When I was a child, I understood the world through a set of absolute rules that required absolute obedience. I heard these rules at home and at church, and I was very good at telling them to the neighbor kids. I was called a “goody two-shoes,” but I didn’t feel too offended because at least I was “good.” I desperately wanted to be good. And to me, that meant following the rules without question.

I can look back now and recognize that my life was controlled by religious fundamentalism—in my case, a Christian ideology framed by a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, which I was told was inerrant and completely transferrable to our modern lives.

Being controlled by religious fundamentalism or a high-demand group is a little like living in a very small, dark box . . .

Sleeping Beauty

We were told daughters need protection, daughters need help, daughters need supervision.

Daughters need fathers.

We were told a daughter is a princess, and her father is the king. It doesn’t matter if this daughter is 5 or 35 years old. She is bound to her father’s kingdom, waiting for an approved prince to marry her and become her new protector.

I was one of those stay-at-home daughters. . . .

Stories like Ours

We all need books that move us, change us, challenge us, enlighten us, educate us, heal us. One book that has been healing for me in my journey away from fundamentalism and spiritual abuse has been Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu. This is just one of many that have made me feel less alone in my experience, that have opened my heart to the possibility that my story is important too, that this hasn’t all been for nothing. That our experiences mean something.

When I first heard about Jennifer Mathieu, I was attending the Festival of Faith and Writing three years after leaving the stay-at-home-daughter movement, and I saw her talk in the conference program, with a description of her book mentioning Christian Patriarchy. I hadn’t heard of any fiction books about the world of fundamentalist Christianity, and I was curious to see what she had to say and what her book Devoted was about. . . .

How to Know You're in a Christian Fundamentalist Church

If you’re like me and you grew up under Christian fundamentalist teaching, then you probably know the Bible backward and forward, never dated (or at least wore a purity ring), and were told Democrats are demonic and Halloween is Satan’s holiday. And maybe, like me, you’ve since grown up and learned a lot about the world outside church walls, talked with people from different backgrounds, and looked at the Bible with fresh eyes and lots of questions. You might be deconstructing or reconstructing your faith, finding real freedom in the escape from legalism.

I’ve been working on deconstructing the worldview I was brought up in for quite a while now, and the more I move away, the more I notice fundamentalism, legalism, and patriarchy growing in evangelical churches. And I’ve been thinking about the people in these churches who didn’t grow up with this ideology--who didn’t have the consequences of living with perpetual shame and false guilt--because they probably won’t understand right away the impact that Christian fundamentalism and patriarchy can have on people seeking God. I’m concerned for the children who will grow up being imprisoned by legalism and distanced from the love of God.

So I’ve been thinking about signs or red flags that warn me that fundamentalism is in play in a church, and I hope my laying these out here might be helpful. . . .