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Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church
An effective plan to help those suffering from wounds inflicted by the church find spiritual healing and a renewed sense of faith.
Raised as a conservative Christian, minister and author Carol Howard Merritt discovered that the traditional institutions she grew up in inflicted great pain and suffering on others. Though she loved the spirituality the church provided, she knew that, because of sexism, homophobia, and manipulative religious politics, established religious institutions weren’t always holy or safe. Instead of offering refuge, these institutions have betrayed people’s hearts and souls. “People have suffered religious abuse,” she writes, “which can be different from physical injury or psychological trauma.”
Though participation and affiliation in traditional religious institutions is waning, many people still believe in God. Merritt contends that many leave the church because they have lost trust in the institution, not in God. Healing Spiritual Wounds addresses the church’s dichotomous image—as a safe space and as a dangerous place—and provides a way to restore personal faith and connection to God for those who have been hurt or betrayed by established institutions of faith. Merritt lays out a multistage plan for moving from pain to spiritual rebirth, from recovering theological and emotional shards to recovering communal wholeness.
Merritt does not sugarcoat the wrongs institutions long seen as trustworthy have inflicted on many innocent victims. Sympathetic, understanding, and deeply positive, she offers hope and a way to help them heal and reclaim the spiritual joy that can make them whole again.
Raised as a conservative Christian, minister and author Carol Howard Merritt discovered that the traditional institutions she grew up in inflicted great pain and suffering on others. Though she loved the spirituality the church provided, she knew that, because of sexism, homophobia, and manipulative religious politics, established religious institutions weren’t always holy or safe. Instead of offering refuge, these institutions have betrayed people’s hearts and souls. “People have suffered religious abuse,” she writes, “which can be different from physical injury or psychological trauma.”
Though participation and affiliation in traditional religious institutions is waning, many people still believe in God. Merritt contends that many leave the church because they have lost trust in the institution, not in God. Healing Spiritual Wounds addresses the church’s dichotomous image—as a safe space and as a dangerous place—and provides a way to restore personal faith and connection to God for those who have been hurt or betrayed by established institutions of faith. Merritt lays out a multistage plan for moving from pain to spiritual rebirth, from recovering theological and emotional shards to recovering communal wholeness.
Merritt does not sugarcoat the wrongs institutions long seen as trustworthy have inflicted on many innocent victims. Sympathetic, understanding, and deeply positive, she offers hope and a way to help them heal and reclaim the spiritual joy that can make them whole again.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 7, 2017
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July 13, 2018
In her new book, Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church (Harper One, 2017), Carol Howard Merritt tells her own story of moving from the punishing theology of her childhood to a new understanding of love, mercy and forgiveness. Yet this is not a memoir; it is a trail guide designed to help the reader make a similar journey. Recognizing our wounds allows us to undertake our healing, the healing God wants for all of us.
The Reverend Carol Howard Merritt grew up in the evangelical church. While attending Bible college, she made a turn in her theological understandings and became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Her past books, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation (Alban/Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) and Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation (Alban/Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), provided resources based in a deep understanding of cultural changes and generational shifts the mainline church seemed reluctant to acknowledge. Now she turns her gaze to the tradition that formed her, and to the injuries inflicted by a controlling, patriarchal system.
The chapters are organized around areas in our lives that might need healing from wounds inflicted by the church: our image of God, our emotions, our broken selves, our bodies, our hope, even our finances. Howard Merritt shares pieces of her personal story as well as the experiences of others whose stories illustrate each concept. At the end of every chapter, she includes exercises designed for use by individuals or groups. The exercises employ scripture, art, encounters with nature, journalling and other forms of reflection. A range of questions prompt the reader to consider and reconsider events that may have been harmful. I found the prompts to be creative, gentle, and pastoral.
I grew up in a downtown Southern Baptist church that didn't seem to differ much from the mainline downtown churches of my childhood, and I have done a lot of psychological and spiritual work over the past thirty years. I thought, as I began reading, "This book will be a great tool for others." As I got in deeper, I recognized the places where I learned something new years ago that I accepted intellectually, but never at the heart or gut level. Any of us who grew up influenced by the patriarchy can find some good work to do with this beautiful book.
Carol Howard Merritt is an intellectual force in the life of the 21st century church, an artist and a mystic, and a genuine example of a faithful Christian who has done and is doing her work. This book is recommended for individuals and groups, for men and women, for anyone who has been hurt by the church or wonders what people mean when they say they have been hurt by the church.
I received a free advance copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.
The Reverend Carol Howard Merritt grew up in the evangelical church. While attending Bible college, she made a turn in her theological understandings and became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Her past books, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation (Alban/Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) and Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation (Alban/Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), provided resources based in a deep understanding of cultural changes and generational shifts the mainline church seemed reluctant to acknowledge. Now she turns her gaze to the tradition that formed her, and to the injuries inflicted by a controlling, patriarchal system.
The chapters are organized around areas in our lives that might need healing from wounds inflicted by the church: our image of God, our emotions, our broken selves, our bodies, our hope, even our finances. Howard Merritt shares pieces of her personal story as well as the experiences of others whose stories illustrate each concept. At the end of every chapter, she includes exercises designed for use by individuals or groups. The exercises employ scripture, art, encounters with nature, journalling and other forms of reflection. A range of questions prompt the reader to consider and reconsider events that may have been harmful. I found the prompts to be creative, gentle, and pastoral.
I grew up in a downtown Southern Baptist church that didn't seem to differ much from the mainline downtown churches of my childhood, and I have done a lot of psychological and spiritual work over the past thirty years. I thought, as I began reading, "This book will be a great tool for others." As I got in deeper, I recognized the places where I learned something new years ago that I accepted intellectually, but never at the heart or gut level. Any of us who grew up influenced by the patriarchy can find some good work to do with this beautiful book.
Carol Howard Merritt is an intellectual force in the life of the 21st century church, an artist and a mystic, and a genuine example of a faithful Christian who has done and is doing her work. This book is recommended for individuals and groups, for men and women, for anyone who has been hurt by the church or wonders what people mean when they say they have been hurt by the church.
I received a free advance copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.
March 21, 2017
A friend found an article about this online and sent it to me and I am SO glad she did. This is a very profound book, one which will linger with me for a long time. It's not a book meant to convert anyone or to glorify Christianity, and although Christianity-focused it really could apply to other faiths too (if you replaced the prayers and biblical passages with those from other texts). Meritt has a beautiful, holistic way of viewing spirituality and a wonderfully quiet, thoughtful approach to religion. She brings a uniquely feminine, nurturing perspective to the bible and to the church, and it is one that I very much needed after being raised in a patriarchal, regressive evangelical tradition. Merritt finds many major hurts the church can cause that she addresses here, the most familiar among them homophobia, sexism, and sexual and physical abuse; but she also includes some more subversive (and less openly discussed) problems such as convicted evangelicalism, misapplication of biblical texts and principles, and the low self esteem and self-worth caused by the prosperity gospel and a false focus on "humility." I really think this is a necessary book for any Christian or person raised in the Christian tradition (ESPECIALLY women) in America to read today, both as a way to understand the harms the church can do as well as to understand their Christian privilege. It should be easily digestible from such an approachable source. I flew through this but I can see myself re-reading it several times; there is a lot to unpack in these simple but loving words.
March 6, 2017
I received an Advance Reader Copy for an honest review.
I wrote a full review at The Young Clergywomen's Project: http://youngclergywomen.org/healing-h...
Short version: I highly recommend this book for anyone who has experienced spiritual harm by a church or organization or member of the clergy. I also highly recommend this book to be on your shelf if you are a member of the clergy or a therapist. This is a good resources to help people navigate the journey of healing with a loving God.
I wrote a full review at The Young Clergywomen's Project: http://youngclergywomen.org/healing-h...
Short version: I highly recommend this book for anyone who has experienced spiritual harm by a church or organization or member of the clergy. I also highly recommend this book to be on your shelf if you are a member of the clergy or a therapist. This is a good resources to help people navigate the journey of healing with a loving God.
