Am I Crazy or Is This Spiritual Abuse?

You have been sitting in the parking lot for ten minutes. You are not sure you can walk through the doors. Something has felt off for a while now, maybe months, maybe years. But every time you try to put words to it, you talk yourself out of it.

They are good people. The sermons are powerful. Your kids have friends there. And besides, who are you to question a pastor?

If that sounds familiar, you are not crazy. And you are not alone. Here are three patterns that researchers and psychologists have identified in spiritually abusive church cultures.

Pattern 1: Disagreement Is Treated as Rebellion

In a healthy church, you can ask a hard question and get a thoughtful answer. In a spiritually abusive church, asking a hard question gets you labeled:

• "Divisive"
• "Rebellious"
• "Not walking in faith"
• "Not submitted to authority"

Jeff VanVonderen, coauthor of The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, calls these "unspoken rules." You do not know they exist until you break them.¹

The rule is not written anywhere. But it is enforced everywhere.

Ask yourself: when someone leaves your church, how does leadership describe their departure? If the answer is always that the person was "bitter" or "divisive," and nobody asks for the other side, that is a pattern.

Pattern 2: You Are Afraid to Speak Up

Dr. Hillary McBride has identified five reasons people stay in systems that hurt them: consequences, compliance, confusion, coercion, and community.²

Think about what you would lose if you left your church tomorrow. Your friends. Your kids' activities. Your small group. Maybe your entire social life.

This is not weakness. This is how abusive systems are designed to work. The more you invest, the more it costs to leave. VanVonderen calls this the "equity trap."³

If you are staying silent about something that feels wrong because you are afraid of what you might lose, that fear is telling you something important.

Pattern 3: The Church Protects the System

Dr. Diane Langberg says it as clearly as anyone:

"Jesus didn't die for systems."⁴

When a leader is accused of harm, the first response is often to hire an attorney, not to sit down with the person who raised the concern. When a family leaves, the institution controls the narrative.

Langberg describes the "halo effect": when a pastor is gifted at preaching, people give them a pass on everything else. A gifted speaker accused of abuse will use that gift to deny it more persuasively than a frightened victim can describe it.⁵

Chuck DeGroat adds: churches cannot investigate themselves. Bringing in an independent third party is essential. Resistance to that process is itself a red flag.⁶

So What Do You Do?

• Talk to someone outside the church. A licensed therapist, a trusted friend, a family member. Get an outside perspective.
• Trust your gut. Matthias Roberts, a therapist specializing in religious trauma, calls "something is wrong here" a holy instinct, not rebellion.⁷
• Know that leaving can be an act of integrity. You are not failing God by leaving a church that is hurting you.
• Document what you can. Dates, names, what was said. Keep a record.
• You are not alone. One in three adults in the United States reports having experienced some form of religious trauma.⁸

Recovery from spiritual abuse is hard. But it starts with believing what you already know: something is wrong here. That instinct is not crazy. It is the beginning of freedom.