Spiritual Abuse in the Christian Patriarchy Movement

When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, “I’m going to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.” This wasn’t what I really wanted to be, but I believed that it was my destiny and that I had no other option.

As I got older, I was trained for this future, and I was told that after I graduated high school, I would stay in my parents’ home as a stay-at-home daughter until I got married. All my friends from church were given the same expectations. This was the norm in the Christian patriarchy movement.

Daughters were treated differently from sons because we were helpers in training. We were supposed to be dependent on men, protected by men. Any independence of thought or action was shut down . . .

November Update

When I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.

Which brings me to some exciting news . . .

Getting Out of a High-Control Group

Eight years ago, I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter in the Christian Patriarchy movement.

I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and terrifying fear. My voice was silenced, and I had no agency over my life. I was not allowed to get a job outside the house, not allowed to go to college, not allowed to date. I had few friends and was mostly cut off from extended family.

The conservative Christian church I was a part of as a teenager was deeply invested in teaching strict gender roles, homeschooling as the only way to raise children, courtship instead of dating, and father-controlled families. Hate speech toward women and the LGBTQ+ community was preached from the pulpit. In this church, I learned to fear everything and to hate myself . . .

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. . . .