Some kinds of abuses are really only enabled when you add the authority of a certain interpretation or misinterpretation of Scripture or the apparent authority of God himself. Therefore, these abuses are unique to church environments.
That is what makes the Bible and Christian doctrine so dangerous.
In the hands of a good and benevolent leader, the Bible and the Church can become a life-giving force for good — which is certainly what God intended it to be. However, when the Bible and the church are weaponized to control behavior through coercion, manipulation, gossip, shaming, performance-based religion, and exploitation, you end up with damaged and broken people.
And that undermines both the church’s credibility and its message and — to be frank — angers God.
After almost four decades in the church, first as a pastor’s kid and then as a pastor, I’ve seen the best and worst of it. Now, as an advocate for victims of spiritual abuse, I intend to call out the abusive behaviors that are not only tolerated in churches but are sometimes celebrated as noble and good. Here are 12 forms of abuse that are unique to religious environments like the church:
1. Sin Watching
Sort of like bird watching, except instead of looking for birds, you’re looking for sin. Sin-watching is keeping a close eye on someone else’s behavior with the intent of pouncing on them if you perceive they have made a mistake. It is practiced when a person establishes themselves as a kind of moral gatekeeper who believes it is their job to police everyone else’s behavior.
For example, a woman at my former church would befriend all of the younger people in the church on social media and then keep an eye on their newsfeeds to make sure that they were behaving themselves.
On one occasion, she saw a photo of a group of them enjoying a few drinks at a local club and dutifully reported this to the church leadership. The church disciplined the young people. Most of them ended up leaving. The woman patted herself on the back for faithfully admonishing her brothers and sisters in Christ towards greater godliness.
2. Futurism
Futurism is keeping people living in fear of a certain future which ultimately prevents them from living life now. For example, a person who believes that the second coming of Christ is imminent may delay going to college or getting married because, hey… what’s the point if the world is going to end?
Futurism also absolves Christians of social and environmental responsibility by allowing them to claim that social and environmental decline are merely signs of the ends times. We shouldn’t have to fight it. It was all prophesied about in Scripture.
Above all, futurism uses the fear of future punishment (eternal damnation or hell) as a tool to manipulate and control behavior in the church. If you are repeatedly told that the threat of hell hangs over you unless you listen to and apply the preacher’s words, it actually gives the preacher power over you. You must keep coming back to them for assurance.
3. Service Abuse
Service abuse is taking advantage of the good nature of people by pressuring them into volunteering their time to serve the church without the expectation of reward or compensation using the argument that service to the church is the same as service to God.
For church staff members, it can come in the form of being expected to work way above and beyond the hours for which they are paid, or being paid at an unreasonably low rate because they are ‘serving the Lord.’
For laypeople, it can manifest as being guilted into serving in various church ministries or activities by church staff who only have a relationship with you to ensure that you keep on serving and only try to reach out to you to find out how you are going if you happen to stop serving.
4. Forced forgiveness
Forced forgiveness takes the words of Jesus in Matthew 16:15, which says: “If you don’t forgive others, then your Father in heaven will not forgive you,” and uses them as a weapon for forcing you to forgive people who aren’t necessarily sorry, repentant, willing to take responsibility for their actions, or willing to change.
During the middle of a sermon that I was preaching one Sunday, I somehow offended an older man in the congregation. He jumped to his feet and, from his pew, unleashed an almighty tirade of abuse, shouting at me about how wrong I was.
It was, for me, a total public humiliation.
After the service, the church elders got this man and me together in a room for mediation. In this meeting, I was forced to offer my forgiveness to this man who had publicly torn me to pieces, even though he didn’t seem particularly perturbed by his actions.
Perhaps that’s a trivial example. But, at its most wicked, forced forgiveness has been used to keep women locked in domestic abuse situations, all in the name of forgiveness.
5. Spiritual bypassing
Spiritual bypassing is a tactic in the church to negate negative emotions because they seem ungodly, and therefore we must cover them up with bible verses and self-denial.
It includes things like forcing others and ourselves to find a silver lining in the midst of suffering and pain by using religious platitudes like, “God has a plan,” or “God won’t put you through anything you can’t handle,” or even, “All things work together for our good.”
Spiritual bypassing maintains that all negative emotions are ungodly and therefore causes people to adopt the false view that Christians ought always to be nice, agreeable, and happy, or else perhaps Christ is not at work in them — also known as toxic positivity. This leads to feelings of guilt and failure because, ultimately, negative emotions are both a common and inevitable human experience.
6. Claiming false spiritual authority
Claiming false spiritual authority occurs when a person tries to add weight to their personal opinion by prefacing it with the phrase, “God told me to tell you…” or similar, so that the matter is not up for discussion. After all, if someone claims the authority of God, saying, “God told me to tell you,” how could you possibly object? Can you disagree with God?
Don’t get me wrong. I am sure that God is capable of providing words to people. However, humble and wise people always preface those words with a disclaimer that allows for the fact that they are human and prone to error. There have been all kinds of atrocities committed by people who have claimed false spiritual authority.
