Dear Friends,
With over 40 years Church Music experience I have witnessed just about every horrific experience one can imagine.
Age 19 - I stood toe to toe with a minister of a large main line denomination church and told him he was stealing God's people's money. I was appalled at that young and age that I caught a minister restoring a Southern Style mansion on a newly acquired 200 acres that was slated to build a church building, classrooms, staff homes, etc. The minister spent well over $250,000 in 1974 restoring a three story mansion and was not disclosing any of the expenditures to the congregants. His board was made up of compliant 'yes' men. At 19 years of age I had insight and boldness beyond my years. I knew this was not right.
I have been told equally sad stories from colleagues throughout the nation, everything from secret documents that had to be signed that they would never discuss with anyone why they were terminated and told if they ever mention to parishioners or anyone why they were fired, they would not be given their severance pay.
Most recently I was forced out of a position I enjoyed because among other issues, the ministers felt threatened by me and my honesty and willingness to help the church grow (it was dying a potentially going to close according to the minister via the Bishop's edicts). After 2.5 years of a tremendous Music Ministry and hundreds of emails validating my great and positive work with the choir and congregation which I have on file, I was made to look foolish and inept in a falsely written job performance review. Some members and former members from this church have suggested that the minister 'works' three days a week / 4 weeks paid vacation, and makes $93,000 a year felt she might loose her salary if people stop giving. The size of the congregation varied week to week from 50 to 90 people most of which are sweet retired widows on fixed social security. A colleague of mine who found out called this out of line salary "spiritual rape". Wow, I know nurses with Master's degrees who work 50 weeks a year plus overtime who do not come close to this high a salary. How hard is it to prepare a 20 minute sermon and do a few hospital visits.
If you find yourself in a church who pastor and board fall into this questionable realm coined as SPIRITUAL ABUSE, as expounded on in the next few pages, resign, with dignity. Find another church to worship God. I would never give a dime to a pastor who is abusive and operates secretly, berates staff and members behind closed doors, and hope no one will ever find out about how evil their hearts are. I have even found folks who claim to be ministers who pretend to embrace Christianity who do not authentically believe in the Bible.
Here are some more tremendous facts concerning Spiritual Abuse in the Church. Draw your own conclusions.
"Most of the authors researched consider the remaining players to be persons addicted to a toxic or sick religious system, generally assuming that healthy members would be aware of the problems and leave to find a more nurturing environment. While not all are directly involved in the abusive behavior, all people remaining within the system and choosing not to seek change are, to varying extents, complicit in the illness of the church. Various terms were used to name these people – victims, religious addicts and scapegoats being the most common.
Arterburn and Felton, however, describe the remaining participants as falling into four distinct groups within the unhealthy church – victims, outcasts, enablers and co-conspirators. It is undeniably limiting to pigeon-hole people into such narrow definitions, but this latter method of categorizing participants seems more effective than using just two – persecutors and victims. The remainder of this paper explores participants using Arterburn and Felton’s model, with additional insights taken from the other authors and my own observations.
Victims are compliant people who openly support the abusive leader that they perceive as having integrity. In order to be valued by the system, the unassuming victims sacrifice their need to be significant and place total trust in the presbyter. Those in power assume their blind allegiance because the victims lose themselves in the family or organization. These are the readily expendable participants within the abusive church – remember, the antisocial leader becomes known for the number of people who leave and the majority come from this group.
Victims need to belong to something larger than themselves, and their fears of rejection and abandonment compel them to be exploited members of something rather than loners and part of nothing. When and if the toxic faith system is exposed, however, victims must bear the feelings of being used to satisfy the sinful desires of those in authority. Just as in the adage, “The witness of violence is a victim of violence”, victims may reach a point where they can no longer reconcile the unhealthy practices of the church leadership with their own injured faith. Spiritually, victims may suffer abandonment, loss, loneliness and isolation from the church. Since they have been “driven out of the garden where God is experienced” (Benyei, p.97) victims may become spiritually homeless, or even devoid of faith, due to the violation of their system of belief.
“Spiritual molestation rapes the victims’ minds of reason and strips them of their direct access to God. It takes away their self-respect and leaves them feeling broken. Once victims have been spiritually molested, the persecutors and co-conspirators attempt to manipulate them into keeping the secret” (Arterburn, p.230).
”Of the five roles in the toxic faith system, only one is not a religious addict or a possessor of toxic faith. In the toxic system there is usually someone who can see the problem and confront it. Unwilling to play the games of the persecutors and coconspirators, the person becomes anoutcast” (Arterburn, p.235).
