Religious abuse
Religious abuse is abuse administered through religion, including harassment or humiliation that may result in psychological trauma. Religious abuse may also include the misuse of religion for selfish, secular, or ideological ends, such as the abuse of a clerical position.[1][2]
Religious abuse can be perpetuated by religious leaders or other members of a religious community, and it can happen in any religion or faith.[3] Some examples of religious abuse include using religious teachings to justify abuse, enforcing strict religious rules and practices that are harmful, shaming or ostracizing individuals who do not conform to religious norms, using religious authority to manipulate or control others, and denying access to medical care or other basic needs in the name of religion.[4][5]
Religious abuse can have serious and long-lasting effects on individuals and communities, including trauma, emotional distress, loss of faith, and even physical harm. It is important for individuals and religious communities to be aware of the signs of religious abuse and to take steps to prevent it from happening.[6][7]
Psychological abuse
One specific meaning of the term religious abuse refers to
Even well-intentioned religious abuse can have long-term psychological consequences, such as the victim developing phobias or long-term depression. They may have a sense of shame that persists even after they leave the religion. A person can also be manipulated into avoiding a beneficial action (such as a medical treatment) or to engage in a harmful behavior.[1]
In his book Religious Abuse, pastor Keith Wright describes an example of such abuse. When he was a child, his
A more recent study among 200 university students has shown that 12.5% of students reported being victimized by at least one form of religious or ritual abuse (RA). The study, which was published in the
Against children
Religiously-based psychological abuse of children can involve using teachings to subjugate children through fear, or indoctrinating the child in the beliefs of their particular religion whilst suppressing other perspectives. Psychologist Jill Mytton describes this as crushing the child's chance to form a personal morality and belief system; it makes them utterly reliant on their religion and/or parents, and they never learn to reflect critically on the information they receive. Similarly, the use of fear and a judgmental environment (such as the concept of Hell) to control the child can be traumatic.[10]
Physical abuse
Physical abuse in a religious context can take the form of beatings, illegal confinement, neglect, near drowning or even murder in the belief that the child is
In 2012, the United Kingdom's
Survivors
Survivors of religious abuse can develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to their abusive religious experiences.[13] Dr. Marlene Winell, a psychologist and former fundamentalist, coined the term religious trauma syndrome (RTS) in a 2011 article she wrote for the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies.[14] Winell describes RTS as "the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination."[14]
In the article, Winell identifies four categories of dysfunction: cognitive, affective, functional, and social/cultural.[14]
- Cognitive: Confusion, difficulty with decision-making and critical thinking, dissociation, identity confusion
- Affective: Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, suicidal ideation, anger, grief, guilt, loneliness, lack of meaning
- Functional: Sleep and eating disorders, nightmares, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, somatization
- Social/cultural: Rupture of family and social network, employment issues, financial stress, problems acculturating into society, interpersonal dysfunction
It is important to note that these symptoms can occur for people who have simply participated in dogmatic expressions of religion, such as fundamentalism. It is easy to validate traumatic responses to religious abuse in more extreme cases such as authoritarian cult membership, clergy sexual abuse, or mind control tactics used to extremes like the mass suicide at
Exposure therapy or staying in religiously abusive settings may not be conducive to healing for survivors of religious abuse.[19] Healing can come through support groups, therapy, and psychoeducation.[20] Survivors have many opportunities to recover and live vibrant lives after they leave religiously abusive settings.
Religious violence
Religious violence and extremism (also called communal violence[21]) is a term that covers all phenomena where religion is either the subject or object of violent behavior.[22]
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice (sometimes called ritual murder), has been practiced on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is typically intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods. Fertility was another common theme in ancient religious sacrifices.
Human sacrifice may be a ritual practiced in a stable society, and may even be conducive to enhance societal unity (see: Sociology of religion), both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment, by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of war). However, outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of blood frenzy and mass killings that destabilize society.
