Religious Trauma Quotes

“In the dresser there are two sets of rosary beads, a Brigid's cross, and an iron pendant on a chain. And then there is her, more worthy of worship, with a knee on either side of my hips”
― Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

“Oh father Abraham, what kind of people are these Christians? Their own meanness teaches them to suspect other people!”
― William Shakespeare , The Merchant of Venice

“Choosing to avoid talking about money, sex, religion or mental health doesn’t make them go away. Each of these taboo subject are part of the human experience and to exclude them from “normal life” is silly, in fact impossible.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“In the South, Christianity was as ubiquitous as sweet tea and country music. Questioning my religion meant questioning how the entire world worked and my very identity.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“A marker of healing from religious trauma is not simply the process of deconstructing one’s worldview and identity and rebuilding a new one; it is also the willingness to remain open to shifting and changing over the course of one’s life.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“If the world out-loves the church, then we have implicitly nudged our children away from the loving arms of Christ.”
― Preston Sprinkle, People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue

“I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one's head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me believe in the existence of heaven.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“It's so deeply entrenched in me, the Fear of God, so much more strongly than the belief.”
― Celine Saintclare, Sugar, Baby

“But the evangelical impulse, the idea that people need the Lord, that we have been given a unique understanding of the truth about the most complex questions about reality, and which we must impose through persuasion or coercion, has never made much sense to me when I survey the complexities of the world and the diversity of experiences and points of view. Even worse, that way of thinking seems to be at the root of so many evils that have been perpetuated throughout human history by religious fundamentalists and other extremist ideologues. I fear that the same impulse is currently laying the groundwork for irreparable harm in our country and the world, and I fear that some of the people I have known and loved, and who have loved me, are being persuaded to aid and abet that evil... To subscribe to such a project, even out of a desire to maintain family and community ties, would be a betrayal of one's own integrity.”
― Sarah McCammon, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

“I began to hate myself and pray that God would make me straight. I carried the fear that authenticity would be met with condemnation and shame for years. No one felt safe to share with anymore, so I hid it all deep within me.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“You might think Cult Girls would have a rather limited readership (ex-Jehovah's Witnesses) but I, who never bothered to learn anything about those strange people who rang my doorbell with "good news" loved it. Jehovah's Witnesses aside, this beautifully illustrated graphic novel pertains to any cult. Nicely and clearly written, it's a good harrowing story.”
― Trina Robbins, Women And The Comics

“why was I raised to follow the precepts of a religion that exalts sorrow and suffering? Yet my nose is as innocent as any snout. If I had been an animal I would have been very successful. But a man?”
― René Crevel, My Body and I

“A woman is praying beside me. I would really like to be able to believe like that, I would like to be able to feel something when I pray but I don't. Maybe looking for God is just looking for something to be in awe of, something to tremble before, a standard to uphold. Perhaps religion is a way of punishing oneself, a manifestation of the shame built into the human experience.”
― Celine Saintclare, Sugar, Baby

“I am not afraid of the nuns anymore. I have been in Eden all Summer long, I know divinity better than they ever will.”
― Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

“Maybe if I just kept acting like a Christian, I’d eventually feel like one again.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“...Mary Lambert is singing "Love is patient, love is kind" from 1 Corinthians 13 over and over, repeating "Not crying on Sundays," and I am gone, head fully turned and staring out the car window, trying to hide the tears that are streaming down my face.”
― Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir

“My newest novel, Tiny House of God is now available as an audiobook through Audible! It was so much fun (and work) to record.”
― Sara Zavacki-Moore

“These researchers found that trauma is a subjective, perceptive, and physiological response to a person, place, or thing that overwhelms the nervous system's natural capacity to cope. Practically, this means that trauma is in the eye of the beholder. What is traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another, and thr body may experience trauma as a result of either a real threat or a perceived one.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“Religious trauma resides in our bodies and nervous systems in the same way that trauma from war, developmental trauma, or sexualized trauma live inside us. Though the triggers and environment of the original trauma may differ, how religious trauma lives in our bodies, on a physiological level, is the same.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“How could they receive grace if all we give them is strife?”
― Kailey Bright, Unity

“Focus on the Family addressed followers of the organization whose grown children had become distant or estranged. 'They won't return your calls,' the message begins. 'They ignore your texts and emails. Either you have little to no idea of what they're actually doing, or their only communication is to rub in your faith the sinful lifestyle they've embraced. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.' The email goes on to describe the hypothetical perspective of a parent who believes they'd raised their children to follow Christ, who as adults 'would accomplish amazing things and would reach out often with all the updates, and with sincere gratitude for all you sacrificed to help them succeed. Instead, your child has grown into an adult who rejects you and everything you believe in.'

...Mayfield, a millennial who grew up evangelical, continued with an imagined response to these frustrated baby-boomers who'd raised their children by the tenets of Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family, only to see them walk away from it all. In a thread, Mayfield writes, 'Listen, your kids don't want to talk to you because your love is conditional, and it is very painful to not be loved for who you are by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally.”
― Sarah McCammon, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

“There's a lot my parents and I don't talk about, that we can't talk about. When we've tried over the years, the conversations inevitably end in misunderstandings, tears, and an ever-widening distance. They spent years building a world for me that was intended to protect my spiritual safety and warning me not to leave it, only for me to feel anything but safe inside.”
― Sarah McCammon, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

“Shelby cared when the villagers expected him to be virtuous. To set an example of a perfect relationship with God and remain undivided in his mind and soul. It was terrible enough that Shelby had thus far let himself be so distracted, let alone by another man … Was Thatcher even a man?”
― Airic Fenn, Lamb, Stag & Wolf

“She lived a sinner, and she will die a Christian.”
― Alexandre Dumas fils, Camille: The Lady of the Camellias