The Violence of Thought Conversion: Wrapped in Gentleness and in Cruelty

I thought I would mention a bit more about my own experience with informal discipline tactics that church leaders and cultic groups use to exploit and manipulate members. In years past on this site, I've mentioned the many gentle sessions of double bind and informal logical fallacy I endured directly with my pastor in his study when I approached him about things that were said from the pulpit that didn't quite sound right doctrinally. When I left the church office, I would feel disoriented and exhausted in a detached and pleasant sort of way, and I'd often go home to nap until dinner.

When I started reading the literature on cults, I learned that feeling was a lasting effect of dissociation. (In the previous post, Wendy Duncan notes that after formal hot seat sessions, group members of the Trinity Foundation cult would remain disoriented and numb for several days.) In a recent post, I also mentioned my experience of dissociation at an informal home meeting, a moment that was so terrible that I experienced physical symptoms. And I described what it was like to observe someone else breaking apart emotionally after a terribly personal and unwarranted tongue-lashing in the name of church authority.

Gentle Thought Conversion

Not all of the breaking was harsh, like those discussions in the pastor's study. I was treated well, and I so enjoyed the pastor's company. We hadn't lived there in the area for very long, moving to the state only months before, making my husband and I especially vulnerable. I suppose that the pastor became one of my closest friends, when you stack everyone up and compare all the people I knew while we lived there. And the church liked having me around initally, offering me the job of substitute secretary which I did until just a month or so until we left.

I recall another notable moment of breaking during my first six months at the church. The dissonance of that hot seat came with gentleness, something amazing because this young elder's wife was generally on the aggressive side, just a little "socially rough."  At the time, I was stressed about getting ready to apply to graduate school, and I had tremendous stress when sitting for the GRE, just before the retreat. Direction in life always created a huge amount of stress for me. My Word of Faith background had largely conditioned and convinced me that the weight of the world depended on me making the right decisions, though I knew that I made many very human mistakes all of the time. Adding that idea of overt responsibility for everything including things out of my control to the deep shame I felt as a consequence of my yet unhealed childhood wounds made for terrific anxiety about the big choices.

A different kind of hot seat

I'd been invited to the ladies retreat, and one evening, the whole group of us went to a restaurant for a family style dinner. I ended up seated next this elder's wife who had invited us to dinner a couple of times right after we first started attending there.  I must have mentioned my anxiety about the wait for my GRE scores when this elder's wife struck up a conversation, though I don't remember the details. I do remember feeling odd when she pitched an idea to me – a remedy to make all of my anxiety about the future go away. She proposed that by remaining a housewife who concerned herself primarily with interests within the home under a husband's authority and remaining home to have children (which I'd already determined to do anyway when children arrived), I could find real freedom from the stress of deciding what to do with my life.

The comment had all sorts of baited emotional hooks as selling points. I would no longer have to worry about getting into school. I would no longer have to worry about anything ever again. Hierarchy was freedom. It sounded eerily like Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four: “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.”   I part of me snapped and broke.   Simply, quietly. I took the bait, because accepting the idea provided secondary gain: the illusion of being able to hide from my life and the stress of making decisions. I could have freedom from responsibility for all of  my own thoughts and actions. That is essentially what she said and what I would hear repeated in not so many words for another 3 ½ years, over and over. I fell prey to all sorts of logical errors and made the decision to buy into the distortion as a good idea. An aspect of the argument was very true, and certainly, being married and who I was married to did limit my options. For instance, I couldn't be someone else's wife, so I was free from that threat, wasn't I? She built an argument that sounded similar. I was born an American, so I'm free from threat of the slavery of being a Canadian, as if everything were a black and white decision with all or nothing implications. And that's supposed to make sense? I could live like a parasite off of my husband and learn to be content with that "freedom."

As Orwell says in the third section of the book, the reverse statement is also true: “SLAVERY IS FREEDOM.” And I vividly remember dissociating at that moment, and even the mental of the picture of the silverware in my hand and the food on my plate still remains in my mind. A part of me broke, and the scene became a bit unreal. I felt like I was almost looking thorough someone else's eyes, and I felt like I was watching other people acting in a movie, even thought the situation was not unpleasant, nor the words we exchanged uncomfortable. I remember attributing it to the idea that I likely didn't have enough sleep the night before, staying in a strange place with strange people. I know now that I dissociated, and it was quite powerful. I was in a situation that I could not exit (brought there by bus from the retreat center) and I had to sit there to be bombarded with ideas by an elder's wife who spoke authoritatively. There was also that subtle, unspoken suggestion of “What's wrong with you for believing such foolish ideas when freedom awaits you?” I didn't see it as a threat, and though I knew something was very wrong, I went into a "highly programmable" altered state of consciousness and just soaked up everything that she said to me as my power to scrutinize what she said melted into nothing.  I couldn't contest her, I couldn't leave the situation, and because of the tremendous discomfort I felt because of the many pressures on me at that moment, I passively accepted what she said.

Not So Gentle Conversion

During our last year at the church, all sorts of things went really sour on many levels. We were asked to start our own mid-week home group which we soon abandoned. It was difficult to attend the meetings for leaders because my husband and I both had scheduling conflicts. We managed to make it to one meeting where we were instructed to collect personal information on the people in our groups to pass up through to the elders. I didn't go back to another meeting, very uncomfortable that I'd been drafted into the Thought Police without informed consent. Needless to say, we explained away our inability to participate by noting our scheduling conflicts.

I was so "flipped out" about what I learned at this leader's meeting, I went on an extended fast, looking to God for answers. I was on day nine of a twenty-one day fast per Daniel's example (Daniel 10:2-3) when my "music team" was summoned to meet with the elders on a Saturday morning in April of '96. Several elders and the pastors been to a local Messianic church for a funeral/memorial service, and the elders wanted us to start playing in the musical style of this other church, albeit failing to realize that not one of us on that worship team attended the service. When I said that they were, in fact, asking us to be different people with a different music style which was entirely dependent on personality and training (things out of our control), I started to shake because my sugar was so low. I really started to shake when they lectured us about praying and fasting! I regret it now because the activity of fasting should be concealed.  When the pastor asked me what was wrong, I took great satisfaction in explaining to the group that I had not eaten anything but very limited amounts of dilute juice in more than a week – ummmm ... to fast and pray.

When I broke the fast and recovered some time later, I went to the church office to speak to the assistant pastor. I remember very little about the meeting but vividly remember feeling barely able to make it to my car which was not more than a 20 yard walk from his office door to my car. I know that the "failed" home group was mentioned as well as the music ministry issue (??) because they were used to shame and denigrate me on a deeply personal level.  I could not focus on the specific reasons that he listed because my body seemed to take over my mind in an overall feeling of illness and disorientation.  (Of course, he parsed his deeply personal words as concern and "loving admonishment" because of my great value as a person to him and the church, a confusing double-bind.   On some level I do think that they believe their parishioners are valuable, and there is a great deal of love which makes the cruelty all the more confusing.  But the leaders in such situations feel justified in the use of cruelty because it accomplishes what they feel is the greater good:  for the person's own growth of character, for the smooth workings of the church so as not to cause "discord among the brethren," and to literally save the soul of the individual from hell by abusing the "rebellion" and "independent spirit" out of them.

I only vaguely recall his  litany of all of the horrible things that were wrong with me, including my physical appearance, though I only remember two or three phrases of what he said. There was something said to me about my tendency to use minimal cosmetics, as if that was a sign of neglect which was a sign of lack of respect for my husband.  (I have to look attractive to other men as a show of love and submission to my husband?)   I remember thinking about makeup instead of listening to the specifics that he said about what I did that was right or wrong, unable to get beyond the idea that it was such a bizarre topic.  Today, out from under the conditioning and the influence of the church, I would tell him that it was none of his business.  That day, I could not speak.  What I remember was the feeling that my throat was so tight, I was not sure that I could catch my breath or utter any sounds. I felt like I no longer had a physical body, and again, my vision changed. I didn't have any momentary blindness this time, but I was sure that I was going to walk out into a thunderstorm when I left, as though black clouds blocked the sun and the light that came in through the windows behind me and to my right.   The room suddenly grew dark as he spoke, just like it sometimes does right before a violent, middle-of-the-day thunderstorm in the spring.  Later, I stood in utter dismay that it was a sunny day with only a single, small cloud floating in the blue, blue sky when I looked up into it as I stood beside my car on the bone-dry blacktop.

