Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

I confess to enjoying cop shows, despite having been an imaginative enough child that even listening to the suspense music in the ones Mum and Dad watched after I went to bed could give me nightmares!  I was a teenager before I could watch such shows with comparative impunity, and back then my favourite was Cop Shop.  Blue Heelers and Police Rescue both helped fill the intervening years, and now it’s The Bill.

Which brings me to my point.  Currently, a major character (Sergeant Smith) in The Bill is facing investigation for beating up a criminal who was, in turn, beating up a fellow officer.  And the only person who knows the truth of what happened (apart from the crim) is Smith’s fellow sergeant Calum Stone, who himself has been shown to be somewhat inclined to administer what we might call rough justice.

Stone is prepared to back Smithy up, regardless of the truth, because “the crim deserved it”.  And this brought me to musing on the “protect one of our own” mentality that prompted Stone to lie for Smithy.  Police are encouraged to think this way, and there’s good reason for it.  Watching and defending your fellow officers’ backs might save their life one day.  Or they might save yours.

And this is where the tension between truth and mateship pulls me in both directions.  Because it’s that “watch your mates’ backs” attitude that sets up this kind of situation, where protecting your mate takes precedence over the truth, and it seems that while the basic attitude can be life-saving, it can also - in non-life-threatening situations -  destroy those to whom justice is denied as a result.

Is Smithy still a good police officer despite stepping over the line on this occasion?  Hell, yes.  Is the truth more important than his career?  I confess I’m not sure.

And perhaps you can see where this is leading, because the situation isn’t all that different in the church.  Clergy step over the line, their mates close ranks, cover up and lie for them, and justify it on the basis of his career (and possibly the reputation of the church).  And I’m quite clear that that is wrong, but not so clear on it in the police force.

But I think there are two fundamental differences.  Firstly, that in the police force, they can and do face life-threatening situations.  In the church, they don’t.  So in the church, there’s no real justification on that basis for a culture of closing ranks.  And secondly, that the church supposedly puts morals first.  In fact, many denominations or church spokespeople argue that morality outside the church is necessarily deficient.  To argue for morality, yet not place primary importance on truth seems to me to be duplicitous.

In some ways, maybe, it comes down to who do you protect first - your mates, the criminals or society/injured victims?  I don’t support vigilantism, but neither do I support excessive societal protection of those whose actions put them outside society.  And I certainly don’t agree that anything less than the truth is appropriate in the church.

No, no… I’m not getting married again (I like the model I’ve got, thanks), or moving (god forbid!) or changing my diet (current one’s working well, thanks), or pregnant (god forbid that one too!). This is about my website.

Firstly, that I was asked to write an article for the WA Uniting Church’s The Transit Lounge website, on the recent release of the Ferns Report (Irish Catholic) and the Australian Anglican research into abuse allegations in their dioceses. However, the end result raised “concerns that there could be some sections that might be defamatory and/or damaging to our ecumenical relationships”, and Assembly therefore declined to publish it. I’m proud to prove that despite maintaining useful connections with people in key places in various denominations, I can’t yet be accused of selling out my principles

And the second half of that news is that I chose to post the article on my website rather than see its punch severely lessened by the diplomatic editing that would have been necessary for it to be published in The Transit Lounge. The direct link is here, but I have also added (and will continue to add, supposing I’m disciplined enough) various other articles I’ve written along the way, which you can find by going to the main page of the website and clicking on the “my articles” link which has been added to the menu.

And the second major thing I’ve added to the website is something I’ve been meaning to add for a long time - perhaps the most momentous piece of church documentation I possess after my ten-year fight with them, and that is the Notice of Relinquishment which proves that Vic Cole relinquished his holy orders as a result of his sexual abuse of me. I have also added the letter of apology I received from Peter Jensen at the end of the negotiations with the Anglican Church, wherein he also refers (somewhat obliquely) to the refusal of Harry Goodhew, Donald Cameron, and Vic Cole, to make similar apologies to me. Both can be accessed via links contained within my story.

<sigh> It’d be nice to have time to scan every letter I sent to, and every letter I received from, the church, but that’s still a long-ahead dream.

