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This article is based on a chapter from the author’s doctoral dissertation and forthcoming book, In the House of Friends: Understanding and Healing From
Spiritual Abuse in the Church, about the recognition of spiritually abusive churches and recovery from the trauma they inflict on members.
When the Walking Wounded
Walk Into Church
By Ken Garrett
T
he members of healthy churches often have a
tough time understanding the concept of an
abusive, Christian church—a church that holds
to correct, orthodox theology, and yet functions
like a cult. Many believe that a church with
“good doctrine” is inoculated against spiritually abusive
conditions. Moreover, recent statistics suggest that only
about two percent of the congregation sitting in a church
on a Sunday morning have experienced spiritual abuse.1
That’s a lot of people, but it’s also few enough spread out
over the 350,000 churches in America to go unrecognized
and unappreciated.
As a result, very few Christians today understand the
experiences and trauma their fellow Christians who have
been spiritually abused have experienced. And because their
wounds are spiritual—invisible—they are not readily noticed.
What are these wounds survivors of spiritual abuse carry with
them when they walk through the doors of a healthy church?
I have asked friends who have shared my experience of
belonging to an abusive church to describe their experiences
of reentry into healthy churches. They speak of loneliness,
insecurity, and the prevailing fear that they are perceived
as spiritually damaged goods when they seek to worship in
healthy churches. I’m not sure if we spiritual-abuse survivors
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really stick out as prominently as we feel we do—but we do
share that sense of unhealed woundedness that we fear must
be obvious to others. Many of us are compelled to find a good,
healthy church as an issue of obedience to God, but we do so
with a vague, gnawing feeling that our very reason for finding
a good church might be a part of what led us into the abusive
church in the first place. Others among us simply step back,
take a break, and disengage from the whole organized worship
scene. These folks frequently do not receive much patience or
understanding from their fellow Christians, who often believe
that, until a survivor of an abusive church buckles down, bites
the bit, and joins another church—this time a good church—
God won’t have much to do with them.
Those survivors who do choose to enter a church again enter
a community that believes and does many of the very same
things those in the abusive church she left believed and did:
Good churches sing abusive churches sing. Good churches
have powerful, persuasive preachers abusive churches have
powerful, persuasive preachers. Good churches have programs
for the kids abusive churches have programs for the kids. Good
churches open the Bible for answers and direction abusive
churches open the Bible for answers and direction. Good
churches collect money for their support abusive churches
collect money for their support. Good churches notice and
affirm new people and visitors abusive churches notice and
affirm new people.
There are certainly many differences between a good church
and an abusive church. But to a survivor of spiritual abuse
suffered in a church, a whole lot of things may look and feel
the same in both. And now, as she comes into church, she
brings in a lot of pain, and hurt, and brokenness with her. She is
walking, but she is wounded. Let’s take a look at some of these
wounds....
Wounds of the Soul
The trauma inflicted by spiritually abusive churches reaches
deeply into the realms of the psychological, emotional, and
spiritual, and therefore has a profound effect on the self-image
of the survivor and on his most dear relationships. These are the
unseen wounds that ache in a person’s heart. They are wounds
of the soul.
The False Self
Abusive churches unwittingly demand that their members
create a false, church self—one that serves the demands and
expectations of the church about how to speak, act, think,
decide, and be compliant. To comply, the member often builds
a new, false self—one who does and says things that obey the
church, but that simply aren’t him. He’s not himself anymore,
but neither is he the false self. The false self gives more money
than the true self wants to give, spends more time at church
than the true self wants to spend, prioritizes involvement with
the church over time with family, friends, and the things he
used to like to do. The false self is on duty day and night to keep
him out of hot water with church leaders, and this false self
applies layer after layer of inauthentic living that he soon claims
as his true identity.
In fact, the member’s true identity has been highjacked by the
false self, and is hidden away deep in the dark, cold cellar of the
member’s mind. The visible personality, expressed in church-
friendly living, is the one leaders and fellow church members
see. The hidden personality, the one who has been relegated
to the basement and rarely is let out into public, wastes away
in its forced seclusion, but it never dies. The splitting, when the
member speaks and acts on the outside incongruently with
what he believes and desires on the inside, can do horrible
damage to his mental health. Such cognitive dissociation
makes him a type of walking civil war from an emotional-
psychiatric perspective. The battle between these two selves
may form a split personality the member carries with him when
he leaves the church.
But what of the core self, the true, God-given personality each
human being is born with—our souls? I believe that our souls
are a creation of God, and God never relinquishes ownership of
His creation. We can ruin our souls, neglect them, starve them,
ignore them, damage them beyond all recognition—but in the
end, they belong to God.
And as I reflect on my experience of being spiritually abused,
I believe my soul, the inner me, was always working to get
me out of my abusive, cultic church. It nagged me, itched my
conscience, gnawed at my thoughts, and, in the end, like a
whack-a-mole game, simply kept popping up. Finally, it won
out, and I shed the fake me like a snake shedding its skin.
