Why Spiritual Abuse?

This is a portion of a Graduate Paper I am writing - In rough draft form.

Spiritual Abuse occurs when someone, a Pastor, Preacher, Sunday school teacher, husband, church bus driver, Christian Counselor, choir director or someone involved in bible studies uses their knowledge of the bible and spiritual issues to manipulate, control or inflict harm on another person. Sometimes this abuse is financial. Sometimes the abuse is sexual. Sometimes the abuse is psychological. The abuse always has long-ranging effects however. Much has been  written about the sexual abuse that Catholic Priests got away with for decades in the recent years. Undetected, Priests sexually molested altar boys and young men in their parishioners. A google search shows many youth pastors arrested for sexually molesting young girls in their church. The damage inflicted even  without the sexual component is severe enough that it warrants a look in and of itself. Add the sexual manipulations, the lying and lies that are told, the abuse becomes even greater.  

The first book written on the subject first hit the shelves in 1991 by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen and was titled The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse.  This book changed forever the spiritual scene for many individuals, and gave a voice to those who did not have one previously. In 1999, in Charisma magazine, Mike Fehlauer wrote an article titled “Five Warning Signs of an Unhealthy Church.”  It was “one of the most-responded-to articles ever published in the magazine.” One example of abuse (in a minor way) was “‘The Five-Seven-Nine Rule’ the author talks about a music director who rejected a lady’s application to serve on the worship team.  She had a wonderful voice, but the music director told her husband, ‘She’s too fat to be one of the praise singers.’  The husband ‘later discovered that they actually had a policy to weed out overweight applicants. It was called the ‘Five-Seven-Nine’ rule. A woman who wanted to be a praise singer had to be able to wear a size five, seven or nine dress.’ He approached the pastor concerning the policy.  ‘He was told by the elder that by bringing up the policy he was in rebellion to spiritual authority.’ (Fehlauer)

Literature review “The Lived Experience of Spiritual Abuse” By David J. Ward

Published in Mental Health, Religion & Culture in 2011. In this article David Ward discusses cult recruitment, “mind control”, and other difficulties. The article discusses six hard core themes that individuals who left and interviewed. Those six themes were, “Leadership representing themselves to be God, Spiritual bullying, Accepted through their performance, Spiritual neglect, Manifestation of internal states and Expanding external/internal tension.” (Ward) His findings were that spiritual abuse “is a multi-layered experience that is both process and event” that affects the bio/psycho/social and spiritual dimensions of an individual.

Literature Review “An Integrative Spiritual Development Model of Supervision for Substance Abuse Couselors in Training” by Ogden and Sias (2011) discusses fully bringing new counselors to awareness of the importance of spirituality in treatment and recovery of addictions. By addressing “Higher Power” beliefs those seeking to recover have an active source of help. Many of these groups are based on the “12-step model” of AA.

American Counseling Association, Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs and other have specific training for spirituality topics. This article also states the dearth of research regarding the spiritual development. The “Integrative Spiritual Developmental Model” (ISDM) of supervision discusses the importance of the topic in those dealing with substance abuse and is based in theory of Fowler (1981) and faith development and in the Theory of moral development of Kohlberg. (1981).

Relationship Between Spirituality and Depressive Symptoms Among Inpatient Individuals Who Abuse Substances, Diaz and Horton (2011) discuss that a belief in someone higher than oneself, the “Ultimate reality or Truth” is crucial to recovering individuals. When that belief is lacking or interrupted by abuse, the lack of the “Meaning of Life” affects recovery.

Childhood Sexual Abuse and Female Spiritual Development by Reinert and Smith discuss the obstacles of women who have been sexually abused developing low self-esteem, despair, mistrust and fear of authority figures. This can extend to the spiritual realm in that they can’t trust God or a Higher Power.