Some employees or members, usually with significant functions in the church, become aware of the brokenness of the system, but when they voice disapproval they are castigated as troublemakers and treated as pariahs. Within this system, loyalty is inseparable from blind faith and absolute agreement with the abusive leader. Either someone is one hundred percent with the presbyter, or one hundred percent against him or her. These people then become targets of scapegoating, slurs and even slander in an attempt to defend the system. Many leave the church (just as most of the authors recommend), but some are able to process their pain and anger resulting from the attacks, envision a better future for the church and themselves, and remain – albeit in the role of outcasts. Outcasts see the system for what it is and, as “lone voices in the wilderness”, pray for and/or promote change. They love God and want to protect His people and His church from willful abuse. The price paid, however, is being ostracized from the church, friends and, sometimes, jobs.
The enabler participates in victimization, although by taking a relatively passive role in deception. The enablers lose themselves in the life of the abusive leader, but the more they invest the more they resent their role. As the enablers continue to lose self worth, they hang on to their roles rather than break free. “As long as the enabler remains convinced there is no hope to change, the toxic system will continue in denial and hypocrisy” (Arterburn, p.220). Enablers rationalize their role in supporting wrongdoing out of a need to be submissive, and delude themselves that they are being simply obedient and loyal.
Even when confronted with the symptoms of the unhealthy system, the fearful enabler continues to allow the problem to grow until someone else takes care of it. Despite resenting their role, enablers are the most likely to begin the process of scapegoating, due to their need to maintain the peace found in the status quo. “The system, especially the [church leadership], blackmails the enablers to stay in the supportive role – whatever the price” (Arterburn, p.226). In the preceding quote the word ‘blackmail’ seems to be used to mean ‘coerce’. Other participants of wrongdoing generally convince the enablers that the abusive leader is being persecuted, thereby calling on the enablers’ tendency to assist the helpless or underdog. Most often they are manipulated into allegiance, rather than threatened into compliance.
According to Arterburn & Felton, virtually every persecutor has at least one co-conspirator who manipulates, plots and plans to keep the abusive leader in power and position. In an errant church the leader and co-conspirators form a cohesive unit, with the latter feeding the leader’s ego and further blinding him or her from reality, thus allowing the continuation of delusional behavior. The co-conspirators take an active role in the victimization of others. Their motivation is in receiving adulation from the abusive leader when they have defended him or her, and their sense of importance comes from seeing themselves as the caretakers of the entire system. “If it means that lies and distortions must be propagated to retain the [leader] in that ministry, lies and distortions will be devised” (Arterburn, p.216). Two quotes speak volumes about the co-conspirators:
“The ultimate act of loyalty to the persecutor is the willingness to lie” (Arterburn, p.216).
”The desire for right and wrong is replaced with the desire to feel good because they are part of something big. Having wanted security and significance all their lives, they finally have found someone or an entire organization that gives them value” (Arterburn, p.217).
The following is an abbreviated list of characteristics of the co-conspirator (Arterburn, p.220):
- Ultimate team player; shows total dedication to, and support of, persecutor
- Feeds persecutor’s ego
- Addicted to power granted by persecutor
- Willingly deceives to maintain persecutor’s power, rewarded for willingness to distort the truth
- Ties personal feelings of value to another instead of God
- Protects sense of self-worth by protecting the persecutor
- Appears unassuming and grateful to be #2 in the structure
- Is sincerely deluded
- Lacks the strong charisma and leadership abilities of persecutor
- Feels extremely inadequate
- Is viewed by outsiders as trustworthy, conscientious, competent, mature, and reliable
Benyei states, possibly from the position of being a former victim, that the co-conspirator is the person or persons who commit “murder in the guise of caretaking” (Benyei, p.116). She further states that this person is the personification of Luke 11:11-12, “What father [sic] among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion”. The most common manner in which this wrongdoing occurs surrounds the function of pastoral care. Under the guise of nurturing, any information obtained or charge heard may be twisted around to indict or discredit the victim or outcast.
While researching the subject of spiritual abuse, it became obvious there were several distinct categories including cultism, abuse suffered by pastors/ministers, and sexual and non-sexual abuse at the hands of pastors/ministers. The greatest amount of literature uncovered deals with cults, followed by sexual abuse, and the abuse of pastors respectively. Material discussing the emotional, physical, marital and spiritual issues of these particular religious aberrations is readily available, lending credence to the realities of the pain and suffering of the victims. The least reported aspect of spiritual abuse, the non-sexual abuse of parishioners or church staff by ministers of the Word and Sacrament in mainline churches, became the subject of this research paper. This decision was prompted by three factors – (i) the relatively small amount of relevant material; (ii) the apparently cavalier attitude possessed by some regarding this phenomenon; and (iii) my own personal witness of, and experience with, episodes of this nature. With rare exception, only one or two chapters in each book, some of which are secular, dealt with situations of this type.