A discussion with a family member brought me to musing on the “I am the good shepherd” analogy. And you can bet that, having grown up in a conservative evangelical church, I’ve heard it all before - what a shepherd did (and does) to protect the sheep and lead them in safety and good supply. But what I realised I’ve never heard is the other side of the analogy. If Jesus is the shepherd, then christians are the sheep, right? Now start thinking about the characteristics of sheep:
1) They do everything as a group
2) They’re pretty defenceless
3) They don’t think for themselves, they just do what the sheep in front does.

So the extension of a shepherd analogy is neither complimentary nor a portrayal of intelligence. Perhaps that’s why conservative christians hate people questioning their beliefs… because it’s a signal of a sheep who doesn’t obey the unspoken rules.

Of course, encouraging sheep-like behaviour suits the church down to the ground - and when I say the church, I mean the organisation. Obedient, unquestioning followers make for order and safety of those higher up the hierarchy. But - as with many of the church’s policies - it also makes for a member-mass that’s ripe for abuse.

There are many military/war metaphors in christianity, and I want to take issue with them on a number of counts.  Firstly, though, let me list some:

In the bible-
1) the “armour of god” passage in Ephesians 6:10-17.
2) the “fight the good fight” reference in 1 Tim 6:12.
3) “put on the armour of light”, Rom 13:12.
4) “with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” 2 Cor 6:7  (Note: Normally, one would have an offensive weapon in the right hand and a defensive protection in the left, but not in this metaphor!)
5) “like a good soldier of Jesus Christ” 2 Tim 2:3-4  (Note: v.3 includes the quoted text, v.4 defines the good soldier as obedient to his commanding officer)
6) “the weapons we fight with…have divine power… We demolish…we take captive…and we will be ready to punish” 2 Cor 10:4-6

In songs and hymns-
1) I’m in the Lord’s Army (Sunday School chorus for children)
2) Onward Christian Soldiers
3) We are Marching in the Light of God (originally an African anti-apartheid protest song, but adapted as a militant expression of christian witness)
4) Fight the Good Fight

And why is this army/soldier metaphor so disturbing?  Because it encourages the kind of thinking that facilitates abuse and abusive structures.  Successful soldiers possess the following qualities:
1) obedience to their superior officers (and that’s not primarily to the general commanding the army, it’s to their immediately superior rankings)
2) unquestioning allegiance to the cause being fought for
3) a willingness - one might even say an agreed contract - to sacrifice themselves without question on the orders of their commander
4) a vision of themselves as the solution to the dissension and salvation of those on the right side
5) the ability to dehumanise (one might even say demonise, but certainly to depersonalise) the enemy in order to justify one’s own aggressive behaviour and one’s side’s policies
6) the mass-thinking and loss of individualism that comes from army discipline and structures

(Here’s something worth noting - christians define disciples as “followers”, a legitimate definition according to modern usage, but the etymology makes it clear that the word really means “those who accept being disciplined”)

And all the “good soldier qualities” listed above are also the qualities that comprise the setting for spiritual abuse, and foster the possibility of other forms of abuse, including sexual abuse.  That’s why militant christianity is really an oxymoron, and metaphors of battle and war have no place in a religion supposedly based on love.

Father Peter Kennedy has been sacked from his church in South Brisbane (see here and see here), despite having the support of over 1600 congregation members. He has refused to leave, and the Catholic Church is now forecasting legal action to have him removed. Further, he has argued that mediation is pointless, given the church’s strong-arm tactics so far, and refused to be involved. The archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, has even gone to the extent of saying that some sacraments performed by Kennedy were not legitimate and that he would nominate a future date for “valid baptisms”.

Why has he been sacked? Because of “a dispute over the use of lay people and politically correct language in services”. Oh, and he’s questioned the virginity of Mary! Dear me!

How ironic is it that the church would deny the validity of a priest’s ordination (by saying that the sacraments he performed are not legitimate) for simple doctrinal dissension, while sexually abusive priests are retained in the priesthood, cosseted and reassured?

Children sometimes play at “opposites”, where black is white and white is black - the church makes a living out of it!

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Follow-up: Kennedy takes most of his congregation with him to a new location, and the diocesan chancellor foreshadows the diocesan response here.

Or is it laughter amid the groans?

Last night my father, myself, my sister and a friend went to hear Geoffrey Robertson expound on why Australia needs a Bill of Rights.  Not surprisingly, he was impressively convincing (though I did wish for a Hypothetical on the topic), but it was the supper conversation that prompted groans and laughter, both at the time and in the reminder that popped into my head for something I’d meant to follow up on.

