CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
A candid conversation on spiritual abuse, resilience, and joyful, non-weaponised Christianity
A child in Gothenburg thanks his dad for sharing fruit, and suddenly the whole room remembers what faith is supposed to feel like—sweet, simple, and freeing. From that quiet moment, we trace a sharper line into the places where religion twists: the backlash to the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, the old reflexes of control and fear, and the patterns that turn churches into machines for shame. We name spiritual abuse clearly, not to sensationalise it, but to give language to the wounds many carry: control dressed up as obedience, prosperity pitches that prey on longing, and the silencing of anyone who asks hard questions or tries to leave with their dignity intact.
We unpack practical ways to spot danger—legalism, fear-first preaching, information control, and insider–outsider hierarchies—and we hold that up against a healthier, warmer Christianity grounded in relationship rather than rules. Scripture becomes a lifeline rather than a cudgel: the Lord near to the brokenhearted, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life, the promise that bruised reeds won’t be snapped to prove a point. We also talk safeguarding, humility in leadership, and why a nurse’s instincts—care, calm, service—can renew a communion that’s tired of outrage and hungry for mercy.
This is a candid, hopeful journey from harm to healing, with space to breathe, pray, and begin again. If you’ve been burned by church, or you love someone who has, you’ll find language, empathy, and simple next steps here. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs gentleness today, and leave a review to help more people find a non‑weaponised, joy‑filled faith.
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Coffee Pods, a podcast of the Acorn Christian Healing Foundation, exploring what's happening in the world to the land of Christian Healing.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, I'm back in the United Kingdom.
SPEAKER_04:How is it?
SPEAKER_00:Well, there is no FICA down the street here, which is something that was wonderful in Sweden is everybody seems to gather it for, I guess it's their version of afternoon tea, but um to have a pastry and a coffee on this on the street in a cafe is just terribly civilized, very Scandinavian.
SPEAKER_03:How was the coffee?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, really good, strong. My kind of coffee. Your foon spoon just kind of stands up in the middle of it, and uh it's great. But Sweden was was wonderful. My my favorite part, and I told the children um on Sunday I got to play a guitar and sing a little bit with them, and I said, um, my favorite part of the whole time in Sweden was actually sitting down um on the floor in front of the church with all of them and singing and and uh just the smiles of the children, and then this one little boy from Uganda, their refugee family from Uganda, um, I said, What are you thankful for today? And he said, My father shared some fruit with me.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00:And uh, and I thought, I I'm gonna take that away and just tell the world because um the idea of this little boy when he was, you said, What are you thankful for? Anything in the whole world, what are you thankful for? And he said, My father's sharing a piece of fruit with me. And I said, He he made your life sweeter, didn't he? And he goes, Oh, yes, he always makes my life sweeter. And his father was sitting over to the left, and you could almost see him welling up, and uh, and I thought, this is what it was all about was to go to the middle of Gothenburg and talk about Jesus and uh to taste the sweetness of of walking with Jesus, even in the middle of Scandinavia. So it was great, it was a wonderful time, and and uh they've uh they've said please come back, and and I said, Yes, I I must, and I'll bring my my wife next time and uh and we'll go enjoy the archipelago again. I I think that was one of my favorite things, Lisa. I got on a ferry and went all the way down to the southern end of the archipelago, these little islands, and uh I got to ride on top of the ferry, and there was no one else on the boat. Private boat private boat for three pounds. So in America, that's about four dollars. And I went all the way to the southern tip of the archipelago and back. Uh, the only thing I can compare it to is like the Staten Island Ferry in New York, yeah. Used to be like a quarter of 50 cents, and uh just this wonderful ride through the most picturesque scenery in Sweden, and uh you just stand there watching the birds and their seals on the rocks, and it just uh yeah, it's uh splendid. And then the the fellow who works the ferry ended up coming up and practicing his English with me, and he was curious about why I was there, and um, and when the when the ferry boat was over, he goes, I miss see you in church.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, isn't that sweet?
SPEAKER_00:Evangelism takes on all sorts of different things when you're out and about, and but it was a great time. Um, it but it is so good to be home. I I think I have the most grappy dogs in the world. My two dogs cried when I got home. They were so happy to sit all over me and and uh Charlie every time I leave the room he starts crying because he wants me to come back to the room.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, he probably thinks you're not gonna come back.
SPEAKER_00:My wife, my wife, on the other hand, didn't continue to cry when I left. But but I think she was uh happy that I was back home too. Life feels kind of balanced and and uh and it's good. It's good.
