8 ICSA TODAY 6
who have experienced such abuse of their marriages often
struggle with trusting their spouses, and they wonder whether
their marriage can be saved, or if it is worth saving.
For those marriages that began in the abusive church,
achieving a healthy marriage is especially difficult because
the only identity that either spouse knows of his or her mate
within the marriage is that of the abusive church member, not
the prechurch individual. But whether their marriage began
before the couple’s membership in the abusive church or
after they joined, the church’s attack on the marriage is often
ruthless, deep, and lasting. making them hesitate to step into a
church again. You can’t really blame them for wanting to step
back from church and instead take a deep breath on Sunday
mornings, relaxing together over a quiet breakfast before
going on a hike.
Parenting Wounds
Regret and guilt can be overwhelming for parents who have
subjected their children to a church that hurt them. Having
believed they were raising their children in the most positive,
spiritually healthy way, they have had to face that they
exposed their dear children to deep, lasting wounds.
For Sharon and me, the church we believed would provide the
best life, spiritual education, and positive experience of our
Christian faith ended up robbing our children of joy and faith
itself.
One autumn evening in 1996, Sharon and I and our three
daughters were at the dinner table, talking about the start
of school for the older girls, Bryn, then 12, and Rachel, then
10. (Our youngest, Grace, was almost 2.) The subject of the
abusive church we had left just weeks earlier came up often
at mealtime. (Did I just write often? It’s really about all we ever
talked about.)
“Do you think we’ll ever go back there?” asked Bryn.
“Yeah,” her 10-year-old sister quietly asked “are we going
back?”
Sharon and I looked at each other with a look that said, Go slow
and easy on this one—they lost all their friends when we left the
church. Our kids were all born while we were members of the
church, and Bryn and Rachel had spent all their young lives in
it, living semicommunally for 6 of the years we were members.
The other children in the church were like siblings to them.
They spent countless hours with the same kids, learning to
walk at the same time, having little-girl tea parties together,
loving the same toys, playing on the same Little League teams,
worshipping the same pop stars, and attending the same
schools. As far as we saw, they led an idyllic life and when we
left the church we also suddenly, forcibly, separated the girls
from their best friends.
With each day of freedom from the church, our certainty that
we would certainly never return only grew. We lived in a nice
little house in the old neighborhood I had grown up in. The
girls had already begun the school year in their new schools
and were enjoying exploring their new neighborhood. Going
back to the church was out of the question. Now, we were
faced with what we believed to be a critical challenge—telling
our daughters we would never return to the church, and to
their dearest friends.
“Well,” I began, “we’re not so sure about it...”
Sharon continued, “Because we’re not sure it’s where we really
want to be, as far as...”
“...what’s best for our family,” I finished.
The table was silent as the girls looked from Sharon’s face to
mine, trying to figure out what might come out of our mouths
next.
“So, no we’re not going to go back. Ever?”
“No, we’re never going back. Ever.”
There, I thought. We said it. After a brief, awkward pause, both
Brynny and Rachel looked at each other, and then got up from
the table. I looked at Sharon, whose face revealed the same
worry that I was feeling. Oh, no, I thought. They are going to run
to their rooms. They’re crushed, disappointed. It’s going to be a
long night. Dad disappoints, yet again.
But they did not run to their rooms. Instead, they giggled,
locked arms, and began swirling around the kitchen floor like
exuberant square dancers, chanting,
“We’re never going back! We’re NEVER going back! We’re NEVER
GOING BACK!”
Sharon and I stared, open-mouthed, both thinking, What
have we done to these kids? There we sat at the kitchen table in
stunned silence, watching the spontaneous, joy-filled dance of
freedom on our kitchen floor, and realizing in yet another way
how we had really gotten it all so wrong. (In the near future, we
would learn what had happened to several of the girls in the
abusive church, and the unrestrained joy of our daughters that
evening would make more sense to us.)
Parents who exposed their children to spiritually abusive
churches may carry crushing guilt for using methods of
discipline that were harsh and painful. They may realize
that they were uninvolved and neglectful, quick to dish
out punishment and correction, slow to shower grace and
unconditional love. They may grieve the degree to which they
granted other, nonrelated adults the authority to correct and
discipline their children, and to act as parental figures.
Parents may grieve over the money, time, and energy that
went to the abusive church and not to their children. As their
Parents who exposed their
children to spiritually
abusive churches may
carry crushing guilt...
