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Question:
Can
you also elaborate on the stories you have heard about the control
methods used within QF? How does spiritual abuse within QF actually
manifest itself?
One
significant leader was abandoned by a homeschooling organization that
promised him a gainful job and healthcare, so he moved his whole
family to another country. He was never paid, and upon diagnosis
with cancer, he and his family were abandoned and defamed. When he
pursued legal recourse to gain some help for his family through a
mediation program, the organization used the process to play out the
statute of limitations so that he no longer could seek justice.
That
very gracious and broken man told me that had he not lived the
experience out for himself, he would have never believed that
Christians could be possible of behaving in such a way that left him
devastated.
I’m
also reminded of the process of cursing that many controlling
churches use to threaten members into remaining in their groups. It
is an adjunct to the process of shunning — a variation on that
threat of withdrawing personhood from the member. When I told an
elder at my own church that I would not return, I was told that great
calamity would befall me. My husband would lose his job. I could
get cancer. I should be glad that I had no children, for God could
strike them dead in judgement for leaving without the blessing of the
elders. A friend of mine was once told that she would be visited by
“The Three Ds”: death, disease, and divorce. Such threats seem
magnified when entrenched in the dynamics of spiritual abuse.
A person
might be pressured to have more children, to give more money, to be
more submissive, or to be more active in church. Any lack of
compliance threatens the leadership and threatens to disrupt the
control that they hold over the interworking and the communication
within the high demand community.
~
Cynthia Kunsman
The
view of Quiverfull from my vantage
August
2015