So under such a weight of mental stress, what are some of the
wounds of the soul that members in the spiritually abusive
church may suffer and carry with them when they leave?
Survivors may experience flashbacks when later circumstances,
interactions, and conditions remind them of their experience
in the abusive church. Such episodes may trigger responses
that may seem inappropriate or extreme. An authoritative,
charismatic, talented preacher, for instance, can trigger
survivors into feeling the same emotions and tensions that
they experienced under the preaching of the abusive pastor,
if that pastor was such a preacher. A casual statement from
the new pastor affirming the positive, beneficial results of
regular attendance, financial support, or even the practice
of a healthy spiritual discipline, can trigger survivors into
...very few Christians
today understand the
experiences and trauma
their fellow Christians who
have been spiritually
abused have experienced.

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experiencing the same emotions they did when those personal,
spiritual disciplines were demanded of them in the abusive
church. The simple phrase the Bible says can cause survivors to
brace themselves for the blow to come—as they mistakenly
anticipate the Bible will be used to make demands, exert
control, and strip away their autonomy.
Depression
Survivors often struggle with depression, including persistent
feelings of sadness, anxiety, purposelessness, pessimism,
joylessness, and exhaustion. The level of depression the
survivors of spiritual abuse experience often merits medical and
psychiatric intervention in the form of counseling, medication,
and even physical therapies designed to help them in their
recovery. One of the most harmful results of pastors not
appreciating the phenomena of abusive churches and Christian
cults is that they are slow to refer survivors to the specialized
counseling and medical care that can provide significant
assistance in their recovery.
Self-Medication
Survivors may attempt to self-medicate as they seek to alleviate
emotional pain and stress. They might abuse drugs, whether
prescribed by a doctor or scored on the street. Alcohol can
provide the nightly relaxation they require to be able to sleep
or to take the edge off of their fear of going to work or church.
They might also use sex to distract themselves from emotional
pain, or resort to unhealthy overeating. I often ask those who
have recently exited a high-demand group, abusive church,
or cult if they are self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, or other
harmful behaviors, and if they acknowledge that they are,
suggest they would benefit from a visit to a primary-care
physician. They may have begun self-medicating when they
were in the abusive church, and that may have been tolerated,
encouraged, and even exemplified by its leaders. Abusive
churches do not produce or sustain healthy people.
Guilt
Survivors often struggle with guilt. They may have
compromised personal standards of ethical speech or behavior.
They feel guilty for the things they said and did while they were
in the church. They are sure that, somehow, somewhere deep
down, they must shoulder some blame for their abuse.
Shame
Survivors often struggle with shame. Shame, while closely tied
to guilt, is much worse. It is toxic to the soul of its carrier. Shame
is the result of mixing up what we do with who we are. We feel
guilt over the wrong things we do we feel shame for who we
believe we are. We do something wrong, bad, hurtful, and then
we feel guilty, as we should. But when we do or say something
wrong, deceitful, dishonest, and then surmise that we therefore
are unworthy people—that is shame. We feel we are unworthy
of respect... courtesy... kindness... forgiveness that we deserve
to be hurt and abused by our pastor.... Things like that. Shame
suffocates our souls—pounding into them the message that we
don’t deserve the air we breathe.
Abusive leaders of abusive churches may have shamed
members through public (group) condemnation mock trials
(often with a twisted, ecclesial tone to them) or private, one-
on-one discipleship meetings with a spiritual mentor. Sadly,
although the members may successfully walk away from their
abusive churches, they often carry destructive feelings of
shame for many years after they have left.
Anger and Blame
Survivors of spiritual abuse are often angry. They are offended
and provoked as they come to grips with what the leader
and the group did to them. As time passes, they may better
understand the unstable, vulnerable position they were in
when they were recruited into the church, and how the leaders
took advantage of their condition. But improperly processed,
this anger can be misdirected, resulting in self-loathing and
nastiness toward others, and even God.
When I left the church, I was enraged at God within weeks,
blaming Him for the 12 years there that I accounted for as
wasted and devastating to my family. “So, is THAT the way You
answer the prayers of 22-year-olds who want to serve You?!
THAT’S what You do when they ask You to lead them ...send
them to a CULT?! You are one lousy Father, God,” I railed. “Thanks
a lot!”
While misdirecting our anger can delay recovery from
spiritual abuse, we should not fear it, for something terrible
has happened. As abuse survivors, we were mistreated,
disrespected, and used. Of course, we are angry! The challenge,
for survivors, and for those who wish to help them, is to find
healthy ways to deal with anger, whether through our own
reflection and study, through professional help, or through a
new and nonabusive spiritual community.
Ambiguity
Survivors often struggle to accept the ambiguity of many
theological, faith-related issues. Abusive churches and cults
do not teach their members to tolerate diversity of opinion.