November 20, 2017
Stories abound of people who have been spiritually wounded. Many who have such experiences have decided that religion and God are not worth the trouble. If they're to find healing it won't be in a religious context and likely won't involve God. Such wounds come in many forms. We have heard much about clergy sex abuse scandals. LGBT folks often find that the church and religious people can be not only unwelcoming but hostile and even violent. Religion has been used to justify racism and sexism. Then there are the preachers who rain down upon their congregations words of anger and abuse, often creating a climate of fear, guilt, and shame. So, is it possible for someone to experience such realities and reconnect with God?
Carol Howard Merritt is a Presbyterian pastor and author (and a friend). Carol has her own story of spiritual woundedness that is deeply rooted in her own experiences growing up in a fundamentalist context, with an abusive father who justified his rage with the Bible, and then found herself in college at Moody Bible Institute. It was during her time at Moody that she began to discern a different path. In part this had to do with encountering other forms of Christianity while in Chicago. It included being given the opportunity to befriend an older woman, needing companionship, who was liberal in her sentiments, opening up another avenue. It also included a horrific event, the day she was sexually assaulted (groped) by a man, while standing near the front door of her college. Even as she felt shame, because she had been taught that women were the temptresses and cause of such assaults, she began to realize that such a message could not be true. While she might have left Christianity behind during these moments, she didn't. Instead, she found a pathway to healing that ultimately led to seminary and ordination.
Carol's own story forms the foundation of this beautifully written (as one would expect from Carol) book that is part memoir and part guide to spiritual healing. The message is in many ways quite simple. As Carol puts it in the opening chapter" "Yes Christianity was and is part fo the problem, the cause of much suffering, anxiety, and pain in life; but Christianity has also been my cure, my solace, my center" (p. 8). That is an important message that needs to be shared with all who have experienced spiritual woundedness.
Througout the book Carol weaves her own story with the stories of others, many of whom she has had the opportunity to minister to during her years as a pastor. Each chapter includes exercises that can help readers needing spiritual healing to remember, deal with their own experiences, hopefully letting go of the hurt so that healing might take place. Her purpose in writing is to provide a "safe place where we could speak honestly about all the bitterness caused by the church --- the blatant sexism, physical abuse, sexual harm, and emotional manipulation -- while finding a way to hold on to the sweetness and wholeness and healing the spiritual life can bring" (p. 9). This isn't meant to be a defense of Christianity, but is her attempt to help those desiring to reconnect with God to do so. That means reconnecting with the loving God she has discovered during journey.
After an introductory chapter, Carol begins to lay out a way toward healing. She begins to develop a vision of love and of wholeness (shalom). This is the goal -- wholeness. That often requires a new vision of God, thus she leads us through a conversation about "healing our image of God." For many the way to healing requires replacing a vision of the angry God with the loving God. This is important, as Carol notes, because for many God was understood to be involved in that which wounded the person. So, it's important to reclaim God! It also involves, as Carol writes in chapter 4, recovering one's emotions. Carol had learned to hide and suppress her emotions. She survived spiritual abuse by becoming numb, but this numbness is a result of messages designed to produce guilt and shame. Through a series of experiences and encounters, Carol emerged from her numbness, allowing her to move toward healing. In a chapter titled "Redeeming Our Broken Selves," Carol writes of not only learning to lover herself, finding the possibility of loving all humanity. That required her to reenvision how she spoke of God to the world.
Chapter six is titled "Reclaiming our Bodies." This is an important chapter in the book, especially for women. The message that often is given to women is that they must be careful about how they dress and act, because they can cause men to stumble. They are often blamed for sexual assaults. All is justified religiously. As I read the book, I looked back at my own pathway out of a more fundamentalist context, though nothing like hers. I was part of a conservative Christian community, and I bought into much of its message, but I wasn't born into it as was Carol, and my college experience didn't reinforce these messages. In fact, in many ways, though my teachers weren't necessarily liberal, they opened up my eyes to different visions of God. But the other piece for me is that I'm white, male, straight. I may have had issues with my body, but they weren't religiously instilled. But for Carol, and for many women, that lesson was deeply embedded. She found healing by affirming that God had created her flesh in God's image and that her flesh was good. Yes, this is an important chapter.
From there we move to questions of hope, a conversation that takes us into the fundamentalist interpretation of scripture, especially dispensationalism. In this chapter Carol shares how this version of biblical interpretation was taught and its implications. Healing comes as one moves from fear to hope. There is an intriguing chapter on finances. Here the issue is the way in which the prosperity gospel and other forms of Christianity turn the faith into a transactional one, that can have deadly impact on one's finances.
The final chapter is titled "Being Born Again." Conservative Christianity often lifts up the need to be born again, and often does so in a transactional form. On the way to healing Carol reclaims the idea, and shares her own story of being reborn. That is, being born from above. It is in this chapter that she shares the story of being sexually assaulted, and the final discovery that she was not to blame. As she let go of her guilt and shame, she was spiritually reborn. For her and for many this requires a movement away from patriarchal views of religion. Ultimately it came when she experienced the fullness of God's love enveloping her, so that she realized that she needn't "livin in constant fear of losing God's love, or anyone else's love" (p. 212).
For Carol, healing ultimately required that she deal with her relationship with her father, a relationship that did not get resolved during his life time. She found healing when read the story of the raising of Lazarus, and she heard Jesus words "unbind him, and let him go," as a word to her about her relationship with her father. That was the wound that needed to be healed, and it was healed, when she removed the bandages and let him go, and discovering that love remained.
I know that Carol initially planned on simply writing a memoir of her experiences at Moody, but it became more than that. While I might have enjoyed that original concept, I believe that this is a book that can help a lot of people reconnect with God, so that they might experience healing of spiritual wounds that have been inflicted on them by the church and by Christianity. As Carol noted early on, this isn't a defense of Christianity. She's not attempting to convince anyone of anything. But for those ready to take this journey, she wants to help guide them to a place where they can find healing. My prayer is that many will take this journey.
Carol Howard Merritt is a Presbyterian pastor and author (and a friend). Carol has her own story of spiritual woundedness that is deeply rooted in her own experiences growing up in a fundamentalist context, with an abusive father who justified his rage with the Bible, and then found herself in college at Moody Bible Institute. It was during her time at Moody that she began to discern a different path. In part this had to do with encountering other forms of Christianity while in Chicago. It included being given the opportunity to befriend an older woman, needing companionship, who was liberal in her sentiments, opening up another avenue. It also included a horrific event, the day she was sexually assaulted (groped) by a man, while standing near the front door of her college. Even as she felt shame, because she had been taught that women were the temptresses and cause of such assaults, she began to realize that such a message could not be true. While she might have left Christianity behind during these moments, she didn't. Instead, she found a pathway to healing that ultimately led to seminary and ordination.
Carol's own story forms the foundation of this beautifully written (as one would expect from Carol) book that is part memoir and part guide to spiritual healing. The message is in many ways quite simple. As Carol puts it in the opening chapter" "Yes Christianity was and is part fo the problem, the cause of much suffering, anxiety, and pain in life; but Christianity has also been my cure, my solace, my center" (p. 8). That is an important message that needs to be shared with all who have experienced spiritual woundedness.
Througout the book Carol weaves her own story with the stories of others, many of whom she has had the opportunity to minister to during her years as a pastor. Each chapter includes exercises that can help readers needing spiritual healing to remember, deal with their own experiences, hopefully letting go of the hurt so that healing might take place. Her purpose in writing is to provide a "safe place where we could speak honestly about all the bitterness caused by the church --- the blatant sexism, physical abuse, sexual harm, and emotional manipulation -- while finding a way to hold on to the sweetness and wholeness and healing the spiritual life can bring" (p. 9). This isn't meant to be a defense of Christianity, but is her attempt to help those desiring to reconnect with God to do so. That means reconnecting with the loving God she has discovered during journey.