9 VOLUME 11 |ISSUE 1 |2020
Note
[1] Langone, M. D. “Research Survey on Spiritual Abuse” (n.d.). (A ”Paper
Pilot Test—Preliminary Report.“) Available online at
https://sites.google.com/icsahome.com/icsa/articles/research-survey-
on-spiritual-abuse
About the Author
Rev. Ken Garrett, DMin, is senior pastor
of Grace Church, located in his hometown
of Portland, Oregon. After a 20-year career
as a paramedic, he completed seminary
studies and transitioned to the pastorate.
For 12 years, Ken and his wife Sharon
belonged to a high-demand, abusive
church whose members lived communally, practicing an
overbearing, extreme form of the Christian faith. Ken and
Sharon made a painful exit from the church in 1996 with
their three daughters. They now enjoy many opportunities
to counsel and care for survivors of abusive churches from
the Portland metro area and have begun a quarterly Spiritual
Abuse Forum for Education to promote friendship and
education for survivors of spiritual abuse. Ken has earned a
Doctor of Ministry degree, with a dissertation focusing on
the recognition of spiritually abusive churches and recovery
from the trauma they inflict on members. Ken loves reading,
traveling, and hiking in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. n
children begin to believe they truly are free of the abusive
church, they may begin to relate to their parents what life was
really like for them, including examples of emotional, physical,
and in some cases, sexual abuse. Parents’ confidence may
wither as they realize how extensive the effect of the spiritually
abusive church was on their children, who memorized verse
after verse of the Bible while also memorizing whom to obey,
and whom to fear in the church.
There is perhaps no greater responsibility in life than that
of parenting a child. It is a bitter thing to grasp the fact that
your kids, who had no choice in the matter, were abused in
the church that Mom and Dad raised them in. This is a burden
that loving, understanding, empathetic friends, pastors, and
extended family members can help to bear in caring for
parents who survive abusive churches.
Economic Wounds
Abusive churches do not exist to make people happy,
satisfied, and spiritually healthy. Rather, they exist to serve
and support their leaders. A prime example of this is how
members are persuaded to give up their money. Once we
had left our church, we realized that what were presented as
“opportunities” to support the work of the church were simply
ways for more of our hard-earned money to make its way into
the hands of the pastor of our small church. And besides the
loss of actual wealth members suffer, there is often the loss
of potential wealth if members fulfill the expectation of near-
perfect attendance at church programs, ministries, and special
events. The time they might have spent working, developing
businesses, or taking on odd jobs is sacrificed to the church
instead.
The survivors of abusive churches often are struggling
financially, and fighting, scrimping, and saving to regain
financial stability. Some are at a stage of life when they
expected they would own homes, be secure in their
professions, and have retirement savings but they often have
none of those resources and are starting over to build wealth.
Even now, it still pains me to think of the lost income, both real
and potential, of those 12 years we were under the domination
of an abusive pastor. I suppose anyone can make bad financial
decisions and end up with fewer dollars in the bank. But the
feeling of being ripped off, deceived, and squeezed in the
name of Jesus stings, and it takes a while to get over that.
Educational and Professional Wounds
Many survivors have neglected or been actively dissuaded
from pursuing educational and professional goals. They will
feel that they have lost opportunities for advancement in the
workplace and have left their dreams and goals on the altar of
loyalty to the abusive churches and pastors. Some may have
put career plans on hold, having been told by their abusive
leaders that they instead should be investing their time and
energies in the abusive church. They may have been told that,
as the church grew, there would be opportunities for paid
service, perhaps even as pastors themselves, if they would only
hold on and keep on giving to the church. And they gave and
gave—and left with nothing.
Survivors of spiritually abusive churches often walk through
the doors of healthy churches feeling like professional and
academic failures. They feel like unfortunate, spiritual gamblers
who have cast the dice in a bid for greater meaning and
productivity as Christians and thrown snake eyes.
These are just some of the main areas of trauma and
woundedness that the survivors of spiritual abuse may bear.
They don’t leave these wounds at home on Sunday when they
seek a healthy church in which to worship, and they don’t
leave them in the car in the parking lot either. The wounds of
spiritual abuse come right through the door with the survivors
and are, in fact, the wounds that they hope to find care for in
the healthy church. n
The wounds of spiritual abuse
come right through the door
with the survivors and are,
in fact, the wounds that they
hope to find care for in the
healthy church.

10 ICSA TODAY
Why We Can’t Eliminate Cults,
and How We Are Drawn In
This article is based on a paper presented at ICSA’s Annual Conference in Manchester, United Kingdom in 2019.