SPEAKER_04:And there's a wonderful photo on our Facebook page, I think maybe also on Instagram, uh, of you playing the guitar with the children sitting around you. So if anyone wants to see what you're talking about, just official platform.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe through the magic of Callum. I think somebody in the church actually took a video of me singing, Jesus is my rock and he rolls my sins away. I did this funny little rock and roll thing, and uh somebody was filming it from the middle of the church. And uh, but again, it's just having fun with God and encouraging people where they are with with their walk. Um we um we talked about the grateful leper last Sunday who turned the Samaritan leper who turned back and said thank you to Jesus. And uh and honestly, I cannot remember what we talked about the week before because that was the week before. That's right. Um, but it it just um it was a good time up there. And then we had a little mini healing academy in the middle of the week where some folks came and we talked about healing, and then we had some of the most powerful prayer um in the church that I've had in a long time with laying on hands and and um gosh, it was just um yeah, it was good, it was quick, and um, but it it is um it's good to good to be back.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's good to have you back. It is. And um while you were gone, we we had uploaded another podcast, um, and it's been quite popular, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_00:I think anything that has the name Dame Sarah Mulali in it right now is going viral because you either absolutely love it and just rejoice at the news of a new Archbishop of Canterbury who happens to be a woman, or you're absolutely clutching your pearls and you're talking about how we have no longer to be you know connected to the archbishop with all the I mean, and my feed, my social media feed is filled with um Anglican groups from around the world, and so many of the they call them GAFCON or the conservative Anglicans from the global south are just not happy, you know, not happy that the new head of the Anglican communion is uh a woman, and then they also talk about um what they believe to be her theological positions on different things, um, from gay marriage to abortion, etc. etc. Yeah. And so it's uh it's so interesting that there's just this kind of it's like smoke coming out of every crevice right now. You know, for the longest time, all this stuff seemed rather calm. It's like walking around a volcano, and then as soon as the announcement was made that she was the new archbishop, suddenly the smoke starts spewing out of the volcano in every little crack because you can you can feel the pressure building in inside the volcano. And so many of us are like, well, is this gonna erupt?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And if it is, well, then maybe it needs to go ahead and erupt. I think there are a lot of people that that are just like, we're tired of walking on eggshells because there's an element which I know is really the heart of what we wanted to talk about today. There's an element of abuse in some of the reactions and the reactivity, and and it's historic abuse that has been persistent in the church for decades and decades and decades. And it's kind of been in the form of mistreating people from other nations, of other skin colors, of other sexualities. And now we have something which is almost like a revisiting of the turn of the century where women before, you know, women didn't have a right to vote, and you went through suffrage, and then women suddenly um developed a place in society, and and then now we're back to this place where all of these men are going bananas over a woman being at the head of the Anglican community. I'm like, come on, are we really are we really back in that place? And um, and so you know, I guess I feel like there's an element of abuse in uh in some of the response. And I keep thinking about my own daughters, I think about women in ministry, I think about my wife, who's been a priest for as long as I have, um, people who serve God every day faithfully, and how watching these reactions from angry men, almost all angry men reacting to this, how that must make them feel as women. And I guess my hope is that if people are listening to the podcast, they they don't hear that and and think, yay, let's carry the flag, you know, the women need to shut their mouths. I hope that they'll kind of go, this is this is a time for the women to stand up and be proud and know that they're not alone and that no, it's not okay to be mean to them because of their gender. Yeah, I think allowing that is in fact um a spiritual issue.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so why don't why don't we talk about that? Because I think instead of just talking about women's ministry and whether Jesus had females as disciples and all this kind of, you know, that's at one level. But if we go deeper in, then we can talk about what abuse looks like in the context of the church, in the context of religion.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that would be helpful.
SPEAKER_00:And then then let's come back to the surface. So if we kind of deep dive in a little bit, not too deep, but just enough so that people go, Oh, yeah, I feel that. Yeah, and then we come back to the place where we say, now how do I feel about women in the church, women in ministry, women in politics, women as police officers, women in the military. Suddenly you're going, wait a minute. And I know this isn't just a feminist uh uh podcast, so that we're just talking about women's issues. We're talking about how spiritual abuse can pop its head out in all different places. It just happens that a female Archbishop of Canterbury has become a catalyst for people to kind of rediscover their bad behavior and bad practice.
SPEAKER_03:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we've even gotten some comments on our social media feed um from people who, you know, they're using the the catchphrases that you often find in conservative political media, you know, that oh, she's just another woke DEI choice, blah blah blah. Um, but I think we can do better than that. So so let's talk about it. Yeah, let's let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I just wanted to say as well, as we uh go into it, I think also for some women it's hard to see, or they're unhappy with a woman being in this position as well. Um, and that I think that could be challenging for us in our ministry context.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_04:You maybe didn't expect it. But what we were saying then, let's take a look at what spiritual abuse might be. Um could you could you help us with that a little bit, Chris?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So if I was defining spiritual abuse in a very broad and simple way, I would say that that spiritual abuse is the misuse of spiritual authority to control, to manipulate, and to even harm others emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. So the misuse of spiritual authority to control, manipulate, or harm others emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. So basically, abuse is what happens to us. And so you could have all different kinds of examples of what that looks like. So often we focus on things like physical. So what hits the news are cases where there's been inappropriate behavior, like the story from the the boys at the camp who were were viciously attacked by a gentleman who then got in trouble and went to Africa and did more harm. Um these are physical things, these are acts of abuse against others. Spiritual abuse sometimes is a little bit trickier because it doesn't often um it doesn't often see itself in a physical form. It can, but the abuse part is what happens to us. The people that say I suffer from spiritual trauma. That's somebody who that that's the impact on us. The people who are the recipients of the spiritual abuse often carry the trauma in their life. And so so the the abuse could be um as simple as the person in charge of church saying that they're not letting one person ever read in church. That seems like a mild thing, but let's say you're in charge of dis determining who gets to read the lessons