After an introductory chapter, Carol begins to lay out a way toward healing. She begins to develop a vision of love and of wholeness (shalom). This is the goal -- wholeness. That often requires a new vision of God, thus she leads us through a conversation about "healing our image of God." For many the way to healing requires replacing a vision of the angry God with the loving God. This is important, as Carol notes, because for many God was understood to be involved in that which wounded the person. So, it's important to reclaim God! It also involves, as Carol writes in chapter 4, recovering one's emotions. Carol had learned to hide and suppress her emotions. She survived spiritual abuse by becoming numb, but this numbness is a result of messages designed to produce guilt and shame. Through a series of experiences and encounters, Carol emerged from her numbness, allowing her to move toward healing. In a chapter titled "Redeeming Our Broken Selves," Carol writes of not only learning to lover herself, finding the possibility of loving all humanity. That required her to reenvision how she spoke of God to the world.
Chapter six is titled "Reclaiming our Bodies." This is an important chapter in the book, especially for women. The message that often is given to women is that they must be careful about how they dress and act, because they can cause men to stumble. They are often blamed for sexual assaults. All is justified religiously. As I read the book, I looked back at my own pathway out of a more fundamentalist context, though nothing like hers. I was part of a conservative Christian community, and I bought into much of its message, but I wasn't born into it as was Carol, and my college experience didn't reinforce these messages. In fact, in many ways, though my teachers weren't necessarily liberal, they opened up my eyes to different visions of God. But the other piece for me is that I'm white, male, straight. I may have had issues with my body, but they weren't religiously instilled. But for Carol, and for many women, that lesson was deeply embedded. She found healing by affirming that God had created her flesh in God's image and that her flesh was good. Yes, this is an important chapter.
From there we move to questions of hope, a conversation that takes us into the fundamentalist interpretation of scripture, especially dispensationalism. In this chapter Carol shares how this version of biblical interpretation was taught and its implications. Healing comes as one moves from fear to hope. There is an intriguing chapter on finances. Here the issue is the way in which the prosperity gospel and other forms of Christianity turn the faith into a transactional one, that can have deadly impact on one's finances.
The final chapter is titled "Being Born Again." Conservative Christianity often lifts up the need to be born again, and often does so in a transactional form. On the way to healing Carol reclaims the idea, and shares her own story of being reborn. That is, being born from above. It is in this chapter that she shares the story of being sexually assaulted, and the final discovery that she was not to blame. As she let go of her guilt and shame, she was spiritually reborn. For her and for many this requires a movement away from patriarchal views of religion. Ultimately it came when she experienced the fullness of God's love enveloping her, so that she realized that she needn't "livin in constant fear of losing God's love, or anyone else's love" (p. 212).
For Carol, healing ultimately required that she deal with her relationship with her father, a relationship that did not get resolved during his life time. She found healing when read the story of the raising of Lazarus, and she heard Jesus words "unbind him, and let him go," as a word to her about her relationship with her father. That was the wound that needed to be healed, and it was healed, when she removed the bandages and let him go, and discovering that love remained.
I know that Carol initially planned on simply writing a memoir of her experiences at Moody, but it became more than that. While I might have enjoyed that original concept, I believe that this is a book that can help a lot of people reconnect with God, so that they might experience healing of spiritual wounds that have been inflicted on them by the church and by Christianity. As Carol noted early on, this isn't a defense of Christianity. She's not attempting to convince anyone of anything. But for those ready to take this journey, she wants to help guide them to a place where they can find healing. My prayer is that many will take this journey.
February 9, 2017
Carol Howard Merritt has offered herself as a loving, compassionate guide for anyone looking to reclaim love of self, love in community and a healthy understanding of God. Her storytelling and her use of beautiful metaphor light the way to recognizing and embracing a fuller interior life. She leaves no stone unturned, speaking frankly about patriarchy, finances, abuse, and sex. She both examines hurt and offers healing from stories and poetry in the Bible. As a pastor, I will keep one handy, ready to give it away.
I received a free copy in advance for my honest review.
I received a free copy in advance for my honest review.
September 17, 2018
It's unfair to judge a book based on your own personal expectations (needs?) for a book. However, I am finding it hard to not do so with this book.
A few weeks ago my minister wife and I found out that the governing body of the church was eliminating her position. This would set off an unsettling chain of events for our family: she would lose her job, we would basically be expelled from our church family, we would have to move away from our community that we've grown to love, she would have to find another job in another city, I would have to quit my (brand new!) job, I would have to find a job in another city, we would have to move out of our current house, and we would have to move into a new house. All of this was compounded by the fact that we have an eleven month old child. The very same community that vowed to help raise and nourish our child in her baptismal vow in February laid-off her mother in September.
As I began processing all of this (with quite a bit of bitterness and anger), I remembered seeing this book on Englewood Review of Books' "Best Books of 2017" list. From the title and sub-title, Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church, I thought this would be a great book to read during this stage of our life. Unfortunately, the title is somewhat misleading and was not at all what I needed.
Healing Spiritual Wounds is simply another spiritual memoir recounting a person of faith's journey from a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist background to a more progressive form of Christianity (a la Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Rachel Held Evans, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Jonathan Merritt, etc.). Merritt shares anecdotes from her life to confront the problems of clergy abuse, patriarchy, condemnation of homosexuality, condemnation of the female body, pre-millennial dispensationalism, hell, etc. Each section ends with reflective writing prompts such as:
In church, I learned to think my body was . . .
In church, I learned that sex was . . .
In church, I learned that women were . . .
I used to think it was sinful to feel . . .
My parents used to manipulate me with . . .
My church used to manipulate me with . . .
Did you grow up in a faith tradition that threatened your safety and security?
Write down or tell a story about when you felt afraid because of a religious belief.
Was there a time when a sermon scared you?
Of course, none of these things related to my need. My need was to find something to help me process what I felt as a betrayal by my church family. What I found was a how-to guide for how to quit evangelicalism and be more progressively minded.
A bit more objectively, I'm consistently bothered by these types of authors (who used to collectively be called "Emergent Church" authors though now probably have a different title). Everybody must eventually break from the traditions of their parents and formulate their own faith. I did. However, this mentality often turns into a baby-with-the-bathwater mentality. I find healing by delving deeper into the tradition of the church, not by moving farther away from it.
A few weeks ago my minister wife and I found out that the governing body of the church was eliminating her position. This would set off an unsettling chain of events for our family: she would lose her job, we would basically be expelled from our church family, we would have to move away from our community that we've grown to love, she would have to find another job in another city, I would have to quit my (brand new!) job, I would have to find a job in another city, we would have to move out of our current house, and we would have to move into a new house. All of this was compounded by the fact that we have an eleven month old child. The very same community that vowed to help raise and nourish our child in her baptismal vow in February laid-off her mother in September.
As I began processing all of this (with quite a bit of bitterness and anger), I remembered seeing this book on Englewood Review of Books' "Best Books of 2017" list. From the title and sub-title, Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church, I thought this would be a great book to read during this stage of our life. Unfortunately, the title is somewhat misleading and was not at all what I needed.
Healing Spiritual Wounds is simply another spiritual memoir recounting a person of faith's journey from a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist background to a more progressive form of Christianity (a la Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Rachel Held Evans, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Jonathan Merritt, etc.). Merritt shares anecdotes from her life to confront the problems of clergy abuse, patriarchy, condemnation of homosexuality, condemnation of the female body, pre-millennial dispensationalism, hell, etc. Each section ends with reflective writing prompts such as:
In church, I learned to think my body was . . .
In church, I learned that sex was . . .
In church, I learned that women were . . .
I used to think it was sinful to feel . . .
My parents used to manipulate me with . . .
My church used to manipulate me with . . .
Did you grow up in a faith tradition that threatened your safety and security?
Write down or tell a story about when you felt afraid because of a religious belief.
Was there a time when a sermon scared you?
Of course, none of these things related to my need. My need was to find something to help me process what I felt as a betrayal by my church family. What I found was a how-to guide for how to quit evangelicalism and be more progressively minded.
A bit more objectively, I'm consistently bothered by these types of authors (who used to collectively be called "Emergent Church" authors though now probably have a different title). Everybody must eventually break from the traditions of their parents and formulate their own faith. I did. However, this mentality often turns into a baby-with-the-bathwater mentality. I find healing by delving deeper into the tradition of the church, not by moving farther away from it.
