My phone's photo album memories setting reminded me of this photo, taken 5 years ago.
I snapped this photo in the church bathroom so I would have a full length shot of this dress I made and felt pretty in. Since the capturing of this image, the dress has lived in the back of my closet.
My mormon scriptures, featured in my hand, live in my closet now, too. A spiritual renovation has led me through painful realizations about how my childhood faith contributed to the shame, guilt, & fear I work tirelessly to let go of as an adult. Peeling back so many layers of religious dysfunction continues to be quite the experience - vulnerable, maddening, freeing, passionate, sometimes uncertain & confusing, and always sorrowful. |  |
For reasons that are partly professional and deeply personal, I am earning a certification in religious trauma through the Global Center for Religious Research. I want to find a soul-lit path through the messy middle of social work, spirituality, and theology. At the time of writing this, I've finished the first quarter of the certification and have felt my awareness of religious trauma expand in ways I did not anticipate, and, because writing helps me make sense of it all, I am here sorting my thoughts.
I've decided to do the scary thing and share pieces of this journey. I won't share everything, because some of it is too personal to travel from heart to fingers typing, but I will share tidbits of my learning & renovation. Religiosity & spirituality based in Abrahamic faith traditions are steeped in complicated dynamics both individually and collectively. For as long as the body of religion has existed, people of all genders and identities have been drastically hurt. I don't intend this to become a free for all in bashing religion. Religion, while it has hurt many, has also provided a spiritual beacon for many. While expressions of my hurt will likely come off as salty, at the heart of me remains my value in honoring the mess as kindly as possible.
Getting into it:
My first massive takeaway from this certification in religious trauma is about fundamentalism. If you search “LDS fundamentalist”, you will find a link to the church’s website claiming that they are not fundamentalists because they no longer practice polygamy. The wording of their claim leads the reader to believe that fundamentalism = polygamy, with their claim an attempt at separating from their formative history. There are, of course, groups who identify as fundamentalist mormons; families who practice polygamy and in extreme cases live on compounds where a number of atrocities happen; all rooted in perverse power and control exerted over the vulnerable in the name of eternal glory.
While I can understand why the current church doesn’t want to be associated with these types of incidents, no carefully crafted statement on a website can change the fact that fundamentalism and polygamy are two distinct practices.
Polygamy is the practice of having more than one spouse, and in mormon culture it is always one husband with multiple wives, while *religious fundamentalism is “the belief that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contain the fundamental, basic, intrinsic, essential, inherent truth about humanity and the deity; that this essential truth is fundamentally opposed by forces of evil, which must be vigorously fought; that this truth must be followed today according to the fundamental, unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and follow those fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity”.
*Definition featured in Dr. Gill Harvey's presentation 'Developmental Religious Trauma in the Familial Setting: Imagination or Experience' .
By this definition, the church of my childhood qualifies as a fundamentalist religion. So much so, it was listed as the first example of fundamentalist churches on the slide following the definition.
I paused the presentation at that point. Took a minute to breathe.
Stared at the screen for a slice of time, and have been in a bit of a funk since.
I was brought up in a fundamentalist religion while the church claimed it wasn’t the thing it is.
I have had a lifelong relationship with gaslighting, so much so that in the days following my brain injury, being stuck alone in bed with myself unable to engage my typical methods of distraction was wildly uncomfortable; (necessary for furthering down the path of trauma recovery, but uncomfortable all the same). I learned very quickly I had been gaslighting myself (because I was taught to), so that I was unaware that my childhood faith contributed to that specific harm feels like the ultimate dupe. We should be held in safety at church; in spiritual sanctuary; not breathing in toxins from the poison in the paint on the pews.
I'm not asserting that there is anything wrong with fundamentalist religions per se, but at least say you are the thing you are. There are plenty of extraordinarily smart people in authority positions in that church; there is no way those in charge of public affairs don't know that polygamy and fundamentalism are different. This isn't a naivety, this is a calculated manipulation. They must be so desperate to separate themselves from harms their theology is responsible for, that instead of holding themselves accountable, they are just lying about what they are, and hoping that their teaching of the sin inherent in critical thinking will protect their membership numbers. Gotta rake in all that tithing, after all.
(Told you this would get salty)
When congregants eternal spiritual welfare is on the line, can we please care about them enough to have a value in transparency? Transparency wasn't something I learned how to put into action until my second social work diploma practicum. I shadowed a job developer who delivered hard truths to people with transformational kindness. I had not witnessed transparency with such clarity before my experience there. I left that placement grateful to her for the relational learnings and try to practice transparency as often as possible now.
And now that I type that out, I'm wondering if my childhood was what it was because my parents were so deeply influenced by the church we attended. It all feels so twisty right now, like religion was received traumatically because I had the proper childhood wounds to receive it that way, but maybe my childhood environment was so harmful in part because of teachings and expectations from the church.
So, fair to say, I'm a little mad looking at a picture of myself in a pretty dress I made 5 years ago, while standing in the bathroom of the fundamentalist church I grew up in, a bathroom I'd seek refuge in when theological trauma turned me into a disassociated disciple.
Processing,
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