abuse. While 700 pastors over 20 years may not seem like a lot, this is one report about one denomination and doesn’t consider the over 400,000 clergies in America. It also does not account for the statistically significant 63% of abuse cases that go unreported.

That means, considering those 700 cases, more than 1,200 other cases potentially went unreported to the SBC. Those numbers don’t even account for other denominations that have reported and unreported cases (think of the Catholic church, Presbyterian Church, Mennonite Church, LDS, or the 30,000 other denominations that exist). This also ignores that other pastors may have been aware of the abuse and did nothing. That knowledge and failure to act automatically make them complicit in the abuse. It also doesn’t account for additional victims who may never come forward. And this only considers sexual abuse and rape.

Calling All Pastors

To be clear, I’m not only, or even primarily, addressing sexual abuse in the church. I want to speak more broadly to other, sometimes less obvious, spiritual abuse and harm that causes religious trauma. This includes the seemingly harmless, and often presented as good, teachings about authority and submission. Often, these teachings bear many of the same elements and results as grooming. For this series of posts, I’ll refer to these teachings and the culture they produce as spiritual grooming. To clarify what I mean when I reference spiritual grooming, this is my working definition: Spiritual Grooming is a manipulative process used by spiritual leaders or those in positions of spiritual authority to exploit their influence over an individual. This process involves building trust, emotional connection, and dependence on spiritual guidance in a way that makes the individual vulnerable to abuse, control, or harm. Spiritual grooming can occur knowingly or unknowingly and often blurs the lines between spiritual care and exploitation. It creates a power dynamic where the individual may feel obligated to submit to harmful behaviors under the guise of spiritual obedience or faithfulness, making it difficult for them to recognize or resist abuse. Additionally, we’ll define spiritual abuse and harm as “when someone uses spiritual or religious beliefs to hurt, scare or control another person.”  

Because abuse within the Church is serious and widespread, we need to understand the problem in a nuanced way. We also need to find ways to take urgent action. The Guidepost Solutions report makes clear that Christian leaders can no longer dismiss the prevalence of abuse within the Church. Pastors must understand how the implicit trust connected to their position creates fertile ground for abuse and harm. In realizing this, they must reconsider how and what they teach regarding authority and submission. In the following blog posts, we’ll explore the issue deeper and consider some ways forward.

This is part three in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read parts two HERE and three HERE.