February 16, 2017
In an approachable and pastoral way, Carol Howard Merritt brings our attention to the aspects of religion which have been used to cause harm and inhibit healing. Through her stories and honest yet caring dialogue, she reminds us - both in the church and outside of the church - how these very same aspects, when utilized in a more faithful way, can bind up the broken-hearted and promote health and wholeness. Hope-filled and Life affirming, these words call each us back into a discipleship and faith practice which honors the invitation to Life Abundant, and that our health is tied to the health of others, as well. A must read, and an enjoyable read.
January 31, 2017
I really loved this book. Highly recommended for those who have been hurt by church or religious people, but still keep coming back to God. Interview forthcoming at Off the Page.
March 29, 2017
I am a friend of Carol Howard Merritt, and my wife, Candasu, is an even closer one. I have had the pleasure of hearing about the genesis of this book for some time through Candasu, who read an earlier version and offered notes. (She is mentioned in the acknowledgements.)
The book was worth the wait. Merritt does a great job of naming the most salient causes of spiritual wounds for people who have encountered hurtful religion: Physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse and the rush to blame victims for their own abuse; patriarchy and complementarian theology that teaches women they are lesser beings; homophobia and shame of our bodies and sexuality; and a "transactional" view of relationships that teaches us that we are only worth the money and wealth we possess. Rather than dwelling at length on the pervasiveness of these sources of spiritual wounds-- and they are pernicious and widespread-- Merritt focuses on ways to help those who have been wounded, but want to retain a connection to their spirituality, find a way forward.
I found Merritt's discussion of finances and the "transactional" view of relationships refreshing and helpful. It's not what I am used to seeing discussed in this context, but shame and exploitation around finances and debt is widespread, both within churches and without. I work in a law practice that does consumer law and personal bankruptcy, and I can attest to the crippling shame and crisis of self-worth that comes with being in debt over your head. Merritt discusses those issues with sensitivity and real insight.
My advice to anyone inclined to read this book who doesn't already know the author and her other work would be to prepare to read it twice. The first read-through will give you a sense of the overall framework of the book and Carol's overall perspective towards spiritual life and spiritual healing. The second read will give you an opportunity to work through the helpful spiritual exercises that accompany each chapter.
The book was worth the wait. Merritt does a great job of naming the most salient causes of spiritual wounds for people who have encountered hurtful religion: Physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse and the rush to blame victims for their own abuse; patriarchy and complementarian theology that teaches women they are lesser beings; homophobia and shame of our bodies and sexuality; and a "transactional" view of relationships that teaches us that we are only worth the money and wealth we possess. Rather than dwelling at length on the pervasiveness of these sources of spiritual wounds-- and they are pernicious and widespread-- Merritt focuses on ways to help those who have been wounded, but want to retain a connection to their spirituality, find a way forward.
I found Merritt's discussion of finances and the "transactional" view of relationships refreshing and helpful. It's not what I am used to seeing discussed in this context, but shame and exploitation around finances and debt is widespread, both within churches and without. I work in a law practice that does consumer law and personal bankruptcy, and I can attest to the crippling shame and crisis of self-worth that comes with being in debt over your head. Merritt discusses those issues with sensitivity and real insight.
My advice to anyone inclined to read this book who doesn't already know the author and her other work would be to prepare to read it twice. The first read-through will give you a sense of the overall framework of the book and Carol's overall perspective towards spiritual life and spiritual healing. The second read will give you an opportunity to work through the helpful spiritual exercises that accompany each chapter.
March 22, 2018
Merritt has a wonderful writing style making this an easy read. But it is not a book that is easy to read. Her story is full of anguish and pain; of dealing with emotional and spiritual wounds for herself and those she loves. If one has been through traumatic events in a church setting or is wrestling with toxic fundamentalist theology, this could be a liberating read.
On the positive side, she speaks of her own journey as well as provides concrete exercises to work through a variety of issues wrought by toxic theology. From emotional abuse, body image, patriarchy, finances and others, she helps the reader re-frame Christian theology and self-worth. In the end, she knows if you can love yourself, you can love others as is the call of Jesus. Of note, her chapter dealing with the roots of the prosperity Gospel and unpacking her own feelings about money were superlative.
That said, while any of us from a fundamentalist background can relate to some of her trauma, this book may feel voyeuristic to those who grew up in a healthy theology or those who have worked beyond the sweaty palms and guilt of leaving fundamentalism. She opens her soul to some of the most traumatic episodes in her life. But like someone who is a cancer survivor, others may sympathize with the event but cannot fully empathize with it. Simply, the intensity can seem a bit overwhelming to a reader raised outside her abusive system.
All that said, I intend to keep it at hand for anyone wrestling with the effects of toxic theology.
On the positive side, she speaks of her own journey as well as provides concrete exercises to work through a variety of issues wrought by toxic theology. From emotional abuse, body image, patriarchy, finances and others, she helps the reader re-frame Christian theology and self-worth. In the end, she knows if you can love yourself, you can love others as is the call of Jesus. Of note, her chapter dealing with the roots of the prosperity Gospel and unpacking her own feelings about money were superlative.
That said, while any of us from a fundamentalist background can relate to some of her trauma, this book may feel voyeuristic to those who grew up in a healthy theology or those who have worked beyond the sweaty palms and guilt of leaving fundamentalism. She opens her soul to some of the most traumatic episodes in her life. But like someone who is a cancer survivor, others may sympathize with the event but cannot fully empathize with it. Simply, the intensity can seem a bit overwhelming to a reader raised outside her abusive system.
All that said, I intend to keep it at hand for anyone wrestling with the effects of toxic theology.
March 9, 2017
Another entry in the Recovering-Evangelical genre. I was hoping for a more nuanced discussion of repairing relationships in Christian community and instead found it mostly a rebuke of hyper-conservative, purity culture complementarianism. If you've read Sarah Bessey, Rachel Held Evans, or Dianna E. Anderson, then you've already encountered much of the territory traveled in this book. Having not grown up with that baggage, I'm not looking for a way to recover from it. I can understand this is probably helpful for readers who need it. Church community can be hurtful in other ways that could've been addressed here - how about churches that burnout their staff? Consumer Christianity/Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?
Pros: the helpful tips for overcoming negative church programming, specifically related to abuse or strict gender roles
Cons: florid prose, not nuanced
Pros: the helpful tips for overcoming negative church programming, specifically related to abuse or strict gender roles
Cons: florid prose, not nuanced
October 17, 2017
I feel a bit awkward writing a review of this book since I happen to be friends with the author and she sent me a free, autographed copy of the book. It’s a weird position to be in when you are friends with an author because how do you objectively review something they’ve written? I’ll just say that I think Merritt really nails it here. She gets at the heart of the reasons why so many of us have been wounded by the church and she gives us some great exercises to do to recover from those wounds. This is an important and needed book for anyone who has found themselves hurt by the church, which sadly is most of us. An easy going and engaging writing style that doesn’t get too bogged down with complicated theological terms or ideas. Accessible, short and detailed. Thanks for writing this, Carol. Looking forward to seeing you in person next week and telling you how much I enjoyed this.
November 22, 2016
I was able to read an advance copy of this book, and was delighted to see that it was everything I hoped it would be: readable, insightful, and packed with practical help.
Carol Howard Merritt gently unspools the tightly wound messages of shame and guilt that strangle spirits and cause damage to body, soul and relationships. Merritt shows the reader how to unfurl into the open space of God’s great love. An invaluable tool for faith leaders and healers of all types.
Carol Howard Merritt gently unspools the tightly wound messages of shame and guilt that strangle spirits and cause damage to body, soul and relationships. Merritt shows the reader how to unfurl into the open space of God’s great love. An invaluable tool for faith leaders and healers of all types.
February 20, 2017
A thoughtful and provocative entry point to the work of healing that the church has caused. Carol bears her soul so we might do the brave work in her likeness and find grace and God in the process.
March 24, 2017
Carol Howard Merritt, known for her insightful writing in the Christian Century and her previous books* offers a gentle work for those who have endured mistreatment by the Church. This book is not intended has an apologetic for “why” one should be in a church, or even be a Christian. Rather, it is intended to help those who are struggling to redefine faith’s role and want help finding the path back to belief and wholeness.
