Spiritual Abuse Quotes

“God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Your body is a temple, not a daily dumping ground for another person’s pain, anger, betrayal, judgment, hypocrisy, denial, games, jealousy or blame. When you are being psychologically, spiritually or emotionally abused by a person, and they don’t care how it hurts you, then it is time to leave what is polluting your relationship with God.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“As a child abuse and neglect therapist I do battle daily with Christians enamored of the Old Testament phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child." No matter how far I stretch my imagination, it does not stretch far enough to include the image of a cool dude like Jesus taking a rod to a kid.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography

“How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life?
We might, as a society, slowly find it possible to accept that one in four citizens are likely to have experience some form of emotional, psychical, sexual or spiritual abuse (McQueen, Itzin, Kennedy, Sinason, & Maxted, 2008), in itself a figure unimaginable and hidden twenty years ago. However, accepting the way a hurt and hurting parent or stranger re-enacts their disturbance with a vulnerable child or children remains far easier to digest than to consider the intellectually planned, scientific, methodical, procedures of organized child-abusing perpetrators-in other words, torture.”
― Valerie Sinason

“Oh father Abraham, what kind of people are these Christians? Their own meanness teaches them to suspect other people!”
― William Shakespeare , The Merchant of Venice

“When I ask you who you are, you'd better say my fucking name.”
― Alicen Grey, Wolves and Other Nightmares

“I put people before gods. I respect believers of all kinds and work to promote interfaith dialogue, but my whole life I've seen religion used as a weapon, and I'm putting all weapons down.”
― Zak Ebrahim, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice

“To Christy Wimber:

"Are you even aware of the massive growth of the 'organic' home church movement in the USA??? They are primarily comprised of those Christians who have suffered significant 'spiritual abuse' (Dr. Ken Blue) within the 'organized' churches of which the Vineyard may be sadly included. I know John came down hard on any servant leader who spiritually abused anyone if he was personally aware of it!!! Alas, John is gone and there doesn't seem to be anyone who comes near to filling his spiritual 'shoes' within VCFUSA. Seems to me God is putting those in leadership who abuse the flock in their place...an empty church!!!"

~R. Alan Woods [2013]”
― R. Alan Woods, Do’in The Stuff: A Complete History of The Vineyard Christian Fellowship Movement

“Qualitative and quantitative research with adults and children reporting ritual abuse has found that it occurs alongside other forms of organised abuse, particularly the manufacture of child abuse images (Scott 2001, Snow and Sorenson 1990, Waterman et al. 1993), and hence subsuming such non-ritualistic experiences under the moniker ‘ritual abuse’ is misleading at best and incendiary at worst. Moreover, it is unclear why an abusive group that invokes a religious or metaphysical mandate to abuse children should be considered as largely distinct from an abusive group that invokes a non-religious rationale to do so. The presumption evident amongst some authors writing on ritual abuse that a professed spiritual motivation for abusing children necessarily reflects the offenders actual motivation seems naïve at best, and at worst it risks colluding with the ways in which abusive groups obfuscate responsibility for their actions.”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“Everyone secretly wants to be owned.”
― Alicen Grey, Wolves and Other Nightmares

“More often than not, leaving a cult environment requires an adjustment period, not only to reintegrate into “normal” society but also to put the pieces of yourself back together in a way that makes sense to you. When you first leave a cultic situation, you may not recognize yourself. You may not know how to identify the problems you are about to face. You may not have the slightest idea who you want to be. The question we often ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” suddenly takes on a new meaning for adult ex-cult members (p. 1).”
― Madeleine Landau Tobias, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships

“Concerning the narcissist- after having been so seemingly incredibly loving and gentle, compassionate and caring- it would be like a light switch had suddenly been turned off and “all of a sudden” they simply did not care. They turned into a cold person, someone without love, compassion, empathy or regard for the subject’s feelings what so ever. It’s like they suddenly and literally stopped being human.”
― Jacqueline Servantess, The Other Woman: Based On A True Story • Helping To Protect Young Women From Narcissist Married Men

