This is part two in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read part one: HERE.
Divisive Heretics
In the growing wave of people deconstructing their faith, I’ve heard many pastors speak against It. They’ll typically frame it as a trend that’s a general danger to your personal “faith” and the Church, at large. They warn their congregants that asking questions and pointing to problematic issues is being “too critical” of the Church. Part of their warning might involve telling congregants not to ask questions or not to point out negative issues. Sometimes it can involve promoting a culture verbalized as “focus on the good, not the bad.” Many of these critiques and questions involve how Christians have historically handled and responded to serious cultural issues. Issues such as racial injustice, the LGBTQIA+ community, and abuse can easily get you labeled as distracting, divisive, and/or heretical.
Ironically, those same pastors have no problem criticizing and critiquing those very same people who are “deconstructing.” They accuse those “deconstructing” of being indoctrinated by the “godless left” to become progressive Marxist communists. When challenging Christian leaders about these issues, it is not unusual for many leaders to dismiss the calls for acknowledgment, accountability, and repentance. Often, they also ignore and reject those echoing God’s continual call for justice (Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18, Matthew 18:6, and Romans 13:10) as heretical disruptors. All the while, church congregants continue to embolden and support these pastors and leaders with nods and hand-lifted “amens.” This is part of why Christians will co-opt words like grooming to use against people whom they don’t like.
Spiritual Grooming
My intention is not to justify deconstruction or critiquing the Church; no one needs permission to do those things. My purpose is to address pastoral practices, such as teaching and culture building, that promote only “seeing the good.” By dismissing very real concerns, they are ultimately employing elements that resemble grooming and enable abuse. As a reminder, I’ll continue to refer to this as spiritual grooming. And to be clear, it’s not that I don’t want to “see the good.” Believe it or not, I’ve always been hopeful when it comes to the church. It’s the reason that I’ve stayed connected to it and worked on staff for so long.
Unfortunately, in my practice as a professional clinical counselor, I hear so many people dismiss their own traumatic abuse. They’ll say things like, “…but I’m not a victim,” “I’m not supposed to live in a victim mentality,” “In my suffering, I’ll receive a blessing,” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” because they’ve been taught to dismiss it. I’ve also heard clients dismiss a clearly abusive situation by suggesting that they couldn’t trust their feelings. Or, they excuse their pastor’s behavior because they were told that they misread the situation and know he couldn’t do “that” because he’s a “good man of God.”
Often, there’s a teaching they received that told them they were not victims and that their feelings weren’t facts. There’s often an encouragement to embrace suffering, like Jesus. Or that they need to submit to those in spiritual authority because it’s “biblical.” In some cases, the teaching reminds them that God desires their holiness more than their happiness.
Authority & Submission
This brings us back to the concept of grooming and how spirituality introduces implicit trust between the victim and the pastor. There can be serious consequences when a spiritual leader, who is communicating unbalanced messages about authority and submission, occupies a position of authority in their congregant’s life. The consequences are compounded when the leader becomes the sole arbiter for defining and affirming hurt or abuse for victims. If we consider the definition, as previously stated [HERE or HERE], these circumstances create fertile ground for abuse within our churches. And this isn’t hyperbole. Remember, for every instance of sexual abuse reported, about two more go unreported. And that’s sexual abuse, a type of abuse that we clearly know how to define.
Imagine other types of abuse or harm that may not be as clearly recognizable. Add to that all of the misteaching around authority, submission, divisiveness, and “disrupting the work of God,” and it’s no wonder why abuse perpetuates. How many of those instances go unreported? Spiritual leaders who have made it a practice, even unintentionally, to dismiss this conversation perpetuate spiritual harm and abuse. Please hear that I’m not saying that pastors who say and teach these ideas are trying to create abusive relationships. While there are pastors and Christian leaders who do this intentionally, they’re not who I’m talking to or about.
I’m talking about pastors who, in teaching their congregation to dismiss anything negative as unnecessary criticism, are subtly teaching them not to question those who have “authority” over them. In doing so, they are also teaching them to reject personal accountability and accept a lack of accountability from those in leadership. Not only does this teaching fly in the face of basic Christian teachings about rebuke (Luke 17:3), confession (James 5:16), accountability (Romans 14:12), and repentance (Acts 20:21), it provides fertile ground for abuse and creates a scenario where a victim may question or dismiss their own abuse. This is spiritual grooming.
Confusion & Distration
Spiritual abuse and harm involve complex elements that can make it difficult to define and recognize. Because of that, it is not uncommon for victims to leave the church and sometimes their entire faith system feeling as though they were the “problem.” Add to that the confusion created around the continued misunderstanding and misuse of the term grooming, and it’s easy to see how abuse continues. The accusation that Queer community and drag entertainers are grooming children not only harms those in that community but is also a distraction from the actual grooming that is occurring in our own church spaces. So, what do we do? In the last article of this series, we’ll look at some answers from different positional/role perspectives.
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