How To Spot Religious Abuse

Note: After posting these signs one by one on my Facebook wall, I had mentioned that when all had been posted, I would combined them together and place it all in a blog. Here it is. I originally ended with five signs, but I added one more that I had forgotten to mention. Keep these close by and refer to them as often as you need to. It will enable you to make the right decisions in choosing a church and also to keep the church you are presently serving in accountable to the Word of God.

We are blessed with so many wonderful and caring churches that teach the Word faithfully and impact the people who attend. But like people, not all churches are healthy. The reason is that not all people are healthy spiritually and churches are made up of people – the healthy and unhealthy. Some have more healthy people in it and others are plagued with the opposite.

When a church loses its focus which is to build up people and empower them to do ministry (Eph. 4:11-12), it can become toxic. When this occurs, people get turned off. No one wants to be part of a church that is judgmental, promotes conditional love, teaches salvation at a price, rules by self-righteous people, alienates itself from others and divides families.

However, what makes this kind of church worse is when its congregants believes it is doing right and acts out of a mindset that it is indeed biblical and healthy.  This then is quite deceiving when new people come for a visit and they don’t know anything of their group dynamics and control.

Therefore, if you are visiting a church for the first time and you want to know whether or not it is spiritually healthy (not perfect, but “becoming”), what signs should you look for?  You need information. Don’t be afraid to ask. You as a guest are expected to ask and inquire. I want to share with you five warning signs of an abusive unhealthy church by stating them as questions you need to ask.

Question #1: (To the Pastor) – “Who are you accountable to?”  Sign: Look for unchecked authoritarian leadership.

If the pastor tells you that he is only accountable to God, then a big red flag ought to pop up in your head. Danger and abuse are more assuredly in that church!

You see, the pastor may preach awesome messages, be well liked, spiritually caring and conservative, but if he is beyond confrontation and necessary correction, then he is serving as a loner and that is not healthy especially in ministry.  He is more likely independent and not part of a structure of accountability. He is a one man show. And God help the church member who gets in the way and makes waves by asking penetrating questions.

Abusive pastors often come from troubled backgrounds and are very insecure persons despite the “take charge” image they may project. They are power hungry people who crave visibility. Leaders who inflict spiritual violence often hide behind the smoke screen of authority to gain power. 

It is important to understand that religiously abusive church leadership is most visible when it demands public and private attention to be given the authority and control over the flock by the pastor. Often, in aberrant churches, this is not an easy thing to discern, and yet, it is frequently one of the danger signs that are too easily overlooked. Such leaders will seem too quick to chastise members, often in harsh forums of public rebuke.

Question #2: (About the Congregation) – “What are its overall spiritual condition?” Sign: Look for signs of imbalance.

Too often, church members of authoritarian churches are frequently comprised of young, spiritually immature Christians. This kind of church is successful because it is meeting basic human needs - the need to belong, the need to be affirmed, to be accepted and to be part of a larger family. It is not unusual for the leaders to assume the role of surrogate parents, especially for those young adults who come from dysfunctional family backgrounds.  Because of such deep yearning needs of those in the congregation, the authoritarian church pastor will attract and seek after in order to exploit his flock through manipulative control.

The abusive church leader or pastor will encourage in his membership an unhealthy form of dependency, spiritually and otherwise, by focusing on themes of submission and obedience to those in authority, i.e. himself. He wants to create the environment and impression that people just aren't going to find their way through life's maze without a lot of firm directives from those at the top. These firm directives are fleshed out in a demanding lifestyle rigidity that is actually a form of controlling and abusive legalism. A black and white view of the world is the mentality that is created in the minds of the abusive church's congregation.

Do's and don'ts found in church-supplied codes of conduct are taken so seriously that they have a stifling effect upon the spiritual liberty that Christians should enjoy and impose a dangerously controlling conformity upon the congregation.  Fear of messing up replaces joy of discovery. So then, a major component of such control is the usage of unspoken expectations: moral directives that everyone in the group knows are "the law", the way "things are", but which are never explicitly spelled out until one just so happens breaks one of them. It is then that personal punishment or sanctions are imposed.

So what you want to look for is a congregation that is being “empowered” to serve God and love their families by its leaders. You do not want to find people in the church who are simply “yes” people to its leaders, who will blindly do whatever they are told to. They ought to be people who are encouraged to “search the Scriptures” (Acts 17:11) in order to keep the leadership accountable to what they are teaching. You do not want to hear people say, “We do this or don’t do this because that’s what our pastor tells us.” Your aim is to be part of a church in which its members are encouraged to think for themselves, who are told that they can, with the Holy Spirit’s help read and understand the Scriptures, and if they mess up, God’s grace and forgiveness is in abundant supply.

Question #3:  How does the church handle people who leave? Sign: Look for two things: First, are the people afraid to leave the church? Second, do the leaders make people afraid to leave the church?

You see, what you want to discover here is this: The body of Christ is universal and not merely local. By this I mean, there is no one church that has it all. Some churches are gifted with great teaching and preaching, some would want to go there. Some are gifted with an awesome youth program, and some families need to go there. Some are blessed with inspiring praise and worship, some need to be there. Some have it all together with a budgeted mission and outreach ministry that reaches out to the world because members in this church are able to finance it. Some like this. Some like churches where they do not need to serve, but just sit and listen to the message, while others like a church where they are challenged to serve.

My point: No church has it all. And when someone within the church, senses the need to go to another church, does the congregation and leaders begin to ostracize the person or family in order to make them feel like they lost their salvation and are going to hell?