Archaeology has uncovered physical evidence of child sacrifice at several locations.[23] Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica and the Inca Empire.[24][25][26] Psychologists Alice Miller and Robert Godwin, psychohistorian Lloyd deMause and other advocates of children's rights have written about pre-Columbian sacrifice within the framework of child abuse.[27][28][29]
Children were thrown to the sharks in ancient Hawaii.[31]
Sacrificial victims were often infants. "The slaughtering of newborn babies may be considered a common event in many cultures" including the
Initiation rites
In
Modern practices
In the rituals of some tribes in Papua New Guinea, an elder "picks out a sharp stick of cane and sticks it deep inside a boy's nostrils until he bleeds profusely into the stream of a pool, an act greeted by loud war cries."[37] Afterwards, when boys are initiated into puberty and manhood, they are expected to perform fellatio on the elders. "Not all initiates will participate in this ceremonial homosexual activity but, about five days later, several will have to perform fellatio several times."[37]
Individual cases of ritual murder have been recorded in Brazil,[38] the United States,[39] and Singapore (See Toa Payoh ritual murders).
See also List of satanic ritual abuse allegations
Witch-hunts
To this day, witch hunts, trials and accusations are still a real danger in some parts of the world. Trials result in violence against men, women and children, including murder.
Psychohistorical explanation
A small number of academics subscribe to the theory of
This psychohistorical model claims that practices of
Spiritual abuse
Spiritual abuse includes:
- emotional abuse
- Physical abuse including physical injury (e.g., tatbir) and deprivation of sustenance.
- Sexual abuse
- Any act by deeds or words that shame or diminish the dignity of a person.
- Intimidation and the requirement to submit to a spiritual authority without any right to dissent.
- Unreasonable control of a person's basic right to exercise freewillin spiritual or natural matters.
- apostate, an enemy of the church or of a deity.
- disenfranchisementor estrangement from family and friends outside the group due to cult-religious or spiritual or indigenous beliefs.
- Esotericism, hidden agendas and requirements revealed to members only as they successfully advance through various stages of a faith.[53]
- Enforced practice of spiritualism, mysticism, or other ideologies peculiar to members of that religion.[53]
- Financial exploitation or enslavement of adherents.[53]
Background
The term spiritual abuse was purportedly coined in the late twentieth century to refer to alleged abuse of authority by church leaders,
Characteristics
Ronald Enroth in Churches That Abuse identifies five categories:[citation needed]
- Authority and power: abuse arises when leaders of a group arrogate to themselves power and authority that lacks the dynamics of open accountability and the capacity to question or challenge decisions made by leaders. The shift entails moving from general respect for an office bearer to one where members loyally submit without any right to dissent.
- Manipulation and control: abusive groups are characterized by social dynamics where fear, guilt or threats are routinely used to produce unquestioning obedience, group conformity or stringent tests of loyalty. The leader-disciple relationship may become one in which the leader's decisions control and usurp the disciple's right or capacity to make choices.[1]
- Elitism and persecution: abusive groups depict themselves as unique and have a strong organizational tendency to be separate from other bodies and institutions. The social dynamism of the group involves being independent or separate, with diminishing possibilities for internal correction or reflection, whilst outside criticism.
- Life-style and experience: abusive groups foster rigidity in behavior and belief that requires conformity to the group's ideals.
- Dissent and discipline: abusive groups tend to suppress any kind of internal challenge to decisions made by leaders.
Agnes and John Lawless argue in The Drift into Deception that there are eight characteristics of spiritual abuse, and some of these clearly overlap with Enroth's criteria. They list the eight marks of spiritual abuse as comprising:[citation needed]
- Charisma and pride
- Anger and intimidation
- Greed and fraud
- Immorality
- Enslaving authoritarianstructure
- Exclusivity
- Demanding loyalty and honor
- New revelation
The author of Charismatic Captivation, Steven Lambert, in a post on the book's website delineates "33 Signs of Spiritual Abuse",[58] including:
- Apotheosis or de facto deification of the leadership.
- Absolute authority of the leadership.