As a trained chaplain, several of the chapters reminded me of my own work in my spiritual identity and pastoral identity. In particular, the chapter on “Healing Our Image of God” took me back through the process of experiencing the “life-giving God” through a process Merritt calls “communal and personal” (p. 55). I remembered how I learned to experience God outside of a list of do’s and don’t’s. How photography, poetry, writing and music changed the “replay” of God’s work in my life. It was soul-stirring.
See my full review at https://unfinishedsymphony.org/2017/0...
As a trained chaplain, several of the chapters reminded me of my own work in my spiritual identity and pastoral identity. In particular, the chapter on “Healing Our Image of God” took me back through the process of experiencing the “life-giving God” through a process Merritt calls “communal and personal” (p. 55). I remembered how I learned to experience God outside of a list of do’s and don’t’s. How photography, poetry, writing and music changed the “replay” of God’s work in my life. It was soul-stirring.
See my full review at https://unfinishedsymphony.org/2017/0...
May 9, 2018
This book didn't work. The title leads you to think it will help you recover from bad experiences in church, but I didn't find it helpful at all. This is mostly a memoir about growing up in a very conservative church and with an abusive parent. The book also tries to be an all purpose self help book. Sorry, I wasn't looking for help with my finances or a re-interpretation of my image of God. The author writes beautifully. This might be helpful for former fundamentalists, but not for the rest of us.
Read
July 3, 2018She’s a friend of mine, so I read it knowing her and hearing her voice. Very personal. I appreciated the commitment to the idea that we wouldn’t let Christians/religious people take away our spirituality and the blessing of the church from us. It’s more her own journey than a how-to, and that’s inspiring.
April 28, 2021
We used this book as the primary text for a church group for people who experienced spiritual trauma and religious woundedness. It was a great guide for our group. Merritt's stories and pastoral experiences spoke to the experiences of my church members. The exercises gave us room to grow rather than simply think or process.
April 11, 2021
Carol Howard Merritt's book, Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting With a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church, begins with an explosive situation.
A panic-stricken teenager, (the author), retreats into her room to escape an abusive father. As her father and mother are caught in their own brokenness, the teen begins to ask a series of questions, each ending with a haunting refrain.
“Fear choked me as I heard the voices of my mother and father, rising and cresting, with angry rhythms. I tried to figure out a strategy if it became dangerous… What should I do?”
Fortunately, God seems to meet her, at least temporarily, to calm her down. She simply breathed deeply, sat down on her bed and “an overwhelming sense that it would be okay – that I would be okay – flooded me. God surrounded me and embraced me.”
Merritt grew up in a Christian household, but the religion didn’t lend itself to answers, and, to a large extent, was a source of the problem. To begin to unravel unholy church experiences is complex, says Merritt. Especially for individuals who choose to hold onto their spirituality, no matter how wounded they have become.
“I wasn’t afraid to ask the questions or deal with the consequences if I eventually found religion unbearable,” she writes. “It’s just that when someone complains of religious wounds, we’re often told to quit going to church and disconnect from spiritual practices. No doubt this works for some people, but others see the world through an irremovable religious lens. Asking us to stop believing and practicing would be so unnatural that it would cause certain blindness.”
From this point, Merritt begins to deconstruct the fundamentalist, paternalistic brand of Christianity she grew up with, and, at the same time, offers meditative practices to foster healing.
“When students of humankind want to understand a culture, they take a careful look at its religions, myths, and artifacts. A society that worships a wrathful God will reflect violent characteristics and honor those traits in its people. They will begin to believe that God calls them to war rather than forgiveness.
“It’s not just an anthropological understanding, but it is also a neurological reality. Worshipping an angry God changes our cerebral chemistry. The amygdala, that primeval bit in the brain that triggers fear and anger gets a workout when we worship a God of fury, it becomes stronger, and we can begin to reflect that rage.”
By extension, Merritt argues that individual views of God can be reflected in society. A God of wrath creates guilt and shame. A God of love creates a society in which peace and love are valued.
At this point, Merritt introduces several examples of meditative exercises meant to help readers re-engage the church. One of the first meditative exercises that Merritt suggests is to realize that “Often God’s presence is understood through creation or actions, and the way to God is diverse… Can you recover your union with God through creation? Go on a walk, if you’re able. Look around, particularly at the elements that surround you, and finish these sentences:
God is like air, because…
God is like fire, because…
God is like the ground, because…
God is like water, because…”
The whole point is to latch on to what elements of creation “makes you most alive to God’s presence… then intentionally practice these things… [K]now that an important healing process is taking place as you learn to love God and be loved by God.”
A big part of emotional healing for Merritt is the realization that “there are core emotions such as anger, sadness and joy. And there are inhibitory emotions such as guilt, anxiety, and shame. When we experience core emotions, we also experience the release that follows. But the inhibitory emotions block a person from feeling core emotions and thus from feeling the release.
“Religion can be an especially powerful inhibiting force, because religious messages so effectively produce guilt and shame…
“[I]n order for us to have wholeness, we need to reclaim our emotional shards. You can start to do this by acknowledging your emotions.”
Merritt suggests that readers “take your emotional temperature, and check in with yourself throughout the day.” And then noticing patterns of behavior – “do you feel guilt surrounding certain emotions? Do you try to pretend some feelings don’t exist? Do you have a go-to emotion? Does gender factor into your emotional life?”
She offers an exercise to help accomplish this.
Later on in Healing Spiritual Wounds, she argues that how we view ourselves has ramifications on our world view. As Jesus taught, the ability to love ourselves is wrapped up in our ability to love others.
“How one views oneself is a common concern when people are longing for spiritual wholeness. It makes sense. Advertisements swarm us each day, reminding us of what we do not have… The average American is exposed to three hundred sixty ads every day… Every hour we are awake, we are told twenty-two times that we not rich, thin, young, beautiful, ripped, or stylish enough…
“Even though our culture has been criticized for being too narcissistic, being overly self-conscious can be a mask one learns to put on to hide damage and abuse. In the midst of all this, our religious understandings don’t always help…”
Merritt relates her own experience of attending a seminary that taught a fundamentalist doctrine. “Through the practice of evangelism, I realized I was hurting people with the premise of my evangelism. I thought we all deserved to go to hell.”
As part of her seminary training, Merritt had to hit the streets of Chicago, witnessing to people. “I believed that God would send these beautiful people to eternal suffering unless they repeated the magic words [of the Salvation Prayer] after me. If I loved them, after fifteen minutes of noticing the curve of their cheeks and the angle of their nose, wouldn’t God love them more? Or was God’s wrath so violent that it caused some sort of divine blindness? If God created them, and blew breath into them, why would God care about that prayer, that random recipe for salvation? And what did I really believe about people if I thought that we all deserved eternal burning?”
Merritt makes an excellent point when she writes, “The denigrating images our religious traditions can inflict on people can move us to imagine ourselves as lowly creatures, undeserving of God’s love… Much of this belief system was designed to highlight the grace of God, but it is unnecessary to make a creature look bad in order for a Creator to look even better.”
Once again, Merritt offers a meditative practice to help clear the theological air.
She takes on Augustine, noting that he “moves the realm of sin from what we do to who we are. The sin is no longer an action, but a being, a woman. So he makes a distinct, damning move from guilt to shame when he judges not the action but the person.”
Merritt takes on proponents of the ‘prosperity gospel’ who preach a “faith as palpably demonstrated by wealth and places the individual over community. It’s message that ‘God wants to bless you with wealth….’ Disseminating the idea that money equals the good life, and that if you do what the Lord wants, then you will reap those blessings…
“The shadow side of these beliefs can heap shame on the poor and lead to the understanding that those who struggle deserve their lot in life…” So economic inequality fueled by social injustice gets ignored. On this point, Merritt concludes: “As we keep hiding our hardships, individual responsibility turns into isolated suffering.”
About the subject of patriarchy in the church, Merritt defines it as “a system that promotes male privilege, or an unearned advantage that’s available to men while it’s denied to women…
“A patriarchal society has an obsession with control because patriarchy maintains its privilege through restraining women or men who might threaten it… In the religious arena, Christianity remains male-dominated, identified, and centered through our masculine ideas of God, by not allowing women to be in authority, and by building its theological systems based solely on the actions of men.”