As usual, when my sister, father and I get together, the conversation leaps from one varied topic to another, broken by interspersed explanations to Dad, who’s missed hearing some significant punchline due to his obstinate refusal to wear his hearing aids, or emphatic point-making to Dad, whose general socio-political stance is far to the right of ours. Again not unusually, clergy abuse and church hierarchy stupidity in general formed a part of the conversation. Roberston’s reference to George Pell’s inane argument against a bill of rights (”it hasn’t worked in Zimbabwe”) perhaps put church inanities in our minds, but I also mentioned the pope’s recent effort on washing machines and the liberation of women. Jaqi, in the midst of her frenetic life and recent forced dietary headshift, had missed that spicy piece of news, and nearly choked on her supper at the ludicrousness of the pope knowing anything about the liberation of women. And I don’t want to simply repeat Jac’s own blog comment, but we did agree on a conclusion that is worth putting up on the Net in more than one place: that the pope had a point - but only with regard to women who aren’t allowed to use the Pill.  First groan.

The second arose from the memory - an irrelevancy to the topics over supper, but something I’d meant to do - that I had on my agenda to read through the transcript of Marcus Einfeld’s recent Four Corners interview, to find out just how he thought he could explain those lies he told. I couldn’t bear to sit through the actual broadcast, but thanks to Aunty’s obliging habit of posting transcripts, I could read the show later. And I found roughly what I had expected to find: a Hollingworth-esque (though somewhat more intelligently offered) self-justification full of holes. Einfeld’s “frank admission” that he simply did the wrong thing, and he’s sorry, doesn’t quite mesh with these statements from the transcript:

1) “Look I don’t want to commit myself, to commit another crime by admitting to something here, but I’m trying to be as honest as I can be so, Let’s put it this way, I, I, um, I must’ve had doubts about it [that he had lent his car to a dead friend].” Oh, so there’s another crime you haven’t been charged/convicted with here, Mr Einfeld? And your remorse doesn’t quite extend to putting your hands up to that as well?

2) “It was [a straight out lie]. And it’s, probably more shameful in a way than the driving.” Only probably, Mr Einfeld? As a judge, one would have thought that there would be no question that lying under oath is more shameful than driving 10kmh over the speed limit. As you’ve found out (but should have known anyway), the first garners you a 2-year jail term, the second merely a $77 fine.

3) On being asked wasn’t it rather tawdry to use the name of someone he admired in a perjurous statement: “I didn’t do a tawdry act. I ah, did something that I can’t explain.” Well, no. If you don’t admit that it was just cheap and nasty, then it’s hard to come up with any reason for a judge to do what he did.

4) “Ha. The joke about that is that I did know another person by the same name and I did meet her in Bangladesh, but she wasn’t the person driving the car.” Do tell me, Mr Einfeld, in what way it’s a joke that you tried to wriggle out of your lies when caught out - by telling another lie?

5) “Obviously the lie on oath is the, is the critical one as far as the law is concerned. But I treat it [all the lies told] all in the same category because I told a lie, I had opportunities to get out of it and I didn’t take them.” But you don’t put them all in the same category, Mr Einfeld, because only 30 seconds earlier, you said “That, that was a lie, but you know that was a lie to a journalist, I, I didn’t quite feel the same obligation [to tell the truth as I should under oath], if you don’t mind my saying so.”

6) “If you mean that I told more lies, um I don’t think so. Nothing of any significance anyway. I mean it would have only been follow up, the necessary follow up from what I’d said. … I possibly embellished the story with more detail but I, I don’t really think I made any significant change, no.” No, no significant change, Mr Einfeld, apart from managing to get two women to make supporting claims that they were in the car, with a dead woman, when it was caught on camera.

7) On being quizzed about the police implication that Einfeld had done the same thing (submitted stat decs saying he wasn’t driving) on several occasions before to avoid speeding fines, he said “I never lie in statutory declarations if I can conceivably have any hope of it being true. I never tell untruths.” So…what exactly was it, Mr Einfeld, if it wasn’t a lie (and given that you’ve already said it was a lie)? And did you notice the qualification - I never lie in stat decs if.  Ok, we get it. You never lie unless there’s a chance of getting away with it.

