About a week ago, my friend Kenna mentioned to me that: “We all have church hurt.”
I was flabbergasted beyond remorse. Church hurt? Everyone? Church hurt?
After a few exchanges back and forth, it was clear she meant to say: “We all have experienced hurt from other Christians, even those whose Church affiliation we shared.”
What I thought she meant was: “We all have been hurt by the Church, from the Church, with the support of Church leaders, whose doctrine overrode their will to be kind.”
The day prior to this, I finally (finally) opened up my issue of Counseling Today, and the issue featured a story about DV/IPV [Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence] inflicted against a bisexual woman whose several year abusive relationship ended up destroying her. I promise you that reading this was somehow the worst and best thing all at once. It was horrifying but affirming.
If you find the article, give it a read.
I’ll share my story below in terms of what the article left out but included lightly.
In the article, the femme partner reported the masculine partner using Church ministry and doctrine against her. She mentioned instance after instance of him being able to get away with abuse. In my experience, this is often because the Church leadership blames her for his behavior. Often pastors will look at the violence and espouse support that he is going to heal through Jesus’ salvation, and thus not only is it no longer the Church’s problem, but it is beyond her control as well. It’s a load of garbage, TBH.
My story is simply stated:
- met this guy online; he says he’s Christian
- he asks about my sexual orientation (still unsure why)
- I was volunteering at a church, and he wanted to leave
- we go to a new church
- he uses my liberalism and identity against me
- the pastor calls me into his office to berate me
- I am left with horrific PTSD and a bunch of other issues
Sure, there are some details ommitted, but some things are never actually made that clear in real life to be red flags or signs to leave. I want to stay true to the fact that my narrative was taken from me and placed into the hands of someone who felt it utterly and completely necessary to destroy me and my love for God.
Church hurt is that.
It’s the Church taking the side of abusers and saying that the Bible justifies it. It’s when the pastor is more concerned that you don’t care if people hear you’re bisexual than the fact of someone running to him claiming it makes you “fake”. It’s when your partner uses your openness as a weapon forged perfectly against you. It’s your parents believing that you’re in the wrong because how could the Church; God’s people fail you?
When my friend argued that Church hurt is simply people being mean, I was grateful that she didn’t understand. But admittedly, I was so enraged and envious, too. I have experienced horrific violence at the hands of a boy who used the Church to back him up in his abuse against me. And you know what? I never actually gave up on God.
I would be knocked out some weekends by my ex or wake up with no memory of anything from the past few days. There are blood stains all over my bed from all the horrible things done to me, and often I have to leave my bed at night because I’m so panicked beyond belief that my ex is somehow still going to be strangling me in the middle of the night and then say it was my fault because I have dated women, too.
To express that Church hurt is an extreme and almost offensive thing to claim everyone has is really my only argument here.
I actually couldn’t step foot in a Church building for a good stretch of time when I finally was able to get my ex to leave me alone. And to say he left me alone is a stretch in its own right, as he would constantly try to get me back and claim he changed. (Spoiler alert: he never did change, and he never did try to.)
When I finally stepped back into a Church community, I couldn’t figure out what my beliefs were or what I wasn’t willing to stand firm and argue on.
Years with a partner whose only goal is to beat me down, emotionally and physically, not to forget spiritually, made me so unsure that I knew God or anything about Him. My view on God is not limited by people’s understanding of faith or religion. It’s not even based on precedent of who has been previously allowed to hold leadership roles.
For someone to have written the article about DV/IPV and left out how abuse is constantly furthered by Christian conservative doctrine is appalling. I know the article would have been really long with that, but it would have helped people understand why the last thing that any, and I mean any, human being who survived DV/IPV needs a lecture on is faith or spirituality or even their relationship with their diety. Pastors are not great for this role of counselor to abuse survivors because pastors are beholden to their Church doctrine, which often includes things about how women are meant to be subservient or something about how men are allowed to do whatever they want to their partner, especially if they say it is to discipline the queerness out of her. (Disgusting, but sadly true.)
So next time you want to claim you’ve experienced “Church hurt,” consider if you mean to say that you’ve experienced “people bullying their equals by being people” instead of “leadership using their power to discredit my rights as a human being”.
XOXO,
Dorothy B
(that’s me)
Just Ask 