How Did We Get Here?
I escaped my cult and now they are taking over the world.
Either the ultra-conservative Christian movement of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s was actually as influential as we wanted it to be, or we weren’t as far from mainstream as we thought we were. Both possibilities are frightening.
The AI generated image of Trump as the pope popping up in my socials today was icing on the cake for me. What in the world? How did we get to this place of ridiculousness? Have we been slowly boiled alive until we no longer realize where we are or that we should have jumped ship long ago? Those studying evangelical history would say yes. Future historians will also say yes.
Setting increasingly horrifying politics aside, the institutional evangelical church seems to be crumbling and yet people continue on as though nothing is wrong with their eyes tightly closed and their ears plugged. No one is even shocked any more when well-known Christians publicly leave the faith. Pastors and leaders are so regularly exposed for abuse, harassment, or embezzling that it is no longer surprising. We’ve written and read books on spiritual abuse and narcissism in the church. We’ve produced and listened to podcasts talking about the fall of certain churches and the bodies under the buses, but the decay continues.
Looking at our modern, evangelical Christian culture, I find it eerily fascinating that so many of the biggest problems are familiar ones. Growing up in my Christian cult (Gothard and IBLP) these issues and lies were far more exaggerated, but they were similar none the less. Either the ultra-conservative Christian movement of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s was actually as influential as we wanted it to be, or we weren’t as far from mainstream as we thought we were. Both possibilities are frightening.
It’s like I escaped my cult, and now my cult is taking over the world. And the regular old Christians in evangelical churches don’t even notice that something isn’t right. They’ve slowly been conditioned, influenced, and nudged into line without even realizing it. How? How did we get here?
I’m not a historian, but I am a Christian cult survivor (Shiny Happy People) who has noticed familiar issues within the modern, mainstream evangelical church here in America for years now. I’ve been talking about it, but I think I might need to start shouting because we cannot afford to keep silent. We cannot afford to put our heads in the sand or under our pillows and pretend that everything is fine when it’s not. It’s far from fine. We are far, far away from the real Jesus, and we don’t even know it.
This is about more than politics. Politics is the evidence of collapse. The evangelical conglomeration (churches, para churches, media, institutions, etc.) needs an overhaul. There is rot in the walls, the foundation is shaky, and the roof is leaking. If you’ve followed me for a while then you know that I am still technically an evangelical in the global sense. However, I’m not afraid of asking uncomfortable questions, pointing out problems, and rejecting tradition, religion, and lies.
With that, I want to point to eight, unfortunately familiar problems that desperately need to be recognized and rethought if anything is going to change. We are where we are today partly because people have not noticed these issues and lies. I talked about many of these same problems a few years ago on my first podcast Looking for the Real God where I go into greater detail starting with episode 67.
Redefining Biblical Authority: The word authority is often confused with power. People—such as false teachers and false prophets—claim to have authority when all they really want to do is control people. Think of the ways the saying “touch not the Lord’s anointed” gets misused to protect an abusive leader. If we look at the life of Jesus Christ and his example of someone who had genuine authority (Matthew 1:22) and then contrast that with the abusive leaders who are being exposed in our churches and Christian organizations, the differences are shocking. I love this differentiation between power and authority. Power is the ability to make someone do what you want. Authority is living a life so genuine that people want to follow you. If this is going to stop, then we need to understand true authority and push back against authoritarian leaders who simply want power.
Twisting of the Terms Unity and Gossip: Power hungry leaders use these words and their own twisted definitions of them to control the people under them. Rather than meaning oneness centered around Jesus Christ, unity gets twisted to mean that no one disagrees with the leader. Dissenting voices are not allowed. Different opinions or perspectives are shut down. And if you speak up against something that is wrong, abusive, or unethical then you get labeled as a gossip. According to the dictionary gossip is the casual sharing of secret information, but according to many churches and organizations gossip means saying anything negative about leadership or a particular leader regardless if it’s true or not and regardless of your motives for sharing. If things are going to change, we need to boldly speak truth.
Overly Literal Biblical Interpretation: I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I do not believe that we can always take the words in our English translations at face value and decide that they are literal without taking other important things into account. The Bible is made up of many different types of literature: history, poems, prophecies, letters, etc. Just as you would not read a biography in the same way you would read a sci-fi novel, we need to read each genre in the Bible differently. Some books are more figurative and metaphorical, and some are more literal. We also need to understand context, author intent, cultural norms, and background information. Honestly, the idea that we twenty-first century Christians can read an English translation of an ancient book and just automatically understand the meaning is both arrogant and ignorant. If the rot is going to be remedied, then we need to read scripture in context with solid hermeneutics.
The Suppression of Women: This is a controversial topic with some Christians and I don’t know why. It’s not as though the role of women in the church is central to the gospel, yet it totally gets people riled. But as I’ve studied the role of women in Scripture, I no longer identity as complementarian. I see the idea that men are supposed to be the leaders and women the followers as a tradition of Christianity that isn’t actually Biblical. When I look at the overarching themes of Scriptures I see religion and sin suppressing women as a result of the fall and God lifting them up as co-heirs of his kingdom. How does the accepted Christian suppression of women contribute to the current state of our church and Christian culture? I think it ties directly into the sexual abuse and harassment we are consistently seeing. Women are not seen as equals or as teammates but instead as objects to be used. Because women’s voices aren’t being heard and their opinions and perspectives aren’t being valued the church is lopsided. If things are going to change, men and women need to work as important, equal teammates in the church and their spiritual gifts need to be appreciated and used.