on Sunday morning, and you do the rota, and you get to determine who gets to read, and and you've got this one person in the congregation that uh for whatever reason, maybe maybe she's divorced, or maybe she's uh she came talked to you and said she had had an affair, or whatever the reason. But just a subtle thing that you've decided in your position of authority that this person is not worthy to read on a Sunday morning, and so week after week after week you marginalize her. That's a form of spiritual abuse, and you could be saying, Well, we're doing it to safeguard the church, to protect the church from this bad person, but you can see how easy that can be abused because you have somebody who perhaps wants to teach Sunday school or perhaps wants to show leadership in some other place in the church, and you say, No, no, we we we're not gonna let you. And then people often will talk about other people and the whys that they are excluded, and then you create an inner in-crowd and an out crowd within the very church of God. Wow, and and suddenly you have people that that are desperate to be in the in-crowd. What do I have to do to be welcomed into the leadership of the church? Yeah, you know, I just desperately want to be a part, I want to be considered a member here, and so so so often you're creating like a secular club environment for a religious institution. And secular clubs are about membership and making sure that you have credentials, and then you get recognized by the leader as an official member, and then you get a badge. You have to wear your little badge to say, I'm a member of the club. And then when you walk around, everybody goes, Oh, yeah, did you see Chris? He's a member of the club.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But if you walk around without the badge on, what do they say? Oh, I bet you wish you were a member of the club, don't you? Now, do you know that is spiritual abuse? It is because as a Christian who follows Jesus, you're a member of the club. No matter how deep the hole you climbed out of to follow Jesus, you're a member of the club. And so if you're involved in an organization that creates these gradations of inclusion, then what you've found is a place where they are probably very carefully navigating spiritual abuse at times and using it for the advantage because so many organizations do use it for their own advantage. I made a note that there is something called um something called RTS, which was a term that was coined in 2011 by Marlene Wendell, and it's religious trauma syndrome. If you are actually going to see a professional, you can actually be diagnosed with the condition of religious trauma syndrome. And this has come up because so many people are victims of being involved in abusive religious organizations. Now, who would have thought we live in a time when people who historically would have been misdiagnosed as having anxiety or bipolar disorder, depression or obsessive compulsive disorder, anything like that? A lot of people realize that those are simply subconditions of what is the main condition, which is a person who's experienced religious trauma syndrome. So imagine being in a congregation or in a church where you are told this is what you have to believe, this is what you have to believe, and they just pump it into you. And then they exclude you and include you based upon theology and and the behaviors of the religious organization. And eventually those people can crack.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They suffer from persistent abuse until finally one day they wake up and say, I just don't agree with what they're saying. What do I do? And they go to a therapist and they say, This is affecting my life. I can't get out of bed in the morning. It's killing me. I I wake up every day wondering if I'm going to hell forever, and and I and I struggle mightily because my theology is so different than my parents or than my pastors. All these people who I love and I get along with, but I just can't function in the world anymore. And RTS became a diagnosis for people, and then they've crafted ways to help people out.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's really quite remarkable how sophisticated religious trauma can be for people.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um so why don't I I listed some things on our note sheet? Why don't you walk us through the three examples of spiritual abuse and then maybe we can talk about each one?
SPEAKER_04:Definitely. And some of these might resonate as you're listening. Um, and we'll come to a moment of prayer, I think, towards the end. But um, the first one is using religious authority to control behavior. So using religious authority to control behavior. So an example might be a pastor, a guru, spiritual leader tells followers that disobeying them is the same as disobeying God, using good or fear or divine punishment to force compliance. That's very interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, it can be something as big as a priest who stands there with holy communion and says, No, I'm not giving you the communion wafer. And you, as a priest in the Church of England, you have the authority to do that, to withhold Holy Communion for a particular reason. That is a power that is given by the secular, by the church authority, that you can actually say you are not living a godly life or what for whatever reason, you you you know, I think it would be reckless to do that without really carefully considering why you're doing it and the repercussions of doing it. But that's one example with holding communion. There are there are other things that um you know when when a priest stands up and says uh uh something powerful, like um, for for example, imagine if you have a big congregation of people and the priest stands up in front of them and says, If you have ever had an abortion, you're a murderer.
SPEAKER_04:Oh so it can be on that.
SPEAKER_00:And you say, Well, we we are a pro-life congregation, and so we want to make it very clear that the word of God teaches that life is life, and so if you've ever had an abortion, you're you're a murderer. And if you're a murderer, you should you should be going and repenting before you ever come back to this altar for prayer. Well, you you have a pastor who has no idea the story sitting in front of him. No, that there are men and women who've experienced all sorts of things related to pregnancy and and uh and miscarriages and all sorts of things. And he makes that statement that is actually very abusive. Yeah. Because what he has just done is he's laid theological guilt on the heads of everybody in the room, even young girls who are listening to that who may one day find themselves pregnant from a rapist. Yeah, God forbid. And then they hear the echoes of this voice saying, but if I terminate this pregnancy from this rape, then I'm gonna be a murderer.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So suddenly, you know, this is where it goes in the ditch, I think. And and I think there are, you know, there are a lot of people that are gonna disagree with this and they're gonna say, no, you have a moral obligation to speak the truth. And but I'm telling you straight up, you can abuse people with your power, and you can be abused by allowing yourself to to be pummeled from the pulpit or from the voice of someone in religious authority. So, so I think in some ways, this is why safeguarding in the Church of England is such a good thing because when somebody does stupid things and abuses their power in any way, yeah, be it a physical touch that was unwanted, or be it a sermon that really was inappropriate, or things said to a person that were wrong, these can all be reported through the safeguarding process in the Church of England, which is why I kind of am happy about the new Archbishop, because I think she understands the nature of these things and how important they are.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. And and knowing that you know it could just take one person in the congregation um to make a report, that's all it takes is one person to help. Um okay, so yeah, how about the second thing? Yeah, the second one is exploiting spiritual teachings for personal gain. So, an example may be a religious leader demands large financial donations.
