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I don’t point out tiny flaws—I breakdown the l

I don’t point out tiny flaws—I breakdown the large yet hidden abuses in Christian Fundamentalism.

But language matters—I say that often. It usually refers to naming behaviors but it also applies to cherry picked scripture and twisted theology. Part of my deconstruction process and awareness awakening is realizing when language shuts down and shames.

“You’re judging them,” is a frequent criticism by Duggar defenders, pastor defenders, the “not all Christians” crowd, and oddly grouchy older women who hit and run on Facebook.

So I unpacked that until I put my finger on the catch. It comes back to context, misquoting, and manipulating Jesus’s words.

I grew up in “don’t judge” culture. It led to a lack of discernment and naïveté in me—and a lack of accountability for others.

A quick read of the Sermon on the Mount widens the intent. An open mind is free to question “is judgement bad?” And that’s what deconstruction is—a series of questions to unpack paradigms, platitudes, and carefully picked one liners used to nurture conformity.

Please judge what you hear. How someone treats children. How a pastor leads. Critique and examine the fruit of anyone claiming “the way.” Jesus’s point about hypocrisy is unthreatened by keeping your own swim lane clear. By loving and embracing the fruits of the spirit. By holding yourself to the same standard. The word “judge” has been stolen and it’s time to reclaim it.

Grab my free FUNDIE CHEATSHEET to get the inside words that signal fundamentalist abuse. Know what to watch for—and what to judge.

#criticalthinking #criticalthought #religioustrauma #religiousabuse #hypocrisy #sundaysermon #judgementalpeople #churchtoo #progressivechristianity #jesusfeminist #breakitdown #exevangelical #recovery #cognitivedissonance

Gratitude is powerful and perspective shifting. Bu

Gratitude is powerful and perspective shifting. But like spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity, there’s a dark side to gratitude in high control religion. A performative, gaslit, false and manipulative blanket applied that paralyzes followers and keeps them silent and complacent.

Christians are taught to give thanks for all things and to give glory for all things to Christ. This includes pain, suffering, hardship. It also includes dysfunctional situations, injustice, inequality, enslavement, and loss.

One of the worst things a Christian can be accused of is being ungrateful. You don’t complain about God has given you (even if it hurts or you know how to improve it.) You always know it can be worse (hellfire.)

When you want something as a Christian, you pray for it. Which sounds like thinking it over—except you’ll given God all the credit for what’s received or decided, and if there’s a problem, we’ll, to God be the glory.

In my own life, this kept me from articulating what I wanted. It kept me from getting help when I was abused. It kept me from setting boundaries, leaving toxic situations, making decisions, owning consequences.

This thanksgiving, I urge you to look at what you’re saying your grateful for. If you need a quick filter for what falls into healthy and shame-driven, the Serenity prayer works. Maybe there’s more in your control than you realize. You aren’t obligated to express false gratitude, find the bright side of crap, perform to portray holiness, or like poor Priscilla in this video—-add scrubbing mildew to your work list because hubby wanted a camper and brought home a wreck because he found a good deal.

Fundamentalism recovery frees me to be honestly grateful for the goodness in my life, in warm light of love.

For more on how Christian Fundamentalism gets into our heads grab my free FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#gratitude #thanksgiving22 #thanksgiving #duggars #toxicgratitude #spiritualbypassing #toxicpositivity #gaslighting #gaslightingyourself #settingboundaries #callitout #serenityprayer #religioustrauma

I did feel freer. I wore pants. Went to the librar

I did feel freer. I wore pants. Went to the library. Read Harry Potter. Threw dinner parties for church friends. Drank wine to better understand the miracles. But was I “free indeed?” Not even close. In fact, as the secret practices and stifled screams from abuse I had a duty to “endure,” while leadership emphasized complementarianism, our reformed years ushered in a silent prison much worse than anything I experienced in the IBLP.

How free can she be while other women in high control prison are the subjects of legal accusations brought against Johns Piper and MacArthur?

Jinger made a step forward. She wears pants. She’s feeling less externally restricted. I’ll read her book and root for her. But I don’t trust this title and a lot is coming up as I hear various reviews. Agenda. Usefulness to a movement (see what Desiring God has had to say about deconstruction) who wants those questioning to keep their butts in church and with Jesus.

Fundamentalism is about so much more than a dress code. The fruit of Calvinism, complementarianism, TULIP, and staying in abuse because God “needed” me there as a mission was rotten and left me without comfort. It was hell on earth, with no hope for eternity because it was the Calvinist God I was predestined to join. Not even death would’ve offered relief.

