Thank you, Shannon, for sharing this. It sounds like cult indoctrination and hazing, the sorts of social abuse that are baked in to too many of the institutions that survive in the West (and no doubt elsewhere) under the guise of tradition, often justified by religion, and blanketed by the shame of those who survive them. Although I was not raised Evangelical, I saw less virulent versions in the Catholic church that I was part of.

It’s really helpful to throw light on this. I feel that many defensive Christians only focus on how people react to them in politics or public life, but it is these sorts of long-term projects of indoctrination that are even more damaging. Those who stay in the group have to do all sorts of compensatory rationalization to deal with their own unexamined trauma, so they often perpetuate it. That is, it’s not just how Christians treat non-Christians, it’s how they treat their own members and children, that often lead to rejection and animosity. (Again, of course Christians aren’t the only group who does this.) When I lived in the US, I saw so much of this in so many of my students who acted like cult members, nursing trauma they didn’t understand, even when they were members of mainline denominations.

Thank for sharing this, especially for making it so concrete. It’s one thing to talk vaguely about these sorts of problems, another entirely to describe an example that is such a searing indictment of this system.