Inspired by Richard Gelina of By His Grace, For His Glory

A Painful Breaking

I do remember him opening his office door, as he apparently wanted me to leave, but in retrospect, I don't think I knew what he'd been saying or whether I'd been talking, because my throat felt like fused, rigid, painful bone that would not yield for me to speak.  Had he asked me to leave?  I remember getting to the outside door to leave, and I felt a momentary rush of anxiety, sure that I must have left my purse on the floor in his office --  because I couldn't feel my arms. As I looked down to put my hand on the horizontal bar to open the door, bouncing my body against it because I felt like I had no strength to push it, my purse bounced into my field of vision which I thought strange because I couldn't feel it. I did feel the metal of the bar, though.  It felt searing cold, and I felt numb until I touched it.  I was not fully "in my body," or so it felt.

It took forever for me to get the car door open, and it was an effort to get myself into the driver's seat after I swung my purse haphazardly on to the passenger seat because I didn't feel like I had proper use of my arms. It was humid and hot in the car in a way that was stifling, making it hard to breathe.  I struggled and fumbled to get the key into the ignition, as if I was watching a film in slow motion. I sat there, sick, and I remember saying in my head, “What did I say? What did he say? I don't even remember what I even came here to talk about with him today." And nothing looked real. It seemed like my vision was film of a stream of long frames of still photos that had been taken with a camera lens that distorted distance. My hands and my lap seemed to be about four feet away from my face as I looked down at the distorted, unreal images.  Looking down at my hands seemed like a journey as my awareness went from somewhere above my head, having to travel down the miles in front of it to allow me to focus on my hands.  My vision seemed two dimensional and my movement choppy.  At least, I could not track those single, still pictures of my vision smoothly with my attention.

I felt sick and achy, and though I don't remember getting in my purse for Ibuprophen, I found myself suddenly looking at the four brown pills in the palm of my right hand for what seemed like an eternity as I felt like bones in my arms were stretching further away from me. The pills looked distorted, and I stared at them for a long time.  Something was very wrong, I felt, and I still feel that moment, as though my torso is hollow, right down to the floor of my pelvis. Everything felt wrong. Everything felt unsafe and unreal. When I swallowed the pills, I felt like I'd swallowed something else, and I felt the sensation of swallowing them as though I were a computer consciousness in a plastic, android body. I stared at the pills for a long time, and I saw them resting in my hand from a different angle that couldn't have come from the vantage of my own eyes, as though my consciousness had left my head and was floating at the roof of the car in the middle, closer to the windshield. In my mind, I kept repeating the thought, “I feel so sick,” over and over. I was not sure if I should rest there or if I could manage to drive the rest of the way home.  I didn't feel comfortable being there, as if I had to get away from a place where I'd just been assaulted, finding a safe place.  And I used to turn the corner into the parking lot of that church, seeing it like a bright green oasis of love and hope, teeming with life for me and others which gave me joy.  Suddenly, that changed.

My Body Repeats the Story as Evidence of the Trauma?

A few days later, on a Saturday evening, I took some Ibuprofen out of the bottle, and as I swallowed the pills, I felt that android like feeling again and had the sense that something was dreadfully wrong.  It was horrible.  It was different from the way I felt in the car, and it wasn't exactly like what I would call impending doom, but more like some feeling you might have while watching a dysphroic horror film.   It again was like watching a movie, with a part of me not fully present, a film without sound that just showed disjointed images of strange things that seemed out of place and time.  I felt creaturely and anxious, but I was not "present enough" in my consciousness to feel afraid, though it was not comfortable. But I was the star of this strange film, and I had the sense that something dreadful happened. I dreamed about the assistant pastor that night, and I remember thinking about that day that I'd met with him for the browbeating as I drifted off to sleep.

I awakened that morning with angioedema – an acute swelling of the tongue and face. I said that I looked like the Elephant Man, and my face was sore to touch. When I looked at my tongue, my teeth left indentations in the side where it had swollen against them. I decided to stay home from church because I was not sure what was happening. Gary went without me, and I went back to bed. Within a year, I would be able to tolerate no drugs in the whole NSAID class, and I also developed wicked asthma which worsened severely when I took NSAIDs  -- asthma which I did not have before, new onset at the age of 30. I rapidly developed several other chemical sensitivities followed by dramatic symptoms which I later learned are strongly tied to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and somatic illness. I found it odd, but I still remain extremely allergic to eye makeup, too. 

It has been suggested to me that my body decided to tell the story of my trauma that day through allergy – that my body is literally grieving over what the assistant pastor said to me that day.  It certainly sounds curious, though I don't profess that I believe this, one way or the other.   Something terrible happened that only the two of us saw, the assistant pastor and me -- and somehow, the Ibuprofen and the eye makeup became wrapped up in the process, and perhaps asthma in general. It may be that my body continues to tell this specific story about the trauma because I couldn't find my voice.  I suppose that only God knows, though my symptoms are much less severe since working with a therapist concerning this and other specific memories of trauma related to my experience at the church.

If you ask me about the worst moment during my four year tenure in Shepherding/Discipleship, I'm not apt to identify that afternoon in Paul's office. I don't think about it much because it seemed so unreal, though as I write this, my body aches and my heart is pounding, and the center of my chest feels empty, just from revisiting what I do recall. It seems to much like a dream than it does a memory, and I might dismiss it if I had not felt so wrong and so eerie when I think of that image of the pills in my hand as I sat there in the car. I then had the experience in the kitchen which I recall more acutely as I took the next dose of the medicine.  I have no trouble remembering the disturbing, pervasive threatening sense and idea that life had been forever changed in a dreadful way, and it would never again be the same.

One Good Thing

I believe that I was so rattled by that last meeting with the assistant pastor that a part of me decided to never be that vulnerable and naïve again.  I certainly took the first step in that direction.  My husband had already wanted to leave the church, and I think that in my heart, I'd made the same decision, though my body wouldn't follow for another couple of months. After all, I was not yet willing to believe that the senior pastor was a manipulator, something I had to experience directly to accept.

On a few occasions thereafter, similar manipulation and shame tactics were used against me by others in the church. A few weeks later, at the end of a special meeting that was set aside on a Friday night for the sole purpose of worship, while I was singing at the end of the service one night.  While I was still on podium behind the mic, singing with my eyes closed, I was abruptly summoned by the tap of bony fingers on my right shoulder. The pastor's wife and another woman who had identified herself as my mentor sat me down in the pews, trapping me there, while people milled around.  Anyone who wanted to listen could hear everything that they said to me, and there were a number of people still around with gentle music playing in the background. The elders sent these women to send me a message to say that I was not behaving properly in terms of submission and authority.

What I found odd was that in this experience, I had trouble paying attention to what they were saying, but not like I had in the assistant pastor's office.   Mind kept spontaneously repeating a phrase that competed for my attention: “If your heart condemns you not, you have confidence towards God.” It was plain and clear, and I heard it repeated in my head after nearly everything that they said to me.   I wondered if my conscience had been seared, because I did not feel a bit convicted and spent a couple of days praying and asking God why I didn't feel bad. I believe that I'd already decided that I wasn't going to revisit that terrible place I'd experienced in the assistant pastor's office. I was later summoned to meet with the pastor and two elders (without the assistant pastor for some reason), I assume to discuss what they'd sent those ladies to me to discuss and to address some specific questions that I'd asked them a few weeks earlier. By then, it didn't matter. I felt victorious again, and their words seemed empty.  We parted amicably, in my understanding, and they even called me in to fill in for the secretary just two days later.  I believe that they wanted to crush me in that meeting, but they had no real cause to take issue with me because I'd done nothing wrong.  Or perhaps they realized that their intimidation stopped working on me like it had in the past?   I never found out, and by then, it didn't matter to me.

