Under Much Grace: Recommended Reading

According to the Spiritual Research Network, “spiritual abuse occurs when a leader, church or belief system – whether well intentioned or not – dominates, manipulates or castigates individuals through fear tactics, mind control or some other psychological or emotional abuse.”

I believe that Jesus dealt with a great deal of this phenomenon and that the Pharisees were the spiritual abusers of His day. They are shepherds who use, manipulate or hurt the sheep for their purposes.

This is a difficult thing to understand at first, especially if you are in a church and believe that your pastor or church leadership has subjected you to this process. Especially if you are new to this concept, based upon my own experiences and the recommendations of my own exit counselor to me, I believe that there is essential reading that must be done in order to recover fully.

Some of spiritual abuse is religious, but a large portion of it has nothing to do with religion or doctrine, although we do see these things occurring in the New Testament. Therefore, for the Christian, I believe it is very beneficial to first get a spiritual perspective, but then to go on to realize that spiritual abuse has nothing to do with the Gospel message or Jesus or true Christianity. The dynamics of spiritual abuse involve social influence and and psychological manipulation, so for that reason, I recommend that Christians read at least some of the secular literature regarding cults and exit-counseling. The dynamics found in abusive churches are identical to those found in any other cult, though they may vary in degree from group to group. I believe that spiritual abuse means exactly the same thing as “cultic” or what some people come right out to call a “cult.” Another area of literature that I believe is profoundly beneficial is that which pertains to sales techniques and how salesmen take advantage of human nature to “sell” their ideas. Interpersonal manipulation occurs as well, so this is another area of reading from which a person emerging from spiritual abuse or cults will glean and benefit.

I have listed books in this format, separating out each book based on its subject, though they are all helpful and they all will address some aspect of spiritual abuse. The first category details one suggested way of working through the literature in a way that builds upon the information in other books to help the reader glean the greatest benefit, though this is certainly not the only order or way to research the literature. Based upon the subjects, I will try to offer some choices and options, though I would definitely read as much as I could.

Please also see this post about resources dealing with shame and those that pertain to Enmeshment/Covert Incest at the Enmeshed For Jesus blog.

I. Suggested Reading Plan

II. Christian Books Addressing the Dynamics of Spiritual Abuse

III. Secular Books Addressing Cults and Cultic Churches

IV. Personal Accounts

V. Sales Techinques

VI. Manipulative and Abusive Relationships

**My Preferred books

I. Suggested Reading Plan

	Christian	Secular
Phase I: First Priority Critical!	The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse (Johnson & VanVonderan) Or Healing Spiritual Abuse (Blue)	Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Cialdini) Deals with sales techniques that exploit human nature an natural tendencies
Phase II: Essential	The Heresy of Mind Control: Recognizing Con Artists in Leadership (Martin) And Churches That Abuse (Enroth)	Take Back Your Life (Lalich) Or (older version of the book might be cheaper) Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Landau-Tobias and Lalich)
Phase III: Personal Accounts	I Cant Hear God Anymore (Duncan)	** I believe all Christians NEED to read this book! Combating Cult Mind Control (Hassan)
Phase IV: Continued Healing	Safe People (Townsend and Cloud) And Families Where Grace is in Place (VanVonderan)	Whose Pulling Your Strings? (Braiker) and The Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo)