How a Christian Cult Stole my Childhood – Part 4

Answering your questions

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last wrote something about my childhood experience in a Christian cult. Time goes by so quickly, and as the old saying goes, it really does heal all wounds. Except, as I recently described it to my husband, the healing isn’t linear. It goes up in a spiral, often cycling back to layers of pain you thought you’d already dealt with. I’m always taken aback when something triggers this pain. It could be a memory, or something someone says, or even someone’s innocent behaviour… anything can begin a new cycle of healing. Our ego would rather not have to go through these difficult cycles. But it’s worth it in the long run.

I recently delved into a Netflix series about a cult in the U.S. On the outside the cult bears no semblance whatsoever to the one I grew up in. You don’t even find out that it has any affiliations to religion whatsoever until the final couple of episodes. But it definitely still triggered me. I found old, familiar, and painful feelings bubbling to the surface as I watched it. I felt profoundly sorry for, and compassionate towards, the little girl who had to endure so much because the adults and environment around her weren’t emotionally safe. I was reminded of the feeling of light and freedom I began to experience for the first time in my life when I started to question it all. I was reminded of the struggle it’s been to prove to others, and even to my own inner voices, that I haven’t made mountains out of molehills, and that what I experienced as a very young person was indeed wrong.

I began to feel a quiet stirring inside; a longing to speak up again. A longing to be part of the multitude of voices speaking out against injustice and cruelty and repression everywhere, and not staying silent just because it’s easier.

I could tell myself that I’ve already said my part. But this is the kind of story that doesn’t have an end, and never will, until every single similar infrastructure on this earth is shown up for what it is, and people can finally reclaim their agency, rediscover their individuality, and live life freely and joyfully they way they were always meant to.

It can be hard to decide exactly what to cover in these blog posts, because there’s just so much I could go in to. Instead, I’ve decided to ask you what you’d like to know. I’ve collated some of your questions and will be answering two of these below.

Question 1: What are some things you thought were normal until you were out of the situation?

There’s so much I could unpack here. There are just so many things I’d gone about thinking were perfectly normal and acceptable for 18-years of my life, only to discover that they really weren’t.

Here are some examples.

1.      I thought it was perfectly normal and acceptable to have unsolicited physical contact from adults of both sexes. For example, during a prayer meeting, it was extremely common for someone to come over to you and place their hands on your head, rock you back and forth, or lean really close to your face.

*EDIT: I have thought about this over the past few days and weeks and I feel like I want to add something, not to justify this behaviour, but to put it into context. The 'laying on of hands' happens in many different Pentecostal churches, and other branches of the Christian church as well. It's not exclusive to the church I grew up in. Also, back in the nineties, I feel like child protection was more lax than it is now. So although this behaviour (laying on of hands, being rocked, etc) may feel now like an invasion of personal space and even worse, it's something which still happens globally to people of all ages, many times consensually.

2.   I thought it was normal to believe simultaneously that I was better than everyone else around me because God had chosen me to be part of the holiest church on earth, and also believe I was the world’s greatest sinner because I was consistently told so.

3. I thought it was normal to believe that any questions or doubts which arose in my mind, which went against the leaders of the church or what they taught, was sin. I thought it was normal to believe that the leaders of my church were closer to God than anybody else on the earth.

4.   I thought it was normal to give up my precious summer holidays to attend three weeks of church camps.

5.     I thought it was normal to attend 6+ church meetings a week.

6.    I thought it was normal to be 7 or 8 years old and alone with a man in a tiny office, door closed, knees touching because there was no space, being prayed over for healing.

7   I thought it was normal for people’s supposed sins to be called out during sermons, for all to hear.

8.  I thought it was normal to believe that sex education classes were sinful.

9.    I thought it was normal to sit through demon-deliverance prayer meetings in my early teens.

10   I thought it was normal to feel overwhelming guilt which had me confessing the smallest details of my life (crushes, my period starting, etc.) to youth leaders who took on the role of counsellors, without any suitable credentials.

