Church Hurt and Spiritual Abuse: A Faith-Affirming Framework for Clarity and Healing

After experiencing coercion in religious settings as a teen, I wrestled for years with the term spiritual abuse. This is a look at my journey with that term, what I've learned, and why a faith-affirming framework matters.

Art by Sabrina Paredes

I write from lived experience, more than twenty years of serving as a church youth leader, and ongoing learning about evidence-based safeguarding that names harm without undermining faith.

I know I'm not the only one who has wrestled with this question: If church hurt and spiritual abuse are real, is there room for me to hold onto my faith?

I began researching the term spiritual abuse in 2018 after trying to understand my experiences with what many refer to as church hurt.

What I found was both validating and unsettling. Much of what I encountered online described real problems, but it left me feeling worse rather than informed. Definitions of spiritual abuse varied. There was no shared language. And much of the conversation felt shaped by all-or-nothing thinking. The solutions being offered seemed incomplete, boiling down to a single refrain: leave your toxic, high-demand church. I explore the difference between a high-demand religious culture and Christ’s invitation to an easy yoke in more detail here.

The point is, everything still felt very “in process.” It didn’t fit my experience of knowing goodness in the same places where harm had occurred..

If you’d like to understand more about my personal journey of staying faithful and reclaiming my agency, I share that story in a separate post.

Church Hurt and Spiritual Abuse: Why Naming It Clearly and a Faith-Affirming Framework Matters

I could understand the charged emotions. Decades of trying to cope with my own made me empathetic. But by then, I needed something different. I needed ministering. And more of the peace and clarity I had felt from my Savior, as He helped me understand the impact of my experiences. I needed a safe space where I could understand my experiences without it completely defining the faith communities that had shaped my relationship with God.

Clarity Begins with Jesus Christ

Reading about Jesus' encounters with imperfect behavior in religious settings in scripture, I noticed that He didn't see anyone as beyond hope. Those who doubted Him, denied Him, broke His laws, or slept while keeping watch were not labeled irredeemable. Like the "sinners" He ate with, they all kept their place at the table where He met them as they were, then invited them to new ways of thinking and being. Under His influence, individuals and institutions evolved, because in this life, there are no final judgements.

That pattern mattered to me. It suggested that naming harm, being faithful, and seeing the value in the communities that had been central to my life, didn't have to be at odds. They could co-exist the same way they had in the life of Jesus Christ.

Why the Term Spiritual Abuse Can Feel Uncomfortable

For those of us who are deeply religious, terms like spiritual abuse can create an impossible conflict. How can something good and sacred be paired with a dark and painful word like abuse?

Because most behavior in faith communities is healthy, many have had only positive experiences with religion. That is a good thing. But it can also make it harder for those of us with painful experiences to be understood.

Because I've seen the term spiritual abuse used in ways that feel weaponized and broadly aimed at entire faith communities (rather than specific patterns of harm), I'm cautious about using it to describe my experience.

Still, naming it has been essential. When you don’t know what you’re suffering from, it can be almost impossible to heal.

After wrestling with the shame and discomfort surrounding this topic for many years, I've learned something important:

Bringing spiritual wounds to Christ isn’t an “even this” situation, where He can "even" help us with this. It is especially this.

This is why a faith-affirming framework matters so deeply to me.

Our Savior Understands Coercion and Spiritual Abuse

I’ve heard it said that Jesus Christ could have learned all that we'd suffer in mortality by revelation, but He chose to learn by experience.

Looking at His life, this rings true.

Throughout scripture, we see Him falsely accused, threatened, shamed, and subjected to attempts at coercion meant to force Him to deny who He was.

When that didn’t work, those efforts escalated.

We don’t often describe Christ’s suffering using the language of abuse (because His sacrifice was the will of His Father, and He willingly laid down His life) but that does not erase the reality that He experienced it.

Our Savior understands coercion, which is why He is uniquely able to minister to spiritual wounds.

