“Hillsong is the last church that I will ever go to this side of heaven.”

“I don’t consider myself a Christian anymore.”

“I’m a really happy atheist.”

“It’s been 4 years now since I stepped in a church.”

(Quotes from @hulu #secretsofhillsong )

1/x Spiritual abuse has real consequences: people no longer can step foot in places of worship.

I’m not debating whether or not ppl should retain faith in the church after abuse.

I’m not shaming anyone for leaving the faith.

2/x

1) When a narcissist leads a church/org/inst, the system becomes a "narcissistic system." This means that as the narcissist (N) relates in his sphere, there is an inter-dependent mutually-impacting dynamic that takes place... 2) (For my purposes, narcissism describes the state where a person cannot tolerate or absorb shame - even healthy shame, such as the "prick" of having hurt a loved one, that would lead him to ask "what have I done?") - [credit to Chuck DeGroat & Adam Young here]

A thread I’ve been sitting on for months.

I believe a person’s abuse story is theirs to tell. But some victims of abuse are no longer with us to share theirs.

This is one of those stories:

There was a POC (let’s call him “Joe”) who was a member at our former church. 1/ It may be important to state that there were very few POC at our church & they were some of the only ones who voted “no” on excommunicating us). 2/