When we finally left the church a month later, I called the single elder who had been especially kind and supportive with me. I wanted him to know that we'd left but that I was grateful for his kindness to me. Though I can say that it was no picnic hearing him say that we would lose our jobs, would get some fatal illness, and that if we had children, they could die because we'd left the church without their blessing, I didn't go back to that "place in my head" that I did that day in the assistant pastor's office. As this elder spoke, a different phrase spontaneously popped into my mind and repeated, over and over, in my mind: “Ye have not so learned Christ.” I still had much recovery to work through, and I still felt sick with grief. I still felt rather lost, but I had my mind back. I was no longer willing to listen to them, or perhaps, I'd found my own voice in my own mind and had realized that I could begin to trust myself again.  I could hear them, but I turned down the volume of my attention on what they said and turned up the volume of the voice of my own better judgement inside my mind.

I don't consider myself invulnerable to manipulation like this by any means.  I still hear the words of others.  I still hear the voice of temptation and ideas of condemnation in my own mind, but I make a willful choice to turn down their volume.  There is no condemnation to those in Christ, and whether encouraging thoughts pop into my mind because my own brain find them and pushes them into my consciousness or whether that is the Holy Spirit bidding me to follow, I do know that I don't have to give ear to the condemnation.   Real feedback, constructive criticism, doesn't denigrate but creates safety and a path of productive action that leads to confidence and honor.  That path may be uncomfortable, but it is not demeaning, denigrating, or judgmental.  It makes no use of shame.  It fosters and respects choice and liberty.  Condemnation crushes, and I can choose to turn down its volume.

You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible?

Slavery is freedom.

Alone -- free -- the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. 

But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity,

 if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, 

 then he is all-powerful and immortal.

'O'Brien' in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four

 

(I hope that all learn to resist this temptation.  It is a lie.  CK)

Thought Conversion on the Hot Seat

In the previous post, I discussed what my husband and I dubbed “The Star Chamber,” the interrogation and intimidation sessions that our former cultic church elders regularly adjudicated in the pastor's study when they wanted to address what they saw as serious behavioral non-compliance in members. Though the elders had their star chamber meetings, the thought conversion exercises were not limited to those more formal sessions. Though their manipulation was certainly not limited to only the formal sessions, the confrontations with the group of elders was quite powerful. Manipulation in informal settings can be just as effective, but star chamber sessions could affect much emotional, psychological, and spiritual harm, a special practice that involved a higher level of manipulation and force because of the ritual and the fact that a person was outnumbered by eight authority figures (the number of elders and pastors we had at the time of my attendance).

Interrogation isolates a person and disorients them, and the trauma of the experience pushes people into dissociation, a process discussed in greater length in a previous post. We remember the iconic picture from early films about gangsters of the spartan, dark, windowless room with a single, uncomfortable chair in it, an occasional table, but always with a ceiling lamp with a bare lightbulb hanging above the chair. This not only puts the subject of interrogation on display for those in the room to scrutinize, the bright, undiffused light prevents the subject from seeing much of anything but his own body and cannot see much of anything else in the environment. This naturally induces literal disorientation, because a person cannot see their surroundings.

When bent on shaming a parishioner into submission, a local church may not use the light bulb in a dark room to enhance the torture session, they do use other factors to psychologically disarm those who are “under their authority” and have challenged it. This previous post discusses what happens to consciousness when a person dissociates (a physiologic feature of PTSD), and as also noted in a series of posts on this topic, this kind of technique does alter memory by fracturing the self through the use of interrogation. People will believe fantasy to be fact after psychological and physical torture, just as a way of surviving in order to maintain a functional sense of self (because they do lose there sense of identity when they are required to conform to that which is untrue). For the Christian, manipulators can further enhance this effect by claiming that non-conformity and resistance will result in eternal damnation in a place of eternal, unfathomable torture – a special kind of emotional and spiritual blackmail which proves highly effective. Robert Lifton called this fallacious distortion the technique of the Dispensing of Existence, what some evangelical groups call a “spiritual covering,” and what Gothard defines as the “umbrella of authority.” Only the group or the cultic leader can determine your status, and they claim to be able to be able to prognosticate easily, determining your eternal status through a divine insight that only they possess. 

The Hot Seat at Ole Anthony's Trinity Foundation

Wendy and Doug Duncan who were once members of the cultic/spiritually abusive Trinity Foundation in Dallas describe their formal process of interrogation created Ole Anthony – sessions that the group called “the hot seat.” Known to reduce some grown adults to fetal position and drive others into psychotic episodes, Ole's hot seat sessions would extend for hours and took place in front of the entire group of followers. Information elucidated in such sessions through this enhanced torture technique would then haunt group members for years thereafter, levers of control that would be remembered and used by everyone in the group to maintain conformity and compliance of others through threatened shame. Ole believed that to free a person from shame, he was called to induce shame by making them fully experience a sense of their total depravity until that person became so broken that they would essentially become entirely desensitized to shame. That was his premise, anyway.

He believed that harsh, degrading sessions of shame induction were the best way to augment a person's sanctification and were absolutely necessary to make a person into an effective Christian. He also just so happened to believe that he was put on earth to purify people himself in order to make them truly fit for service to God in ways that only he could elicit. I find it fascinating that these types of sessions always start out with specific infractions and always degrade into deeply personal and mean-spirited criticisms which do little else but facilitate unquestioned obedience to the group and its leaders. (We find the same type of beliefs about breaking a child in larger and expanding sectors of Evangelicalism today.  Here's a great new review article about this troubling trend.)

Wendy graciously shares with us some excerpts from her book pertaining to the practice of breaking the spirit within the Trinity Foundation.

From Chapter 6 entitled “Breaking Spirits” in Wendy Duncan's book, I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult (pp. 87-109):

“You can have people come to Bible study three times a week but that really isn't enough to thoroughly indoctrinate people to the extent that Ole wanted. He needed some other way to profoundly and permanently alter people's personalities, and from his perspective, to fix them. Ole discovered the ultimate method for transformation when he started the hot seats.” [Quote from a former member named 'Dave']

In the spring of 1985, Trinity Foundation members embarked on the first of what would be dozens of rounds of psycho-torture sessions known as the hot seats. The “hot seat era” lasted through the early 1990s, and during that period, the hot seats became a daily part of life for the members. The group would go away for long weekends and have marathon sessions. People would curse and scream and cry – eventually arriving at the “orgiastic sense of oneness” described by Lifton. . .

The hot seats were gruesome, tortuous events, both for the person on the hot seat as well as the other participants. The stated purpose was to free you from your past, free you from the things that were hindering you from entering the kingdom of God. In practice, however, they had the effect of changing the participant's perception of himself, reinterpreting his life history, and transforming his worldview by replacing it with Ole's. No one challenged Ole's insights. Though others would pile on and point out the contradictions and faults of the person being hot-seated, Ole kept tight control of the sessions and was the sole arbitrator and judicator of which insights were genuine, who had permission to speak, and, ultimately, when the person being hot-seated was sufficiently broken. . .

It was Ole's role to discern the true meaning of any event described during each prison's hot seat, and it was always stated in a way to make that person realize his or her total depravity. He would tell people that the Holy Spirit could not have anything to do with them because they were too evil, and they had no hope of being saved. His favorite technique was to force one of his disciples into a state of despair so that he or she thought there was no possibility of salvation, and then, when Ole felt that the person was sufficiently broken, he would turn it around. God had returned, and the person was safe, and he was part of the Kingdom after all. . .

There must be some truth to Ole's premise here, but the problem was that the programming, which people received from their parents and from society – some of it no doubt was destructive – was replaced not with God's programming, but with Ole's. . .

[Quoting 'Mark.'] “[A]t the time, there was a strong belief that we were doing the right thing. None of us could see the damage. Ole convinced us that the shameful events in our past were the things that defined us now – defined our false worship. . . We believed that we were in a spiritual, life-and-death struggle for the soul of the individual who was on the hot seat. If each of us did not repent, we would be forever banished to hell. We were engaged in this spiritual warfare. There was a grand fight going on between God and Satan, a battle for our souls.” . . .

