it boggles my mind that our parents really thought we would never speak up/get the opportunity to be honest and have it received as truth. I'm really really thankful for social media connecting so many of us who grew up extremely isolated!
There are so many of us... and social media (among other things) has allowed us to hear each other tell our stories and realize we aren't alone. Thanks for sharing your story. Can't wait for the book. :-)
The root of all of it--all fundamentalist religion--is the outsourcing the complex process of discernment and decision making to an certain, oversimplified external authority. For cults, it is a personality. but for all evangelicals, is an inerrant view of scripture and a single acceptable interpretation of that. You don't see more mainstream evangelical leaders (like David French and Russell Moore, both of whom I respect nonetheless) making this connection. https://open.substack.com/pub/hollyberkleyfletcher/p/bad-religion?r=17nn2v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Yes, and there’s some outsourcing going on with their political activism, I think. Feels like they can’t trust the kids to be convinced; so, they have to make their beliefs into laws (if that makes sense).
Wow, Sarah! As someone with absolutely no awareness of, or knowledge about, this extreme evangelical philosophy/endoctrination, all I can say is: what a scarily challenging way to grow up. Glad you survived! Makes me even more eager to read your book. ❤️
The feeling of being an alien in a world that spoke a different language is so resonant. I remember trying to watch the Kimmy Schmidt TV show, and it triggered me almost nonstop through the first season — her (fictional) isolation in a bunker and subsequent waymaking in the real world felt like our stories were one and the same. Even though I didn’t live in a bunker, I might as well have. The cost of escaping was high indeed.
I raised my kids evangelical adjacent as my siblings were evangelical fundamentalists. As a progressive Christian we avoided "controversial" topics. I regret this now. When one of my children invited the family in to their queerness they were met with shame and shunning. We tried for years to make the family safe for my child. It was not to be. I was unaware of how thick the soup was my siblings were swimming in and that rejection of queerness was a cornerstone to their belief system. So my child went from feeling beloved and as part of a larger community to the trauma of being rejected simply for who they were. So the ripples of trauma are not only for those raised in the systems but for those adjacent to them also.
One phrase that became common in my evangelical spaces was “own your faith.” (In my mind, I’m connecting that to Ron Luce.) the idea was that we couldn’t just live to think through the faith we were brought up in and how it makes sense of the world. We had to so ingrain a very particular spin on faith that it formed every part of our identity.
I think about that a lot as my faith (I hesitate to say I “own” it) puts me at odds with the churches and people I grew up with. I don’t think evangelical leaders wanted us to own our faith; they wanted us to own theirs.
it boggles my mind that our parents really thought we would never speak up/get the opportunity to be honest and have it received as truth. I'm really really thankful for social media connecting so many of us who grew up extremely isolated!
There are so many of us... and social media (among other things) has allowed us to hear each other tell our stories and realize we aren't alone. Thanks for sharing your story. Can't wait for the book. :-)
The root of all of it--all fundamentalist religion--is the outsourcing the complex process of discernment and decision making to an certain, oversimplified external authority. For cults, it is a personality. but for all evangelicals, is an inerrant view of scripture and a single acceptable interpretation of that. You don't see more mainstream evangelical leaders (like David French and Russell Moore, both of whom I respect nonetheless) making this connection. https://open.substack.com/pub/hollyberkleyfletcher/p/bad-religion?r=17nn2v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Yes, and there’s some outsourcing going on with their political activism, I think. Feels like they can’t trust the kids to be convinced; so, they have to make their beliefs into laws (if that makes sense).
Wow, Sarah! As someone with absolutely no awareness of, or knowledge about, this extreme evangelical philosophy/endoctrination, all I can say is: what a scarily challenging way to grow up. Glad you survived! Makes me even more eager to read your book. ❤️
The feeling of being an alien in a world that spoke a different language is so resonant. I remember trying to watch the Kimmy Schmidt TV show, and it triggered me almost nonstop through the first season — her (fictional) isolation in a bunker and subsequent waymaking in the real world felt like our stories were one and the same. Even though I didn’t live in a bunker, I might as well have. The cost of escaping was high indeed.
I raised my kids evangelical adjacent as my siblings were evangelical fundamentalists. As a progressive Christian we avoided "controversial" topics. I regret this now. When one of my children invited the family in to their queerness they were met with shame and shunning. We tried for years to make the family safe for my child. It was not to be. I was unaware of how thick the soup was my siblings were swimming in and that rejection of queerness was a cornerstone to their belief system. So my child went from feeling beloved and as part of a larger community to the trauma of being rejected simply for who they were. So the ripples of trauma are not only for those raised in the systems but for those adjacent to them also.
One phrase that became common in my evangelical spaces was “own your faith.” (In my mind, I’m connecting that to Ron Luce.) the idea was that we couldn’t just live to think through the faith we were brought up in and how it makes sense of the world. We had to so ingrain a very particular spin on faith that it formed every part of our identity.
I think about that a lot as my faith (I hesitate to say I “own” it) puts me at odds with the churches and people I grew up with. I don’t think evangelical leaders wanted us to own our faith; they wanted us to own theirs.
Looking forward to your book!