Moralism vs Heart Transformation: Having good morals is great. People who know the difference between right and wrong and choose to do what’s right are an important part of a healthy society. However, too often the church becomes fixated on moralism rather than the gospel. Christians try to control people’s behaviors instead of introducing them to Jesus. We are watching this happen in real time these days. There is a fascination with creating a moral utopia here on Earth rather than building the kingdom of heaven. Creating good people doesn’t reconnect them with God. However, when we come face to face with Jesus and allow him to transform us from the inside out, goodness is a natural fruit of the Spirit. For the craziness to stop, we need to realize that outward goodness has little value compared to inward resurrection.
God as a Concept rather than a Being: Within many modern versions of Christianity, God is more of a concept or an idea than a real and living Being. We quickly make him in our own image instead of recognizing that we were made in his. God is nothing like us. But he chose to make us a little like him so that we could have a relationship. If God is just an idea than he is free to be debated and changed according to our desires. But if he is REAL real, then we don’t get to decide who he is. We just get to discover him. When we acknowledge God as real and alive apart from our understanding, things will change. We will change.
Motivating with Fear: Fear is a powerful motivator. Just look at the way the media and political powers have used fear over the past few years—on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately people in power within the Christian community have figured this out too. Fear has been used to keep us quiet about scandal and abuse within the church. It’s been used to stop us from telling the truth. Fear has also limited us from seeking the truth as we question the traditions of religious Christianity. They warn us that doubt it is a slippery slope so we don’t ask questions and discover truth. If things are going to change, we need to be aware of how we have been controlled by fear and reject it. We need to be brave enough to discover the truth for ourselves.
Dualistic Thinking: When there are only two options, someone is always right and someone is always wrong. Of course we assume that we are right, and everyone who doesn’t agree with us is wrong. This black and white way of seeing life provides us with a false sense of security. However, the real world is complex. It is full of paradox, tension, and mystery. When we ignore our beautifully complicated world and the people in it, we miss out on finding a fuller experience of truth. Polarization is only beneficial to news sources, social media companies, and people seeking power. If this nonsense is going to stop, we have to be willing to step into the misty gray and accept complexity, embrace nuance, and be okay with not having all the answers.
These are serious issues, friends, and until we are willing to recognize and address them—along with others—nothing will change. It will take time to work through them, but we need to start now. Change can feel hopeless, frustrating, and discouraging. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, anything is possible. Thankfully, it seems like more and more of us are waking up and asking questions. Reformation has happened before and it can happen again.
Let’s get in scripture for ourselves. Let’s study and listen to people who have different opinions. Let’s be brave enough to question and wonder. It can be scary to realize things we thought were true might not be. It’s hard to re-evaluate our beliefs. What I don’t want is for us to simply flip sides while keeping our dualistic thinking and twisted definitions. I long for true heart change because I know that the real God behind our religion and tradition is absolutely worth finding.
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As a cult survivor myself, I came to realize that there are phases that one goes through between entry and exit. Perhaps I will develop that idea a little more and post about it, but the exit is preceded by a realization that things are not right, an inability to ignore what you are seeing and an escalation into the realm of the intolerable, to the point where you are willing to leave.
No one wakes up one day and says, “today I shall join a cult“. If you are not born into it, then there is some initial attractive feature that gets you through the door. This begins a honeymoon period, followed by a slow burn where you can be enthusiastically supportive and “all in“ on the doctrine. Then something happens, or perhaps a series of “somethings” which creates a cognitive dissonance that intensifies over time. Though cults condition people to embrace ideas and behavior that would be considered abhorrent outside of that environment, sooner or later there is a threshold in which warning lights within you begin to signal that things are not right.
Perhaps it is a significant traumatic event or perhaps it is the combination of years of mistreatment. It could be something that happened to someone else that you have witnessed. Perhaps it is a glimpse outside of the cult, followed by the realization that you were always told that the people outside were the ones who were messed up and yet they are doing just fine. Your life on the other hand seems to be spiraling. That’s when the lights give way to warning horns, at least on my experience. Cults redefine the concept and perception of truth but at the end of the day, they cannot redefine truth. They can only try to deny it.
The current administration and the forces that shape and drive it are not hard to understand when you have experienced the cycle of a cult. Not hard at all. For that matter, the current institutional evangelical church is inexorably complicit in it. Perhaps there’s room for a point number 9, the evangelical Church needs to divorce itself from the corporate structure and mentality, as it has failed to differentiate between a family of God and a corporation where power and profit become the highest goal.
Jim K.
This is such a thoughtful articulation of what has been happening in the church over the last 40 years. I am distressed by the number of people in my church who have been influenced by these things & yet seem oblivious to how un-Biblical these ideas are. Even in churches (like my own) where these ideas are not being preached from the pulpit,there is a failure to directly confront them for fear of causing conflict. Thank you for having the courage to speak up.