You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

by Jamie Lee Finch

the specific abuse inflicted upon me by that community was rooted in their belief that anything less than a positive response to pain was disobedient and unfaithful to god and his design. When they uprooted me, left me with no home or form of income, and relationally abandoned me for the sake of continuing to focus on building their project with the people that were there, it was both implied and directly stated that it was now my job to be obedient and faithful to both them and god because this is what god knew and intended to have happen all along—they were simply the arbiters of his perfect will.

I was startled by how much this paragraph is the nearly play-by-play experience we had with my husband’s family as they attempted navigate a season of a family member’s potentially fatal health diagnosis, how that event brought to the surface long-dormant toxic family patterns, and how strange it was as we watched Scripture passages be viewed as talismans of healing. Particularly surprising — but also traumatic —was “their belief that anything less than a positive response to pain was disobedient and unfaithful [witness] to God and His design,” as if all those sermons against the prosperity gospel had been erased in hopes of their situation being the one in which God saw prayer and positivity as meritocratic, where physical healing might be the reward if nothing negative was uttered, and suffering in silence conflated with holiness. “Jesus wept,” even when he knew the outcome.

I felt lonely, afraid, depressed—I plummeted deeper into cycles of self-harm that had offered themselves to me as pain-avoiding compulsions, but I couldn’t say a word. Not only to them, but to anyone else. I had staked my entire life upon this specific shot at a sense of certainty. To express grief, upset, disappointment, or worst of all anger over what had been done to me would have been to give myself away as an unfaithful, double-minded individual, unfit for service in building the kingdom of god. Ironically and unluckily,

“when you sweep an emotion under the rug, you sweep it into the nervous system”. Bottled emotions are not neutral—they go somewhere.

girls and women hold a very specific fear in their bodies, the same way I did. We hold it, internalize it, and then eventually even make that felt sense of shame a goal to aspire to—using it as a true north for the cycle of sin and repentance that is held up as so vital to purity and holiness.

Researchers have come to recognize that trauma is an impactful psychophysical experience—even if the original event/on-going experience does not necessarily threaten to cause any direct bodily harm (Rothschild 5).

Trauma is determined by how the body responds to an incident, not the actual incident itself (Levine 128). The psychological response to an on-going experience may have greater psycho/physiological consequence than the nature of the event itself, and it is that subsequent response that initiates the potential for the development of PTSD.

Finally, both the repression of sexuality and the administration of corporal punishment during formative years can be identified as physical and sexual abuse (“Religious Trauma Syndrome”).

The authoritarian aspect of Evangelicalism is what is especially problematic, as it communicates that all that is good, sacred, or correct is external to you and everything internal is considered bad. This position fosters deep codependence and mistrust of self and offers no permission or access to inner resources (Winell 5).

Unlike many authentic spiritual expressions and the environments of many moderate religious groups, Evangelicalism offers a precarious foundation upon which individuals attempt to build their sense of self.

The exclusivity and authoritarianism of belief systems like Evangelicalism result in disconnection—from self, from other people, and from the outside world.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the predominant determining factor in predicting the eventual development of PTSD is whether or not dissociation occurred during a traumatic event, as dissociation directly correlates with the deployment of the freeze response in the face of threat (Rothschild 13).

When the body freezes rather than fights or flees, it is not able to release the internal energy that builds up within it during the moment the internal alarm system sounds and the ANS is activated.

When daily, sensational reminders of potential threat become prolonged or extreme, the dissociation can become so debilitating that those with PTSD can become severely socially restricted, afraid to leave their own homes, or distrusting of their own physical bodies (Rothschild 14).

Ultimately, the two factors that determine trauma are the response to an event and whether or not the body was able to seek an energetic resolution by way of that response—not the nature of the event itself.

There is an increasingly large body of current research focused on disseminating how trauma expresses itself in the physical body and the physiological consequences and implications for traumatic or overwhelming experiences.

Developing language is crucial to healing, not only to be able to speak about what happened but also to be able to verbally express sensations and emotional experiences in the body.

joint pain, vomiting, chronic fatigue, digestive issues, poor circulation, and skin rashes. It is also very common to see chronic illness and suppressed immunological function in people suffering from PTSD as well as various forms of

In the same way, the ones who love us may have done their best but still caused harm with their Evangelical beliefs.

Because of this, throughout the majority of my adult life, I experienced every argument, every break-up, every relocation of a friend, every time someone didn’t call when they said they would as life-altering abandonment, rejection, and loss. I was being re-traumatized in every one of those moments and relationships because of the way my early experiences with my mother had imprinted upon me and—unbeknownst to me—predetermined the way that I would be able to establish relationship and connection with others.

to reconstruct the story relating to trauma,