SPEAKER_00:We've never heard that before, have we?
SPEAKER_04:Oh my goodness, or even sexual acts in exchange for blessings or forgiveness or spiritual advancement.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's in I mean, it's incredible how you have this amazing power dynamic often between the the religious leader and the person in the pew who is so desperate for acceptance and belonging and to be a part. I just want to be a part of the gang. And um, I want God to love me, and if you love me, that tells me that God loves me. And so when that person who stands between God and you suddenly realizes they've got you like a deer in the headlights, then they can say, the Lord needs you to tithe more, the Lord needs more generosity from your heart. In fact, the Lord really wants you to sow a faith offering to show how committed you are to your faith, and then he'll pour blessings upon you. And so prosperity theology has grown in different parts of the world because these spiritual gurus realize that they can actually utilize spiritual abuse in this way because it's highly profitable. If I say you will get forgiveness by planting a seed of faith, or if you help me buy an airplane, then God is going to materially bless you. That is actually the outgrowing of a spiritual abuse practice where you exploit teachings for personal gain. And it's classic, and yet we live in a society where I can turn the uh I can turn the television on, and there's probably seven different pastors preaching a version of that abusive message every single week on the television, and people send their money, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:They do.
SPEAKER_00:You want to know how to make it easy for uh so many churches are funny, they say, Well, how can we make it easier for our members to give and give electronically? And I said, Turn on seven of the channels on your television and watch how they do it, yeah. Because they're masters at at using QR codes and how to do bank transfers, they know how to get in your bank account, and it's because that is um a sign of spiritual abuse.
SPEAKER_04:Gosh, it's it's really big stuff, this isn't it? And you see how easily it's done. Okay, number three, shaming or ostracizing members for questioning or leaving. I sadly, this is something I think I've seen a lot of. So, an example might be a church or spiritual group teaches that anyone who questions leadership, leaves the group, or associates with outsiders is evil uh or lost or even possessed sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's so sad to see it. But again, it's it's all about uh self-preservation, right? So so often we see religious organizations and small churches, and then the truth teller rises up in the midst of the congregation, and the truth teller says, This pastor abused me. And the people are faced with this terrible kind of decision. Do I believe the victim who's saying they were abused, or do I believe the pastor who says, No, no, this person is off their rocker, they were not abused, there's nothing to it. And so you're in this tough position. And then in a in a pre-safeguarding world in the Church of England, oftentimes the victim would walk away, walk away, and they would be silent, and then the the congregation is left, and they have to decide how do they move forward. And so often the pattern, which is a very dysfunctional pattern, is that we circle the wagons around our fearless leader, and we claim that he was just maligned by this misguided soul, and maybe even the devil was involved in it, you know, and that she was just a harlot. And so so often it's harder for us to look at things as they are than looking at them as we wish them to be. And so for us to allow our spiritual guru, our spiritual leader to be imperfect and broken, you know, you you end up with these stories that pop up every few months or so. You have a story from a megachurch somewhere, like in in Texas recently, where we had the story of the the pastor who was arrested for um an offense that happened years ago. Um, there are other stories like that, Hill Song and and other stories where people in tremendous power, their humanity ends up getting in the way, and then they do stupid things and harm people.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so these congregations, these organizations have to figure out how do we survive because they're you know, you could argue that some of these organizations are um they're bigger than than God and in in the way that they operate. It's like we have to save the organization no matter what, and and you're like, well, what if it means you know telling God to leave? You know, well, if that's what it takes, yeah, and you're like, no, no, the whole purpose of the body of Christ is to be a living organization, not to be a big company. That's it. And and so often we're we are in love with the institution um to a point of letting people be abused within the institution for the sake of the survival of the institution. Yeah, but it's very hard to kind of recognize the signs and the symptoms. I think um, you know, I hope I haven't become too cynical over the years, but but it's super important that we don't just become sh the kind of sheep that, you know, the limbings, the sheep that just run off the cliff and and uh we don't listen for the voice of the shepherd.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it is hard to recognize, and it brings me back to safeguarding training when when you have to identify the type of abuse and you go, Well, it's a bit of this and it's a bit of that, and it's not just one thing. And I think when we just looked at those three examples, you can see how stuff could overlap and intertwine. Um, why don't we have a little bit of a chat about how we can or start to recognize the signs?
SPEAKER_00:There's a good one of my favorite quotes is when when religion becomes a weapon, that's when it ceases to be holy. When when religion becomes a weapon, it ceases to be holy. And and that, I mean, when you stop and think about it, is anything in this religious organization shaped like a weapon? Is it aimed at people? Is it hurting people? Is it attacking people? When whenever you're involved in an organization that's doing damage to others, in my world, I think that tells me that this is not an organization grounded in the love of God. But you know, that's my personal statement. I I know that some people would argue that um that you have to stand for something. Um but I I the love of neighbor and the love of God are the two principal commandments in the Bible. And I think um if if acorn is about anything, it's about bringing people together, and it's about helping people to hear their voice in prayer and to hear God's voice reaching back to them. And and so we don't want to be the kind of Christianity that pushes people to the margins. We want to be the kind of Christianity that's magnetic and it and it brings people in from the margins to the heart of God.
SPEAKER_04:So, what might some of those signs be? You said that you know that it it won't be loving your neighbor. What what might that look like?
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, like we said in before, excessive control or legalism is the fancy word that you that you get. And that's kind of like in the old days of the Pharisees, they walked around knowing all the code of Hammurabi to and fro, and you know, the Levitical laws and an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, all those phrases that you often hear in some fundamentalist circles. Um, the idea of having rules and regulations as a religion. And I think I like to believe that Christianity is about a relationship. And so often when you have people leading from the front or organizations that are kind of put together with hardline rules and and a real rigid legalistic kind of approach to every social issue, I would see that as a warning sign.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I and whatever those particular issues are, there's a bucket full of issues, but it's the approach to each of them that would cause me concern, not the issue themselves and not whether you're for or against, but it's about how you're allowed to engage in the issue.
SPEAKER_04:Very good. That's a really good thing to be thinking about. Okay, what else?
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh I mean, another sign is uh using fear, you know, here we are in the season of Halloween. But in the church world, fear is is highly useful and highly damaging. And so when your whole thrust on a weekly basis when you gather for worship is to scare people, to instill the fear of God into people, then what are you doing by that? You're creating an atmosphere where you're calling for obedience based upon fear, right? So you say, if you do this, you will burn in hell for eternity. So that's a fear-based approach. You take a little 12-year-old kid and they're sitting in front of you, and they they just want to be loved, and they want to be loved by their parents, and they want the church to look at them and say, You're okay, God loves you. But instead, the preacher looks at them and says, Do you know if you do this and if you do this, and if you're like this and if you believe this way, you will burn in hellfire for eternity. And suddenly that little 12-year-old sitting there going, Wait a minute, that's that's really tough. Is that true? And so suddenly there's you've got to be obedient.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Obedience, it's it's like using a whip to to get someone in line. You strike their back until they will be obedient and do what you tell them to. And when religion looks like that, it's abusive religion. You strike the parishioner until they get into line. And I think, what kind of Christian faith is that? That's why so many people who grow up in these sort of fundamentalist kind of homes and fundamentalist churches, when they hit the age of 19 or 20, they're gone. They don't want anything else to do with this kind of religion because they've escaped the plantation. They're free. Yeah, and they look back and they say, I don't want to get whipped anymore. Yeah, that was slavery back there. That wasn't relationship with Jesus. What was that? It was spiritual abuse. Yeah, that's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_04:You see a lot of that, don't you? That you're right, that age often.
SPEAKER_00:I see it, uh, I see it a lot. I think the Anglican church often is a place where people come after they escape from abusive uh religious upbringing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because the Anglican church tends to be intentionally broad. You come in, and even though we have doctrine and we have uh, you know, we we read the scriptures and we have creeds, historic creeds, which kind of give us the boundaries of what our faith is as an Anglican Christian, um, you also have this breadth of opportunity for people to just come and be who they are before God without a lot of judgment. You know, it's kind of like I may not agree with you, but I love you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Let's let's have a cup of tea and you explain to me where you're coming from. Yeah. That way of doing Christianity, I think, is so much healthier.
SPEAKER_04:It is, yeah. And actually that ties into the next point. Um, you're you're talking about a free and loving um Christianity and faith and relationship. But sometimes if you want to talk about these things, um, there's shame, isn't there? Or you're silenced.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, it's silencing dissent is one of the biggest signs that you are that you are in a place of spiritual abuse because nobody wants the dissent to get legs.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The minute your voice starts sounding reasonable, and um especially if you can articulate your position, oh my goodness, you are a you are a threat to the system.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so you have to be cast out, which is again the um the other thing that that happens um is that you isolate people.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So you you isolate the people that are your followers from the outside sources of information, and you isolate the outside sources of information. So, I mean, I've even had um, you know, I've seen where church leaders will actually tell their members not to watch news on certain channels on the television or not to read certain newspapers. They will literally prescribe where you are to engage with the world.
SPEAKER_03:I get you.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you are not to use uh TikTok. TikTok's evil, not to use it, do not use it. If you use it, it's a sin. Yeah, you don't want to burn in hell again. It's all these things playing together to manipulate the behavior of the person, and all of those things create uh a kind of abusive cupcake. And you serve it on a weekly basis to people, and uh, and it's no different than you know, Matthew 23, which says they tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders. I mean, that's what that's what's happening when people spiritually abuse other people. Um, you know, Jesus went around rebuking religious leaders for burdening others, yes, not helping others, and the whole idea of love of neighbor being such a radical commandment because Jesus says that you know all the rule following and the legalism that's not about relationship with a living God. Um, but we live in a funny world where politics and religion and money and all these things kind of intersect and it creates the the perfect storm for people to get in the middle of that and abuse other people. Yeah, so that's why I thought maybe having a discussion about it today would be useful.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and there is a really good quote, actually, it gets you thinking by Madeline Lengel, which says, We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it. That's love, isn't it? Isn't that wonderful?