By Russell Bradshaw
11 VOLUME 11 |ISSUE 1 |2020
Introduction: An Evolutionary Psychology
Perspective
We can’t eliminate cultic groups because they appeal to two
of our strongest human needs, and because psychopathic and
narcissistic personalities may be inclined to exploit and control
other persons.
First, we feel a deep-seated need to belong to a group. This
is how our species has survived. Through millions of years of
natural selection, we have evolved into social animals. Second,
our social evolution and cognitive development eventually
created a deep-seated human need to understand our life on
earth: We try to understand our particular, personal place in
family, society, and the cosmos. As we evolved as a species, we
experienced a growing need to answer persistent questions
that impact our personal well-being and our unique existence.
These two basic needs, to feel part of a group and to understand
our lives, though often unconscious, are now part of our
evolutionary inheritance.
Membership in some kind of a group or groups is therefore
rewarding and necessary for most people. Indeed, without
such membership, people may experience serious mental
and social problems. Many researchers feel that the present
epidemic of depression and anxiety illnesses can be traced, at
least partially, to increasing loneliness and social separation
in our society. However, these deep-seated needs, to belong
and to understand, also open the door to the manipulations of
narcissistic and psychopathic leaders of cultic groups, which
purport to offer both fellowship in a close-knit group and
answers to existential questions.
In other words, cultic groups emerge as a form of social
and existential collateral damage resulting from our deeply
imbedded evolutionary inheritance exploited by unscrupulous
individuals. This outcome is especially evident in the context of
our postmodern alienating and anomic society. Although our
material well-being has increased in advanced societies, our
cultural angst and insecurity have also increased. Adolescents
and young adults in particular may find these inspiring and
idealistic groups especially supportive and appealing as they
intently seek their psychosocial identity (Erikson,1980).
Obviously, not all groups are harmful. So how can we distinguish
between a normal or beneficial social group and a harmful one?
In his article “Origins and Prevention of Abuse” (ICSA Today, 2016,
pp. 11–13), Michael Langone finds two critical characteristics
that distinguish between these two kinds of groups: In benign
or beneficial groups, he explains, members are treated as
subjects, with respect for their individuality and autonomy
whereas, in harmful groups, members are treated as objects,
attracted, retained, and manipulated at the expense of their
autonomy through undue influence and coercive control. These
latter are the groups often referred to as cults. Rod Dubrow-
Marshall, Maarten van de Donk, and Wessel Haanstra (2019) give
a comprehensive description of the powerful social-influence
processes used to retain members after initial recruitment.
Our Basic Needs and Cult Recruitment
How, then, are our basic social and cognitive instincts—the
need to belong and the need to understand—related to
whether or not we become engaged in a cultic group? Although
we all have these two evolutionary needs, not everyone
becomes involved in a cult. Extremist groups are not active
everywhere, and there is a host of individual and environmental
variables that promote or hinder our general tendency to
belong to a group. Among these variables are the following:
Intelligence. Research has shown that cultic group
members are not more mentally or psychologically
challenged than the rest of the population in fact,
the intelligence and educational level of members are
often higher than the average. They are often seeking
to improve themselves or society, and therefore may
be more open to unusual or alternative approaches
to life’s challenges. The explanation often provided
for the success of cultic groups, that weaker or
more troubled individuals become members, is not
supported by research.
Life Circumstance. Everyone goes through
psychosocial developmental stages, with their
inherent transitions and crises. All human beings
also have personal weaknesses, somewhere in
their psyches (e.g., see the works of Freud, Erikson,
Kohlberg, Fowler, and Maslow). Narcissistic leaders
and cultic groups are adept at identifying situations of
transition and crisis, in which people are vulnerable,
and exploiting the human weaknesses that may be
exacerbated under these conditions. These leaders
often find promising recruits in self-help or therapy
groups, political movements, religious gatherings, or
pyramid business enterprises. Cult recruiters often seek
out prospective recruits on college campuses, where
students are at a particularly vulnerable stage of life as
they emerge from the protective environment of their
families and confront adult challenges on their own.
Chance. Perhaps one of the most important variables
involved in who joins a cultic or extremist group and
who does not may be that someone is merely in the
wrong place, and at the wrong time.
I should note here that this paper does not deal with the special
issues of people who are born or raised in cultic groups.
…these deep-seated needs, to
belong and to understand, also
open the door to the manipulations
of narcissistic and psychopathic
leaders of cultic groups,…