“The goal is not to tear down the church, but to free you from an imitation of it.”
― Robert G. Callahan II, Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming Our Wholeness

“Describing the process of making her decision to leave, Patricia said: “It is as if there is a shelf where all your doubts and misgivings are placed while you are in that group. Over the months or years you observe so many things that may conflict with your original beliefs and values, or you see things done by the group or leader that are just not right. Because of the indoctrination and not being allowed to ask questions, you just put it on the shelf. Eventually, the shelf gets heavier and heavier and finally just breaks, and you are ready to leave" (p. 55).”
― Madeleine Landau Tobias, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships

“So I lived in their midst, always on the fringes, insignificant, and they spoke freely in my presence.
I saw how little regard they had for us, how much they held us in low esteem. They did not know us, and were not really interested in knowing us either. By virtue of their faith, their mission, and their biases, they did not have to: they knew better than us, both what we needed and how we should live.
I cannot discount the unparalleled work they did in education and healthcare. I would not have had a formal education had it not been part of their plan. The free dispensary was always full, rolling back childhood diseases in the region. I saw them clean the most putrid wounds with a straight face. Yet, their mission required locals to forfeit ancestral practices, including our indigenous languages, which we were forbidden from using in their presence. The essence of our being in the world, its core tenet, ingrained in us across generations, was being violently questioned. Their work demanded allegiance, utter surrender, from us.
I did not realise this then, but these demands threw us off balance, divided us, made us doubt ourselves and weakened us. They birthed a cruel conflict in us, putting our loyalty to the test. We were inhabited by this childish and conflicting desire to please and resist them all at the same time.
Our people claimed neither detachment from the world nor dominion over it. We did not have the universe and its mysteries, meant to be conquered, subjugated on one side, and humankind, the mighty owner of it all, on the other.
We were the world and the world was us: water, wind, sand, the past, the future, the living, the dead... we were all woven into the fabric of the world. They, however, had appropriated it, simplified it to make it intelligible and malleable. They had invented words and concepts that dismissed our more complex and comprehensive intuitive understanding of reality. There is no denying that, seen through their eyes, conceptualised in their terms, the world was unmistakeably coherent, logical. For those of us who embraced the mysteries of the world, the encounter was a matter of course, and a tragedy. I doubt we will ever fully grasp the exact extent of our distress.
Today, I believe Western knowledge is both simple and despotic. There is only one God and he is present in church. Education is found only in textbooks. Art is separate from spirituality, confined to specific spaces. The law applies equally to everyone and all values have a price.
The sole measure of success is material. Our paths in life are already charted, marked out, and you can choose to follow... the path assigned to you. A promise of comfort, a ready-made life so enticing it warrants universalisation; a dream no human should be denied. Masters, gurus travel the world to guide lost peoples towards this path of salvation, readily resorting to violence to crush every resistance, driven by the firm conviction that their philosophy is the philosophy and their religion the religion.
Perhaps it spread so far and wide due to the active proselytism inherent to the Western vision of the world, or maybe it was so easy to replicate because it was the most simplistic doctrine ever developed by humans—it did a better job of dismissing our diversity and disregarding the complexity of our being. Our material realities would become more bearable, that was the promise. It mattered not that this would devastate nature and leave our inner beings shuddering with anxiety.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Too often, we are told that anger has no place in the hearts of Christians. As a consequence, we don't know what we're allowed to feel in regard to the wolves that have infiltrated our flocks. EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CULTURE HAS A WAY OF TRAINING US INTO TIMIDITY to protect the opinions & abuses of others.”
― Robert G. Callahan II, Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming Our Wholeness

“In controlling or neglectful marriages, marriage counseling will overburden the partner who takes responsibility for the marriage and embolden the one who doesn’t to behave even worse.”
― Ngina Otiende, The Newlyweds: Pursuing Mutuality, Health, and Happiness in Marriage

“Healing happens when you receive and experience the reality of God's gentle love—a love that peels away the false images of a God shaped by pain, rejection, or abuse, and replaces them with the true God who meets you in your pain with presence and compassion.”
― Colleen Ramser LPC