Nov 14 | Tear it down, Part 2 (Letters from the Coast)

This is the second in my three part series on Christian fundamentalism and the harm it can and will cause in people’s lives.

PART II: THE PLAIN MEANING

Years later, I found myself obsessively scrolling through a forum of survivors of IFB churches (Independent Fundamentalist Baptist).

I don’t remember how I got there. I’m absolutely fascinated by cults, and IFB churches are very culty, so that might have been part of it.

It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that, over and over, I saw the same damn story.

Kid (often but definitely not always a girl) ends up in IFB church. Maybe she grew up in it, but there were quite a few stories of families transferring to these churches from other ones. Finds herself in a community that prioritizes male authority, and concentrates it on the male pastor, who might as well be God.

Sidebar: I always found this funny as IFB and other fundamentalist Protestant churches usually dunk on the Roman Catholic Church for its hierarchy and elitism, but then literally recreate it without any of the accountability they might get from the wider communion or magisterium – hence, independent.

Said minister, or one of the other many many men in the parish with authority then sexually abuses the child.

Obviously many of the kids never come forward, but quite a few do.

And everything goes to hell.

If the kid is a girl (and especially if it’s a girl over 10 and under 18), the abuse is framed as a “giving in to temptation.” Abuser and abused are judged by elders of the church, and often sat before one another and made to “confess their sins.” Often the girl is then forced to apologize to the man’s wife, if he has one. In some cases, she is even forced to confess in front of the whole congregation.

If the kid is a boy, often the same process is followed, now tinted with all of the anti-LGBTQ persecution you might expect.

If the kid is under 10, there might be less focus on the “temptation” narrative, but the abuse is still framed as a lapse and the abuser is, for lack of a better word, coddled.

Because IFB churches are antagonistic toward the “sinful” outside world, more often than not no-one will go to the police. In the stories I read, the abuser was never kicked out of the church or even subject to what I would see as real discipline…and went on abusing.

I was completely horrified by everything. All of the above was accompanied by gaslighting and spiritual abuse.

Sexual abuse within families is bad enough. Over and over, survivors have to put up with family bullshit – secrets, enabling, denial, all of it. All of this is assuming that the survivor feels able to come forward, which of course many do not. I know people who have always wanted nothing but the best for their children who, confronted with abuse years after the fact, are utterly floored.

Because kids will do anything to survive. They will smile and grit their teeth and get good grades and put up and shut up.

But how much worse when an institution which was meant to be built on trust, meant to be built on not causing any little ones to stumble, meant to be built on a foundation of truth-telling, liberation, and love, enables objectification and abuse and hypocrisy of the highest order?

All of this brings me to X.

X is a composite of a few people I know. I’ll be clear right off the bat that any personal details about X are altered or hidden. Rest assured, however, that the accounts are true.

X grew up in a hardcore fundamentalist church, in a family that has no patience for any kind of Christianity other than what they believe is “the right one.” I, of course, would be deemed unsalvageable and destined for hell in this church.

X is from a large family, as many fundamentalists are. From the beginning, X was not entirely convinced of the rigidity of the faith they grew up in, but what was the alternative?

X was taught from birth that the job of the true Christian is to save souls. One’s age should not be an impediment to this work, X’s church family insisted. Little children were responsible for the salvation of everyone they knew, and they had to work fast because time was running out. The apocalypse was coming, and it was up to their church – the right church – to save the world.

It might sound a little exciting, and I imagine that sometimes it was. But more often than not, it was terrifying and stressful.

Imagine being 6 and feeling responsible for the salvation of the whole world.

My mum was still choosing my outfits and brushing my hair at 6.

X was constantly on the lookout for Satan, who was not merely outside, but inside the heart, which was “deceitful above all things.” All of the children of the church were taught never to trust their own feelings. If they had questions, they were to ask their parents or their pastor.

“Look at the Bible,” they were told. “Look at the ‘plain meaning.’ That will fix everything.”

But of course, it didn’t.