[Quoting 'Paula'] “Ole drilled into each of our heads that we were each the chief of sinners. So I always thought that whatever accusation Ole made against me, he must be right. I am guilty. The hot seats tore you down to where you were nothing but a mass of jelly. If you had any confidence or self-esteem when you began the hot seats, you sure weren't going to have any when it ended. . . I know it sounds odd that I would allow someone to abuse me that way, but I was convinced that unless I went through the hot seat, I would never be able to see what was keeping me from being real, keeping me from fellowship, keeping me from being who I was supposed to be in Christ. You submit to those things because there are things about yoruself that you believe that you don't perceive accurately.” . . .

It did not matter what you had done or what you wrote down on your list, Ole was going to make it about something else. . .

After the ordeal of a hot seat, people would report a type of dissociation – a feeling of numbness that lasted for three or four days. If brokenness was the ultimate good, the best one can do is to break people – and that's what Ole believed he was called by God to do. . .

Read more about the “hot seat” and much more in Wendy Duncan's book, I Can't Hear God Anymore, which details her experiences and the experiences of former members of the Trinity Foundation, a spiritually abusive organization founded and still operated by “Ole” Anthony in Dallas, Texas. Also, visit the DallasCult.com website to learn more about their experiences and to find lists of resources for help and healing.

Additional posts about the dynamics of altering memory through psychological pressure and thought reform techniques (geared toward the experience of the survivors of Hephzibah House):

• Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast and the Ingram Family (Family who creates, accepts and believes an alternate version of reality under the pressure of thought reform and interrogation)
• Transformed Memory in a POW Camp (a way of coping with mind control)
• Reaffirming the Myth (how and why victims change their memories and believe falsehood as a coping response to mind control)
• Changing Memory to Gain an Abuser's Approval (Martin on mind control)
• Using Denial Results in Altered Memory (more Martin on surviving mind control)
• Altered States of Consciousness Contribute to Altered Memory (how mind control adversely affects a person's ability to think and their mental development)
• The Role of Trauma/PTSD in Altered Memory (trauma as a physical process; nouthetic counseling can inhibit healing from PTSD)
  

When You're Summoned to the Church Star Chamber

My husband and I attended a Shepherding Discipleship Movement church for four years, and when we joined, we had no idea that there was such a thing called Shepherding. The principles of submission are wrapped so well in careful language that is drawn from Scripture that it is difficult to discern the principles that the ideology creates from Scripture, and it has a degree of truth in it. It's easy to see the truth, and when those who follow the aberrant ideology talk about their beliefs, most reasonable people will give those folks the benefit of the doubt. They will hear the true aspects of what they're being told, but they will tend to dismiss or ignore many of the aberrant aspects. 

Personally, I would tell myself, “I must have misunderstood them, or perhaps they're not effectively communicating what they're thinking, because they surely can't literally believe what they just said.”

The first few times this happens concerning a certain principle, it's easy to tell yourself that the problems with statements people make amount to problems in communication. When you find yourself rationalizing about the same issue on a regular basis to “give people the benefit of the doubt” or when you find yourself misunderstanding multiple people on a whole variety of topics that have to do with the general discussion of authority and submission, it's very likely not a communication problem.

Year Three: The End of the Honeymoon

The first two years of our experience with our church and within their network of churches were great. During that time, we both did a lot of rationalizing away things that didn't make sense. During the third year, we started to have some different types of conflict, and we started to see patterns about how people behaved that didn't make any sense to us. We also started to learn about some of the shepherding practices by way of experience, usually by watching friends get counseled or by learning about the practices by innocently introducing ideas that were poorly received. It was as if the curtain lifted at the start of year three, and the church leadership stopped the love bombing and started to pressure and control us, all under the guise of teaching us “correct” doctrine of shepherding.

On one specific occasion when I had the instant epiphany about one of their teachings at a group meeting, I actually could not see for what probably only amounted to a few seconds, but I remember the sense of something that bordered between shock, panic, and nothingness. I literally could not see for a few moments, and I asked others in the room if they could tell how much distress I was in, because, for a few moments, a part of me felt like I was dying, and my physical body was reacting to the emotional stress. Everything seemed very unreal, and I felt like things started moving in slow motion, an experience of dissociation called derealization because of how threatened I felt. I couldn't believe that I'd become that involved in a church that believed this, that they had not told us about this belief, and that I'd failed to identify that this was a principle within the group.

The matter related to a discussion of doctrine, but there were strong elements of shame and “correction” wrapped around the discussion. The situation painted and all or nothing alternative: either believe what the church doctrine is, or you are sinful. What came along for me on a personal level, in addition to my shock concerning the overt social pressure and the authoritarian constraint that did not invite discussion (through verbal, non-verbal, and social cues), I was immediately forced to question whether I had failed to recognize these teachings or had ignored them. The truth of the matter was, at that time, that I was never given full disclosure about the matter. The unpleasant doctrines were kept hidden from us until we were sufficiently entrenched in the system and in social relationships. In retrospect I would learn that when we met and talked with the pastor, believing that we were asking questions about the church, we were also being assessed by the pastor, too, and later, an elder and his wife did the same with us. They were collecting information that they used to manipulate us, mentioning certain things that they knew we would like, and specifically avoiding doctrines that they knew would send us packing. They were not revealed to us until leadership felt that we were firmly connected with the group.

The Star Chamber

After the year of epiphanies about some of their more unpleasant teachings, we spent an additional year at the church, believing that we could be agents of positive change. We left at the end of the fourth year, because it became obvious that we were in no position to change anything, based on how poorly our efforts to be change agents were received. At the beginning of the fourth year, my husband wrote a letter to the elders, essentially to offer help with a particular ministry in the church that we saw as beginning to fail. Assuming that this matter was one of interest to all of the elders and pastors, he wrote his concerns in a letter which they could decide to address at their convenience and then could avail themselves to him for questions and further discussion. We were busy, they were busy, and it could all well be addressed that way (at least in our estimation). But things were not perceived that way by our church. We eventually learned that few people wrote letters to them, and it was our habit to do these things to be clear in our communication. I'd written a couple of memos to the group concerning practical matters that concerned the relationship between the seminary and the local church, as I was involved with both, and that sometimes required discussion which I saw as formal. We learned, after some experience, that they viewed anything written in a formal style as a threatening challenge.

My husband was summoned to an elders meeting, and I always wondered why they needed 3 hour meetings to discuss things twice per month. They group met on the same night that I attended music practice, and over the course of the years I spent there, I had a good idea of their habits. From time to time, I also saw people waiting to get into the room with the elders and always thought it strange that people were asked to wait on a metal chair in a dark hallway outside the pastor's study. It was by no means a comfortable place to wait, and I often saw many nervous people waiting in the hall. I understood it better after my husband was summoned to address a letter that they viewed as his way of “challenging their authority” and suggesting that they were out of touch with the life of the church. What my husband saw as our offer to help meet what we saw as the obvious unmet need within the church, they saw as an accusation, an statement of arrogant criticism. My husband was required to wait 30 minutes in that half-lit hallway on an uncomfortable metal chair, just as I'd seen many other people do so many times.

My husband is a forensic expert and has much experience testifying in court, sometimes for four and five hours strait while attorneys try in every way that they can to get him to foul up and stumble so that they can win the case for their clients. It quickly became apparent to him that he had not been invited to the meeting to discuss with the group about how he could be a part of a solution to a problem, but rather that this was a session of intimidation and discipline in what reminded him of being on the stand in court. He'd made the mistake of violating the informal and unwritten rules of the group concerning authority and submission, rules about which we were never given any direct information or instruction. During our third and fourth years, we learned about these rules by either watching other people pay consequences for violating the rules, or we were required to pay those consequences ourselves. The elders essentially accused him and cross-examined him about a motive he didn't have, and they used all sorts of miserable manipulation tactics to shame and exploit my husband in that meeting. Considering his experience on the stand, he went into the mode he goes into when testifying, and I don't think that these men realized just who they were dealing with. (None of that made the encounter any less stressful or disappointing, however.)

There was no issue requiring church discipline, but it was pretty clear that the church believed that this confrontation was warranted. My husband was able to essentially convince them that he never intended in any way to be challenging their authority because he had no such motive. He'd offered to serve the church, not accuse it of anything. But certainly after that meeting, any “honeymoon glow” that may have lingered concerning our relationship with the church was now gone. He'd been summoned to what we subsequently referred to The Star Chamber, a reference to the 1983 film of the same name starring Micheal Douglas – a film that even featured the theme of the crushing loss of idealistic naivete which we found amazingly relevant. In the film, a group of judges who were unable to convict criminals whom they believed were guilty of capital crime gathered privately in a “star chamber” to pass their own judgements and hire mercenaries to kill the guilty, all in the interest of protecting the greater good of society. We felt that this was exactly how our church had been using the elder's meetings, sessions wherein they used verbal assault to abuse non-compliant or “problem members” into “submission."

(Read here for more on the history of the star chamber.)

My husband came home from the meeting and said when I got in from music practice, all while looking down at the floor with his jaw tightly held and his fist clenched, “We have to leave that church.” I vividly remember the moment, where I was standing, and the feel of the carpet under my slipper socks as I curled my toes into the carpet as he spoke, perhaps trying to stabilize myself. I asked for a little more time there, because I was not yet ready to go. I was not yet convinced that things were as bad as he suddenly described them, and I had not yet seen the true nature of the abuse there. We remained there for another revealing eight months and left because we put a date on the calendar, agreeing with one another to leave the church if certain key things had not changed. And those eight months were not pleasant, and it was as if God lifted the scales off my eyes in response to our prayers for direction, insight, and wisdom. I almost immediately started encountering battered and abused women who told me that the church placed all responsibility and blame for any of their marital discord on them as wives, though it was blatantly obvious that their husbands were engaged in some serious sins. The men were permitted to remain in leadership and ministry while the elders had full knowledge that they were batterers.

Should You Meet with Leadership if You Suspect Manipulation?

Do you have a duty to confront your elders? If you decide to leave a church that you believe meets the criteria of spiritual abuse, do you have a duty to explain your rationale to the leadership? Does it do any good? These are hard questions, and many online who discuss this topic have offered their own advice. I don't intend to answer all of these questions, but I would like to address just a few of the many problems one encounters when one faces such a meeting.

I am often contacted through this site by people who have begun to realize that they are involved in a high demand idealistic group, be it religious or political. I've even worked with a woman who was subjected to the tactics of spiritual abuse at a complementary and alternative medicine clinic. When people figure out that the problems and the nagging concerns they have about their group stem from the dynamics of these systems which operate through deception and by way of covert manipulation tactics, many of them want to confront their leaders and feel responsible to tell them what they've learned. They assume that their ministers or leaders seek the same things that they do, and when they approach their leaders, they will listen. They assume the good character of their leaders, and they believe that if they are honest with them about their concerns, their ministers will listen and will be motivated to make things right.

My husband says that wen walking into these types of meetings with the leadership of a high demand group, most people walk into them “flat footed” because they have unreasonable or unrealistic expectations of the virtue of the leaders. The expectation of mutual respect which is rarely present in these groups puts most reasonable people at a great disadvantage, especially if the leadership is trying to hide some unpleasant controversy that they'd prefer to see disappear. And by showing up at such a meeting when summoned, when you know in advance that the group intends to manipulate you, you're actually giving the leadership an advantage in terms of power. In some sense, you're affirming their power, and in doing so, you give a little bit of your own power away. We are called to submit to one another in love, and at such meetings, this is not what happens. And I am sad to say, in our new age of aggressive church discipline in evangelicalism (a phenomenon that I rarely saw 20 years ago), pastors are not good shepherds for their sheep when they summon sheep to such meetings. The shepherds usually do not anoint and care for their sheep in such meetings. Rather, the sheep are expected if not required to go obsequiously and fearfully before church leaders for a shearing – as a sheep before his shearers is dumb. The balance of power becomes hopelessly inequitable.

This brings to mind a quote that burned into my head that survivor (and social worker) Wendy Duncan wrote in her book, I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult, something noted in the chapter called “Believers in the Hands of an Angry Cult Leader.” While she and her husband, Doug , were working through their equivalent of the “fourth year” of confrontation that my husband and I experienced, she makes note of the state of mind in which group folloers find themselves, if merely just because of the conditioning and habituation within such manipulative groups. It changes the follower, and when you as a member tries to confront a manipulative leader, you don't have access to all of your strength inner strength because of that conditioning. You walk into such confrontations in what is almost like a kind of disability of perception. Wendy writes, quoting her husband (a licensed counselor): “I had truly bought into the Trinity belief system. I believed that Ole was the prophet of God who had brought the knowledge of the true faith back into the world. There was no possible way that I could have said to him, 'Ole, you are wrong'” (p 115). Though people believe that the power structure within manipulative, authoritarian groups does not effect them, the subtle nature of the relationship actually poses a profound influence which works to the disadvantage of the member. The relationship and the tremendous social and emotional pressures posed by such meetings of confrontation make it very difficult for members to speak up for themselves and be heard. The dynamics of power work against them.

I actually discourage people from creating confrontations such as this, and ask people to consider that if they see signs of manipulation, avoidance, and punishment before the meeting, it is likely that a confrontation will not result in any positive change. I will say that most people feel a Christian duty to make the attempt to confront the injustice that they see, but I do help coach people to state things in terms of their own perspective as opposed to offering criticism. You must be windsome and not confrontative in your approach when attempting such things. Most people seem to need it to get closure and to come to terms with the biter reality that their leaders are not the virtuous men that they believe. They need to witness the manipulation and what usually turns into aggression on a personal level. They seem to have to witness it for themselves to truly believe it. And I hear that sentiment quite often from people who have endured (or have had their lives nearly destroyed) as a consequence of their own “star chamber” sessions, ecclesial courts, and other ecclesiocentric interference (micromanaging of the deeply private aspects of personal lives by church leaders in the name of authority and counsel).

Lasting Effects

A few days ago, an acquaintance of mine mentioned that they'd been summoned before a group, and it sounded to me like a “star chamber.” My husband and I prayed for this person, and I wrote to them to encourage them to decline. I believed that they were walking into the meeting with some very naïve expectations. I sent several emails, and apparently, I continued to write them while the person was actually at the meeting, not realizing that they'd decided to go.

I was amazed by the reaction of my husband. He became notably upset and concerned for someone that he has never interacted with but knows of only through my acquaintance with them. Considering what I'd told him about this person's statements and expectations for the meeting, and reflecting on his own memories of his own “star chamber,” I was amazed at how concerned and emotional my husband became. He is a man of passion, but he has matured into a wonderfully balanced person, some of which has come through the hard knocks education which results from confrontation with manipulators.

I was proud of him and touched at his degree of compassion for this stranger the other evening, and the intensity of his response caught me by surprise. He was aglow with good character and reminded me of what a good and compassionate man he is. But I was also amazed at the zeal of his response as he kept popping his head back in the room, asking me if I'd mentioned this reason and that reason as to why it's unadvisable to go to the star chamber. “Make sure you tell him this...” Then he started talking about an excellent analogy about why the experience was informative, but it was not advisable or worth the great burden of living with the experience thereafter. He said that “it destroys your ability to trust pastors easily, and really makes it hard to trust anyone because you want so much to believe in the good character of your pastor.”

Occasionally, since it happened, we talk about the star chamber evening and what resulted. What struck me this week was the intensity of the emotion that my husband still carries with him from that meeting. We no longer see or interact with that group of people. We've relocated away from that area, so it is not as if we bump into that pastor at the grocery store or the mall from time to time, stirring up the memory. But it gave me cause to think back to how long ago that meeting took place. It happened just three weeks shy of sixteen years ago (because the event was so traumatic for me, the exact date of the meeting he went to is still vividly burned in my mind).