Beware of churches that warn of certain doom if you leave their “covering,” (i.e. you leave the church to go someone where else) or if you “break covenant” with them (membership). Once banished from the group, little compassion is shown. I have personally witnessed from experience and have talked to others, that former members of aberrant churches, when contemplating leaving the group, were issued dire warnings that they were backsliding, compromising and facing judgment from God.

As a means of preemptive control, the public teachings and private social life are regularly used to deliver indirect, yet unmistakable hints to potential "troublemakers" and the membership at large that one could never gain the same depth of spiritual truth anywhere else.  So in other words, this is the only church that fully and faithfully teaches the Word of God. All other churches are weak and deficient in this duty. Therefore, if you leave, you will be harming yourself and family spiritually and remember, “We told you so!”

Thus, only among the group could true insights into life be found, the real interpretation of the Bible be discovered, and the closest and deepest fellowship be experienced. With such carrots dangled on such long sticks for all to see, the reinforcement of the group's exclusivism is accomplished, making the fear of leaving to be the ultimate horror to be avoided at all costs.

Question #4: How does this church deal with sin? Sign: Look for signs of obsession with discipline and excommunication from the fellowship.

Church members who are seen as stepping out of line will find themselves being shunned or criticized by the so-called "true believers" in public, and will usually face much harsher treatment in the larger abusive church congregation. Some will go so far as to deny you to partake of the Lord’s Table (Communion Service).

Demeaning public rebuke, even ridicule from the pulpit is one means of religious abuse disguised as "discipline."  You’ll hear messages that are no mistakenly geared right at you.  But more often such power ploys are extended across the congregation or congregations in question through even subtler and indirect ways.

Question #5:  Does the church strongly encourage distancing members from those who are not part of its fellowship?  Sign: Isolation of members from outsiders.

Abusive church leaders want to maintain control over the flock. So one sure way is to prohibit any outside contact with those who are not a part of the church’s fellowship. In some instances, for church leaders to come out and say, “Thou shall not talk to any outsiders, would be a bit too strong and all kinds of red flags would be raised. So what leaders would do is plant more of a subtle approach. They will create bible studies and small group meetings during the week so that virtually every day of the week is a meeting that one must attend. The average family of this church will be so busy attending meetings on a daily basis that it would be literally impossible for involvement with outsiders to generate. Church leaders will teach and give the impression that the more meetings you attend, the more spiritual you are becoming.

It is not uncommon for such leaders to say things like, “Love not the world and neither the things in the world.” Or “Come out from among them (the world) and be separate.”  Or “Satan is the god of this world, and whoever is friends of this world is an enemy of God.” All of these are found in the bible, but they must be understood in their rightful context.

While it is true that Christians ought not to love this world system, nor put the things of this world above their relationship with Christ, isolation from the world was never Jesus’ intention. He was the one who said, “Be salt and light in the world” (Matt. 5:13-14).  One does not light a lamp and hide it where it can’t be seen and useful to others (v. 15). When abusive church leaders literally keep their saints locked away attending meetings after meetings and not encourage them to “go and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19), this is a positive sign of religious abuse.

It is also not uncommon within these types of churches to observe that even family relationships within the group become severely disrupted and strained, since the demands for attention to be given to the "spiritual family" become all too important. Parental and marital bonds may be strained or shattered over the need for individual family members to more fully identified with the church group, and non-member relations outside of the group are often stunned at how cold and distant their once loving family members became when they "got religious” and began attending “that church.”  The abusive church's "spiritual family" then becomes the recipients of the warm family ties and affections that group members desperate need since they have withdrawn from their own family.

This is one of the most heartbreaking and shattering consequences of religious abuse dispensed by such churches. Many people who have suffered unspeakably agonizing losses of their marriages, children and parents at the hands of abusive group leaders, end up committing themselves to the church while ignoring the warnings of loved ones. Yet they are unaware that their relationship with their church leaders and their obsessive commitment to the church is far too spiritually polluting, smothering and destructive and it will produce disastrous consequences.  

You’ll hear stories like this one where a wife will come to her senses and leave the church, but the husband will remain and later be counseled to divorced her since his she has now become part of the world system.

6) Does the church encourage its members to withdraw and isolate from the “outside?” Sign: Look for signs in which the leadership discourages its members from rubbing elbows with other churches and its members.  This is known as “information control” and it is a crucial element to control its members’ minds. 

When you go to a church and you hear the same pastor preach week after week, and on top of that, he belittles other churches and pastors on a regular basis, you know something is not right.

Also, news events, local issues, and personal events are reinterpreted by the church leadership in such a way so as to lead the congregation to see the world as they wish it to be perceived. Bible verses are misquoted as divine sanction for these actions, citing the need to be separate from the doomed and satanic world order outside of the group's domain.

This contributes to the construction of a completely sealed society of people who effectively shut out the world from among them, even though they may continue to move within it. Newspapers, television programming, and even ordinary social interaction with other members of the larger culture become strongly discouraged. The issue goes way beyond a pious avoidance of tempting imagery and thought but actually is a means to stifle and control the thoughts, consciences and spiritual autonomy of the individual member.

Abuse in the name of the one true God who is the embodiment of love and grace is certainly one of the great tragedies of our time that have both broken His loving heart and aroused His wrath upon church leaders who have savaged His flock. The Gospel of Jesus Christ can never be served or proclaimed where fear, coercion, and outright spiritual trauma is inflicted. Only the cause of religious tyranny and megalomania is advanced.  Instead, love, sacrifice, prayer and a strong commitment by church leaders to empower God’s people with His Word and to live out daily Christ-likeness, are places of worship where you want to take you and your family and friends.