8] Answering the challenge that he’d done it before, on at least three occasions, and that it was a pattern, he said “Yes but that’s nonsense. Why would you name people who you, who actually existed? You can name people who don’t exist.” Well, Mr Einfeld, not only have you clearly done it this time, so why not those other times, but it’s nice of you to show us the way your mind works. Not “it’s unthinkable to do it”, but “here’s a much more plausible way of getting away with it”.

9) “No it’s not a lot of mistakes, I’m sorry. There were three events plus this one. I’ve admitted to this one. If I’d been called upon to meet the others I might have admitted to one of those when I’d got the facts and I’d checked up on them. …I don’t think you can accuse me of not being frank because I can’t remember the details.” But the details have been put in front of you, Mr Einfeld, you don’t have to remember them. You signed stat decs saying these people were driving your car when it was caught speeding, and in each case they were overseas (or dead) at the time. No ifs or buts. It’s not down to your memory now, and it wasn’t when you signed those stat decs. (Einfeld pleaded guilty in order to avoid those other incidents being raised in court.)

And it all came out by a mere fluke (though at least a predictable one) - the idle curiosity of a journalist. There are distinct similarities here with the unfolding of the Boston clergy sexual abuse scandal in 2002, which grew from one small journalistic question to 11,000 pages of internal church documents and several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for public service,* for the journalistic team that uncovered the church’s lies. In Einfeld’s case, a journalist on a slow news day wondered who is Teresa Brennan, did a web search, and found she died three years before Einfeld claimed she did.

And as I read the transcript, it all had a wearying sameness to me.  Einfeld, Hollingworth, Pell, the pope… the pattern of lies, cover-up, being forced to confront their lies publicly, and a simultaneous attempt to avoid responsibility while seeking to claim honesty and remorse.  None of which is to say they haven’t each done some good things.  But life isn’t as simple as saying “he’s done X good things, and Y bad things, and the number of good ones outweigh the bad, so he’s really a good person and shouldn’t suffer the normal penalty for this crime”. The truer view is that people are a mix of good and bad, and the more they promote the good and conceal the bad, the greater compartmentalism there is in their lives and the greater unreality they come to live in. Einfeld’s actions here demonstrate a wilful intent to go against all his judicial career stands for, and he still won’t just say “yes, I told a tissue of lies, I convinced other people to tell lies for me, I sustained it over quite a long period of time, including after it was first uncovered, I only admitted it when I had no choice, and I deserve all I get”.  So, second groan.

But wait, there’s more… (do I hear you groaning?)

Einfeld, of course, as a judge, should have known better. But at least his career doesn’t rest on claiming the moral high ground. His job is to administer the law (which is codified morality), not to define it. Church hierarchy, on the other hand…  which musing brings me to my third groan: I’ve been looking at just how many convicted clergy abusers may well still be in active or semi-active ministry.  Certainly very few are defrocked (see the perpetrator list section of my website for explanation on the difference between licence [aka faculties] being revoked - which is temporary, or defrocking - which is permanent).  And I’d like to see a church which actually believed that a conviction for child sex offences resulted in automatic defrocking, but not even the Uniting Church (perhaps the best of the lot in terms of policies) does.  But if one were to place articles 3 and 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (”Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”[emphasis mine] and “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein” side by side, one might interpret that as saying that the church is acting contrary to human rights principles when it reinstates convicted child sex offenders into the priesthood, thereby implying their good ability to uphold the “security of person” to which their congregants are entitled.

Which takes us back to Robertson. Robertson’s premise is that a Charter of Rights would provide an informed platform from which to argue for rights-based treatment of any application of law. So if a judge, for instance, made a decision that was contrary to the principles of the Charter, it could be pointed out to him, and change requested. And that, over time, people would come to expect that decisions informed by rights principles would be the norm. And as he detailed rights achievements over the centuries, he quoted the Magna Carta: “We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right”. A basic human right, understood for 800 years, which is regularly ignored by the churches in dealing with clergy abuse victims. But if history can repeat itself, with systematic abuses of power causing the common people to force the authority figure to bow to their insistence on their rights, perhaps there is still hope that clergy abuse victims could receive better treatment from the churches.

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Footnote:
* The other awards were: the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Freedom of Information Award, the Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the George Polk Award for national reporting, a medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in investigative journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Taylor Family Award for fairness in newspapers, the Worth Bingham Award for investigative reporting, the New York Times Company’s Punch Sulzberger Award, a media award from the Massachusetts Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, and the Spirit Award for Media Responsibility from Jane Doe Inc., a Massachusetts coalition against sexual assault and domestic violence.