So I tend to tell people that, if they can at all avoid such confrontations, they shouldn't go to them. Talking with one person can be traumatic enough, but the star chamber experience is much worse, and it stays with you. My husband performed well in the meeting and he did not cower, compromise, or concede to the manipulation. But he walked away from that meeting forever changed, as a part of him that hopes and believes all good things in love died a little bit that day when those men tried to crush him in the name of the Lord. None of it had to do with the Gospel or Christian living or doctrine. It was only about power and rage, a disappointing experience that he now carries in his heart. He didn't see the confrontation coming, so he didn't have a choice to decline it as a matter of a wise man seeing trouble coming and avoiding it. For those who do, I hope that you will consider these words.

More to come on the subject....

When Persecution Comes and Thought Conversion Results

I suppose the phenomenon is easier to spot when it happens to someone else, because it is horribly painful to realize that it has happened or is happening to you. There's something about it that feels like you are falling off the planet, or more like you are fixed, but the entire world has just dropped out from under you, leaving you in a place where you don't know where you are. (At least, that's how it feels for me when it is most intense. How you would describe matters will likely be different as you loose touch with your resolve and strong sense of self because of this process.) Disorientation is a word used often in my profession that describes the feeling somewhat, but even that term seems grossly inadequate.

Watching a Train Wreck that I Never Saw Coming

My husband and I left our abusive church some six months earlier, and people I counted as friends invited us on an independent foreign missions trip that they'd organized, returning to the place where they'd once served for years as missionaries themselves. They needed the specific skills of both of us for the effort. We were each invited to serve in a specific and deeply meaningful capacity. On the heels of feeling utterly lost, learning through exit counseling that we'd been “spiritually abused” through the use of thought reform techniques at our former Shepherding/Discipleship church, both of us found great encouragement in the idea that we could be a part of ministry again. We grieved the loss of the opportunity to minister regularly at our former church, and its absence left a sad void in us. The preparation for the trip infused us with hope and a sense of purpose which we found very healing.

The night before our team arrived in the foreign country, the local church that we intended to work with toward a specific end “split” due some drama of church politics that had nothing to do with us. Unfortunately, for some of us, this church split made certain aspects of the work we went to accomplish there almost obsolete in some cases. We walked off the plane into a little bit of confusion, and instead of “hitting the ground running” to labor at the work we planned to do, we basically had to reorganize and find new, different opportunities and contributions to the effort. As Christians, my husband and I believed that God already orchestrated specific things for each of us to both do and and learn, a matter that Scripture says is prepared in advance for us. That belief enabled us to joyfully adapt, though I must admit that it was not an easy task (for me, anyway). We did find precious opportunities to minister which we found deeply rewarding, and they may have actually become more effective and fruitful than that which we originally intended to do there. We apparently also went there to learn some painful lessons in life as we watched group manipulation unfold.

Classic, Basic Spiritual Abuse

Perhaps because of the unforeseen setbacks that the group faced, our group leadership became very passive rather quickly, and at times, they behaved as though they were detached from most everything that was going on around them. In the absence of strong leadership, the large group comprised of people from four churches across three different states in the US separated into three subgroups: 1.) the passive elite who ended up treating the trip like a “spiritual party” holiday in a tropical paradise, 2.) wealthy, proud people who sought after any and every kind of power and notoriety they could get at the expense of others which was geared toward street evangelism and plays in the evenings, 3.) those who had a more pragmatic agenda within the host church which was task oriented, the group most heavily affected by the church split. Subgroup size (people who came from the same group/State/church) and our accommodations (arranged according to the type of work we came to do) also helped contribute to some of these divisions, but these factors didn't excuse what resulted.

Having just exited a church where the leadership exploited the emotions of their followers and manipulated church members for personal gain and power, I was shocked that I “found myself” in a foreign country with people who began to behave very differently than they did with me when we were back at home in the States. (Why???!!!) (How???!!!)

The people who came to do specific work within the church faced some difficulties as they tried to figure out what they could do at the local church which largely fell apart because of the church split faced some serious difficulties. When they asked for guidance and resources, these people were shocked when they were told that they had the “wrong spirit,” were shamed for having needs, and were given condescending moral lectures. A few were reprimanded verbally. I could barely believe my ears when I first heard this and witnessed it from the leaders myself. It also became quite difficult, because the group of assertive people became aggressive in the absence of strong leadership which was expected from those who organized the trip. By the second half of the tour there, this group actually sought to prevent any work by those who were not members of their subgroup which emerged. They were cruel. They even excluded others from social activities at the end of the trip., and the absent leadership did nothing.

The Kangaroo Court Session

Then it happened. One afternoon, I watched a husband and wife who were a part of the smaller, specific, and pragmatic ministry subgroup attempt to participate in the activities of the larger, dominant, and now aggressive group. (It was like watching a 20/20 Episode expose on human behavior.) The wife had a particular skill that was useful and needed at a planned event, and she planned to do what she traveled to another country to do. My husband and I watched as three aggressive men from the large group called the woman over to them (while her husband was elsewhere), all while the former missionary who served there who orchestrated the missions trip looked onward, listened, and did absolutely nothing.

We listened to them tell her that she was under their authority and had overstepped her bounds, primarily because her part in things that day was not wanted. She was accused of challenging them, having the “wrong spirit,” and of working against the team. They then made what I thought were quite mean-spirited and unwarranted personal criticisms regarding her actual skills which, frankly, I thought were exceptionally good. We had only a few more days to endure, and as you may imagine, I'd already heard one moral lecture myself several days earlier. My husband and I saw an opportunity to talk with and encourage the woman being demoralized and shamed, because by then, we were sure that anything we could possibly say to the aggressors would fall on angry, deaf ears. We decided to keep our pearls, avoiding the rending that we were sure would follow. We shared our pearls of love with her and her husband who knew nothing about our similar experience earlier in the trip.

We watched this beautiful, happy, strong, woman whose heart ached to contribute – to do what she spent her own money, time and effort to travel there to accomplish – turn into a defeated, heartsick, broken person in the blink of an eye. We listened to her fold up and repent and apologize to her abusers. The words of Jesus came to mind about the parable of the sower. This woman was not being challenged about her doctrine, but the way she lived out and manifested her faith in the Word of God was being attacked. But like the seed that fell on soil that was stony and failed to grow roots to keep it stable and strong, her resolve and her confidence in what God was doing through her was not deeply rooted, at least not on that particular day. Like the Word of faith that can spring up in us quickly like seed sown in stony soil, she didn't have the strength to endure against those who were jealous of her and the reward of good work she sought to do.

And it struck both my husband and I. This was the pain of cognitive dissonance in action and the very same type of breaking that we saw at our church and didn't want to believe really happened until it happened to us. We looked at this young woman and saw ourselves. She was powerless to change the situation, and within that system and place of isolation (primarily because we were kept by the group and had no transportation and didn't even have access to our own plane tickets, several years before 9/11/2001), she had no options to easily or gracefully exit the confrontation. None of us had that option, at least not without creating offense and drama. We were beholden to these people for our basic needs for the next five days. We saw a picture of ourselves in what this young woman endured, and we watched spiritual abuse in action.

Cognitive Dissonance and Thought Conversion

Steve Hassan describes thought conversion which takes place through the process of cognitive dissonance as a process that results in domination of the self. He breaks down individuality by describing it in terms of an individual's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Because we are cohesive and rational beings, our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors follow one another. We feel the way our thoughts direct our emotions. Our behavior flows from our emotions and our thoughts, and these three elements of the self work together. When one of these factors of self is pulled in another direction, it creates a great deal of emotional and mental stress for the individual. Because these factors must work in concert with one another to maintain the person's cohesive sense of self, manipulating one aspect becomes a means of manipulation.

In other words, if I want to manipulate a person to think, feel, and behave in a certain way which is different from how they are currently thinking, feeling, and behaving, I need only to dominate one of those aspects of that person. Because of the cohesive nature of the self, the other aspects will follow.

For the sake of argument, lets imagine that a parishioner rejects the doctrine that their new pastor has just presented to them. The pastor wants the parishioner to accept, believe and support his newly introduced doctrine, and that is the pastor's expressed goal. He wants to win the thought and mind of this person, his follower, but the pastor meets notable resistance, and the follower is very resistant. What can he do?