The development of spiritually abusive patterns
Before discussing issues of pastoral care for the spiritually abused, it seems necessary to define the situations, environments and methodologies within which spiritual abuse proliferates.
“Spiritual abuse is the mistreatment of a person who is in need of help, support or greater spiritual empowerment, with the result of weakening, undermining or decreasing that person’s spiritual empowerment” (Johnson, p. 20).
One of the earliest non-scriptural references to abuse at the hand of clergy was found in Six Books on the Priesthood by St. John Chrystostom, written in the fourth century CE. Chrystostom’s discussion revolved around the high expectation of thought and behavior and the displacement of ego necessary for the office of bishop, combined with his fear of his own human weakness of spirit and inherent iniquity. Ambition, conceit, pride, anger and love of power are among his most common self-criticisms, as well as reasons for disapproval and rebuke of clergy. Jealousy, arrogance, fawning over the rich, acquiring and hoarding material wealth, slander and political intrigue, while not character traits repeatedly applied to himself, are appended to the list of unacceptable qualities in a bishop (Neville). Chrystostom cited these characteristics as foundational to the then-current incidences of abuse of church members. Preaching for self-promotion rather than the edification of the populace, ignoring the plight of the widowed and sick, and complicity in the condition of the poor by amassing wealth as opposed to supporting the needy were some of the symptoms of pastoral abuse he mentioned. Chrystostom’s description of the consequences of these actions was dire, but his contemporaries were evidently not motivated to change, since he died en route to exile for upsetting the church and political elite.
Chrystostom pushed against power, and power pushed back. In Understanding Clergy Misconduct in Religious Systems, Candace Benyei states that, when our forebears in Eden assumed the right to possess the knowledge of Good and Evil, they actually made a decision to rely on their own resources instead of the gifts of God. In this search for meaning in their lives, they instead “discovered insecurity, and its corollary, the need for power” (Benyei, p. 6). Power, she asserts, is a function of advantage or privilege. Insecurity teaches that there is not enough abundance to satisfy everyone equitably. The need, therefore, develops to guarantee existence by controlling more than a fair share of available assets. When this underlying fear of ‘being without’ is exacerbated by childhood experiences of abuse, abandonment or neglect, it can lead to what Wayne Oates, in When Religion Gets Sick, calls the “sociopathic power orientation”.
According to the Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, the more correct term for sociopathic is “antisocial personality disorder” or “antisocial person” (Hunter, p.46). Throughout the texts researched, the authors interchangeably used persecutor, oppressor, abuser, antisocial pastor and sociopath to describe this personality type. For consistency and ease I have used the terms ‘antisocial pastor’ to denote a member of the clergy with inclinations towards abuse, and ‘abusive pastor’ to refer to those actively engaged in spiritually abusive behavior.
An antisocial pastor leads others by dividing and conquering – maintaining some level of distrust and conflict between – his or her ‘subjects’. Pastors of this type become “known for the number of people who leave the church” after suffering or witnessing one conflict after another at the hands of the leader (Oates, p.164). Other people learn about these conflicts – only occasionally at first, but then with increasing frequency. Any effect on the antisocial pastor is negated or limited by the congregation’s tendency to find a scapegoat. “Because it is unbearable to believe that the beloved minister could commit such acts, since that would shatter the fantasy that one had at last found the ultimate caregiver, victims are often [to the congregation] unforgivable” (Benyei, p. 95). Most often the persons disclosing mistreatment are accused of lying, bearing a grudge against the pastor, being sick or neurotic, or even as evil incarnate. The church so described has a secret to keep, and will attempt to squash any attempt to make indiscretions public.
“Too many churches communicate this kind of shaming message: ‘the problem is not that your boundaries were crossed and violated, the problem is that you talked. If you would not have made such a big deal, everything would still be fine.’ If a person accepts that message, they will stop talking. The real problem, however, is that if a Christian who feels violated stops talking, then the perpetrator will never be held accountable for his behavior” (Johnson, p.69).