SPEAKER_00:That is so beautiful. It's so true. Yeah, isn't that the most compelling thing? I I know throughout the years I've uh I've heard people talk about evangelism, and and they always speak in terms of confrontation, and confrontation sounds very close to abuse in my way of thinking. And and when you think confrontational evangelism is I, you know, I walk up to you, Lisa, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? And and you confront the other person with your truth, yeah. And what is a much more wonderful model, and I think more successful model is when I walk up to you and I happen upon you on a trail somewhere, and I say, Hi, what's your name? And you say, I'm Lisa, what's your name? I'm Chris. Where are you heading? Well, I'm heading down this road, and uh well, tell me about yourself. Yeah, and next thing you know, you have what's known as a relational model of evangelism, yeah, and they see the light of Jesus in your life because they're looking at the things you're looking at as you look at them rather than being confronted about self and about their own misgivings and misguided nature, and let me point out all the sin in your world. I mean, how you how ridiculously useful is it to say, wouldn't it be easier to walk along with people instead of bashing them in the forehead with with the Bible, with your truth?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But again, I think the um, you know, the the impacts of spiritual abuse are that for a long time that model of confrontation has been widely kind of embraced.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And I believe that a confrontational model leaves a mark, it leaves an impact. Um, you know, spiritual abuse doesn't just break trust in people, but it can also fracture their trust in God. It really is. Yeah, and that's a huge thing. No one would ever want to be the person that causes someone to fall away from their belief in God.
SPEAKER_04:But I think also it shapes people's belief in God because you might end up thinking, oh, well, if God actually does think I'm a murderer because I've had an abortion or it could happen, is you know, yeah, you start to think that could be true of God. Um and and I think again, that is how the trust in Him is fractured, it's just so damaging.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it's it's worth going back to the um you know the dynamics of complex trauma families, you know, we talked about that diagnosis, scientific diagnosis. Um, there are some people that live in a traumatic family system. So imagine you're your dysfunctional church that's spiritually abusing so many people, but for the members of that church who are compliant, who are in in that family system, they are the compliant child. Yeah, they're they're the the hero. They're come you know, they're um almost invisible. They they because they're compliant, they just get along. They go, oh wow, this is this is great. I don't understand what you're talking about. There's no abuse here. This is great. I love it here. Are you kidding? I love my church. And then there's the problem child. And the problem child is is the one who looks at that system and says, This isn't a healthy place. There's a double standard here. This isn't love, this doesn't feel like love to me. And then they're always going to be the one in trouble. So the system's always gonna be pouncing on them, ostracizing them, excluding them, making them feel uncertain of themselves. And they, you know, they're in a church that that that says, uh, we only believe in two genders, blah, blah, blah. And the person goes, but you know, I'm really trying to figure out, I feel like maybe I'm not a boy, and I was born with with uh with boy parts, and I'm I'm feeling, I'd like to kind of see what this whole non-binary thing. Oh, you can't talk like that. Yeah, you can't, you're not allowed to ever question any of these things. And again, that is that's the beginning of spiritual abuse, just kind of taking and imagine it's more than that. It's like you you fall in love in high school with a boy, and and he's an immigrant from uh from Uganda, and you're you're a white girl from Surrey, and all of a sudden your grandpa who goes to this church where you've been members for years and years, they go, We don't believe in interracial marriage, you know. And suddenly the pastor says something about wanting to come and counsel you about your choices. This is spiritual abuse, and so you're not the compliant child. The compliant child's gonna go, oh yes, I'm not supposed to marry a boy from Uganda.
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you're gonna comply, you're you're gonna say, Oh, yes, I'm a boy. I was born a boy, and that I'm only a boy, and I can't question that.
SPEAKER_04:But then what's that doing to you inside?
