Religious Trauma and the Role of Lament
At the beginning of May, the editorial team of Metanoia shared an open letter to journalist David Farrier whose work over the last month has exposed widespread abuse and narcissism within one of Aoteaora’s largest megachurches, ARISE. It comes at a moment in culture where many global neo-pentecostal, megachurch movements face new scrutiny for their contribution to burnout, abuse, and unaccountable leadership. This piece continues our series in which we seek to hear from different perspectives on the various issues raised by these recent events.
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Where are the wailing women of old who can call our people into communal lament? Let’s gather together with sackcloth and ashes, with basketfuls of broken pottery, with jars to collect our tears.
When Aotearoa’s nationwide body of Christ is in public disrepute and disrepair, how are we as Christians supposed to respond? When scandal is rocking one of our largest Pentecostal churches, with their pastors resigning and exposés of abuse and allegations, what are we to do? When the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care announces further investigations into other Protestant churches, because of the “increased numbers of survivors” coming forward from these groups, how are we to react?
There are many things that could be said and done, many undoubtedly useful. However, I think that, first and foremost, we who follow Christ are called to lament. We are called to sit with our own faith communities and to face the shame, pain, and confusion together. If leavers and survivors from other broken churches are brave enough to set foot inside our religious spaces, let us sit with their wounds and lament with them. Let us listen deeply to them, name religious betrayal and abuse for what it is, and lament together.
What is lament? According to my dictionary, it is “to give passionate expression to grief, sorrow, or complaint.” Renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, teaches us in his wonderful book on the Psalms that lament in the Bible is not only expressing grievances, but doing so as raw conversation with God. Brueggemann shows that the Psalms usually follow a particular pattern; they move from a place of orientation, into disorientation, then towards reorientation. In other words, the authors usually begin with addressing God and describing how good life had been (orientation), then they swiftly move towards cries of despair, confusion, and desperation (disorientation). Lastly, they move towards placing trust in God for the future. Even though circumstances may not have changed yet, the language moves towards acceptance and a new reality (reorientation).
“In the art of lament, I have found a place where God welcomes me: real, raw, unedited.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see that this literary arc found in the Psalms of lament is the same narratival arc that many of the stories of our lives take, especially as we respond to various kinds of griefs, betrayals, and trials. I am a survivor of reasonably significant religious trauma, having been excommunicated by the Exclusive Brethren at age 20, and thrown into a big wide world that I was wholly unprepared for. Of all the Christian disciplines, it has been the discovery and practice of lament that has most welcomed and sustained me in the ensuing years.
At times this has looked like breaking pottery in condemnation of destructive evil found within a people, in the terrifying but powerful pattern of Jeremiah 19. At other times it has looked like quietly paraphrasing Psalms of lament to personalise them. Angrily drawing with bold black strokes and a blood red pen. Tearfully sharing in a church service. Wearing an uncomfortable stone in my shoe to remind me to pray. Breaking internal numbness to risk sharing about a painful anniversary with a staff team.
Slowly learning how to stop running from pain, to make friends with triggers, and to place wounds over and over again before the One who understands more than anyone else, what it is like to suffer betrayal, abuse, and trauma at the hands of religious leaders. In the art of lament, I have found a place where God welcomes me: real, raw, unedited.
To experience religious abuse or loss of trust is a peculiarly painful type of grief; because it has happened at the hands of the very people who are supposed to be the most whole and healing, it cuts all the more deeply. It is one thing to be wounded by a nasty employer or a thug; we may have never expected much from them in the first place. But to be wounded by those meant to be mediators of the presence of Christ, those who are supposed to care for our souls? That disembowels our sense of trust in the Church, in anyone claiming to be Christian, and in humanity itself. Disorientation.
What can Christians do to support anyone leaving Arise or any broken church community? Learn to lament; and learn to lament communally. The Psalms were Israel’s communal worship book, and the largest genre of them all is lament. Let leavers share their experiences of disorientation, their questions, their confusion. Let them share their emotions; the ones that are uncomfortable to sit with. Don’t you dare jump to pray away the pain, or to draw silver linings on their clouds. As Brene Brown put it so well in her book, Atlas of the Heart, “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.” In your communal spaces, make sure you include ways to share lament as well as praise, that you name things to celebrate as a church as well as things to repent of, that you find songs and prayers and preachers who give voice to the gamut of the human experience.
As with any experience of grief, leaving a broken church community is a time of stripping away. Priorities become more clear, fears become stark, desire for a different kind of future comes into focus. As we stumble around in our disorientation seeking a way out, usually we realise we will have to put some things down and pick other things up. To do this well requires wisdom, discernment and wise counsel from others. Some leavers might put down God and pick up unhelpful coping mechanisms, instead of the other way around. As we support leavers from toxic religious communities, we can gently encourage them to not throw the baby out with the bathwater; to pick up God and put down the things that are harmful as they walk away.
In 1 Corinthians 3 the apostle Paul is scolding the believers for picking up their human leaders, for making more of them than Christ. He reminds them of their priorities; others might build some impressive things but it is only Christ who can be the Foundation Stone. Some will build with gold and precious stones, others with wood or hay. The apostle warns us that everything built will be tested, burned with fire, brought to light. This may happen in a coming Judgement Day. Or it may happen when a journalist writes an exposé that culminates in shutting down your church.
With this in mind, it is imperative that we support leavers in their connection to the Founding Stone; and to allow to loosen the priority that may have been placed (however inadvertently) on this leader or that leader, this church or that church. If Jesus is our foundation, then we are more resilient when our human leaders fail us. There will still be grief, but it will not overthrow us. We are secure in Christ. As Paul strongly concludes that discourse, remember “you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” (1 Cor 3:23).
A psychologist once said to me, “wounds caused in relationship can only be healed in relationship.” It is a paradox but one that I believe to be true; those who have been wounded by unhealthy people in the Church, will ultimately find their deepest healing not in abandoning churches forever, but in finding trustworthy and true Christians who can restore their sense of betrayal and loss of community. This itself is a mirror of what we see in one-one relationships; if I am wounded by a parent or friend or sibling, I will find healing not in sealing myself off from all other interpersonal relationships, but in slowly rebuilding loving, trusting relationships with people who can show me what a real parent, friend, or sibling is meant to be.
Not only that, but once we have known deep betrayal yet learned to love and trust again, in my experience our ability to relate to others will be more profound than it was before we were first hurt. It is a mature ability to love, one that has been weathered by storms. It is not naïve about the ability of the human heart to veer towards destruction, so it is watchful for this, but it is able to keep doing the work of trusting love. It is secure on its Foundation Stone, so is more resilient in responding to the vicissitudes of human environments—including when fires test and prove the gold or hay edifices of our church community.
I like to say that the Church is both the Bride of Christ as well as a prostitute; she is the loved fiancée of our Lord, but she is also shockingly unfaithful to her Lover. I use this language intending to provoke, because I believe that Christians need to be more honest about the appalling extent of brokenness found within our holy halls. Why should it take investigators from beyond our communities to call us to account? Why are we not already doing this ourselves? Why are our churches so often places where masks are worn, sin is hidden, and our ears are plugged to the wounds of those around us? Lamenting together helps us to love without delusions and illusions, and this is the antidote to spiritual abuse.
If we practice the art of lament as often as we take up the offering bag, perhaps we will truly become places of refuge, wholeness and healing.
Come, let us lament together.
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Lindy Jacomb is pastor at Karori Baptist, Wellington.