Experiences of religious or spiritual trauma/abuse/harm can be hard to succinctly describe, which is evidenced by the fact that it doesn’t yet have one universal name or description. The Religious Trauma Institute uses the term religious trauma and describes it as “the physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.” The Reclamation Collective, a non-profit organization created to support the healing journey of survivors of religious trauma and spiritual abuse, uses three specific terms distinctly, religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and adverse religious experiences:
Sometimes these experiences are simply called spiritual harm or even church hurt. Whatever we call it, the fact remains that these are experiences that many people have had, over many generations, and across various religious and spiritual contexts.
Too often when we talk about this topic with others, there is an assumption that we are referring to blatant abuses of power, such as clergy being willfully manipulative and deceptive, a church covering up physical and sexual assaults, or leaders embezzling money from congregants. While these are all egregious violations that do cause extensive harm, we believe spiritual abuse is more broad and often more nuanced than these examples – and often committed by well-intentioned members of the community. It is rooted in beliefs that taught a generation that their body was bad and their desires could not be trusted; it is community that no longer welcomes you if you ask the wrong question or share that your theology has shifted so you walk on eggshells to protect yourself; it is questioning your worth and value if you don’t fit into expected categories or make a mistake; struggling with boundaries because of an expectation to give all of yourself to others; and a fundamental belief that you must be superhuman to be accepted and not spend an eternity in hell – what would Jesus do after-all?
These things can feel more difficult to name and harder to wrap our minds around because there isn’t something that is obviously “wrong,” such as when someone breaks a law or rule, or does physical harm to someone else. Ironically, given western culture’s propensity to downplay the importance of the body, our society views physical harm as more valid, objectively provable. It’s as if the less obvious forms of trauma are harder to process because the pain isn’t clearly visible and not everyone who has the experience is left traumatized. However, this is actually true of all traumatic events; it’s not the event that occurs which creates the trauma, but the response to it. Just like some veterans experience PTSD and others do not, some people in religious contexts will experience trauma and others will not.
Examples of Religious Trauma Responses
In Peter Levine’s book Waking the Tiger, he discusses four common symptoms of trauma. Below are examples of how religious trauma can be experienced within each.
Hypervigilance
A drive for perfection and need to follow all rules and expectations without faltering for fear of being shunned or exiled from your community.
Dissociation
Disconnection from one’s body and bodily states; A belief that the body is bad or deceitful and cannot be trusted.
Tightening/Constriction
A narrowing of worldview, strict adherence to dogma, and isolation from “outsiders.” Members are cut off from anyone who is not within the church.
Inaction
Similar to a freeze state, where one feels that they cannot leave a church or faith community despite awareness of harm being done to others or themself.
“Academia is often the last to know about what the bodies of people everywhere have been saying for millennia. Spiritual trauma didn’t emerge in 1991, nor did it emerge as soon as white evangelical Christians started talking about it. It has always been here.”
– Dr. Hillary McBride, Holy Hurt
Healing from Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse
Like all forms of trauma, healing occurs in the presence of an attuned other (i.e., a therapist). Healing from trauma is about re-experiencing safety where it was not felt previously. It’s a slow process that takes time to unfold because our bodies and hearts need time to build trust and be open to the new experience. Too often in church communities we’re expected to divulge private thoughts and struggles to practical strangers in the name of confession and accountability but this is counterproductive. In the healing process we need to be able to trust the other person’s ability to care for us, protect us, and have our best interests in mind before we reveal our deepest vulnerabilities. We need to know this both intellectually and experientially and that process takes time.
This is true of building trust with a therapist as much as it is about re-building trust with ourselves. As mentioned above, many religious contexts teach a distrust of one’s body, desires, and experiences, and when that becomes deeply engrained in you, it takes time to rebuild trust in your own experiences. Now, does this mean we take a laissez faire, anything goes, approach to life? No, but it does mean that we do not automatically dismiss our experiences as “bad.” We become curious, thoughtful, and kind to ourselves, our experiences, and to what might be happening, so that we can become more non-judgmental, intentional, and loving toward ourselves and others. This is the power of healing.
Learning More about Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse
If you can relate to these experiences and would like to learn more, I’ll be maintaining a list of reading resources below. Be sure to check back from time to time as they may fluctuate when new books and podcasts are released.
If these examples resonate with you and you’d like to begin exploring your own healing journey, please reach out or schedule a free consult. We’d love to learn more about you and how we might be able to support you in this process. Additionally, we’re available to other clinicians and pastors for consultation and resourcing.
Further Reading
- General Overview
- Holy Hurt by Hillary McBride – We recommend this as a first read. Her podcast and book have overlap and both are accessible introductions to religious/spiritual trauma/abuse.
- Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
- Orphaned Believers by Sara Billups
- Sacred Wounds by Teresa Pasquale and Richard Rohr
- When Religion Hurts You by Laura Anderson
- Leadership and Abuse of Power
- When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat
- Biblical Porn by Jessica Johnson
- Gender, Sex, Sexuality, and Purity Culture
- Beyond Shame by Matthias Roberts
- Growing Up Pure by Lauren Sawyer
- The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr
- Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher
- Sex, God, and the Conservative Church by Tina Shermer Sellers
- Virgin Nation by Sara Moslener
- Memoirs and Deconstruction
- Holy Runaways by Matthias Roberts
- Inspired by Rachel Held Evans
- Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
A Note About Religions/Spiritual Trauma/Abuse Research
Research is still emerging on religious/spiritual trauma/abuse, but it is beginning to accumulate; research articles and books are being released with increased frequency, and the conversation is becoming more mainstream. As is often the case with academic research, it is generally focused on western, Christian beliefs, and we need to expand the research outside of one belief system, but it is a start toward validating what many have known through their personal experiences for a long time. This new evidence does not necessarily disprove the numerous previous research studies that demonstrated how religion and spirituality can have a positive influence on an individual’s mental and physical health, but we believe it is important that we open ourselves to seeing a more wholistic picture of both the value it can have and the harm it can cause. Both things can be true at the same time.
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