Towards the end of Healing Spiritual Wounds, Merritt discusses the central idea of fundamentalism – individual salvation – versus corporate salvation. “When a loving mother suffers a miscarriage, it would be cruel to fault a mother for the loss. Instead, we honor her grief and suffer with her. In the same way, when we suffer wounds, we can understand the nurture and comfort of God, who is the source of all life. Through this shift, we move from understanding salvation as an individual act of submitting to the Father to realizing that we work alongside God for the salvation of all creation… God saves us not in a solitary act of murmured a prayer but through pulsing, vibrant community. It is not because of our individual striving or saying some magic words. The act of salvation begins and ends with God, and we can participate in it if we wish, for God is pregnant with us and all of creation.”
Merritt continues: “If I were to be born of God, then God had to be mother… A good mom. She was a mother who would love her children, no matter what that child might do and no matter what her child might believe. God would mourn with loss and rejoice with pleasure.”
With these ideas of religion and God, Merritt explains “God didn’t withhold favor based on a particular belief system… God was not over me, judging me, waiting for my missteps. God was under me, grounding me. My faith didn’t have to be a constant struggle to win God’s approval because God was for me.”
For those struggling with past hurts due to religion, or faith stream, For those hungry for a deeper spiritual understanding and connection with God, I highly recommend Carol Howard Merritt’s book.
A panic-stricken teenager, (the author), retreats into her room to escape an abusive father. As her father and mother are caught in their own brokenness, the teen begins to ask a series of questions, each ending with a haunting refrain.
“Fear choked me as I heard the voices of my mother and father, rising and cresting, with angry rhythms. I tried to figure out a strategy if it became dangerous… What should I do?”
Fortunately, God seems to meet her, at least temporarily, to calm her down. She simply breathed deeply, sat down on her bed and “an overwhelming sense that it would be okay – that I would be okay – flooded me. God surrounded me and embraced me.”
Merritt grew up in a Christian household, but the religion didn’t lend itself to answers, and, to a large extent, was a source of the problem. To begin to unravel unholy church experiences is complex, says Merritt. Especially for individuals who choose to hold onto their spirituality, no matter how wounded they have become.
“I wasn’t afraid to ask the questions or deal with the consequences if I eventually found religion unbearable,” she writes. “It’s just that when someone complains of religious wounds, we’re often told to quit going to church and disconnect from spiritual practices. No doubt this works for some people, but others see the world through an irremovable religious lens. Asking us to stop believing and practicing would be so unnatural that it would cause certain blindness.”
From this point, Merritt begins to deconstruct the fundamentalist, paternalistic brand of Christianity she grew up with, and, at the same time, offers meditative practices to foster healing.
“When students of humankind want to understand a culture, they take a careful look at its religions, myths, and artifacts. A society that worships a wrathful God will reflect violent characteristics and honor those traits in its people. They will begin to believe that God calls them to war rather than forgiveness.
“It’s not just an anthropological understanding, but it is also a neurological reality. Worshipping an angry God changes our cerebral chemistry. The amygdala, that primeval bit in the brain that triggers fear and anger gets a workout when we worship a God of fury, it becomes stronger, and we can begin to reflect that rage.”
By extension, Merritt argues that individual views of God can be reflected in society. A God of wrath creates guilt and shame. A God of love creates a society in which peace and love are valued.
At this point, Merritt introduces several examples of meditative exercises meant to help readers re-engage the church. One of the first meditative exercises that Merritt suggests is to realize that “Often God’s presence is understood through creation or actions, and the way to God is diverse… Can you recover your union with God through creation? Go on a walk, if you’re able. Look around, particularly at the elements that surround you, and finish these sentences:
God is like air, because…
God is like fire, because…
God is like the ground, because…
God is like water, because…”
The whole point is to latch on to what elements of creation “makes you most alive to God’s presence… then intentionally practice these things… [K]now that an important healing process is taking place as you learn to love God and be loved by God.”
A big part of emotional healing for Merritt is the realization that “there are core emotions such as anger, sadness and joy. And there are inhibitory emotions such as guilt, anxiety, and shame. When we experience core emotions, we also experience the release that follows. But the inhibitory emotions block a person from feeling core emotions and thus from feeling the release.
“Religion can be an especially powerful inhibiting force, because religious messages so effectively produce guilt and shame…
“[I]n order for us to have wholeness, we need to reclaim our emotional shards. You can start to do this by acknowledging your emotions.”
Merritt suggests that readers “take your emotional temperature, and check in with yourself throughout the day.” And then noticing patterns of behavior – “do you feel guilt surrounding certain emotions? Do you try to pretend some feelings don’t exist? Do you have a go-to emotion? Does gender factor into your emotional life?”
She offers an exercise to help accomplish this.
Later on in Healing Spiritual Wounds, she argues that how we view ourselves has ramifications on our world view. As Jesus taught, the ability to love ourselves is wrapped up in our ability to love others.
“How one views oneself is a common concern when people are longing for spiritual wholeness. It makes sense. Advertisements swarm us each day, reminding us of what we do not have… The average American is exposed to three hundred sixty ads every day… Every hour we are awake, we are told twenty-two times that we not rich, thin, young, beautiful, ripped, or stylish enough…
“Even though our culture has been criticized for being too narcissistic, being overly self-conscious can be a mask one learns to put on to hide damage and abuse. In the midst of all this, our religious understandings don’t always help…”
Merritt relates her own experience of attending a seminary that taught a fundamentalist doctrine. “Through the practice of evangelism, I realized I was hurting people with the premise of my evangelism. I thought we all deserved to go to hell.”
As part of her seminary training, Merritt had to hit the streets of Chicago, witnessing to people. “I believed that God would send these beautiful people to eternal suffering unless they repeated the magic words [of the Salvation Prayer] after me. If I loved them, after fifteen minutes of noticing the curve of their cheeks and the angle of their nose, wouldn’t God love them more? Or was God’s wrath so violent that it caused some sort of divine blindness? If God created them, and blew breath into them, why would God care about that prayer, that random recipe for salvation? And what did I really believe about people if I thought that we all deserved eternal burning?”
Merritt makes an excellent point when she writes, “The denigrating images our religious traditions can inflict on people can move us to imagine ourselves as lowly creatures, undeserving of God’s love… Much of this belief system was designed to highlight the grace of God, but it is unnecessary to make a creature look bad in order for a Creator to look even better.”
Once again, Merritt offers a meditative practice to help clear the theological air.
She takes on Augustine, noting that he “moves the realm of sin from what we do to who we are. The sin is no longer an action, but a being, a woman. So he makes a distinct, damning move from guilt to shame when he judges not the action but the person.”
Merritt takes on proponents of the ‘prosperity gospel’ who preach a “faith as palpably demonstrated by wealth and places the individual over community. It’s message that ‘God wants to bless you with wealth….’ Disseminating the idea that money equals the good life, and that if you do what the Lord wants, then you will reap those blessings…
“The shadow side of these beliefs can heap shame on the poor and lead to the understanding that those who struggle deserve their lot in life…” So economic inequality fueled by social injustice gets ignored. On this point, Merritt concludes: “As we keep hiding our hardships, individual responsibility turns into isolated suffering.”
About the subject of patriarchy in the church, Merritt defines it as “a system that promotes male privilege, or an unearned advantage that’s available to men while it’s denied to women…
“A patriarchal society has an obsession with control because patriarchy maintains its privilege through restraining women or men who might threaten it… In the religious arena, Christianity remains male-dominated, identified, and centered through our masculine ideas of God, by not allowing women to be in authority, and by building its theological systems based solely on the actions of men.”
Towards the end of Healing Spiritual Wounds, Merritt discusses the central idea of fundamentalism – individual salvation – versus corporate salvation. “When a loving mother suffers a miscarriage, it would be cruel to fault a mother for the loss. Instead, we honor her grief and suffer with her. In the same way, when we suffer wounds, we can understand the nurture and comfort of God, who is the source of all life. Through this shift, we move from understanding salvation as an individual act of submitting to the Father to realizing that we work alongside God for the salvation of all creation… God saves us not in a solitary act of murmured a prayer but through pulsing, vibrant community. It is not because of our individual striving or saying some magic words. The act of salvation begins and ends with God, and we can participate in it if we wish, for God is pregnant with us and all of creation.”
