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DID YOU EVER GET A WHIPPING WITH THE BIBLE BELT?
A Sermon By Rev. Chris Buice delivered on September 29, 2002 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church In the Dictionary How to Speak Southern you will find the word switch. There the word switch is defined as an instrument used for the behavior modification of children. As in when you were a kid and you had done something wrong and your Grandma told you to go out back and get a switch that you knew would be used for your own behavior modification. Well, today I want to talk to you about a different kind of whippin. And let me begin by asking you this question. Did you ever get a whipping with the Bible Belt? Have you ever had religion used as a weapon against you?

Whenever religion is used to hurt people, it is religious abuse. And this happens all too frequently. Earlier I read some words from the Passover Haggadah. May the light we know kindle inspire us to use our powers to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve you, Spirit of freedom. These are good words for us to reflect upon as a religious people. Because religion is powerful and anything powerful can be abused. Religion at its best is a blessing. However, religion can be perverted to do harm. Religion can become a curse.

Let me tell you a story from my life a time when I got a whippin with the Bible Belt. Maybe my story will resonate with the stories of other people in this room. When I was fourteen years old I got a thorough whippin. My camp counselor was the person who whipped me good. His name was Pete Dias. He was the first person Id ever met who was sure that I was going to Hell. (Although Ive met a few others since then) The fact that Pete did not know me very well did not stand in the way of his conviction. He told me about the horrors of eternal damnation And he expressed his certainty that I was heading for such a fate.

My camp counselor introduced me to a God Id never met before. This wasnt my first encounter with God. After all, I was the child of an Episcopalian minister. So God and I were acquainted. However, the God I learned about from my counselor at summer camp was very different from the God that I had learned about at home. The God I learned about at home was a God of love. The God I was introduced to at camp was a God of terror.

I had attended this camp every year since I was seven years old. Over the years I had heard many scary stories told at summer camp. I had heard the story of the Wolfman at Caney Creek. I had heard many ghost stories around the campfire. However, the scariest stories I ever heard were the stories my counselor told about God that summer when I was fourteen years old. At that time, I no longer believed in ghosts or werewolves but I did believe in God. And so I found these stories about God to be unsettling and confusing.

My encounter with this counselor was very disorienting. I believed in the Bible and read it frequently. My counselor used that same Bible as a weapon against me, to condemn me and shame me. Pete led the evening devotions in our cabin in which he constantly reiterated his narrow view of the Bible and theology. It was at these sessions that I heard the scariest stories Id ever heard at summer camp.

Pete was a convert to the Church of God and Prophecy based in Cleveland, Tennessee, and he took all of its teachings very seriously. The Church of God and Prophesy forbid many things. The church forbids members from participating in worldly activities like watching television or listening to the radio. Other forbidden activities included going to movie theaters, bowling alleys, professional sports games, horse races, stock car races. If you did any of these activities you were in danger of hell-fire. Women were prohibited from wearing make-up and were instructed to dress modestly. Women and men were to be segregated during activities like swimming so they would not be led into temptation. To swim together would be inviting the Devil to have a foothold in your life.

Pete brought comic books and literature to reinforce his devotions. These comic books showed people burning in Hell. These people had obviously misjudged the dangers of movie theaters and cosmetics. The people screamed in pain as they burned. But their screams were not acknowledged. They cried out in agony to a God who showed no mercy. This God I found more terrifying than any devil.
I realize that a scary story for one person may barely raise the pulse of another. What was scary to me then might not be so scary to you now. And I sometime wonder why these stories had such a powerful effect on me. Had I been exposed to this God of hellfire and damnation at an earlier age I might have been inoculated. Instead I was exposed suddenly and found the experience traumatic.
When I was fourteen years old I could not put my own thoughts into words very well. If I had, I would have agreed with the Protestant preacher, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, who once said,

Better believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a man can cherish. If the God he believes in is small and mean, the more intensely he holds his belief and cultivates it the smaller and meaner he will be. Men have believed in a cruel God who will send a large part of the human race to an endless hell and by this belief all their own cruelty was confirmed. They got the idea that the torture chambers of earth were but replicas of the great torture chamber of God. It behooves us to take care what kind of God we believe in. Some of the people who do not believe in God at all are more merciful, truth-loving, and just than are some who do.

In the 19th century the Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing, was also highly critical of the hellfire and damnation preachers of his day. He said something about these men which I could have said about my counselor. He wrote of these preachers, they take from us our God in Heaven and substitute for God, a being we cannot love if we would, and whom we ought not to love if we could.

Of course, when I was fourteen, I was not nearly as eloquent as Harry Emerson Fosdick or William Ellery Channing. However, I did do my best to dissent. Unfortunately my efforts were probably counter productive. A wise person once said, You do not argue with some people about religion for the same reason you dont wrestle with a pig. Because you will get dirty and the pig enjoys it. Ive come to see the wisdom of this advice.

Pete was my counselor. He used that position of authority to shame me. He used that authority to condemn and judge me. He used that authority in ways that felt humiliating and degrading. I hesitate to use the word religious abuse. I dont like to trivialize the word abuse. But I do feel that my encounter with this counselor hurt me in many ways. Ive been given whippings with a real belt. And the pain from a real belt did not last nearly as long as the pain from that time I got a whipping with the Bible belt. I do not have any physical scars to show for my injuries. But I walked away from the encounter with spiritual wounds.