SPEAKER_00:You know, eventually, eventually, it's like that volcano we talked about at the beginning. It's gonna start spewing steam. And um, and I would say that you know, compliant children have trauma, but they don't realize it. But most people who are compliant will find out about their trauma after many years. And you'll kind of wake up one day and you'll be like, I still believe in God. I haven't lost, I mean, some people lose their religion, but other people they um they hold on to their religious faith, but then they suddenly realize, holy cow, I've been a victim of systemic abuse because I've been around people who are adults who were in authority that made me feel inferior.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then suddenly you get a bit angry about that because there are all sorts of places. I, you know, I grew up in the South in America, and there are all sorts of places where to fit in, you have to buy in.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I was a football player on a high school football team, and culturally you really had to be a Christian of a certain type, a sort of Baptist born-again Christian to fit in with all the guys on the football team and with the coaches on the football team, and then with your social group. You want to fit in, and the way to fit in is to kind of okay, well, I'm gonna agree with everything that you guys say. So black is black and white is white, and up is up, and you know, so whatever you say, the and I I mean, this was a time in the 80s when we were being told that that the devil's was speaking through rock music lyrics and all these things, and this was being taught by adults to vulnerable young people at my school. We had people that would come and talk about how you know ACDC and Ozzy Osborne and all these things were demonic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We needed to reject all these things. You you could argue that there are elements of spiritual abuse in not allowing a young person to kind of come to their own understanding of these things rather than prescribing this is the truth about every single one of these things. And then for me, it just made me want to go do academic work because I suddenly was like, You have no idea what you're talking about, but you're sitting here telling the 16-year-old the truth, and you're telling me what's going to determine whether I go to heaven or hell for eternity, and you're telling me like you know, and at the same time, a lot of these adults were busy sexually carousing with young people inappropriately, and so you have the authority religiously over young people, and then at the same time, morally, they're showing themselves to be bankrupt. For me, that that made me just want to break free and go learn for myself and experience, and then you know, we end up being able to do a podcast today about how um challenge it, you know, challenge the hypocrisy. It's it's really important that we not let people continue to spiritually abuse other people.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely, it is, and it because it can really affect your identity, but not not just affect it in but in terms of you can lose your identity, can't you? Because you start to just come under all these things that you've been talking about. And actually, it's quite remarkable that you went, I'm gonna think for myself uh on this and come out the other side of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Some people, I mean, rebellion is a funny thing, and a lot of people say, you know, oh, when did you rebel from your parents? Did you did you go clubbing and do drugs and break the law and speed in the car and all that, you know? And so, you know, my rebellion was to become really a fundamentalist Christian and read my Bible three times a day. You know, I I became really lost in my faith as a kind of rebellion because I I wanted to figure this stuff out. And um, but there are people that, you know, it's not just like being a uh an Amish person living in community who suddenly finds themselves thrown out and shunned, where they're no longer allowed to even speak to anybody in their community. That sort of thing happens in the regular world too, where you you go from being a member of a a really cool gospel church, you know, in your community and and in leadership, and then you make a mistake, or your your wife falls in love with the worship leader, and there you are with your two kids, and you still want to go to church, and the church has decided that you were a bad dad, and that your wife, who's now uh in love with the worship leader, is the they're the people that that we trust who are Jesus people. And so you're on the outside, you and your two kids, and you think, why is this institution doing this to me? Why are they pushing me away and making me just hate myself? Well, that's spiritual abuse. It is and then the fear, you know, the the fear of God is something that sometimes causes people to end up being hospitalized because they live every day fearing God because they've been programmed from a young age to be very afraid, afraid of hell, that everything you do is motivated by a desire to avoid hell and and the consequences of sinful living. And um, instead of the joy of living for God, your motivation from coming out of abuse is often kind of wrecked.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And and you also, you know, I've found people that roll into church and they meet me and and they immediately sort of have their arms crossed and they look at you and it's like, how can I trust you? Yeah, you know, yeah, you're being nice to me, but then what are you gonna do? Exactly. You're gonna break my heart, you're gonna undermine me, you're gonna, you're gonna tell me how rotten I am. You know, so then they become guarded rather than trusting. And you see it sometimes. You'll stand in the front of the church and you'll look and you'll see people very on edge. And then eventually, sometimes they'll come and they'll say, Thank you. You know, it's taken me a long time, but thank you for giving me a safe place.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, for so many years I've been abused when I come to church and I felt like I wasn't wanted and I always got judged. And and you've offered love, and you've offered an image of God that that actually is the one that I so long to hear about. And it was a God who who loves, a God who heals, a God who redeems, and that removes that confusion and the shame. It does. Women who've who've had made bad choices, women who've um who are divorced, they who've come upon, you know, even a woman who's been in abusive marriage who who breaks free. They come to churches, and there are churches that will judge that woman. Yeah, she's a victim of being in an abusive marriage, and she has made a decision to leave for her own good, and there are Christian churches that will judge her or assume that she's been unfaithful or something. There's something about the man getting the first crack at morality, and um, and that it does kind of bug me.
SPEAKER_04:Um yeah, of course it does, it does. And we talk about uh acorn, of course, that you know, of God's healing. Um, so it'd be good to bring this to uh a little maybe reflecting time on uh on God's heart for healing those who have been wounded by spiritual abuse. It does say in Ezekiel chapter 34, woe to the shepherds, you have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick. That breaks my heart hearing that. I it if I ever heard God say to us at Acorn or to me personally, you you didn't strengthen the weak, you you know, you weren't there, I would be like, I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so let's just take a look at God's heart for the wounded.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I I uh I've always been a big fan of C.S. Lewis.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And um there's a quote from him to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. And I think any pastor, any church leader, um, any lay leader for that matter, um, if you operate from that sense of humility and grace, surely that's the posture that God calls us to when we exercise leadership in the church. That's the kind of posture that leads you to not become the kind of stereotypic abuser in the church because you are aware of your own woundedness. That automatically puts you in a posture of humility. Yeah, and and I think Lewis was absolutely right that to be arrogant and to be filled with, I guess you could call it certitude, you know, the certitude of my salvation, you know, these terms which um are loaded, they're so loaded, and then can be used to rock people who are vulnerable. You know, so the church may have wounded you, but Christ still longs to heal you. It's so true.
SPEAKER_04:It is so true, it is. And I mean, there's loads of scripture we could look at, but we pulled out just um two or three here. Um Psalm 34 says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. And it's lovely, like when we read these scriptures, these are things that you can pray into and over your own lives, aren't they? We're not just quoting these at you, these are these are life um that you can receive today. Um Isaiah 42, a bruised reed he will not break.