Instead, they insist that there is one way, their way, and that all
other views are simply wrong. In such areas as politics, gender
roles in the church and home—including the relationship
of husbands and wives, education, styles of music, social
Survivors of spiritual abuse
often carry significant
wounds to their faith, as they
reevaluate the core theological
beliefs they held and find them
to be insufficient...
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standards, dietary practices, or even a citizen’s obligations
to the government, there is only either/or, in the beliefs and
assumptions of the abusive church—never both/and. It is
very difficult for members who leave such totalist ideology and
teaching to accept that other Christians simply disagree about
some issues that the abusive church considered litmus tests
for the authenticity of faith, and often, salvation itself. And it
can be particularly challenging for those who have left such
monolithic, our-way-or-the-highway thinking to navigate the
waters of today’s pluralistic world.
Conflicting Emotions
The mix of the feelings and attitudes listed previously can
make things pretty messy in a survivor’s head. After leaving my
abusive church, I experienced a bizarre combination of self-
loathing and self-righteousness, especially during the worship
services of the normal churches I attended. I recall sitting in a
Sunday service just months after I had left, inwardly criticizing
the music, the content of the sermon, and the skills of the
preacher. As I thumbed through the worship guide, I judged
what seemed to me the church’s shallow programs and lack of
biblical vision and focus.
But only moments later, I was overcome with excruciating
shame and self-consciousness. I whispered to my wife, Sharon,
“I have got to go. See you at home.”
Five minutes later, there I was, head down, shuffling down the
street, with one step, hating the new church, with the next,
hating myself for criticizing it. It can be tough for the survivors
of abusive churches to simply show up to worship, give
themselves a break, and remain for the whole service.
Sleep Issues
Survivors may experience sleep disorders and nightmares. I
still have dreams, most of which do not rate as out-and-out
nightmares. I think my dreams are a type of self-healing, as my
subconscious is attempting to heal my conscious memories.
Patterns of being back there are common, with me reliving
the horrible stress of the abusive church, but often openly
questioning or criticizing its leaders. I think those dreams are
an attempt to allow me to relive the experiences, only this time
(in the dream) working on making things turn out better than
they did in real life.
Loss of Theological Certainty
Survivors of spiritual abuse often carry significant wounds
to their faith, as they reevaluate the core theological beliefs
they held and find them to be insufficient, illogical, and even
destructive. They suspect, and often fear, that many other of
their tightly held beliefs may also be simply untenable, and
wrong. They are unsure of just how many of those beliefs
they will need to examine and discard, how long that process
might take, and what beliefs might replace them. Often, the
first belief to crumble is that the God they believed in and felt
they were faithfully obeying was predictable and committed to
showing exceptional favor to them. That God doesn’t seem to
exist—and, as survivors, they may find themselves wondering
whether any God exists. Or the idea that a loving God allowed
the deceit, loss, and pain to occur in a community that claimed
to follow Him can deeply unravel survivors’ belief systems.
Survivors also find themselves reevaluating their approach to
the Bible because much of the abuse they suffered was directly
and indirectly validated as being in accordance with biblical
teaching. Finally, survivors of spiritual abuse in a Christian
church cannot be faulted for questioning the validity and
trustworthiness of any church, especially if the doctrinal beliefs
of their abusive church closely correspond to the doctrines
of supposedly healthy churches. Therefore, it is critical that
survivors of abusive churches be shown gracious acceptance
should they choose to stop attending church services, refuse to
become members of a church, or stop identifying as Christian.
I have discussed what I think are the most prominent wounds
of the soul there are. But there also are other wounds, such
as overwhelming, gnawing feelings of isolation, loneliness,
insecurity, lack of confidence, embarrassment, indecisiveness,
and a host of other emotional maladies.
Marriage Wounds
Marriages do not do very well in the abusive church, for
narcissistic pastors are wary and suspicious of the exclusive
loyalty marriage entails. Often, such pastors bear a general
animosity toward all dyadic (two-person) relationships in
their church. Any exclusive, unique relationship between
two people (husband-wife, parent-child, friend-friend, etc.)
constitutes a threat to the pastor’s control, and is therefore
discouraged, ignored, or invaded.
Abusive pastors may demand that no secrets between spouses
are kept from the leader. Spouses are pressured to divulge their
respective mates’ personal issues, failures, and even statements
made in the privacy of the home. In its extreme forms, this
interference with the marriage relationship may even include
abusive leaders prying into the intimate, sexual areas of the
marriage under the guise of counseling, encouragement,
or discipleship, but with the actual intent of unraveling the
intimate safety marriage partners share.
The demand for attendance at the many services and
programs and meetings of the church, along with private
meetings with leaders and teachers, can drain members of the
time needed to relax and enjoy time with a spouse. Survivors
Marriages do not do very well
in the abusive church, for
narcissistic pastors are wary
and suspicious of the exclusive
loyalty marriage entails.