What did make me free indeed? Identifying religious trauma and no longer suffering to maintain the patriarchy’s agenda.

To learn more about how these pastors are connected in fundamentalism grab my free pdf the FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#duggars #jingervuolo #jingerduggar #19kids #countingon #religioustrauma #fundies #christianfundamentalism #gracetoyou #desiringgod #exevangelical #domesticabusesurvivor #traumahealing

Everybody flubs sometimes. But what’s notable

Everybody flubs sometimes.

But what’s notable about Candace’s rapid backpedalling is her insistence she’s all about love. All the love. God’s love. Big love. Storytelling love. Creative, diverse love.

Not so much an apology. Some shamey stuff about our divided country and how we all need Christmas more than ever right now. Some network clarification.

Whatever. Candace’s example serves a familiar platter of fragility rather than ownership and accountability, and survivors of religious trauma will recognize it. “That absolutely breaks my heart,” is a well-worn trope to make us feel guilty for criticizing rude (or worse) behavior. It centers her feelings over the people harmed in the first place. And it reeks of “sorry I got caught” instead if “I’m sorry I said that.”

For more coded language breakdowns grab my free FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#candacecameronbure #oopsie #traditionalmarriage #marriageequality #gayrightsarehumanrights #accountability #fundies #fundiesnark #exevangelical #religioustrauma

It’s exhausting to constantly reassert boundarie

It’s exhausting to constantly reassert boundaries. So what’s going on there? You aren’t responsible for what others do. And it can be very difficult to own behaviors when we’re still identifying and coping with what’s been done to us. But if violations are continual, there’s more going on and chances are, you can do something about it within your self that doesn’t depend on their cooperation at all.

This is a great area to explore with a therapist. Can’t afford therapy? Go to Al Anon and get a sponsor. That’s free.

Examples of this are: removing yourself from a situation. Paying attention to doormat signals you may be sending. In business? Look at your user flow! If it’s constantly misused, avoided, or generates confusion, what can you adjust to make it clearer?

Another healthy example: remember you teach people how to treat you. If you DM me with a question you can find on Google, I’ll probably (gently and kindly) point you there. But if I get a bunch of questions asking me what an insider fundie word means, it’s on me to define it. That’s why I made the FUNDIE CHEATSHEET (all caps because that’s what it’s called) in the first place.

It was a bright day when I realized I didn’t have boundary violations as a regular event anymore. I wasn’t as defensive. My days were marked with warm, kind, human exchanges, sometimes about hard things but always so affirming. That’s the energy I try to bring, and it’s the energy I receive.

Introspection and self-awareness goes a long way in the healing journey. It can hard work but you’re so worth it.

#traumahealing #selfawareness #codependency #boundaries #teachpeoplehowtotreatyou #healthyboundaries #goodenergy #lawofattraction #exevangelical #religioustrauma #fundies #christianfundamentalism

One of the side effects of attending a megachurch

One of the side effects of attending a megachurch is that statistics felt skewed in our smaller universe. So, things that were rare in the world weren’t rare to us. We probably knew someone who had whatever it was—cancer, heart defects, criminal SA—because our population sample was so large.

So there was this year when it seemed like the women were dying of cancer at an alarming rate. In reality, they probably weren’t overall. But at church? It was a parade of funerals as young women under 40 dropped like dominoes.

I got very angry about the funerals. The happy clappy “home goings” and the celebrations they were with Jesus, the reminders to dry our eyes. I was heartbroken for my friends who’d lost their mothers. Sad for a young woman who died at 28. Scared of reproductive cancers. Confused by a God who “needed” to take people in their prime.

The earnest performances with their tech glitches and flat notes, missed words, boom-chick beats—all of it was a distraction. When I voiced this, I was scolded for how these performers meant well, and that some people found it comforting.

When my daughter died and it was my turn to sit on the front row, I didn’t allow the happy songs. I cried without ceasing for weeks. I rejected anyone who suggested God took her because he needed her.

And I got really clear on why defects of development happen, how humans grieve, how vital it is to feel what we feel and let it flow through. How deep love results in deep grief—and that’s ok. My view of sky daddy changed. I learned to sit in discomfort without an easy answer or a tone-deaf song to sugar coat my pain.

Sometimes, life hurts. And its okay to sound that way. You can’t really bypass the human experience anyway—all that stored emotion builds up and comes out in different, often toxic, ways.