11.   I thought it was normal to believe that I would catch a demon if I watched a film or TV program with a sex scene in it.

12.   I thought it was normal to be shamed for crying.

13.   I thought it was normal to be told, “Don’t worry, we’ll find a husband for you as well,” and trust that the church leaders would find me a partner if it was God’s will.

14.   I thought it was normal to always feel like an outsider, never acceptable enough; hopelessly lapping up crumbs of attention and approval.

There's plenty more, but that will be for another post.

Question 2: How did it affect your social interactions with friends?

This is a great question. Again, there’s so much to unpack.

The majority of my friends were in the church. There were quite a few of us girls around the same age. We spent most of our time together, at all the church meetings, church camps, and even at the church school. When I went to public school in S3, one of my friends from the church came as well, and another close friend joined the following year.

I actually have some fond and happy memories of my friendships in the church. Looking back, there was of course a lot of toxicity, but it would be wrong of me to say that it was all bad memories. In fact, my happiest memories of attending the church are the ‘in-between’ moments, like when a friend and I would go to a local shop between meetings at summer camp and buy a sausage roll and a can of Coke, or when we’d cook breakfast together on the campsite, or when we’d share a lift to a meeting and talk about some of the stuff normal young girls talk about.

Some of these girls have since exited the church as well, and I’m so grateful to have people to talk to who understand the extent of what we went through. Some others still remain in the church to this day. I wish them well, but I don’t believe we’d have much in common now at all. I can’t help remembering the letter I was sent by one of them shortly after I moved to France, where she outlined how much of a bad role model I had become because I had decided to dye my hair and attend a different church. Or the time another one came to visit, only to go back and report that I was lusting after some guy over there and had obviously fallen into a very sinful lifestyle.

In all honesty, the friendship side of things is water off my back now. I’ve met and made so many wonderful friends since then, who enrich my life in a thousand different ways, and show me the true meaning of friendship and unconditional love.

We weren’t really allowed to have non-Christian friends (that’s what we called people who didn’t attend our church). We were told they would lead us astray if we got too close. We were meant to influence them for Christ, not to be influenced. Any friendships we allowed ourselves ‘out in the world’ were made with the express aim of converting them and bringing them to the church.

One of my best friends today is a girl I met when I transferred from the Christian school to a public one, in S3. From day dot she didn’t treat me like the holy-living Christian I tried to be, but actually like someone quite likeable, funny, and normal. I’d rarely experienced this before. Although I did bring her along to the church a few times (we laugh about that now!), I actually realised that I enjoyed our friendship simply for what it was. I didn’t want to acknowledge this, because if I had truly admitted this to myself, I would have had to end the friendship.

Similarly, when I started university in Glasgow, I unexpectedly and quickly made a core group of friends who treated me with respect, and whose company I thoroughly enjoyed. We were quite the bunch of misfits, if I’m being honest, but I found myself feeling happier around them and at university in general than I’d ever felt in church. Again, I ignored this realisation, pretended it wasn’t true, but I was really starting to enjoy this season of my life.

Being an overthinker, in the darkest recesses of my mind, I was in constant torment. Back and forth the thoughts would go. Why am I feeling so happy around people who aren’t part of my church? I should give the friendships up. But I really didn’t want to.

Later on, after I’d left the church and was attending a very nice and normal Church of England in France - and as I was beginning to heal - the thoughts would still come back to torment me from time to time. What if I was getting too close to people, ultimately preferring my friends to God? I couldn’t shake the fear I was doing something wrong. Being too happy, not holy enough. Of course, this all stemmed from the trauma that I’ve been working through ever since.

Ironically, it’s friends who have helped me heal and move on. Friends who have wiped my tears away and who have held me when I need to be held. The leadership of my old church had cause to be afraid of us making real and true connections outside of the church. Because it’s real and true connection – unconditional love – which finally opens our eyes and sets us free. When we know real, true love, we don’t need the crumbs of someone’s occasional approval anymore. We’re finally free to be our true selves, and live according to our own values; not anyone else’s.