Are you looking for testimonies on spiritual abuse through control in the church? My husband and I have been members of the same church for 32 years. We were victimized by a combination of "church transitioning" into the Purpose Driven Church movement and the influence of dominionism through the Religious Right. The two movements seem to go hand-in-hand. The control element is carefully hidden, but it IS there. The church is called a theocracy, which is most cases means that the pastor and a small, select circle within the church rule like royalty. Pastors no longer have time for rank-and-file members of the church. The same pastor who never spoke a word to me when my father died in 2005, wanted to come to our home to "talk to me" on the matter of something personal I had written. Someone asked my permission to put it on their website. It took four days for this to get to the pastor. I refused permission, walked out, and never went back. Some of the ugliest scenes I have ever witnessed were in church business meetings and there was and still no doubt is, a pretty thorough "spy system" in place. I had sent an Email to someone whom I thought was a friend who was on the church staff at one time. They moved out of town. This person sent the Email which was about my concerns with what was going on, back to the pastor.
A dear Christian friend of mine who had been in the church 42 years, has been turned into an emotional wreck because of the treatment she received. She was insulted and verbally assaulted on numerous occasions. She was summoned into the pastors office for "discipline" because of two sentences in that dangerous Email of mine and told that she and I had been "gossipping about the church." My husband and I personally saw and heard her verbally ripped to shreds by the pastor in a church business meeting. People, however, attacked her, including the pastor's wife. She got hate mail. Now she is an emotional mess, no longer attending any church, depressed, and spending a good deal of her time wandering back and forth between Texas and her daughter in Arkansas. Our particular treatment was shunning, being ostracized and frozen out until the pastor discovered that I knew how to write.
The church was also immersed in politics. There was more talk about political issues than the Word of God. Anyone who did not totally agree soon learned to keep quiet. It has been my personal experience that some of the most mean-spirited, self-righteous, downright hateful people I have ever met are politically conservative right-wing "Christipublicans." This has even caused a serious rift in our family, outside the influence of this church. There is an attitude of "I've got mine. If you don't have what you need, it must be because you're evil and lazy and God doesn't like you."
There is a definite plan in place to get rid of dissenters. I have personally heard stories from people across the country who have been threatened with the police if they come back to a church, told that they had to stand before the church and publically confess their supposed sin to remain, lied about and vilified, threatened with law suits, shunned by people who had known them for years.
I refused to be bullied and controlled by a preacher 20 years younger than I, who refuses to even speak to me unless he thinks I need "discipline." My problem is that my husband of 35 years refuses to leave this church. I find it maddening, but there's nothing I can do. He has a right to be where he wants to be. He wanders in occasionally on Sunday morning and warms a seat for an hour. I think it's more habit than spirituality. The idea of going to another organized church makes me feel physically ill with dread. I've suffered too much spiritual abuse. Once you've broken free of prison, you aren't anxious to return. All the churches in our area are either Spanish language, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, etc., or PDC churches and people here in our area don't invite other people to church unless they're young, upwardly mobile, and ready to fall into the correct mode of thinking. My husband and I are older (58 and 63), my husband is physically disabled and we have financial needs. I run a small internet business to try and supplement our income. We are not members of the Republican Party and we know how to think for ourselves, although my husband was raised a Southern Baptist which makes him more amenable to all this and less apt to speak out.
God alone knows the suffering we have been through because of this, but I am 58 years old. How much longer can I live anyway? Our son isn't all that nice to us and our daughter-in-law despises me. We haven't been able to see our grandchildren in over a year. We live on an income below the federal poverty level in a house with no heat or air conditioning (in Texas), our living room ceiling is caved in and part of the roof is about to go at any moment, plus no hot water or running water in the kitchen. I have no medical insurance and we have no life insurance. This life here on earth is very, very hard for us and we are very much isolated and alone, but I have learned to accept it and look for my reward in heaven, so I just keep telling our story and trying to talk to people and warn them about these false movements that are leading people down the road to hell, praying to God for wisdom and strength, removing myself into the presence of the Lord when things get too painful, looking upward and saying "Come quickly, Lord Jesus."
I hope you will find some value in the words of our story. God bless you.
A Sister In Christ,
Freida McAninch
Freida has requested that I publish her testimony - Carmen Brill.
I found much value in Freida's testimony and hope that others benefit from it as well. I also have had disagreements with Christians of a different political bent, my views were even called sinful and anti-biblical, though I try to follow scripture as best I can. I feel that no political party deserves loyalty, because no political party can claim to be from God, they are purely human affairs that can never hope to reach what Jesus will with his kingdom when he returns. I agree with the author that a dominionist stance seems to be popular in certain Christian groups that is rather harming the Church than helping it.
Furthermore Freida wrote: "I can handle new forms of worship, but not bullying. Things weren't so bad as long as I kept quiet. My husband doesn't like what's going on either, but says I just want to stir up trouble, but something has just risen up in my spirit that makes me want to fight back."
I fully understand Freida's attitude. She used to be obeying the "Can't Talk Rule" as Jeff VanVonderen describes it in his book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. He also contains this information in an online video: Lecture 2: The Abusive Religious System. He said that althought there may not be a fixed rule not to address certain subjects in a church, there is often an unwritten rule not to do so. The "Can't Talk Rule" can exist in many other kinds of situations. The person that openly addresses a problem is seen as the problem instead of the problem itself.
From the perspective of pastor, Van Vonderen uses the illustration in his video of what would happen if he would hit a woman. The woman then goes to the police and as a result he gets thrown in jail. Who was at fault, him for hitting the woman or the woman for speaking up? In front of God he would have been at fault for hurting someone. He would be at fault according to the legal system as well. If she had not spoken up he might have hurt her again and again and perhaps others as well. But the church he serves might blame her for shedding a bad light on the pastor and therefore on the congregation. They might try to sweep the incident under the rug to avoid embarassment. If the woman could not be coerced into silence, she might be ostracized to prevent a "catastrophe." This would be unjust because she was only testifying to a truth and an injustice that already existed, a catastrophe that already happened. She was not the problem.
Testifying to the truth is not purposely stirring up trouble, it is doing what Jesus did to the Pharisees and what Paul said he would do to all those that were trying to put themselves off as Apostles and assuming false authority. He did what he could to expose them, as Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The truth did not leave us after Paul did or after Jesus ascended. Testifying to the truth and any injustice present in the Church is something that no Christian should neglect, it is carrying on God's work rather than suppressing it. Jesus did not obey the "Can't Talk Rule" since it never came from himself, and we don't have to either.
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