7. Demon slaying
Demon slaying is the propensity of certain Christians to blame pretty much everything on demons. If something bad happens to you, then it’s probably a spiritual attack.
Sickness? Demons cause that.
Mental illness? Demons cause that.
In fact, if you’re not careful about what you watch and listen to, you’ll find demons crawling around in every dark corner of your life. Harry Potter? That’s demonic. Heavy metal music? That’s demonic. Pre-marital hand-holding? That’s demonic.
But don’t despair! With just a little bit of “yelling prayer,” we can kick those demons to the curb! And if we can’t well, it’s either because you have unconfessed sin your life, or you don’t have enough faith. And well… that’s demonic as well.
8. Mental illness abuse
Closely related to my previous point, some in the church either deny the existence of mental illness, minimalize the pain of mental illness, or even claim mental illness is a result of things like demons, doubt, or sin. This only stigmatized those with mental health issues.
Yes, I watched a video on YouTube of a popular Pentecostal preacher recently, where he claimed that if you’re filled with the joy of the Lord, then there’s no way you could be mentally ill. In other words, if you’re mentally ill, then you’re not a very good Christian, and it’s all your fault.
According to a recent study, nearly half of all Evangelicals believed mental illness could be cured by Bible reading and prayer. Consequently, people with mental illness are told not to seek the professional help they need. Rather they are told to have more faith and engage in more spiritual activity.
9. Spiritual gifts abuse
There is an unstated but very distinct hierarchy of Christian-ness in certain Christian circles driven by an unhealthy obsession with spiritual gifts. Particularly in Pentecostal circles, there is a demarcation between receiving Christ as your Lord and Saviour — let’s call that level 1 Christianity — and receiving the Holy Spirit — let’s call that level 2 Christianity.
Level 2 Christianity, or receiving the Holy Spirit, in some churches is an event that is characterized by charismatic phenomena such as prophecy, being slain in the spirit, and especially the practice of speaking in tongues. In fact, some denominations maintain that unless you can ‘speak in tongues’ you have not received the Holy Spirit. They justify this position by using some fairly loose Biblical interpretation of a few random passages in the Book of Acts.
So what is a person to do when they want to receive the Holy Spirit but can’t speak in tongues? Well, they either fake it — as many do — or they go away wondering what the heck they have done wrong for God to hold back the Holy Spirit from them. Once again, people are left feeling like they have somehow failed and are thoroughly traumatized as a result.
10. Purity culture
Purity culture — a subculture of evangelical Christianity that peaked in the 1990s — involved young people pledging to abstain from sex until marriage. The primary tools that the church used to drive home this message of abstinence were fear, guilt, and shame.
Not only did purity culture pressure Christians into getting married young, but it also pushed myths about premarital sex and the guaranteed benefits of abstinence until marriage. Proponents promise Christian young people that if they wait just a little longer, then their dreams will come true — complete with amazing wedding night sex and lifelong sexual and marital bliss.
The problem is, a whole lifetime of messaging about the dangers and wickedness of sex is unlikely to be undone in the act of marriage, and feelings of shame can continue for years.
11. Prosperity Gospel
Prosperity Gospel is the belief among some Christians that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth.
Subsequently, some churches make a habit of using Bible passages about giving/tithing and generosity to manipulate people into giving money to the church. If I had a dollar for every time I had been guilted into giving more money to the church, I would have a considerable amount of money to give to the church.
What is even more abhorrent than this is the suggestion that your financial giving is somehow linked to the blessing of God. The more you give, the more God will bless you, some churches will assert. In fact, your monetary gifts are capable of unlocking the blessing of God, they say. This opens up the possibility that if your life is not going according to your plan, perhaps you are not giving enough cash because good Christians give their money to the church. Bad Christians do not.
12. Destiny theology
Destiny theology is a false belief that you have only one special destiny. Your job is to work it out while God watches on silently. This can lead to a kind of paralysis when it comes to making decisions because, well… what if you make the wrong choice and therefore miss out on God’s best for you? You end up second-guessing yourself at every turn, and every decision is fraught with anxiety.
The opposite idea — the idea that there are multiple paths of blessing — is much more liberating and enabling, but also very scary to the person who has been indoctrinated with the idea that “God has a special destiny for you!”
The last word
Abuse can occur in virtually any context. What makes the forms of abuse described in this article particularly insidious and dangerous is that they are notoriously difficult to spot because, unlike other forms of abuse, they often masquerade as virtue and even spiritual maturity.
However, the time has come to call out spiritual abuse for what it is because, like all forms of abuse, it damages people. I hope that this article has armed you with knowledge. Knowing and understanding the characteristics of spiritual abuse is the first step in taking back control.
There is no place for abuse of any kind in Churches. Do not tolerate it from your leaders. Do not continue in churches where it is commonplace.
If your church cannot get people to fall in love with Jesus and live a life that is pleasing to him, without using guilt, shame, manipulation, or passive-aggression, then your church is not a Christian church at all. It’s a cult.
God’s honest truth.
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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