Sometimes, the antisocial pastor will participate in, if not initiate, accusations to deflect attention away from the original conflict. With each new disclosure, the number of people aware of the pattern seems to grow. The pastor may then become more abusive by aggressively using ‘scapegoating’ as a defense – against individual victims, entire church groups, other churches or ecclesiastical bodies such as presbyteries. The insecurity of the antisocial pastor mandates that his or her ministry be protected at all costs. “The minister addicted to power punishes and purges the system of anybody who would upset the status quo” (Arterburn, p.176).
Eventually the minister may take on the role of the persecutor, becoming an abusive pastor (Arterburn, p.193). Uncorrected, he or she may become paranoid and possibly depressive “especially when caught in misdemeanors or frustrated in his or her global sense of power” (Oates, p. 165). An inner circle of ‘disciples’, or faithful supporters, is enrolled to both feed the abusive pastor’s ego needs and serve as a source of information that can be used for damage control. “With the faithful followers willing to do anything to support the persecutor, the organization becomes dysfunctional and unbalanced, leaning heavily toward the top” (Arterburn, p.196). Robert E. Quinn, in Deep Change – Discovering the Leader Within, describes the next development as a “tyranny of competence”. Fearful of being overshadowed by someone more competent, the abusive pastor may manipulate situations to discredit other lay or ordained care providers, become competitive instead of cooperative, intentionally generate ill-will, and even participate in subtle forms of sabotage with regard to other programs within the church.
‘Plausible deniability’, a tool of some politicians and business people, becomes an effective device within this environment. Essentially, plausible deniability is an intentional process whereby other people are asked to discredit or attack someone, but only after the instigator stages a ‘show of support’ for that person. This allows the abusive pastor to deny that he or she communicated the particular message, ostensibly because it is contrary to his or her publicly stated opinion. “Persecutors don’t start out to deceive and victimize their followers or families” (Arterburn, p.202), but out of their own fear eventually develop into what I have euphemistically labeled ‘ethically challenged’ individuals. Rather than being the origin of untruths themselves, abusive pastors actively encourage gossip and may use any information, no matter the source or credibility, to further their interests. “Truth” may become subjective and prone to manipulation and distortion.
Distraction, or the use of smoke screens, is another tactic employed by some abusive pastors in the aforementioned environments. With the constant and ever-increasing need to maintain the appearance of virtuousness, the minister may use or create other urgencies to “create confusion and uncertainties [that] delay or evade any processes that would seek to uncover the real problem” (Benyei, p.106). Within the staff functions of the church this tool may create confusion as to roles, responsibilities, administrative procedures and hierarchical structure. Within the church, selective amnesia with regard to history or events, the mysterious absence or inadequacy of records or meeting minutes, or the proliferation of stories about a purported attack from inside or outside sources enable the veiling of ‘secret’ agendas or the evasion of consequences resulting from specific situations. “When you see people in a religious system being secretive —watch out. People don’t hide what is appropriate; they hide what is inappropriate” (Johnson, p.78).
Arterburn & Felton developed a comprehensive list of characteristics of the abusive pastor, or persecutor, that is abbreviated below (Arterburn, p.213):
- Needs to embellish and make things grander than they really are
- Needs and seeks power and control
- Projects own misbehavior onto others
- Believes people are extremely good or bad, usually depending on the level of support offered to the pastor
- Often motivated by greed or materialism; impressed by those with wealth or material goods
- Feels is owed something
- Is extremely self-centered
- Contorts Gods Word to fit own beliefs or needs
- Surrounds self with people who are insecure and easily swayed
- Manipulates others using guilt, shame, and remorse
- Attempts to make others accept responsibility for his or her own mistakes
- Has compulsions in several areas, especially in area of ‘hard work’, that appear admirable to the world
- Is not involved in accountable relationships
- When in a bind will ask for forgiveness and appear sincere when doing so, but doesn’t change
- Fears not measuring up or losing image
- Fears that if no longer able to perform for the masses will be useless to God.
The abusive pastor can become pathologically unable to distinguish between the actual and created realities (Oates, p. 166). Within this context, paranoia may develop into a persecution complex. Because reality becomes fuzzy, the created or manipulated diversions may seem to become real leaving the abusive pastor feeling oppressed and attacked. The congregation can also become absorbed with fictitious enemies, thereby strengthening the alliance with the pastor, who takes on the role of defender."
If you have found further information you would like to share on this subject of Spiritual Abuse, feel free to submit it directly to me, Art Scott at mraspiano@yahoo.com
Put "Spiritual Abuse" contribution on the subject line.
God Bless you as we work together to reveal and end this horrific behavior. Art Scott