P.S— it’s ok to cry at funerals ❤️

For support while healing from adverse religious experiences join A DIFFERENT COMMUNION, link in bio.

Cat: culture

#spiritualbypassing #stagesofgrief #duggars #fundies #iblp #christianfundamentalism #exevangelical #homegoing #southernbaptist #denial #cognitivedissonance #righteous #churchmusic #griefwork #bodykeepsthescore

I know the lines. “You have to consider the bi

I know the lines.

“You have to consider the bigger picture. He means well.”

“You have to keep in mind what a good provider he is.”

“You shouldn’t throw out the good with the bad.”

“That moment was taken out of context. Of course it looks bad all on it’s own.”

“Look how hard he’s trying. Look at the progress he’s made.”

These are the lines that help a woman stay. They are the lines that help her tuck her experience back into her pants and smooth her hair. Considering him and all his needs and his promises to be better and his struggles are the context she remembers so she can forgive. So she can get up the next day. So she can cover the scars with her hair and smile.

No, I don’t need to consider the rest of the episode or the whole show. I lived that. The show reminds me how.

I chose, finally, to get away and parent my children differently. To live a non violent life that treats others with respect and takes their feelings seriously. To solve problems and communicate in better ways. Many, many times I failed or fell short. But what I will never do is support this example as part a ideal.

To read more about how Christian Fundamentalists shelter domestic abuse in their homes, grab my free FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#thewaltons #familylife #religioustrauma #domesticabuse #domesticviolenceawareness #gentleparenting #nobullying #exevangelical #alanon #trad #submissivewife

I wonder what’s the magic number. If it’s not

I wonder what’s the magic number. If it’s not all Christians, then how many is too many? What’s the critical mass? How many years of evidential proof that a teaching is harmful does it take before the defenders realize it’s not working? That it actually produces the opposite effect?

It’s a poverty of humanity to value an institution beyond reproof and there are casualties in a choice like that.

And yet parents will cut off children. Spouses will cut off each other. The “not all Christians” is an expensive failure of response to the call to action.

Jesus said you had one job: Love one another.

If you witness religious trauma or hear an experience of it, and your response is to distance yourself from the source while defending the system that protects it, you are not safe to survivors. Nourished danger is not love. Our healing is too delicate and important to sit in your midst.

Maybe not all Christians. But unless you’re doing something to change it, it might as well be. We can’t risk the time we have left to your hands.

For more on the realities of Christian Fundamentalism grab my free FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#religioustrauma #exevangelical #notall #traumahealing #beyondthewound #igotout #fundies #cultsurvivor #domesticabuse #churchabuse #churchabuserecovery #spiritualgrowth #advocates

It all started with a car plastered in these words

It all started with a car plastered in these words in all caps. Then comedian @toberwilliamscomedy read it word for word. Then it matched my mood while moving and my job ending while stuck in traffic during a target run. I swore I’d never do a lip sync video but here we are. Jessus honk, y’all. I’ll get back to serious fundie education after Christmas. 🎄❤️🥰✨

#exevangelical #deconstruction #religioushumor #religiousjokes #religioustrauma #dontyellatme #gottalaugh #targetrun

Personal responsibility wasn’t part of my evange

Personal responsibility wasn’t part of my evangelical upbringing. Neither was agency and autonomy. Even if I sinned, chances are the devil made me do it—so removed was I from active choice. But fear not, because the rapture would soon come and remove us forever from any kind of hardship. All we had to do was hang on.

It’s just one of the many reasons why I stayed in abuse for 15 years instead of leaving after 1. And why I waited for rescue instead of taking action to help myself for so long. It’s why I’ve seen congregations laugh at climate change and why they thirst for war. And why an evangelical voting base sits in inaction on so many needs—they believe the end is near, always.

(What was one of my tip offs it was all a hoax? I realized the pastors invested. Financial gain in the future demonstrated hypocrisy and cracked the door open.)

One of the reasons healing after high-control religion is so much work is because it takes time and therapy to learn to sit in uncomfortable feelings. To admit complicity. To learn how to take action and take responsibility. These are habits we should’ve learned in childhood. But late is better than never, and agency, autonomy, and responsibility are mine now.

To learn more about Christian Fundamentalism and how it hides in mainstream churches grab my free pdf the FUNDIE CHEATSHEET, link in bio.

#religioustrauma #rapture #personalresponsibility #agency #autonomy #wishfulthinking #hypocrite #decon2023 #deconstruction #exevangelical #escapism #sbc #churchtoo #domesticabuseawareness #traumahealing #climatechange

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