The conflation of parental and ecclesiastical authority was only possible in a church like ours, where nearly everyone was related. By rendering us “children” so long as we were unmarried, they thwarted all possible challenges to their control. There was no need to listen to what anyone else thought, because as our parents, they would tell us what to think. I shook my head involuntarily. My father had never been like this. I hated what this church had done to him. I hated what it had done to my mother. I hated what it was doing to our family, and to everyone we had taken aim at outside. This
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