SPEAKER_00:John 10, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A good shepherd does not abuse his sheep, he lays down his life for the sheep, he leaves the herd to go rescue the one sheep, and so there are all kinds of uh affirmations we can have when we see people demonstrably living the gospel that way. Um so healing begins when we name the wound and we invite God into the wound. And I think today what we're talking about is a kind of gaping hole left by spiritual abuse that someone sits there today and they go, you know, I've I've never really been able to put my finger on it, but I think I've got like spiritual woundedness from my past. And so what I want to do is say, well, this podcast today is specifically for you to kind of say, you know, put put your hand on your own heart and say, God, heal me of all of those things. Help me to acknowledge what happened to me and name that abuse. Help me to find some trustworthy spiritual support, some people where I can rebuild some trust in God and separate God from these abusive representations of God. And then maybe maybe I need some professional um counseling and some professional spiritual healing. Maybe I can go find a healing hub or a Christian church around me and just go up to the pastor and say, I would love it if somebody would pray for me. And you don't have to tell them what to pray for in particular unless you want to, but you could simply say, I just want to receive the prayer from a loving God. All the stuff that we've talked about today, just take that before the Lord. And I I really believe with all my heart that there is refreshment that comes from that is kind of a like a little victory. And so if nothing else, it's like telling you where the all-you-can-eat buffet is and giving you a map on the podcast to say, go here and you will find food to eat, and it will never run out.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I love that. I really love that. And um, one of the scriptures that we've written down here is from Joel too, it says, I will restore you to the years, um, restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. And um, I just love that image, Chris, of going to the buffet and actually being restored and having all the goodness back from what the locusts um have potentially eaten over the years of your life.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I know we're right here on the last lap, and we've covered a lot of real estate. Um the other quote from C.S. Lewis that means so much to me is joy is the serious business of heaven. And so we started the discussion about spiritual abuse with kind of the the ultra angry reaction to the announcement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and the fact that um that that it's a woman. And and so I kind of come all the way back around, and I think um, you know, don't let anyone rob you of your sense of joy. If if there are bits of news in it in the institutional movements of a Christian denomination that you don't like, well, okay. Follow God, deepen your heart in the walk with Jesus, and don't get tripped up by the things that that maybe you don't agree with. But the minute you start campaigning against certain people, against things that you don't like, or theological things which you say contravene your understanding of right and wrong, suddenly you seem to be more convinced in shaping the world in your image than being shaped into the image of God. And so, just like a lot of people today. Um, they're praying earnestly for this amazing woman who I happen to be a big fan of. Um, Sarah is a great person, she's a great administrator, but she's super kind, and she's has such a pastoral heart, Lisa. She, I mean, she approaches everything like you can imagine a nurse.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Who's what does a nurse do in the face of conflict? What does a nurse do when there's a catastrophe? Um, she's a servant leader just by definition. And I think she's going to be really good for the the this next chapter of the of the Church of England and for the worldwide Anglican Communion. And I hope people can um I hope people can embrace that and not decide to go back into their foxholes where they start arguing about awful things like civil rights and interracial marriage and gay marriage and all this kind of stuff. I mean, there's all sorts of things that we can fight about for eternity, or we can get ourselves in a posture of hopefulness and say, you know what, I'm gonna just agree to disagree on certain things, but I'm gonna just say Romans 8 tells me that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And so if that is true, then life is way too short for me to get caught up in fighting and being a part of anything that abuses other human beings in this world. I just need to lift up my neighbor in love and grace, and I'm gonna celebrate Bishop Sarah on the day she becomes archbishop. I think will be a great day because a person who loves Jesus and who is a very sensible, caring person who is not about spiritual abuse will be in a position of holding a crozier which gives her the authority to be the great shepherd of the sheep of the United Kingdom. And so I'd be happy to be one of her pastors.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um and I hope others will too. I hope some of the dust will settle and the angry men will stop making racket and we can get on with the business of teaching G to the world that needs to hear about him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, super helpful. Well, on all of this, because I know that this this this topic may have um spoken to a few people. Would you kindly pray, Chris, for those who are listening?
SPEAKER_00:Lord, we thank you for this morning, this discussion. It was a little bit deep, and I imagine it's ruffled some feathers and stirred some hearts. I pray for those who in this very minute know that they have been abused spiritually. And I pray, Lord, for healing, for the for the confidence and the strength to actually take a step and go find a church and ask for prayer for healing. And I pray for the world in which we live on a day when when there's talks of peace in in the Middle East, that Israel and and the people of Palestine are trying to chart a course of peace. We pray for peace in Jerusalem, the land of the Holy One. We pray for the world in all of its unrest. Lord, help bring us together, heal this broken world and bring us back to your heart where we love our neighbor as ourself. We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.
SPEAKER_04:Amen. Thank you so much, and uh, don't forget to join us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, what a great week ahead. I'm off to Ireland.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, you are, yes.
SPEAKER_00:I I don't know, my accent may change when I go to Belfast. I may start talking like this when I get back. It'll be fantastic. Load it just. Yeah, I'm looking forward to being in Carmony this weekend. Uh, we're leading a group on Saturday, and then we've got two different services on Sunday, and uh, we're just gonna talk about Jesus and healing, and I am so excited to go to Ireland. It's gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_04:It's gonna be great. And if you're in that area, the dates and times of what Chris is up to uh are on our website. So have a look if you'd like to go and uh join him and say hello. We got the Healing Academy on the 1st of November where we're gonna be exploring this topic a little further, aren't we? Um looking at the wounds of the church. Um and just don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe.
