One of the most challenging aspects of discussing religious trauma is its relationship to the idea of religious abuse. Some individuals may be reluctant to consider their experiences traumatic because to them that implies abuse, and abuse implies a kind of intention. But trauma and abuse are not the same thing, and religious abuse need not be intentional. Today we’ll see what Dr. Anderson has to say about these themes and I’ll reflect on how some of my own experiences fit into these discussions.*
First, let’s look at the definitions Dr. Anderson uses in her research to get some common ground:
- Religious abuse is the improper use of religious beliefs, teachings, doctrines, and relationships against another person. (39)
- Religious trauma is the physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope and return to a sense of safety (27)
So at their core, abuse is about experiences, while trauma is about our psychological and physical response to experiences. Let’s unpack these a bit more.
Included in religious abuse are such phenomena as: “harassment, humiliation, mind control, psychological abuse, isolation, threats, intimidation, minimizing, denying, blaming, asserting spiritual authority, and making it difficult to leave the religious community. Religious abuse may also include misuse of religion for selfish, secular, sexual, or ideological ends” (41).
But the difficulty in talking about religious abuse is embedded in this definition. If religious abuse is defined by the “improper” use of religion, who gets to decide what is and isn’t “proper”? Often it is the religious authorities (however that is defined in a given group) themselves who decide. As Dr. Anderson notes this “has protected religion from scrutiny for centuries” (39). This is further complicated by the murky lines between what we might call guiding moral behaviour within community — something few people would suggest is not a proper function of religion — and controlling behaviour.
So how might we resolve this problem? I don’t have an answer for this, but as a Christian, the answer always comes back to the example and teaching of Jesus. “A tree is known by its fruit,” and so too are doctrines and teachings (Matthew 12.3). If it promotes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on, then I don’t think it’s abusive. If it promotes indifference to others’ suffering, anger, division, or cruelty, then it is. I’m not an extremist in that I don’t think conservative teachings on contemporary flashpoints of gender and sexuality must inherently be abusive. But I am convinced that if you’re going to take a conservative perspective, the onus is on you to ensure that how you apply it is not abusive. A legitimate Christian teaching will always honour the image of God within the individual and promote their growth in Christlikeness to their full stature as mature, adult persons of faith, who have been empowered to serve the community by the Holy Spirit. True Christian teaching does not have victims or collateral damage.
For its part, trauma is less about what is experienced than our body and mind’s response to it. This means that two people may respond very differently to the same experiences: What is traumatic to one sibling, for example, may not be to another, based on a variety of individual factors (39). (For example, a child who does not believe in their community’s religious teachings is less likely to be kept up at night by, say, fears of hell or being left alone when their parents are raptured; or a child who more naturally fits into traditional gender roles is probably not going to experience them as traumatizing in the way a sensitive boy or bold, adventurous girl will.)
In ‘normal’ operations, the body’s nervous system will activate in the face of danger, readying us to fight or flee (or fawn or faint as the case may be), but return to baseline once the danger passes. In post-traumatic stress, the body’s nervous system gets stuck in the ‘activated’ position, unable to return to ‘normal’ functioning (113). As outlined by the Mayo Clinic, common symptoms of post-traumatic stress include intrusive memories; avoidance, detachment, and numbing; negative thoughts about oneself, others, and the world; ongoing feelings of fear, blame, guilt, anger, or shame; memory problems; hyper-vigilance; difficulty sleeping; self-destructive behaviours and coping mechanisms; difficulty concentrating; outbursts; and physical reactions such as sweating, rapid breathing, and shaking.
The tie that blinds abuse and trauma is what Dr. Anderson calls “Adverse Religious Experiences” (AREs):
To date, our working definition of AREs is as follows: Any experience of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual’s sense of safety or autonomy and/or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well-being. (53)
It’s common for people to minimize the potentially traumatic impacts of AREs. Compared to such big events as a car crash, war, or sexual assault, AREs seem insignificant. This is where the idea of complex post-traumatic stress is helpful. This concept recognizes two important things about trauma: 1. Trauma can be about the accumulation of stresses over time as much as one major event, much in the way that a stone can be worn down by decades of dripping water; and 2. A situation involving both positive and negative aspects can be both traumatic and difficult to identify as such due to the positive memories attached (32ff).
I think my own experiences show the usefulness of this language. I was never in an “abusive” situation. Even though my theology and faith were doing harm to me as they intersected with my sexuality, it was a positive theology and I experienced no blaming or shaming, nor were any barriers placed in my way being of my difficulties. (I know I was very blessed in this. The horror stories I’ve heard from others are pretty shocking.) Yet by the time I stepped away, I was unquestionably experiencing several of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress: I was depressed, experiencing insomnia and shortness of breath, and had become hyper-vigilant and restless. I was carrying the stress of it all in my body to such an extent that a massage therapist told me that my back felt like it had been “in fight or flight mode for twenty years.” Even years after, I experienced sensations of physical discomfort whenever I so much as walked past a church. Again, there was no inciting incident in my case. I didn’t have an “Adverse Religious Experience” so much as that the way my otherwise beautiful, edifying, empowering expression of religion intersected with aspects of myself that would not change and which conflicted with its teachings itself became an adverse experience. And, there is no doubt that my body responded to this as trauma.
Again, these are complex issues, and I think there are two opposite approaches that are equally damaging. On the one hand, I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that says people today are too quick to use language of trauma and abuse to describe their experiences. Not everything unhelpful or shitty is traumatic. But that doesn’t mean the language isn’t appropriate in some, and perhaps many, cases. So, I think we have to use this language carefully, and generally within the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship to help work out the boundaries.
I wonder if a helpful first step when addressing the language of religious abuse and trauma outside of that context would be to approach it as a metaphor. Metaphors live in the tension of similarity and difference (for example, a person called “a bull in a china shop” is similar to the bull because he’s too big for the space and not aware of its surroundings, but is also different from the bull because he walks on two legs and does not have horns (among other differences!)). In thinking of what we’ve experienced we can ask ourselves how is it like trauma or abuse and how it is not. This approach can allow us to engage with the material around trauma and abuse without necessarily identifying with it. I took this approach with using concepts of grief and loss to work through the aftermath of my spiritual crisis. Four or five years after the crisis, I had reconnected with and reconstructed my faith in positive ways and my life was back on track, but I still found myself haunted by everything that had happened. I picked up a book on grief just because I thought I should learn more about it, and was shocked to find how much it resonated with me. So I did a deep dive on the topic of grief and loss. But I didn’t think my experiences justified using that language, so I approached it metaphorically, using this material addressing a different type of experience as a bridge or mirror to understanding my own. But as time went on, I realized that my “similar to” column was full and the “different from” column empty except for the fact that I was not grieving a person. It was only then that I owned my experience as one of legitimate grief and loss. And, the process of working through the materials was profoundly healing. I think a similar approach could be beneficial for anyone wondering how to properly engage with the concepts of spiritual abuse, adverse religious experiences, and religious trauma.
This post has introduced a lot of ideas, but I think it’s been helpful to define and reflect on the terms before moving on in the series.
* All references, unless otherwise noted, are to Dr. Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023).