Merritt continues: “If I were to be born of God, then God had to be mother… A good mom. She was a mother who would love her children, no matter what that child might do and no matter what her child might believe. God would mourn with loss and rejoice with pleasure.”
With these ideas of religion and God, Merritt explains “God didn’t withhold favor based on a particular belief system… God was not over me, judging me, waiting for my missteps. God was under me, grounding me. My faith didn’t have to be a constant struggle to win God’s approval because God was for me.”
For those struggling with past hurts due to religion, or faith stream, For those hungry for a deeper spiritual understanding and connection with God, I highly recommend Carol Howard Merritt’s book.
May 18, 2017
“The reason religious wounds can cut so deeply is that they carry the weight of God with them.”
“Since my father often got angry, and I was taught that my father was my God-ordained authority, I thought that God was abusive and angry with me. I was the problem. I hadn’t been good enough, and I shouldn’t have provoked him. I was a terrible child. But I was beginning to suspect that the issue was not with me.”
“Dad didn’t have the ability to keep us in line, and his powerlessness, in turn, made him more abusive.”
“Like a parent with a tantrum-prone toddler, I tried to learn what would set him off, but there were no set patterns. Later, I would find out that he had a borderline personality disorder, or BPD. Though most BPDs are not violent, my dad was, and the diagnosis helped me understand his fear of abandonment and subsequent rage, but I could never quite predict his outbursts.
“One particularly difficult night, Mark mourned, ‘The more religious dad gets, the more abusive he gets.’ It was true. Since dad had quoted Bible verses as his anger ignited, he had ingrained a connection between abuse and religion for both of us.”
“When a victim asks for help or explains his or her situation, good Christians might even try to make the problem go away by discrediting the victim. The tactics come in a variety of forms: gaslighting (diminishing the credibility of the victim by asserting that she is crazy, lying, or cannot be trusted), victim blaming (saying that the victim caused abuse), and martyrdom (encouraging the victim to carry the abuse as part of a spiritual duty) are among them. I have experienced all of these, all within the church.”
“I still encounter these maneuvers from my colleagues. A pastor might ask me, “Are you sure what you experienced was abuse, or was your father just trying to discipline you?”
“My anguish poured like petroleum into my stomach as I remembered being that little girl, victim of my father’s confusing rage…
…I had denied my fear and anger and detached myself from the stories that came with them, ever since that forty-five minutes in my disbelieving pastor’s office. I figured that’s what a good Christian girl was supposed to do.”
“I resolved that I would not deny my heart’s aching by trying to pretend that what I went through was just a misunderstanding, on my part. I would not allow myself to imagine that I could have stopped the wounding, as if it were my fault. And I would not pretend that it was my Christian duty to suffer abuse. Instead, I would walk through the my dark valley with my shepherd and feel the force of the pain to reclaim my emotions and find wholeness.”
“When I stopped trying to dam my emotions and force a shallow happiness, I was able to tap into something deeper and realize an abiding wholeness.”
“Angry Jael had her tent peg and sorrowful Jesus had his tears.”
“When Bruce could not express that sadness he was experiencing, he began to laugh. When I feel the fear of past trauma, I shut down and go to sleep. When we have not had our access to our emotions and we learn to mask them, our bodies give us cues – headaches, twitching, hand wringing, stomachaches, hunger, constipation, etc.”
“Carol, we all require love. Since you grew up with a volatile father, you received confusing emotional responses when you yearned for that love. But people are resilient and we learn to get what we need. You are resilient, so you began to look for love in other ways. Gifts are tangible. They have a price. You can measure them. Your father was good at giving them. So gifts became a sign of your worth and the proof of your parents’ affection.”
“He woke up. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked, his voice graveled with irritation. I wondered if that was it – if I had traveled there for this peevish blurt, my dad wishing I were someone else. This was our moment for strained amends, affirmed love, and whispered promises. I had read about it, seen it in movies: the gift of prolonged dying, when everyone holds their breath in anticipation. But I just got this grumpy question…
“I didn’t want our exchange at his bedside to be our last. And I did say many more words. I prayed over my dad, asking God to lead him to green pastures and beside still waters. I reminded him that nothing would separate him from God’s love, and I was comforted by the thought that death might finally close the lonely abyss that haunted his mind. But he died when I left, without speaking to me again, and it didn’t seem fair…
“My resentments had bound me to my father, even in his death. I had been afraid that without them, there would be nothing left of our relationship – nothing there to bind us.”
June 1, 2020
Healing Spiritual Wounds Review
What can I say about this book that is positive? Frankly, I don’t think much. This book would have been better if it had remained the personal journal reflections of Carol Merritt. It is an account of an abused woman coming to express that pain that bad hermeneutics and dysfunctional systems can inflict on a person. Instead of it remaining between her and her therapist the author chooses to publish the story of abuse expecting God knows what from her readers.
I do have sympathy for the author. She seems to have gone through some very bad abuse. But painting all Evangelicals with the broadest brush. In my own experience of Spiritual abuse, I have not painted the denomination or the brand of Christianity as abusive in general. She does and it is a disservice. She misreads scripture often. Finally placing more weight on her feelings as opposed to a close reading of the text. All of this seems to invalidate her message and authority. I couldn’t get through the latter half of this book fast enough. Avoid this book if you are looking for answers on the topic.
What can I say about this book that is positive? Frankly, I don’t think much. This book would have been better if it had remained the personal journal reflections of Carol Merritt. It is an account of an abused woman coming to express that pain that bad hermeneutics and dysfunctional systems can inflict on a person. Instead of it remaining between her and her therapist the author chooses to publish the story of abuse expecting God knows what from her readers.
I do have sympathy for the author. She seems to have gone through some very bad abuse. But painting all Evangelicals with the broadest brush. In my own experience of Spiritual abuse, I have not painted the denomination or the brand of Christianity as abusive in general. She does and it is a disservice. She misreads scripture often. Finally placing more weight on her feelings as opposed to a close reading of the text. All of this seems to invalidate her message and authority. I couldn’t get through the latter half of this book fast enough. Avoid this book if you are looking for answers on the topic.
March 12, 2017
This is an excellent, personal, practical look at many of the ways Christians and Christian churches can be hurtful. I've personally experienced more disappointment than wounding, but I've been pastor to wounded individuals and wounded churches. Merritt addresses these wounds through her own memories and stories from folks she has counseled and offers both theological explanations and practical exercises. And that sounds way to bland for the dynamic, touching, deeply personal book this is. So buy it and read it. Then share it with a friend. Or with a group of friends. It might just be life-changing.
April 14, 2018
I wish I’d had this book 20 years ago, when I needed it (but the author, who is about my age, could not possibly have written it). I am overjoyed that it exists now.
May 5, 2018
This book was like therapy for my soul. I can't describe how important this book is for someone that has walked through any sort of church abuse. I know this will be a book a read again and again.
December 15, 2021
I will start with the positive. The author has been through a lot of trauma and as a female that can identify with that struggle I can understand her heart's pain and desire to help women who have gone through exterior church trauma that was backed by the church (which is a specific type).
I believe her wounds can bring comfort to people who have been through these events in life and may have served better as a testimonial book more than a "guide" for healing. This is a book to validate your hurt which is good. People need to know that they can feel hurt and in pain is valid but it is concerning how she does it. She says to "separate God from the circumstance" yet she intertwines it in her life.
I appreciate the chance she has given to see a new perspective and there are a couple of concepts I agree with but do not agree with the execution of those thoughts. 1. To reestablish who you believe God is and how you have formed that view. Trauma and life events distort how we [recieve God ( I believe it is found in scripture but that does not seem to be the author's view. 2. That you need to love yourself and others. That was one I totally agreed on. You do not love others by degrading yourself. 3. The church should not back things that are blatantly against scripture no matter their gender or position. This is an area of the church that needs to submit to scripture (in its entirety, not cherry-picked verses).
