This is What Dangerous Religion Looks Like

Last year I wrote a post listing the dynamics of dangerous religion. I’ve spent the last year slowly adding to the list as I tweet and write my books and talk to people about the things that really scare them about the churches they’ve come out of. Eventually the list grew so long that I had to divide it into sections, and I’ll probably keep expanding it as time goes on. Please share your own experiences in the comments, and together we can continue to expose all the wrong things in the hope of bringing freedom and justice.

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10 Great Books on Spiritual Abuse & Mind Control

The summer after I left the dangerous group, I read a ton of books on the dynamics of spiritual manipulation within Christian cults. Books are a great way of finding one’s way back to reality. Through them I was able to get a better sense of the nightmare in which I had been living for the last three to four years of my life. And when tragedy struck at the end of that year, I wasn’t wholly unprepared to deal with it.

Tonight I wanted to share some of my favorite resources on spiritually abusive groups. Some of these are fictional and some are not. Stories are invaluable to a right understanding of cults because it’s so hard to grasp conceptually how these groups function unless you can see it laid out.

Archives (and Two-Year Blogging Anniversary)

Welcome, everyone! Because so many new people have been visiting the site recently, I’m creating this page to help you navigate through my posts from the last two years.

Seven Signs of Spiritual Abuse

[ Cross-posted at No Longer Quivering, a member of the Spiritual Abuse Survivor’s Blog Network ]

For about five years during and after college I was trapped in a dangerous Charismatic religious community. Living in a spiritually abusive environment is like a nightmare that you can’t wake out of. It can be hard to tell right from wrong, left from right. The people you trust the most could betray you at a moment’s notice. In my group I was routinely punished as a warning to the other members, and my best friend ended up dead under mysterious circumstances.

But in the process I learned to recognize some of the warning signs of spiritual abuse. I offer them today in the hopes that it might bring you clarity and healing.

Nine Totally Random Facts about Me

So this meme has been going around on Facebook, and at first I wasn’t really planning on participating, but I realize a bunch of new people have been reading and subscribing to my blog who might not know anything about me. So for the sake of introducing myself, here are nine (I think) interesting facts about me: