Not Everyone in the Church Is Pursuing God : The Courage to Speak Out Against Spiritual Bullying By Religious Leaders and Congregational Members

 It's okay to stand up to church leaders and the congregational members who are bullies. In many cases, they are distorting the very purpose of faith and are using religion to cultivate the appearance of godliness, goodness, and decency while believing they have a right to mistreat the people around them without ever being held to account.


They especially like to mistreat those of us who refuse to constantly seek their approval, who refuse to submit to their demands without question, who embody a more open-hearted understanding of the Divine, who live in a way that's not legalistic, institutionalized, or rooted in rigid religious conformity, or who simply appear to be easy targets in their eyes.

The people who treat others in this way don't actually have a genuine connection to the Divine themselves and have a deep need for spiritual healing. This is because they remain disconnected from the inward work of transformation that God desires to bring about within the human heart, soul, and mind, which is the very thing that produces genuine spiritual growth and maturity. As a result, they concern themselves only with the outward appearance of having faith and use it as a shield to avoid accountability for the way that they treat others.

When people become involved in the life of the church, participate in its ministries, or serve within its leadership for the wrong reasons, their priorities become skewed, causing their focus to shift away from the transforming work of God within their own lives and toward the pursuit of status, power, and control within their respective communities, with that same mindset often extending onto the people and into the wider world beyond them.

That's why it's necessary to recognize that participation in a church community, religious institution, or faith tradition is not, by itself, evidence that a person is truly on a genuine journey of spiritual maturity, moral integrity, or genuine communion with the Divine. It is therefore absolutely okay for us to establish healthier boundaries, standards, and principles for ourselves concerning the way that we allow church leaders and their fellow congregational members to treat us.

With that being said, if it gets to the point where we have to call out church leaders, ministry leaders, or congregational members who are bullying, intimidating, manipulating, or otherwise mistreating us, or anyone else we see being bullied, intimidated, manipulated, or mistreated by them, then we should just do it and have the courage to do so instead of letting any reservations about upsetting people, damaging reputations, or creating conflict prevent us from doing what is right.

When all is said and done, they shouldn't have been using their faith for the wrong reasons, such as for the pursuit of status, power, and control over others, if they didn't want to be confronted or held accountable for it. And there is nothing wrong with us for refusing to remain silent simply to protect the reputation of a church member, religious leader, or religious institution when people are being harmed by the very people who belong to these church environments or other religious communities that claim to have faith in God.

So, if upsetting people and ruffling some feathers is the price we have to pay to uphold what is just and right, and to protect others from any ongoing harm that is happening at the hands of church authorities, ministry leaders, or any congregational member who engages in such spiritually abusive behavior, then so be it.



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