As someone who believes in the literal interpretation of scripture, there is a laundry list of theological problems with this book. I do not understand how one can agree to the idea of creating your own God to help you in life. That in its self is against the fundamentals of who God is. Her blatant thoughts of not holding scripture as authoritative, and not using any of the biblical stories in the context of which they were written (or even what the stories say about God).
There should be a disclaimer beyond, my words may offend some. A red tag warning of anti traditionalism and harsh distaste for specific ministries, denominations, and genders. For someone who has so many scares from people holding their harsh and form-lined worldview on her, she does not seem to care to not do it to others.
I understand that this is a hard topic to tackle, and the book can be good for certain things, but I do not think it should be a guide for healing. There is always a way to honor the people you disagree with and can not get behind this book. That is just my opinion and is subject to change.
I believe her wounds can bring comfort to people who have been through these events in life and may have served better as a testimonial book more than a "guide" for healing. This is a book to validate your hurt which is good. People need to know that they can feel hurt and in pain is valid but it is concerning how she does it. She says to "separate God from the circumstance" yet she intertwines it in her life.
I appreciate the chance she has given to see a new perspective and there are a couple of concepts I agree with but do not agree with the execution of those thoughts. 1. To reestablish who you believe God is and how you have formed that view. Trauma and life events distort how we [recieve God ( I believe it is found in scripture but that does not seem to be the author's view. 2. That you need to love yourself and others. That was one I totally agreed on. You do not love others by degrading yourself. 3. The church should not back things that are blatantly against scripture no matter their gender or position. This is an area of the church that needs to submit to scripture (in its entirety, not cherry-picked verses).
As someone who believes in the literal interpretation of scripture, there is a laundry list of theological problems with this book. I do not understand how one can agree to the idea of creating your own God to help you in life. That in its self is against the fundamentals of who God is. Her blatant thoughts of not holding scripture as authoritative, and not using any of the biblical stories in the context of which they were written (or even what the stories say about God).
There should be a disclaimer beyond, my words may offend some. A red tag warning of anti traditionalism and harsh distaste for specific ministries, denominations, and genders. For someone who has so many scares from people holding their harsh and form-lined worldview on her, she does not seem to care to not do it to others.
I understand that this is a hard topic to tackle, and the book can be good for certain things, but I do not think it should be a guide for healing. There is always a way to honor the people you disagree with and can not get behind this book. That is just my opinion and is subject to change.
July 27, 2019
Really enjoyed this book, which I picked up a couple years ago when it first came out because I enjoyed the author's previous work. I'm current pursuing an MFA, however, so have trouble finding time to read things that aren't for school (or to review). I decided to include this in a lecture I'm writing on epilogues in memoir, which gave me a reason to read it now. It's not quite a straight spiritual journey memoir, given that Merritt skillfully weaves in pastoral encounters with others and offers spiritual exercises for the reader at the end of each chapter, but it does tell her journey from the gripping opening, when she listens to her father abuse her mother, to the end of the epilogue, after she has experienced spiritual healing, including the hard work of forgiveness.
It's a relief for me as a pastor to read a book that can be critical of the institutional church while remaining in the church and using the Bible to reach deep spiritual insight. I also LOVED that she drew on art, such as Frida Kahlo, as well as nuggets from the recovery movement, which also formed parts of my own spiritual journey.
Merritt moves from humor, such as when as a Moody Bible student she awkwardly tried to "witness" to Bob the Methodist in O'Hare airport, to actual witnessing, when she began to sketch people, which allowed her to see them and listen to them.
The scene where her mother washed the feet of a pastor's wife after the pastor was unfaithful to her was especially powerful.
So grateful that my epilogue project gave me an excuse to finally read this. Now on the study the epilogue, but I wanted to get all of this down before it becomes All About The Epilogue for me.
It's a relief for me as a pastor to read a book that can be critical of the institutional church while remaining in the church and using the Bible to reach deep spiritual insight. I also LOVED that she drew on art, such as Frida Kahlo, as well as nuggets from the recovery movement, which also formed parts of my own spiritual journey.
Merritt moves from humor, such as when as a Moody Bible student she awkwardly tried to "witness" to Bob the Methodist in O'Hare airport, to actual witnessing, when she began to sketch people, which allowed her to see them and listen to them.
The scene where her mother washed the feet of a pastor's wife after the pastor was unfaithful to her was especially powerful.
So grateful that my epilogue project gave me an excuse to finally read this. Now on the study the epilogue, but I wanted to get all of this down before it becomes All About The Epilogue for me.
November 26, 2019
Merritt's prose is a delight to read, both poetic and profound. She explores various ways that conservative evangelical churches hurt rather than heal people. Her profiling of her faith tradition hits close to home, and rightfully so. The body of Christ was commanded to love the misfits and welcome sinners home, and yet through the centuries has become more like the Pharisees that inhibit one's return to God. Merritt's real-life stories and descriptions of the church's failures are direct and often scathing in how it unnecessarily ostracizes groups like women, LGBTQ persons, victims of abuse, and people of other faith traditions, among others. Yet she also provides a helpful suggestions for the individual to recover from these scars and discover a God of love and a faith that inspires hope rather than condemns.
Having grown up in a conservative Christian tradition myself, I appreciate Merritt's critique of the church. What she pushes for is a relational church: one that focuses on loving people and meeting them where they are before providing correction, where applicable.
However, I find some of her suggestions for the church feel incomplete, or at least insufficiently nuanced. I grant that a work of this size can only provide some elementary suggestions, which she freely admits to as well. May the reader take these suggestions and run with them, adapting them as it fits their situation.
Having grown up in a conservative Christian tradition myself, I appreciate Merritt's critique of the church. What she pushes for is a relational church: one that focuses on loving people and meeting them where they are before providing correction, where applicable.
However, I find some of her suggestions for the church feel incomplete, or at least insufficiently nuanced. I grant that a work of this size can only provide some elementary suggestions, which she freely admits to as well. May the reader take these suggestions and run with them, adapting them as it fits their situation.
June 28, 2018
"Here is the crux of spiritual healing. The reason religious wounds can cut so deeply is that they carry the weight of God with them. In some way we have felt that God was behind what wounded us. So the first step in spiritual healing is to learn to love God by separating God from our experience of being wounded." Carol Howard Merritt exercises this principle throughout Healing Spiritual Wounds. It's difficult to judge how successful the book is, having not grown up in the church and not having spiritual wounds to heal, but taking into account that it's primarily a tool of diagnosis I think it does a good job separating Biblical truth from the false worldviews that harm.* The book acts as a sort of spiritual triage with chapters devoted to particular kinds of spiritual woundedness, and to that end I imagine it could be very helpful to many people.
*The glaring exception to this incisiveness is a portion of the chapter "Being Born Again," which has a tangent on the political effects of patriarchy within the religious Right that is so shallow that it makes me wonder whether Merritt ever engaged seriously with someone who was not of the same mind on the topics covered - she certainly doesn't anticipate any reasoned arguments from opponents, and explicitly assumes common conservative policy positions stem from wanting to control women, and only from wanting to control women.
*The glaring exception to this incisiveness is a portion of the chapter "Being Born Again," which has a tangent on the political effects of patriarchy within the religious Right that is so shallow that it makes me wonder whether Merritt ever engaged seriously with someone who was not of the same mind on the topics covered - she certainly doesn't anticipate any reasoned arguments from opponents, and explicitly assumes common conservative policy positions stem from wanting to control women, and only from wanting to control women.
December 12, 2022
This book is more about THE hurtful white evangelical church than A hurtful church, which is what I was anticipating based on the title. I agree with much of the author's responses to a very conservative, basically fundamentalist upbringing that sounds similar to my own. I didn't have a violent parent, but I do have parents who have a very toxic dynamic and whose choices leave me very confused when compared with what they taught me. The angry God motivating violence is certainly reflected in many white evangelical circles I have been in.
I appreciate the straightforward concept of the intertwined nature of loving self, others and God and it's something I can work on every day. The affirmation that God loves me and accepts me is not one I came out of childhood with, but one I try to believe.
I appreciate the straightforward concept of the intertwined nature of loving self, others and God and it's something I can work on every day. The affirmation that God loves me and accepts me is not one I came out of childhood with, but one I try to believe.
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