- Pervasive abuse and misuse of authority in personal dealings with members to coerce submission.
- Paranoia, inordinate egotism or narcissism, and insecurity by the leaders.
- Abuse and inordinate incidence of "church discipline" particularly in matters not expressly considered to be church discipline issues.
- Inordinate attention to maintaining the public image of the ministry and lambasting of all "critics".
- Constant indoctrination with a "group" or "family" mentality that impels members to exalt the corporate "life" and goals of the church-group over their personal goals, callings, objectives or relationships.
- Members are psychologically traumatized, terrorized and indoctrinated with numerous fears aimed at creating an over-dependence or codependence on their leaders and the corporate group.
- Members may be required to obtain the approval (or witness) of their leader(s) for decisions regarding personal matters.
- Frequent preaching from the pulpit discouraging leaving the religion or disobeying the leaderships' dictates.
- Members departing without the blessing of the leadership do so under a cloud of suspicion, shame, or slander.
- Departing members often suffer from psychological problems and display the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Research and examples
Flavil Yeakley's team of researchers conducted field-tests with members of the
This was not a longitudinal study and relied on asking participants to answer the survey three times; once as they imagined they might answer five years prior, once as their present selves and once as they imagined they might answer after five years of influence in the sect. The author insists that despite this, "any significant changes in the pattern of these perceptions would indicate some kind of group pressure. A high degree of change and a convergence in a single type would be convincing proof that the Boston Church of Christ has some kind of group dynamic operating that tends to produce conformity to the group norm." However it could instead indicate a desire on the part of the respondents to change in the direction indicated. To determine actual changes in MBTI results would require a longitudinal study, since the methodology here was inherently suggestive of its conclusion. This is also amply borne out in its instructions: "The instructions stated clearly that no one was telling them that their answers ought to change. The instructions said that the purpose of the study was simply to find out if there were any changes and, if so, what those changes might indicate."[61][2]
See also
- Catholic Church sexual abuse cases
- Christina Krüsi
- Exorcism
- Forced conversion
- Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment
- Infanticide
- List of satanic ritual abuse allegations
- Religious persecution
- Religious trauma syndrome
- Scientology controversies
- Shunning
- Social abuse
- The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
- Theological veto
- Shūkyō nisei
References
- ^ ISBN 9781896836478.
- ^ "Abuse in Religious Contexts". University of Kent. Retrieved 9 March 2023.
- ^ "Child protection in religious organisations and settings investigation report: Abuse of power by religious leaders". Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ "Signs of Spiritual Abuse". WebMD. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ Kippert, Amanda (10 January 2018). "5 Ways to Recognize Religious Abuse". DomesticShelters.org. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ "Effects of Religious Practice on Society". Marripedia. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- ^ Matthews, Cyndi; Snow, Kevin C. "Spiritual Abuse Resources - The Dangers of Spiritual Abuse: Clinical Implications and Best Practices". Spiritual Abuse Resources. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
- Global Sisters Report. Retrieved 29 June 2023.
- S2CID 44617940.
- ^ "YouTube - Jill Mytton Interview - Richard Dawkins". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 26 May 2009.
- ^ Taylor, Jerome (1 March 2012). "Couple guilty of horrific witchcraft murder". The Independent. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- ^ "Witchcraft-based child abuse: Action plan launched". BBC News. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
- ^ Tarico, Valerie (27 March 2013). "Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems". Truthout. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- ^ a b c Winell, Marlene. "Religious Trauma Syndrome: It's Time to Recognize it". British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. Archived from the original on 2 October 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- S2CID 1095871.
- ^ Winell, Marlene. "Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Religion". British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- ^ Winell, Marlene. "Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Leaving Religion". British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. Archived from the original on 25 December 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- ^ Winell, Marlene; Talarico, Valerie (2 November 2014). "Psychological Harms of Bible-Believing Christianity". Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- – via Philosophy Documentation Center.
- ^ Bevan-Lee, Donna (11 November 2018). "Religious Trauma in Childhood". Donna J. Bevan-Lee, Ph.D. MSW. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
- ISBN 9780520224476.
