When Religion Harms

Surrounded by the people she has come to call her leaders, a woman is sitting in the dust, her head bowed. Her eyes are blurry – a toxic combination of terror and stinging tears. She is accused of sin, and according to their religious laws the next steps are laid out before her – she will be stoned to death, and her body discarded outside the city walls. 

Two thousand years later, her story is synonymous with the hypocrisy of the religious leaders grasping at their murder weapons. Profoundly, Jesus proclaimed words that have echoed out through history, “let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” For those who are in the woman’s place, these words are words of liberation and release. But for many religious leaders, they still stand as a sharp rebuke and timeless warning.  

Here, as we hurtle through the turbulence of the Twenty First Century, the need to revisit the harms of religious institutions has never been more pertinent. Not to do so threatens to perpetuate the cycles of distress that infiltrate the lives of our friends, our clients, our families, our churches, and ourselves.    

This process involves more than simply pointing out that harm exists (that has become tragically all too clear). This process necessitates a time of earnest reflection, deep repentance and, at times, a drastic change in the structures and belief systems that have come to feed the pyramid of toxicity. 

Somewhat ironically, those religious leaders, hands gripping the smooth stones that signalled death, could reasonably have mounted a flawless defence of their actions. “I was just following my religion, your honour,” they would say.

The reality stands that for too many people, faith communities are not places of safety and refuge. Rather, they are sources of ongoing harm. Among others, this is increasingly clear for women in conservative spaces, LGBTQIA+ people, and children (who due to their age are inherently vulnerable to abuse).  

Thankfully, light is slowly being shone on such dynamics, and there is an increasing body of reporting and research that seeks to positively reform the church.  

Naming Religious Trauma 

As more stories emerge, it has been possible to discern patterns among survivors of harm that help us understand what is happening. One of the most helpful ways to frame these stories is to recognise them as a form of religious or spiritual trauma. It’s time to update the language we use, and embed trauma research into our ways of thinking. 

Religious or spiritual trauma typically involves communities and leaders using their power to control and manipulate what other people are allowed to think, believe, do, or say. Stone* defines such dynamics as “pervasive psychological damage resulting from religious messages, beliefs and experiences.” 

For example, a woman may not be allowed to speak without her husband’s permission. When at church, she is told to be quiet (as per 1 Corinthians 14), and over time the power differentiation between her husband and her entrenches her self-view that her voice is not wanted, valued or believed. Whether this dynamic is at play in the pew or the pulpit, the diminishing of women’s voices continues to have a significantly painful impact.  

Meanwhile, a gay or trans person might hear homonegative and transphobic messages from their pastor, their friends, their school teachers, and their parents, on repeat. As their experience of gender or sexuality develops, such comments embed themselves in their self-understanding. A growing mountain of shame obliterates any hope of integrating their faith with their queer experience. Pastors may not be holding stones, but they have successfully weaponised the Bible, which, it seems, is equally effective. The church is not a safe space for LGBTQIA+ people, and the impact of such exclusion is often a fully realised trauma response.     

In another example, consider the child who is told over and over again they will “go to hell” if they disobey a parent or a leader. Hell becomes a tool to modify behaviour and manipulate the vulnerable. Rather than understanding God as loving, the child learns to conceptualise God as fear-inducing. This fear becomes associated with faith, with the community, and with religious spaces.  

All of these stem from real doctrines of many faith communities, and are propped up by statements of belief, church structures and community norms. In fact, most people have family members and friends who have undergone these exact stories. If you are reading this, chances are you are picturing someone (perhaps even yourself), and nodding your head.  

To make matters more complicated, when religious  structures are challenged, it can often result in social isolation, judgement or ostracism for the victim, which contributes another layer of distress. The very people that a suffering individual should run to for safety and healing become the very people dishing out the harm. And at the very point when the harm becomes evident, the community shuts its doors and the exclusion is complete. 

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me stories of their churches - upstanding, well-meaning, “Jesus-following” churches - closing in on them and casting them out. Like modern lepers, they find themselves on the margins, locked out of the social structures that moments ago felt like family. 

Microaggression Theory 

It is helpful at this point to recognise that not all trauma stems from one-off events. Rather, trauma can often be an accumulation of far smaller incidents that mark the experience as unsafe. 

These experiences are what we call microaggressions, which lead to microtrauma, which when added up results in full-blown trauma. I like to describe this like a bucket sitting beneath a leaking tap. Drip by drip, the bucket fills up as our sense of self and safety is worn down. 

People who have experienced spiritual or religious trauma such as this often face a whole range of negative trauma type symptoms. 

Many report feeling disconnected from their bodies, or feeling as though they are “losing contact” with their minds, not knowing what to believe or who to trust. Others will experience mountains of shame which cuts them off from the ability to interact healthily with the people around them, while others still feel as though their world is imploding as they begin to “deconstruct” the religious beliefs that have previously provided sure foundations. 

I have walked with people who simply cannot enter church buildings without breaking into tears, and others with significant health problems associated with decades of stress. People report struggling to sleep, ongoing dissociative episodes, self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs, and deep distrust of the people around them. I have watched as people’s mental health has deteriorated and tragically resulted too often in suicide. 

These are the realities of religious and spiritual trauma. These are the realities that our communities, our leaders, our therapists and care-providers need to acknowledge.   

The Power of Silence 

Here is where reality hits home. Microaggressions thrive on the silence of the majority. 

All of the trauma that we have spoken about to this point relies on an underlying social contract which lets comments slide and power go unchecked. My friend Emma Pitman refers to this type of structure as a human pyramid with the masses (who often see themselves as innocent) propping up harmful narratives by their inaction.      

If you witness behaviour (no matter how small) which undermines the safety of a vulnerable person, and you remain silent, YOU are propping up a structure of abuse. If you identify yourself as an “ally” but your allyship involves being a quiet bystander, you are perpetuating the exact cycles of harm you purport to stand against.

The converse of this reality is that you, even if you feel as though your voice is not significant, are in a remarkably powerful position to undo the harms that are currently rife. It does not take much to disrupt powerful narratives – but it does take courage. 

My hope for safer faith communities does not lie in the leadership of our current church. They have proven themselves through their actions to be adamantly anti-safety. 

Rather, my hope lies in the countless individuals I speak with every week who are tired of the same unchecked rhetoric which marginalises and harms. People are tired of seeing women pushed to the sidelines and of watching their queer friends barred from ministry. They’re tired of being told the same theologically baseless answers. They’re tired of hearing that the leaders are just “following their religion.”

Real healing for religiously traumatised individuals can only occur once they feel safe in their communities, once they feel heard, connected, and integrated. Slowly, this is taking place. Slowly, the mechanisms of power that withhold belonging are being dismantled. This movement, glacial paced though it may be, is what gives me hope.  

*Stone, A. M. (2013). Thou Shalt Not: Treating Religious Trauma and Spiritual Harm With Combined Therapy. Group, 37(4), 323–337.