Finding Language That Holds Both Faith and Truth

With that understanding, I continued searching for resources that named church hurt and spiritual abuse clearly without requiring me to abandon my faith.

That eventually led me to the work of ThirtyOneEight (formerly CCPAS), a Christian nonprofit that has spent decades developing evidence-based safeguarding resources across the UK.

What helped me most was their position paper on spiritual abuse. What I found there was clarity rather than polarization. Instead of broad accusations, the focus was patterns of behavior with an emphasis on prevention and healthy cultures.

Wanting to understand their framework more fully, I enrolled in several of their training courses. My experience was consistent throughout: the information was evidence-based, the resources were non-weaponized, and I walked away better equipped to contribute to a healthier culture within my own faith community.

For the first time, I felt the same peace and clarity I had felt from my Savior. I no longer felt that I had to choose between honesty and loyalty, or between naming harm and staying in my faith.

What a Safeguarding Framework Makes Clear

Safeguarding strengthens faith communities.

A faith-affirming approach to spiritual abuse strengthens faith communities from within. Naming harmful behavior protects both people and belief. Clarity is key to prevention and healthy culture.

The focus is behavior—not doctrine.

Faith communities can hold doctrines rooted in scripture. The concern is not belief itself, but how gospel principles are taught and applied. The issue is misuse of authority rather than divinely appointed roles.

Unhealthy behavior is not limited to leadership roles.

Coercion can occur within families, marriages, friendships, roommates, missionary companionships, or among church members. Influence does not come from titles alone. It can come from social standing, legacy, money, or relational leverage. Leaders may also experience manipulation, pressure, or control.

Safeguarding is not about targeting leaders. It is about protecting agency wherever power exists.

Agency and authority must work together.

Exercising authority is not, in itself, coercion. Teaching, guiding, and correcting are part of religious life—at home and at church. The issue is how authority is used. Jesus invited rather than pressured. He ministered rather than shamed. He extended loving invitations while preserving dignity and agency.

Harm and goodness can exist in the same place.

Many people carry both nurturing and painful experiences from the same family or faith community. Naming harm does not require erasing what was meaningful.

Impact matters—not just intent.

Harm in faith-based relationships can result from unmanaged emotions, unhealthy culture, lack of training, or repeating harmful patterns. It is not always malicious. That said, harm is still harm. Acknowledging impact is essential for accountability and prevention.

Not everything is spiritual abuse.

Safeguarding data consistently shows that most behavior in faith communities is healthy. Spiritual abuse is not the norm. While church hurt may include unhealthy behavior, not every uncomfortable interaction rises to the level of spiritual abuse. In safeguarding work, spiritual abuse is described as a pattern of coercive control within a religious context that causes psychological harm. In my own faith community’s youth protection training, coercion is similarly defined as compelling others through religious authority or language that implies obligation, intimidation, or threat—rather than mentoring faith in Christlike ways marked by long-suffering, gentleness, and love.

For those seeking a clearer framework on categories of behavior connected to faith and belief, I explore Professor Lisa Oakley’s A Spectrum of Behavior in a separate post.

A Faith-Affirming Response: Clarity, Agency, and Healing

My journey with the term spiritual abuse has taught me that language matters, but ministering matters more.

How we talk about spiritual wounds, and how we listen and allow room for complexity, shapes whether those who are hurting feel safe enough to stay or quietly leave.

This topic can divide Christians, which is why the apostle Paul’s counsel feels especially relevant:

“If there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit… let nothing be done through strife or vainglory... Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” (Philippians 2:1–4)

When we look on the things of others, we do not have to choose between acknowledging pain and defending our faith. With Christ, we can do both. With His light, we can move beyond simply describing problems to responding well.

My hope is that these conversations remain centered on Jesus Christ and on how we can reflect Him in our homes, congregations, and relationships.

For more, see how to respond wisely and compassionately when someone shares their church hurt.