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www.spiritwatch.org]
However, many others in our region no less zealously and sincerely concerned with their well being and that of their children have found just the opposite in their own religious journeys. Instead of finding fulfillment, they have become bound by fear, frustration, indoctrination, and manipulative mind control that have made their pursuit of God an endless drudgery punctuated by a driven and legalistic lifestyle.
Each of them, however, have one thing in common: they regularly inflict religious abuse upon their members in the name of God and Christianity and have committed untold amounts of spiritual violence upon them.
Also, perhaps the unwritten perception remains in more minds than we care to acknowledge, that to challenge a minister's authority is to be found challenging God, not something very many religious people (particularly here in Southeastern Tennessee) will contemplate doing. While we argue over these issues, the religious abuse goes on virtually unchallenged and unchecked
So what is religious abuse? Religious abuse is the crushing inner psychological, spiritual and emotional damage suffered by members of authoritarian communities of faith whenever its spiritual authority is twisted by spiritual leaders to achieve a desired goal through unethical, cruel and damaging means. Sometimes these may be physical or sexual in nature, but much more often it is more clearly seen in the many various forms of mental and spiritual trauma that are inflicted upon church members, often through the practice of abusive leaders using personal influence upon a community of faith to turn people on one another to exercise and magnify their power and position in the name of "church order." This sort of "discipline" often deeply crushes the mind and spirit of the church member who was unfortunate enough to become subject to it. Individual initiative, critical thinking and personal choices of action are strongly discouraged and condemned by aberrant church leaders as sinful pride. It is made quite clear to the group by the pastor or leaders that the only really important goals in life are those that they dictate to the group. These practices - harsh and bizarre as they often become - are viewed by the group leaders as genuine acts of devotion that all true believers will gladly submit to so as to obtain divine favor and spiritual growth.
For example, there is no qualitative difference, therefore, between a twisted therapist who unethically imposes his own warped worldview upon patients under his care through months of arduous "therapy", an aggressive cult recruiter indoctrinating prospective recruits with questionable dogma through months of "Bible study", and the errant pastor who abusively conditions his flock to adopt his unorthodox convictions through months of weekly "ministry."