Tag Archive | religious brainwashing
Mind Games of Abusers: When Words Have No Meaning
If you dialogue with a spiritually abusive leader or cult member, prepare to enter a mind warp. The rules of sense, reason, and accepted definitions go out the window and are replaced with jargon, double-speak, and circular logic. You step out of reality and stare into a funhouse mirror. Cult leaders make pronouncements which they […]
Brother’s Keeper or Big Brother? 15 Signs of Surveillance in Your Church
We’re back to our series entitled “Frankenstein Faith” about scriptural distortions in the church and how to correct them. [You can see other posts in this series at the end of this post] In George Orwell’s famous dystopian book, 1984, the main character is ever aware of the presence of “Big Brother” looking on. In […]
The Terror of “Normal”: Religious Brainwashing and the Boston Bombers
Perhaps you, like I, feel relief after the death of one Marathon bombing suspect and the capture of the second. But perhaps you also feel something else. Something besides relief, anger, or pain. Something like confusion. After all, why would two young men described by acquaintances as “friendly,” “soft-spoken,” “popular,” and “safe” suddenly commit major […]
The God You Don’t Believe in, I Don’t Believe in, Either: An Open Response to a Spiritually Abused Atheist
It stopped me cold. Sometimes a reader makes a comment that turns into a blog post, because he or she raises such a compelling or broadly applicable topic. A reader named John left just such a comment on one of my posts on religious brainwashing. You can read the original post here. In a nutshell, […]
Book Review of “Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church” by Lauren Drain
Rare is the person who has never heard of Westboro Baptist Church. The small sect from Topeka, Kansas owes its notoriety to its rabid invective and public pickets against homosexuals and military funerals. Rarer still is the person who understands this extreme group of people. Most Americans shake their heads or their fists at the […]
Should We Repent for Allowing Ourselves to be Spiritually Abused?
Should we repent for allowing ourselves to be spiritually abused? Yikes. I am re-posting the following article in its entirety from my friend Julie Anne Smith’s blog, Spiritual Sounding Board. It refers to an original post by Dr. Stephen Crosby. This article will make you think. I came across an article on spiritual abuse Spiritual Abuse: […]
One Who Got Away: Libby Phelps Alvarez, Religious Brainwashing, and the Westboro Baptist Church
We’ve all seen the signs; we’ve all heard the rhetoric of hatred: “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “Soldiers die; God laughs.” The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas remains America’s best-known and least-understood cult. Founded by Pastor Fred Phelps, the rural church believes that the deaths of soldiers and Marines evidences God’s righteous judgment on […]
How to Identify Religious Brainwashing: The Dispensing of Existence (Part 8 of 8)
This is the final in an eight-part series on how to identify brainwashing in a destructive group or cult. It is based off of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s “Eight-Point Model of Thought Reform” and borrows from several other authorities on the topic of religious mind-control.* 1.) Part One: Milieu Control 2.) Part Two: Mystical Manipulation 3.) Part Three: […]
Identifying Religious Brainwashing: Doctrine Over Person (Part 7 of 8)
This is the seventh in an eight-part series on how to identify brainwashing in a destructive group or cult. It is based off of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s “Eight-Point Model of Thought Reform” and borrows from several other authorities on the topic of religious mind-control.* 1.) Part One: Milieu Control 2.) Part Two: Mystical Manipulation 3.) […]
Identifying Religious Brainwashing: Loading the Language (Part 6 of 8)
This is the sixth in an eight-part series on how to identify brainwashing in a destructive group or cult. It is based off of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s “Eight-Point Model of Thought Reform” and borrows from several other authorities on the topic of religious mind-control.* 1.) Part One: Milieu Control 2.) Part Two: Mystical Manipulation 3.) […]
Liberty for Captives 