When I returned home from camp that year I did not even want to darken the doors of a church. When I got home I was almost church phobic. Going to church seemed like throwing salt on a fresh wound. It hurt and so I did not want to do it. I was not sure I could ever trust another church again as long as I lived. And I will confess that I never did feel totally comfortable in a church until I discovered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church after I graduated from college. So two weeks at summer camp made me feel uncomfortable at church for approximately a decade.
Many people, who come to the Unitarian Universalist Church from other places, have had some sort of painful religious experience in the past. My friend, the Reverend Trevor Blondal used to say that our churches serve, in part, as a hospital for the spiritually wounded; a place where people can find a measure of healing from various abuses of the power of religion. Our congregations can provide sanctuary to those who have been beaten up by faith.

However, we are not the only church concerned with the problem of religious abuse. There are leaders in many faith traditions who are writing and speaking about this issue. And Ive learned a lot from reading some of their works. And there is some general agreement about what religious abuse is, how it happens, and how people heal from it.

The pastoral counselors, David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen have written a book called The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. In it they give a definition of spiritual abuse. They write,
Spiritual abuse is the mi
streatment of a person who is in need of help, support or greater spiritual empowerment with the result of weakening, undermining or decreasing a persons spiritual empowerment.

Father Leo Booth, an Episcopal minister, writes that one characteristic of abusive religion is that it is authoritarian and seeks to have total control over its adherents. When people use their thinking or critical skills they are told that the devil is at work in their lives or that they are possessed by demons.

This was true of my experience at summer camp. Because I continually questioned my counselors teachings, he performed an involuntary exorcism on me to remove the demons that were at work in my life. This exorcism was needless to say a traumatic experience. Father Leo Booth says that the prohibition against questioning is the prelude to all other kinds of abuse. Because if you cannot challenge authority then you are in danger of being abused by authority.

Another characteristic of abusive religion, says Father Leo, is that it is shaming. He writes, Shame based thinking reinforces the belief that you dont make mistakes, but that YOU are the mistake. Which leads to another quality of abusive religions; they set moral or behavior standards that are impossible to achieve and then shame their members for not achieving them. These impossible standards mean that members of the faith always feel guilty and ashamed of themselves and thus learn to distrust their own judgement and rely more heavily on the judgement of the church or its leaders.

The pastoral counselor, Ron Henzel, writes that abusive religions use the tactic of spiritual intimidation. These leaders often claim to know you better than you know yourself. One tactic of spiritual intimidation is to accuse someone of something that is impossible to prove one way or the other. The leader says you are hiding something. You are put in the position of trying to prove you are not hiding something. The leader says you are a miserable sinner. You are put in the position of trying to prove you are only a run-of-the-mill sinner. The leader says you are going to hell. You are put into the position of trying to prove you are not going to hell. In a spiritually abusive church you are guilty until proven innocent.

There are many other qualities that belong to abusive religions. Limitations in time prevent me from outlining more possibilities. And of course, not all abusive religions contain all of the qualities I just described. They might have some but not others. Still there is a growing consensus among leaders of all faiths that there really is something called spiritual abuse and that something needs to be done about it.

The Unitarian Universalist church is not the only place people can recover from spiritual abuse. But I do believe there is a reason so many people choose the Unitarian Universalist church as a hospital for spiritual recovery. In this church we are free to express our doubts and questions. This makes the people of the Unitarian Universalist Church less vulnerable to abuse and the tactics of spiritual intimidation. In this church we strive to honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This means Unitarian Universalists stand in opposition to shame based thinking. In this church Unitarian Universalists try to create an atmosphere where people can engage in the free and responsible search for truth meaning. A victim of spiritual abuse will often emerge from the experience certain about what they dont believe but uncertain about what they do believe. We try to help each other when we need to reconstruct a theology or a belief system from the wreckage of a painful past. We recognize that some words or theological ideas may feel like salt in the wounds to some of our members. And so we work for the healing of these wounds. And we work for a day when we will be able to say positively what we do believe, not simply what we do not believe.

My camp counselor, Pete, did not mean to hurt me. He had grown up in New York City and had been involved in drugs and gang activity. Then one day an evangelist from the Church of God and Prophecy reached out to him, touched his life and he was changed for the better. However, a person who has experienced healing is not always a great healer. And in the process of trying to do me good, he did me a great injury.

Of course, Im not the first person who has felt betrayed or abused by a follower of Jesus. In the Gospel According to Luke there is a story about the disciple Judas who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Judas led a group of men to arrest Jesus. One of the other disciples pulled out a sword, attacked one of the men and cut off his ear. Jesus, however, objected to this violence. He told his disciples, No more of this! And he touched the ear of the wounded man and healed him.

Similarly, I believe the work of our church is to continue the work which the story tells us Jesus did on that day: the work healing the wounds inflicted by the disciples of Christ. The Christian church has been the source of much good in our world but it has also inflicted a lot of pain. Followers of Jesus have been guilty, on many occasions, of hurting people; doing damage to their bodies, their minds and their spirits. Its time to say, No more of this! its time to work for healing.

Of course, Christianity is not the only religion that can be mis-used. All religions are capable of abuse including our own. And so we must work for spiritual healing for those who come to us with stories of pain from other faith traditions.

Spiritual abuse, of one sort or another, can happen anywhere. Our churches are not immune. And so we must be vigilant to be sure that we treat each other with care. I believe that religion is more than an instrument used for the behavior modification of children and adults. It is much more than this. And so we must continue to be true to our calling to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, and to serve the Spirit of Freedom which some call God and others know by many other names. May we be faithful to this mission.

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
2931 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, Tennessee 37919
(865) 523-4176
October 10, 2002

We invite you to continue your religious/spiritual journey within our congregation which affirms many paths and covenants to a free search for truth and meaning.