Manipulators and nefarious ministers have learned that if they meet resistance in terms of belief, they stand an excellent chance of getting their mark to accept their belief and idea if they can dominate emotions, for example. They can also do it through behavior, because it is hard to disagree with an act if you are opposed to complying and carrying out that behavior. If the manipulator can dominate your emotions (through shame, embarrassment, greed, pride, desire, etc.), they will have a very simple time thereafter of getting you, their mark, to accept their idea. If they can get you to do what they want you to do, even if it seems like a benign task, they also have a good chance of manipulating your thoughts and emotions.“Can everybody raise their hand to God and say 'Amen'?” Those who do this have just confessed a thought and belief by complying with the behavior requested of them, and the process results in an emotion. Behavior follows emotion follows thought follows emotion follows thought follows behavior...... It is a continual, self-reinforcing cycle of the continuity of self.

Hassan also adds information into this mix of the elements of the self which are the ways we express our individuality, and he puts them all together to form the acronym of “BITE” (behavior, information, thought, and emotion) to describe this dynamic. This process makes thought conversion possible because of the need for human beings to behave, think and feel in a cohesive way. In itself, the process represents how we learn and develop, contributes to moral function and our sense of ethics which result in behavior, and that can be healthy. It can, however, result in harm to the individual when manipulators tap into this aspect of human nature to exploit the innocent and unsuspecting.

Read more about thought conversion and cognitive dissonance HERE.

More About Thought Conversion as a Means of Preserving Image Consciousness and Suppressing Criticism

In days to come I hope to explore how individuals can be affected by these types of situations when manipulators, abusers, and bullies exploit our human nature to get what they want. I may tell of some more of my personal experiences, as well as those of my husband and some of my friends – along with the tactics used to enhance this process used within spiritually abusive churches.

Manipulators, high demand groups, and cultic churches alike use these types of techniques as a means of not only changing thoughts but also as a way of squelching criticism and hiding their dirty little secrets and, most definitely, as a way of burying the big ones. The trouble is that wounded sheep get buried along with them in the process. It looks like Chuckles Travels recently posted about one such big, buried secret, but sometimes, justice digs them back up and they come crawling back out of the ground. May the survivors come forth from their trauma and pain like Lazarus did from his tomb when Jesus called him forth into abundant life.

Check back soon for more.

Complementarianism, Scapegoats, and New Meaning to the “Fountain” at Bellefontaine

Have you ever heard the expression “kick the dog and he shall bite you”? When we're not behaving in optimal ways, we human beings have a tendency to take out our frustrations and disappointments on lesser creatures or even inanimate objects. If you had a bad day at work because the boss gave you a lot of grief, did you come home to take it out your frustration on your children or your spouse? Did you loose patience with the family pet when they were behaving like a pet because you had not productively expressed that stress in a healthier way? It's much easier to vent at other people who are not a threat to you, expecting that there will be no consequences or limited consequences for doing so. Adam started doing it in the book of Genesis. But as the first phrase aptly notes, consequences do revisit us.

But what Adam did was a bit more complicated and went beyond venting frustration. He also attempted to lay blame on Eve to avoid bearing the consequences of his own actions himself. The complementarians claim that this was a just and reasonable conclusion on Adam's part to some extent, because they assume that women are subordinate to men because they are defined by complementarianism as ontologically (of essence) and teleologically (of purpose) subordinate and therefore man's lesser. It's more than just an issue of a hierarchy in terms of the rules they believe that God established. That isn't enough. They have misused Scripture to “read into” what has been written in order to make women into lesser creatures in terms of both essence and sole purpose. Why would this be a problem? Their concept of perceived hierarchy adds to the weight of the blame placed on Eve and takes some of the burden off of Adam (and therefore men) in their minds.

Remember the other cliché that says “'misfortune' rolls downhill”?

Status and the fallacy of the appeal to authority often gives people moral permission to treat subordinates differently and with less consideration than they would give to a peer who is on a linear par with them or a superior.

Demoralization and Dehumanization

Hanna Arendt wrote extensively about the holocaust and totalitarianism, and she wrote some of the best commentary we have today concerning the trials at Nuremburg, particularly concerning Adolf Eichmann. She was tough on everyone. She not only noted how Germany blamed the Jew for all of the evil in the world, but she also believed that those sitting in judgement at Nuremburg also laid too much blame on Eichmann, holding him accountable for more than just his own human rights violations. Each group of people felt great motive and found it easy to demoralize their opponents because of the benefits the perception afforded them (though in the case of Eichmann, there was great cause and just reason to rightfully moralize). Demoralizing an enemy makes it easier to hate them, therefore it is easier to justify any immoral acts committed against them. During wars, one must use every weapon one can find against the enemy, and ideological weapons prove profoundly effective.

In her writings on totalitarianism, Arendt also notes how much of Europe manifested anger and greed which fostered their hatred and jealousy of Jews because of the Rothchilds who controlled much of the banking in Europe prior to the World Wars. She believes that this greed and jealousy fostered the conditions that favored discrimination against Jews in the early 20^th Century. Germans gained great benefit by considering that the Jewish People were less than human, and Hitler capitalized upon this greed and selfishness. As I've written in the past, quoting the book Occidentalism, demoralization can quickly become dehumanization, as we see also see in the case with the Jews. (“The dehumanizing picture of the West painted by its enemies is what we have called Occidentalism,” pg 5.) If someone is seen as less than human, people feel that they are not obligated to treat them with human dignity. They can be defined as deserving of inhumane treatment. This is very common during times of war, and it's remnants can still be heard in the South following the War Between the States in the phrase of “Damn Yankee” which carries with it the connotation that those from North of the Mason Dixon line cannot be Christians and are actually something more like demons who hate Christianity. This belief continues to thrive in the US today, even among Christians.

We also must consider the inherent human trait and drive to punish evil. Bandura's studies (and those of Milgram and Zimbardo also) demonstrate that people will be gracious and kind to those they believe are innocent and good, but to those who are defined as immoral and as “animals,” they tend to deliver great punishment. They are also willing to subscribe to “moral disengagement” for a cause, displacing their sense of ethics in favor of following what someone else has decided for them. They believe that this reduces their own culpability for their personal actions, because the means used to carry out harm and punishment can be justified by the ideology of a group. Please visit the embedded links in this paragraph to understand the very powerful influence that these human traits carry in terms of a person's willingness to participate in and natural tendencies toward punishment.

Defining Women and Wives as Adversaries

Within complementarianism, we see all of these factors at work. We see many examples of logical fallacy and extra-Biblical doctrine used to justify aggression towards women. Women are said to naturally seek to dominate and overthrow men. We see leaders in complementarianism state that men have good cause to consider abusing their wives when they don't submit to a husband's authority, and though they don't officially condone the behavior, they justify it indirectly. We see leaders in complementarianism (Piper and Patterson and Gothard) state that women are obligated to endure at least a certain measure of abuse in the name of their ideology's submission requirements. And there's plenty of ideology to go around.

Add all of these things to the premises of complementarianism. In addition to teaching that women are ontologically and teleologically subordinate to men which in some ways defines them as less human and less spiritually capable than men, they teach that women are little more than a type of child that requires an overseer. Though they ignore that Genesis Chapter 4 notes that Eve named her sons without mentioning any input from Adam, they attest that Eve is subordinate to Adam because he named her. They assert that Adam failed to lead Eve around like a child in the garden (a sin before sin?). All women are said to be easily deceived, lacking spiritual discernment. Women's testimonies and reciting of Scripture are said to be without meaning, power, value, and effectiveness. I could list and list the teachings of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) for days, but I'd rather just refer you to a critique of their Danvers Statement. In addition to the denial of full personhood, CBMW are also saddles women with the blame for original sin (Piper, J, Grudem, W, eds, Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books (1991), p.179- 193.). They claim that it was really Eve who committed original sin, but since she was not created fully in the Image of God and did have a childlike, secondary status, Adam had to take the blame because of primogeniture.

