Spiritual abuse is a sad reality. Churches, pastors, and others can perpetuate it. I’m sure among cults it is common, but unfortunately in many independent Baptist circles, it is too.

I don’t want to say that everyone who claims to have been spiritually hurt this way, really was. Nor do I impugn evil motives on the leaders and churches where this has occurred. All I know is that the results can be painful.

Some of my readers have moved out of a spiritually abusive church. Some aren’t sure if they would classify their past experience as spiritual abuse or not. I’m not sure if I can regarding my story or not, either.

I’m not really trying to define the term here, I just want to talk about the damage that can be done (perhaps unknowingly) by certain forms of fundamentalist Christianity. This post comes out of my recent perusal of some comments at a facebook I joined that is “against abusive churches”. Since it is a closed group, some of the people there felt free to share how they were harmed by their past church experiences. Here is some of what they said:

There was a time when I rebelled against everything the Bible taught because I had a hard time separating stupid “Christians” from the Christ of the Bible.

I dealt with this, too. To the point of questioning the very existence of God.

I haven’t been to church in 2 1/2 years since i left. I guess i am afraid every church will be the same way. I have been having a really hard time putting the past behind me, so I am really glad this group was started, so I can begin to get over everything that has happened.

We have gone to church for years not really liking it nor wanting to go. It is really difficult to get past all this especially when there’s no admission of wrong doing. Good news though! God does know its wrong and he does want to heal your heart….I would encourage you to start looking for a healthy church. There are many out there.

I was out of church for a year or so, too, back before I got married. I had a real hard time figuring out who God was, once I sort of split from my parents’ and church’s rules. Since then I’ve been in a few different churches. I found some I knew I didn’t agree with, and found one that felt like a good fit. It takes time, because you do have a feeling that a church is either going to be too strict or too wishy-washy…very hard to define what is exactly right for you, but I would encourage you to look.

As I read these comments I am saddened in one sense for those involved. On the other hand I am angry at the religious system that could have caused this. I hope fundamentalists take notice. If you stand for what you think is right without a certain element of Christian love, you can produce this. I fear the number of people who have actually dropped out of church and will never return is quite high. How many are innoculated against the true gospel of God’s grace, by graceless carnal manipulation.

This reminds me that I need to continue to post on this kind of topic. For now, let me encourage you to check out churchabuse.com and spiritualabuse.com. These sites seem to have some useful information. And I’m sure I can’t agree with everything on them, but they might be able to help someone recover from spiritual abuse.

I also welcome any of my reader’s thoughts on this point here. Some of us share a similar background, perhaps you can share how youwere able to work through these kinds of issues in your own life.