Barack Obama, as a left-of-centre president, was always going to get panned by the Vatican, but it’s happened in a far more laughable way than I could have imagined possible!  AAP reports that Obama has been criticised by the Vatican for overturning a ban on state funding for overseas abortion clinics (see here).  But it was the form of the criticism that had me astounded - though I should be used to the breathtaking superciliousness of the church by now.  The Vatican official ascribed to Obama “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right”, and further added that “What is important is to know how to listen… without locking oneself into ideological visions”.

If there’s one group of people who are arrogant enough to believe they’re right (and threaten those who think differently with eternal damnation!), and who are locked into an ideological vision to the extent of being unable to listen, it’s the conservative church!

One of the longterm results of sexual abuse is the ever-present possibility of “triggers” (circumstances, events, objects, words, songs, etc. which serve as unbidden reminders of the abuse and triggers of abuse-related emotions, body memories or post-traumatic reactions).  And when the abuse is church-related - and particularly if the victim was devout and actively involved in a religion and its practices - the circumstances around the abuse frequently encompassed the majority of the victim’s time, social circle, faith, beliefs and activities.  This all-pervadingness presents a special kind of dilemma, where the victim - in standing up against the wrongness of their abuse - loses nearly every aspect of their life, and the potential triggers are correspondingly all pervading.  Phrases that people use that happen to be in hymns, symbols that may have been part of the victim’s religious life, events that may somehow be linked with events during the abuse - all (along with many other things) can serve as painful and difficult reminders.

Christmas and Easter are typical examples which are almost impossible to avoid (Christmas is worse, because more people celebrate the religious meaning of Christmas than Easter), so this time of year is a difficult one for clergy abuse victims.  For many victims who have taken action against their perpetrator, these “festivals” are made even more painful by the thoughtlessness (or deliberate intent) of the church.  For example, this year, a few weeks before Christmas, the Catholic Church announced a review of their “Towards Healing” abuse complaint process, and asked for victims’ comments on their experiences.  There was, of course, a deadline.  So if any victims wanted to be involved in the review process by offering comments, they had to revisit their complaint process, analyse and document the toughest parts of it and how the church made it more painful, and do it all within a few weeks, at a time of year which is already extraordinarily difficult for them.

Other victims tell of frequent examples where they have been required to document something, decide something, or deal with something to do with their complaint immediately before Christmas or Easter.  It is such a frequent occurrence, it makes it hard to believe it’s all purely accidental.  One could try to dismiss it as the church wanting to deal with business before the holiday, but given how busy a time of year it is for them, it seems unlikely that they would suddenly place a priority on dealing with abuse complaints rather than church activities, given the long waits for action that victims suffer at other times of year.

By sheer weight of the frequency with which this kind of thing happens, victims are forced to the conclusion that churches do it on purpose - force them into making decisions at a time when they are least fit to do so, thereby giving the advantage in the complaint process to the church, for whom it is purely a business arrangement.

Hollingworth has conceded he thinks the job of GG was wrong for him (see here).  Let’s hope it hasn’t taken him until now to come to that conclusion, because abuse victims could have told him that years, if not decades, ago. They could have told him that when he reassured victims he was “keeping a close eye” on how abuse complaints were being dealt with, but which later inaction he justified as “not being directly involved in”. They could have told him that when he refused to defrock a clergyman (a bishop by the time of the complaint) for underage sex, which he justified as the (14yo) victim’s instigation. They could have told him that when he appointed a clergyman against whom there were two known abuse allegations to a post on the diocesan sexual misconduct complaints committee.

And now Hollingworth tries to justify his failure based on some perceived, or unperceived (it’s not really clear which) separation of church and state. He obviously still doesn’t get it! The public disillusionment with him was nothing to do with any link or otherwise between church and state - it was simply and purely that he stood exposed as miserably inadequate in dealing with sexual immorality in his subordinates, and pitifully shameless in his attempts to wriggle out of responsibility for his poor judgement. Moreover, his supposed moral (religious) and ethical (social welfare degree) education had obviously done nothing to improve him.

Churchman or not, such qualities are not what we want to see in a GG.