But there is another factor which perhaps fosters more discord in marriages because of the Danvers Statement than all of these factors put together. CBMW teaches that it is woman's natural and inherent drive to seek to dominate and overthrow men. You can read it in the Danvers Statement and in the volumes of rebuttal in the 570 page book which defends the Statement because CBMW feels that Christians require this much explanation to discern what the Bible teaches. You can also link here, paying attention to “Affirmation #4” in my response to the Danvers Statement. I hope complementarian men sleep with one eye open in bed at night, because only God knows what the evil woman might do while he's unconscious! Just as the Michael Pearl identifies children as the natural, “diabolical” enemy of the parent, so does CBMW define all women, even Christian women, as the bane of men.

Cause for Retaliation and Punishment at a Men's Conference?

Almost two weeks ago, Paul Dohse attended a men's conference in Central Ohio which featured Voddie Baucham as the keynote speaker. Having little prior knowledge of the dark underbelly of the specific teachings of complementarianism and what the ideology requires of women, Paul was appalled by the things that were said about women. He was especially perplexed by the teaching that there was sin that is not sin unto death, apparently, because it was stated that Adam sinned before the Fall of Man by failing to lead his wife. Baucham identified only two possible camps in the church: either you were on God's side (complementarianism, of course), or you were a part of the evil empire of evangelical feminists.

Paul expressed great distress at what he viewed as passive-aggressive behavior on the part of men who were permitted to use the ladies rooms in the church because of the large volume of men in attendance that day. He found that the ladies room stalls to be disgusting, noting puddles of urine on the floor which he could not avoid. Even the tread on his shoes for which he was grateful could not protect his pant legs from baptism. He believed the behavior to be be deliberate on the part of the men attending that day, particularly after listening to the speakers define women according to the complementarian paradigm.

He wrote on his blog in Will Calvinism Become A Chrsitian Woman's Worst Nightmare:

I guess it’s an age thing, but I needed several trips to the bathroom during the conference and noticed something that was indicative of all of the stalls in the women’s restroom. When I encountered it the first time, I cleaned it up myself, but soon realized that would be futile to continue if I didn’t want to miss the whole conference. I am talkin’ urine all over the toilets and the floor. In regard to the toilets, the first time I left a stall that I did not clean up myself, I was not careful to not  touch the toilet as I turned to open the stall door and got urine all over the back of my pant legs. As far as the floor, we are talkin’ large puddles. We are talkin’….”I’m glad these shoes I’m wearing have a high tread.”

I would like to suggest to Voddie that he teach his kool-aid drinking followers to get it all in the toilet before they attempt to take on Christianity’s number one enemy, “gender feminists.” Somebody had to clean that mess up, and if it was the ladies at Calvary, they may all now be feminists at this writing. And because many of your followers believe that Adam sinned before the fall, teaching them to get it all in the toilet may be difficult, so maybe you could teach them how to clean a toilet. Because after all Voddie, if they can’t even pee in a boot, they will be no match for the feminists.

Jocelyn Andersen, a domestic abuse survivor, corresponded with Dohse and wrote in two venues about Paul's observations I believe that she would agree that Calvinism has already become a Christian woman's worst nightmare and has been for decades, though she would note that the problem does not merely rest within Calvinist circles . At the Freedom for Christian Women Coalition Website, Andersen wrote that Baucham “even labeled women as being just a notch above the serpent on the “food chain,” of which males were at the top, of course.”

She went on to write at The Examiner in an article entitled Complementarian Men Symbolically Urinate On Women:

Paul Dohse, editor of “Paul’s Passing Thoughts” at WordPress.com, wrote that while using the women’s restroom, he found the toilets and floor in every stall sprayed with urine. He wrote that this was the case throughout the entirety of the conference. In an email interview, Dohse’ would not go so far as to say that he believed men at the conference were demonstrating hatred and contempt for women by symbolically urinating on them, but he did say that, “it's hard for me to believe what I saw wasn't deliberate.”
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He blamed the condition of the women’s restroom, in part, on the anti-woman messages preached at the conference by Dr. Voddie Baucham.  Baucham, who will be coming to the Orlando area this fall to speak at a conference with Dr. R. C. Sproul, is a prominent leader within the complementarian movement. He presented three keynote messages at the Bellefontaine conference, and according to Dohse, Baucham’s messages were saturated with anti-feminist rhetoric and an “us” against “them” attitude. From the urine-sprayed condition of the women’s restroom, it seems clear that Baucham was successful in whipping the men into an anti-feminist frenzy.

New Calvinism's Scapegoat

In the Old Testament, the Isrealites were required to take a lamb or a goat to the Tabernacle on the Day of Atonement in order to cover the sins of their family. Once every year, the Levitical priest would then go before God for the sins of all the people to pour blood on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. But before Jesus came to rend the veil that separated both men and women from God's presence, allowing both to go boldy to the Throne of Grace to find help and forgiveness directly, people were required to select a goat upon which they imputed the sins of their family which was sent out into the wilderness, the payment that was also owed to sin. The goat would be devoured alone in the wilderness, and there was quite a panic if that scapegoat wandered back into the camp as it is recorded in the ancient Jewish literature!

CBMW and groups that promote their ideolology have effectively made scapegoats of the very women that they contend to defend and protect. Instead of receiving the blessing of Christ through imputation of our sins to Him on the Cross in exchange for His holy status of right standing before God through justification through the Blood of Jesus, they insist on imputing sin onto women. They blame women for every problem found within home, church, and society. Is it any wonder that men “whipped into a frenzy” would seek to express their frustration in some way against dehumanized, demoralized, demonized, and scapegoated women?

In Occidentalism, Westerners are blamed for all of the evil in the world. Hitler blamed the Jews. Complementarianism blames women, even the Christian women for whom they assume the role of leader, caretaker, and intercessor.

The Response

I understand that elsewhere online, members and representatives of the church that hosted the conference claim that Paul deliberately lied about the conditions in the ladies room when their local newspaper featured a quote from The Examiner on the local topics section of the Bellfontaine, OH website. And as a consequence, I've learned that Paul was approached by three church leaders (who did not represent the church that hosted the conference. The church that did host the conference contacted the leadership of the church to express their concerns about what Paul had written when he came forward to speak about the condition of the restroom as well as the doctrinal issues which encompass not only complementarianism but the doctrinal errors of the infused, progressive justification preached and believed by the speakers of the conference, a doctrine sometimes called “Gospel Sanctification.” Please note that the group did not consider the meeting to be a “Matthew 18 confrontation” (what some see as a formula among Christians for dealing with offenses as well as overt sin). The men parted amicably (without offense) with the three leaders from local church that approached him, though they strongly disagreed about the situation. It was stated that the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bellefontaine, OH does wish to meet with Paul to discuss the matter further.

What I don't understand is why doctrinal issues and matters of observed behavior require what appears on the surface to me to amount to what most Christians consider a “Matthew 18” confrontation, even though the people who recently met with Paul denied that it was such an effort. I can well understand that the pastor of the church that hosted the conference would be grieved to read about Paul's experience, but I don't understand why that pastor could not express that directly on Paul's blog in the comments in an open forum. I know that the type of feedback that Paul offered is painful for ministers to hear, especially concerning special events like conferences such as these which are meant to help believers and to promote a better understanding of Scripture, not detract or hinder their spiritual walk. I also fail to understand why the church in Bellefontaine went to the effort of first figuring out who Paul was, who attended with him, and who might intervene and confront him on their behalf. Why not contact Paul directly? Why require several private meetings?

I cannot but consider to some extent that this is an effort in damage control on behalf of these men who are rightfully embarrassed but also likely feel uncomfortable with the fact that their doctrine has been challenged so openly and directly. We shall see what unfolds, and I hope that the individuals and groups that take issue with Paul's experience and statements about the doctrines preached at the Men of God 2012 Conference in Bellefontaine follow liberty.

Will the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church view these matters of gender and Gospel Sanctification doctrine under the liberty among believers, viewing the matter as an issue of intramural doctrine? Or will he side with CBMW and Baucham who attest that matters of gender represent essential Christian doctrine, a direct reflection of God's Identity and Lordship? It is the position of CBMW as well as Vision Forum with whom Voddie Baucham is affiliated that those who reject their specific gender views worship a false god and are little more than open theists. I suppose that time will tell. I certainly hope that the matter doesn't degrade into this. I would, however, not be a bit surprised if it did.