Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse occurs when a person in religious authority or a person with a unique spiritual practice misleads and maltreats another person in the name of God or church or in the mystery of any spiritual concept. Spiritual abuse often refers to an abuser using spiritual or religious rank in taking advantage of the victim's spirituality (mentality and passion on spiritual matters) by putting the victim in a state of unquestioning obedience to an abusive authority.

Spiritual abuse is the maltreatment of a person in the name of God, faith, religion, or church, whether habitual or not, and includes any of the following:

• Psychological and emotional abuse
• Any act by deeds or words that demean, humiliate or shame the natural worth and dignity of a person as a human being
• Submission to spiritual authority without any right to disagree; intimidation
• Unreasonable control of a person's basic right to make a choice on spiritual matters
• False accusation and repeated criticism by negatively labeling a person as disobedient, rebellious, lacking faith, demonized, apostate, enemy of the church or God
• Prevention from practicing faith
• Isolation or separation from family and friends due to religious affiliation
• Physical abuse that includes physical injury, deprivation of sustenance, and sexual abuse
• Exclusivity; dismissal of an outsider's criticism and labeling an outsider as of the devil
• Withholding information and giving of information only to a selected few
• Conformity to a dangerous or unnatural religious view and practice
• Hostility that includes shunning, (relational aggression, parental alienation) and persecution

Characteristics

Researchers conceptualize a set of discernible characteristics of spiritual abuse.
Ronald Enroth in Churches That Abuse identifies five categories:

1. Authority and Power - abusive groups misuse and distort the concept of spiritual authority. Abuse arises when leaders of a group arrogate to themselves power and authority that lacks the dynamics of open accountability and the capacity to question or challenge decisions made by leaders. The shift entails moving from general respect for an office bearer to one where members loyally submit without any right to dissent.

2. Manipulation and Control - abusive groups are characterized by social dynamics where fear, guilt, and threats are routinely used to produce unquestioning obedience, group conformity, and stringent tests of loyalty to the leaders are demonstrated before the group. Biblical concepts of the leader-disciple relationship tend to develop into a hierarchy where the leader's decisions control and usurp the disciple's right or capacity to make choices on spiritual matters or even in daily routines of what form of employment, form of diet and clothing are permitted.

3. Elitism and Persecution - abusive groups depict themselves as unique and have a strong organizational tendency to be separate from other bodies and institutions. The social dynamism of the group involves being independent or separate, with diminishing possibilities for internal correction and reflection. Outside criticism and evaluation is dismissed as the disruptive efforts of evil people seeking to hinder or thwart.

4. Life-style and Experience - abusive groups foster rigidity in behavior and in belief that requires unswerving conformity to the group's ideals and social mores.

5. Dissent and Discipline - abusive groups tend to suppress any kind of internal challenges and dissent concerning decisions made by leaders. Acts of discipline may involve emotional and physical humiliation, physical violence or deprivation, acute and intense acts of punishment for dissent and disobedience.
Agnes and John Lawless argue in The Drift into Deception that there are eight characteristics of spiritual abuse, and some of these clearly overlap with Enroth's criteria. They list the eight marks of spiritual abuse as comprising:

1. charisma and pride,
2. anger and intimidation,
3. greed and fraud,
4. immorality,
5. Enslaving authoritarian structure,
6. Exclusivity,
7. Demanding loyalty and honor,
8. New revelation.

Although some of these points form aspects of a strong and healthy society (e.g. respect for proper authority, loyalty and honor), the basis of spiritual abuse is when these characteristics are overstretched to achieve a desired goal that is neither supported by spiritual reality nor by the human conscience.