- .
- ISBN 9780761815785.
- National Geographic(in Spanish): 36–55.
- ^ Allingham, Winnie (14 April 1999). "The mystery of Inca child sacrifice". EXN. Archived from the original on 6 March 2008. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- ^ de Sahagún, Bernardino (1950–1982). Florentine Codex: History of the Things of New Spain, 12 books and 2 introductory volumes. Translated and edited by Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. Utah: University of Utah Press.
- ^ deMause 2002, p. 312, 374, 410.
- ^ Godwin 2004, p. 168f.
- ISBN 9780525933571.
- ISBN 9781850752400.
- ISBN 9780880292115.
- ISBN 9780881633054.
- S2CID 144182791.
- ISBN 1610975820.
- ^ Tompkins, Peter (1963). The Eunuch and the Virgin: A Study of Curious Customs. NY: Bramhall House. p. 12.
- OCLC 894357265.
- ^ ISBN 9780534643836.
- ^ Lewan, Todd (17 February 1993). "Satanic Cult Killings Spread Fear in Brazil". Tulsa World. Retrieved 29 June 2023 – via Associated Press.
- ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 21 November 2015.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ "The Gambia: Hundreds accused of "witchcraft" and poisoned in government campaign". Amnesty International. 18 March 2009. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ Migiro, Katy (21 March 2017). "Despite murderous attacks, Tanzania's 'witches' fight for land". Reuters. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ "Vejan en África a 'niños brujos'" (Press release) (in Spanish). Reforma. 19 November 2007.
- ^ Didymus, Johnthomas (17 October 2011). "Ghana to send 'witches' banished to refugee camps back home". Digital Journal. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- IRIN News. 12 December 2006. Archived from the originalon 3 November 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- ^ Salopek, Paul (28 March 2004). "Children in Angola tortured as witches". Chicago Tribune.
- ^ "Angola witchcraft's child victims". BBC. 13 July 2005. Archived from the original on 17 April 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
- ^ deMause 2002, pp. 258–262.
- ^ Godwin 2004, p. 124–176.
- ISBN 9780940508019.
- ISBN 9781568214566 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ a b c Lambert 1996, p. 5.
- ^ VanVonderen, Jeff. "Recovery from Spiritual Abuse". Recovery from Spiritual Abuse. Archived from the original on 8 January 2011. Retrieved 29 June 2023.
Spiritual abuse occurs when someone in a position of spiritual authority, the purpose of which is to 'come underneath' and serve, build, equip and make a deity's or a god's people MORE free, misuses that authority placing themselves over a god's people to control, coerce or manipulate them for seemingly godly purposes which are really their own.
- ^ Lambert 1996, p. 253.
- ^ 2 Chronicles 33:6; Galatians 5:20; Revelation 18:23; et al.
- .
- ^ "The Signs of Spiritual Abuse". Charismatic Captivation. 15 November 2008. Archived from the original on 29 July 2010. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- ^ a b Yeakley 1988, p. 39.
- ^ Yeakley 1988, pp. 44, 46–47.
- ^ Yeakley 1988, pp. 30–31.
Cited sources
- ISBN 9781892746986.
- Godwin, Robert W. (2004). One cosmos under God. St. Paul: Paragon House. ISBN 9781557788368.
- Lambert, Steven (1996). Charismatic Captivation, Authoritarian Abuse & Psychological Enslavement in Neo-Pentecostal Churches. Real Truth Publications.
- Pasquale, T. (2015). Sacred Wounds: A Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma. Chalice Press.
- Yeakley, Flavil (1988). The Discipling Dilemma (2nd ed.). Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company. ISBN 0-89225-311-8.
Further reading
- Massi, Jeri, The Lambs Workbook: Recovering from Church Abuse, Clergy Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, and the Legalism of Christian Fundamentalism (2008)
- O'Brien, Rosaleen Church Abuse, Drugs and E.C.T. (2009)