Under the Banner of Heaven: Standing Up Against Abuse

I know I’m not the only one who finds the stories of faith deconstruction, of surviving cults and high-control groups to be healing. Memoirs, documentaries, blogs, films—no matter the format, I think telling our stories is invaluable in our collective effort to move away from harmful communities and relationships and toward healing.

I recently watched the limited series Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu—almost all of it in one sitting because it resonated with me so very much I simply couldn’t do anything else. And there’s this moment in the last episode that I can’t stop thinking about…

ReviewCait WestSeptember 30, 2022spiritual abuse, religious trauma, mormonism, under the banner of heaven, exfundamentalist, fundamentalism, churchtooComment

Thoughts After Restore 2022

A couple weekends ago, I attended the second day of the Restore Conference outside of Chicago. I hadn’t really planned to go until I heard that some friends from Tears of Eden were attending, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see them as they’ve been an important part of my healing this past year.

I will be honest: I was nervous about the conference though. I recognized many of the names on the speaker list, which told me that the conference would address spiritual abuse and other abuse in the Christian church, topics I’ve been researching and writing about for a few years now. But the tagline—“A Conference Restoring Faith in God and the Church”—didn’t quite resonate with me and my own journey after abuse…

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 . . .

Leaving Religious Fundamentalism

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 . . .