What is religious harm?
Religious harm is a broad category which includes:
religious/spiritual abuse,
religious/spiritual trauma,
spiritual identity disruption,
“church hurt,”
Adverse Religious Experiences, and
some types of moral injury.
A person can experience religious harm if they’ve been negatively impacted (even indirectly) by religious beliefs, teachings, practices, rituals, leaders, institutions, or groups. For the purposes of this article, we’ll use “religious” and “spiritual” interchangeably.
Religious/spiritual abuse
Abuse that happens in the context of religion or spirituality. Abuse usually involves a power dynamic. In religious settings, it can look like coercion or intimidation from a faith leader, shaming/bullying people using religious beliefs or doctrines, intentional isolation of someone who is perceived to be “sinning”, denying harm done by a faith leader, victim-blaming, using sacred texts to justify harmful treatment, manipulating people to give their money, and more.
Religious/spiritual trauma
Trauma is what can happen in a person’s body after an extremely painful, stressful, and/or overwhelming experience. Religious harm of many kinds can result in either “classic” PTSD, which is about one event, or “chronic”/“complex” PTSD, which is about a series of events or a consistently unsafe environment. We can also be traumatized by experiences we had with caregivers in our earliest years of life, and it counts as religious trauma if those experiences were connected to a caregiver’s participation and/or belief in religious practices or rituals.
Spiritual Identity Disruption
Coined by Rebekah Drumsta: “when what you believed or were taught about faith or spirituality collides with an opposing lived experience - which may include abuse, trauma, betrayal and hypocrisy. This polarization cannot be reconciled using the existing foundation thus causing a disruption of identity and crisis of belief. Subsequently, previously held concepts of politics, family structure and parenting, gender roles, race, morality and other constructs of behavior or belief will also be called into question.”
“Church hurt”
This is not a technical or clinical term, but is used colloquially to talk about experiences people have within religious communities that impact their ability to trust others or connect to God. Danielle Bernock lists “betrayal, lying, exclusion, bullying, and nepotism” as common sources of church hurt, and notes “Frequently this [church hurt] is exacerbated by the judgement and criticism of people in the church through lack of love and validation. This leads a person into feelings of isolation, disillusionment, and complicates their spiritual journey.”
Adverse Religious Experiences
Coined by Drs. Brian Peck and Laura Anderson of the Religious Trauma Institute and based off of the study of Adverse Childhood Experiences beginning in the 1990s. Their definition is: “Any experience of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual’s sense of safety or autonomy and/or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well-being.”
Religious practices that can lead to Adverse Religious Experiences include: Fear of hell or eternal conscious torment; purity, virginity, and abstinence culture; altar calls, healings, and scary sermons; spanking and corporal punishment; patriarchy and oppression of women, racial minorities, LGBTQIA+ folks, children, and the disabled.
Moral injury
Moral injury is “the lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, behavioral, and social impact of perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations (Litz et al., 2009, p. 697)” (cited in this article). In the United States, as well as in many countries around the world, people may experience a form of moral injury from watching their religious or political leaders commit harmful or violent acts in the name of religion. This can also happen to folks who are employees or volunteers in a religious organization.
What impact does religious harm have?
All of the below are possible to experience due to religious harm.
Mental and physical health symptoms
Difficulty trusting others
Disconnection from community and/or family
Paralyzing shame
Existential dread/despair
Hopelessness
If you’ve spent any portion of your life in or around religious environments, you may have experienced religious harm. Religious harm can occur even when people have the best of intentions (and they often do).
If you struggle with depression or anxiety symptoms, and you’ve experienced religious harm, it’s important to be able to talk to a safe and neutral person about what happened. Religion and spirituality can be transformative and deeply healing for people, which is unfortunately why they are also able to do so much harm.
If you’d like to process more in therapy about how religion has harmed you, schedule a consult call (select “Request Appointment”) with me today.
