Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church

by Michael J. Kruger

the term spiritual abuse rightly highlights the core reason this abuse is so devastating to Christians—namely, because it was perpetrated by the very pastor (or elder board) who was supposed to protect them.6 It is that dynamic that then leads to disillusionment and distrust of the church, and perhaps Christianity as a whole.

If a person is abused emotionally by their boss at work, that is materially different from being abused by their pastor.

The hallmark of spiritual abuse is that it involves one person with ecclesiastical or spiritual authority over another. Without that authority, you might have other forms of church conflict—where one person mistreats another person—but you don’t have spiritual abuse. In other words, the abuse in view here happens downward.10 Johnson and VanVonderen argue, “Spiritual abuse can occur when a leader uses his or her spiritual position to control or dominate another person.”11 Wehr refers to this dominating behavior as “pious coercion.”

Also, abusers often have multiple layers of authority. For example, if a pastor abuses a member of his staff, then he is operating from two positions of authority: he is that person’s pastor and boss. And if the staff member is female, some pastors may wrongly exploit an additional male-female dynamic as yet another level of perceived authority (even though women are not called to submit to men just because they’re men).

In contrast, if a pastor makes precisely the same remarks, it can be crushing in a different way. It can make a person doubt what God thinks of them (after all, doesn’t this leader represent God in some way?), it can make them fearful of losing their job (if they are on staff), it can make them wonder whether this leader might invoke church discipline against them (especially if there is a track record of such retaliations), and it can cause concern that this leader is speaking negatively about them to other church members (especially if the pastor regularly makes negative remarks about others).

Many victims testify that even many years later they still can’t get their pastor’s voice out of their head as they read the Bible.

In sum, a pastor’s words can be either disproportionately encouraging or disproportionately damaging. Pastors effectively have a “pulpit” inside people’s heads. This is precisely why character matters so much when it comes to whether a person is qualified for the ministry.

or speaking to them in harsh or demeaning ways.

While some abusive pastors use “fire” to hurt their victims, others use “ice”—they turn cold, quietly cutting off the person from the ministry of the church and from the relationships therein.

This same pattern is present in numerous other cases I’ve studied. In one example, a couple was excommunicated for “slander” simply because they raised concerns about the senior pastor’s domineering and harsh behavior.

This story is a classic picture of the abusive pastor. He accuses the staff member of insubordination and then makes her out to be the real problem.

Here’s the reality: pastors accused of spiritual abuse are often accomplishing something helpful for the kingdom—expanding the reach of the gospel, planting churches, helping the poor. Their ministries look blessed. This appearance of blessing not only makes the abusive pastor sure that he’s done nothing wrong, but it also convinces others of his innocence. They refuse to believe any accusations. To allow such a possibility would wreck the tidy world they have built around that spiritual leader.

Inevitably, those interactions provide opportunities for people to get hurt. Pastors can make insensitive or hurtful comments. They might fail to follow up or forget to do what they said. Therefore, much of pastoral ministry is filled with apologies and repentance for these relational missteps. But these mistakes aren’t abuse.

All these categories are important to understand, lest we (wrongly) label every instance of relational conflict as abuse.

Since most elder boards want to find an explanation other than abuse, they may too readily offer one of those previously listed. So churches must be open to the possibility of abuse, and the abuse claims must be thoroughly and independently investigated (more on this in chapter 7).

As soon as victims have the courage to speak up about abusive behavior, they are usually met with a chorus of rebuttals along the lines of, “I know this pastor, and he could never do this,” or, “This pastor has blessed and helped countless people over the years. He could never do something like this.” Rather than taking the concerns seriously and investigating them carefully, leadership dismisses them as impossible or so unlikely as to not merit real consideration.

And in a tragically ironic turn, the defenders of the abusive pastor often raise questions about the integrity and the character of the victims, suggesting they are out to slander or malign the leader’s “good name.”

Because bullies don’t bully everyone. If they did, they wouldn’t last long. Bullies rarely bully horizontally or upward. They almost always bully down. Thus, often the pastor has treated the people evaluating him—his peers—remarkably well.

They are usually composed of the leader’s close friends, sometimes even family members. How, then, can they have objectivity in holding that leader accountable?

Now, more than ever, we hear phrases like “all sins are equal” or “all of us are equally sinners.”

For one, to say all sins are the same is to confuse the effect of sin with the heinousness of sin. While all sins are equal in their effect (they separate us from God), they are not all equally heinous.

Sadly, yet another misunderstanding of grace has been used to defend abusive pastors and further harm the victims. If we are all equally sinful, it is argued, then that must mean the abusive pastor and the victim are equally to blame for the conflict.

But this eagerness to establish peace sometimes leads churches to rush the victims of abuse into a reconciliation process with the abuser that is ill-conceived.

First, victims should not be asked to meet with an abusive pastor unless he has been held accountable.

Second, victims should not meet with an abusive pastor unless he is genuinely repentant.

Third, victims should not meet with an abusive pastor until they are emotionally and spiritually ready.