Many people think that spiritual abuse only happens in cults, and if they belong to a mainstream denomination they complacently assume that it doesn’t happen at their church.  And I’ve certainly never known of or heard about a sermon being preached on it, even in more liberal churches.  As a result, the average person in the pews has no idea what constitutes spiritual abuse, and thus doesn’t recognise it when they see (or hear) it.   And, out of that ignorance, clergy abuse victims who proceed to a complaint find themselves at a loss as to how to deal with spiritual abuse when it’s used against them, as it all too often is.

One of the books recommended on my website is an excellent treatise on this subject - “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” (Johnson and vanVonderen).  Here is a quick checklist from it:
1. Power-posturing - does the leader assert their own authority?  eg. “I am the pastor of this flock”, with the implication (or overt assertion) that his word is final, or the opinion which everyone should heed most.  Sometimes this power-posturing is not actually expressed verbally, but if those who disagree with the minister are frozen out or otherwise victimised for doing so, that equates to the same thing.

2. Performance preoccupation - or “doing God’s will”.  If emphasis is placed primarily on what people do or don’t do, and particularly if this is equated with salvation or grace, this is performance preoccupation.  Obedience and submission are key words in this characteristic.  Johnson and vanVonderen make the point that obedience itself is not the problem, it’s keeping track of it that is, because that turns obedience to God into a means of earning spiritual brownie points.  Again, this can be unexpressed rather than overt, if shame is inherent in admitting to failing to measure up to a particular standard of obedience (for example, where doing “quiet times” [personal bible study and prayer] is used as a measure of a person’s holiness, and particularly if a set minimum amount of time is insisted upon.  Church attendance is another likely point).

3. Unspoken rules - often these contradict the bible, and because they’re unspoken you don’t find out about them until you break them.  Then you suffer the consequences of breaking them, whether that be open censure, or surreptitious condemnation, or ostracism.  For example, abuse victims who disclose their abuse get criticised for “not leaving it to God to deal with” or for “damaging the pastor’s ministry” or for “telling lies about the minister, who’s such a good man”.  In this case, the unspoken rules are a) don’t tell the truth if it confronts or threatens our security, b) don’t act as an instrument of God’s justice if it means asserting your own right to individual conscience, and c) if everything’s ok on the surface, then don’t tell about anything rotten underneath.
According to Johnson and vanVonderen, the most powerful unspoken rule is the “can’t talk” rule - which can be otherwise expressed as: “if you talk about the problem, you are the problem”.  They say that two typical responses to someone who exposes a problem are “everything was fine until you started stirring things up”, or (to sound super-spiritual) “you didn’t deal with it in a loving [or, mature Christian] way”.  The blame which ensues on exposure of a problem pressures the talker back into silence.  In a spiritually abusive dynamic, noticing and speaking about problems is seen as disloyal, unsubmissive, divisive and a challenge to authority (or the system), and the talker is characterised as ungodly, vengeful, a liar, or being used by Satan.

4. Lack of balance - that is, an unbalanced approach to living a Christian life.  Johnson and vanVonderen say this shows itself in either of two extremes: extreme objectivism, where the authority of the biblical text and/or theological education is elevated to the exclusion of valid subjective experience (they neatly summarise this as the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Bible!); or extreme subjectivism, where truth is given to the members solely or primarily through “revelations” or “God’s word to me for you”.  Both are used by those in authority in a church (and those who would like to be in authority!) to manipulate and control.

Other contenders for spritually abusive characteristics:
1) Loyalty to the group/minister is equated to loyalty to God.
2) Using biblical texts to assert control.
3) Pressure to convert - for example “we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and it’s important you make a decision NOW”.
4) Guilt giving - that is, intimidation to give, such as “giving less than X is withholding yourself from God [or, stealing from God, according to Malachi 3:8]“.
5) Inherited leadership - such as the minister’s son becoming the youth leader, without any form of selection process.  This, in itself, is not abusive, but it certainly allows for the perpetuation of abuse by keeping the already-established patterns of behaviour in-house.  Unfortunately, in a congregation that is being systematically spiritually abused, such inherited leadership is often celebrated rather than questioned.

Abuse may be defined as “using power to control another’s actions”.  Physical abuse uses physical power, sexual abuse uses sexual power, financial abuse uses financial power, and spiritual abuse uses spiritual power.  Any time that someone is pressured into doing something by the use of religious doctrine or faith community pressure, they are being spiritually abused.