If victims of abuse refuse to meet, an unrepentant pastor will likely portray the victims as unforgiving and unwilling to reconcile. He will take the moral high ground, making himself out to be the peacemaker and the victims as the ones holding a grudge. This is why it is imperative that churches not even ask the victims to meet with the abuser until the guidelines are met. That way, the church is preventing the meeting from taking place, not the victims.

he portrays himself as the real victim. He flips the script, making himself out to be the grieved party:

When an elder board or Christian organization is faced with accusations that their pastor or leader is abusive, we need to realize they may already have the following assumptions: (1) this is an isolated incident (what dead bodies?); (2) this pastor seems like an honest, good person whom we know and love (there are no monsters); (3) everyone’s an awful sinner and blame must exist on all sides (everyone’s a monster); and (4) accountability isn’t needed because conflicts can be solved if the two parties just meet together (just meet with the monster).

profuse denials, rallying a group of defenders, attacking the accusers, and making himself out to be the victim of a conspiratorial plot to ruin his good name. In short, abusive pastors try to defend themselves by “flipping the script.”

As soon as accusations come to light, the behind-the-scenes networking begins as he weaves his own narrative about what happened. By the time the victims tell their story to a committee, the abusive pastor has already turned most of the elders against them. This is why many victims opt to leave.

most elders or church members quickly become aggressive defenders of a pastor—even lobbying others to join the cause—while very few become advocates for the victims.

But a case can be made that a member could justifiably report spiritually abusive behavior too: verbal attacks, berating or humiliating a church member, threatening to fire an employee, and more.

“inexcusable and psychologically violent” to insist she meet with the perpetrator one-on-one.

Again, one could understand how a husband might (rightly) refuse to allow his wife to meet alone with a pastor who has verbally intimidated and attacked her.

“When we get to a situation of spiritual abuse, there’s a mismatch of power. And, actually, trying to get people together in a room at the beginning is not something you would do with other forms of abuse.”

If a pastor is accused of spiritual abuse, it would not be surprising, nor would it be inappropriate, for him to declare his innocence. He might, in fact, be innocent. But it is wholly different for that pastor to declare that he has been slandered. That is more than a claim of innocence; it is an aggressive countercharge that the accusers themselves are engaged in despicable and sinful behavior. It’s a way to present himself as the victim and the accusers as the problem. In other words, it is a methodology designed to flip the script.

Time and again, abusive pastors argue that they are the victims of a conspiratorial plot against them as their enemies have colluded to smear their good name.

Some churches and organizations develop an environment where anyone who speaks negatively about the leader will be accused of slander. In other words, these groups silence people by threatening them (either explicitly or implicitly) with potential charges of slander. This aggressive posture creates a ministry culture where people live in fear; if they ever speak up, they will be castigated, charged, or fired.

Slander is not merely saying something negative about another person. Rather, it is saying something negative while knowing it is false (or at least having no basis to think it is true). In other words, slander involves a malicious intent to harm another person’s reputation by spreading lies about them

There is a rich irony, then, when the accused pastor offers a strong countercharge of slander. If he has no evidence that the accuser is lying, then the pastor himself may be guilty of slander. In other words, the pastor expressing concern over unjust accusations may actually be making an unjust accusation against someone else. And when the pastor’s defenders repeat the claim that he is a victim of slander—without any evidence that the accusers have malicious intent—then they too may be guilty of slander.

Either way, if the victim came forward in good faith about their concerns, then no slander was involved.

But whereas slander is false, gossip may be true. The problem with gossip is not necessarily that it’s false information but that it’s information shared with malicious intent—namely, to harm a person’s reputation or to entertain or titillate others.

victims of abuse may share their story with others for many legitimate reasons: to get advice on how to proceed, to get counseling and encouragement for what they’ve endured, or to warn others about the pastor’s bad behavior.

One might even say that a church member has a moral obligation to speak up about the pastor’s bad behavior to protect other church members from being harmed.

Thus, when people step forward with concerns, there’s a built-in disposition that these folks are probably lying and that the pastor needs to be trusted and defended.

Churches also need to consider the enormous price people pay when they come forward and speak up about spiritual abuse. Typically, they are not believed, they have their character attacked and tarnished, and are driven out of the churches they love (see chapter 6 for examples). What would motivate them to lie about the charges? What would they have to gain? Often they have everything to lose.

They might think they suffered abuse when they really didn’t; they may just have an overly sensitive personality that led them to exaggerate what happened. They just blew it out of proportion. Fair enough. This important possibility has to be considered and is all the more reason for an independent, third-party investigation

abusive pastor might attack the way the victims are handling the conflict. He might weave a narrative that paints the victims as unforgiving, angry, hard-hearted, and unwilling to reconcile, all while painting himself as a peacemaker who has reached out with an olive branch that has been repeatedly rejected.

Once the abusive leader is confronted over his sinful actions and called to repentance, it is often the case that his cooperative spirit will quickly disappear and he will begin to lash out at those holding him accountable.