ESCAPE FROM TREASON
It’s about time I got a little autobiographical. One’s experiences rarely shapes one’s deepest held beliefs but they have a profound effect on the color of the lens through which those beliefs are received. The last sixteen months of my life have encompassed one long cataclysmic experience that has forever changed me. Like I said, my core beliefs have not changed. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the Creator of the Universe. One look outside my window affirms this without an inkling of doubt. Christ Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, second person of the inscrutable Trinity is exactly who He said He was… and more. He is the Savior of sinners, better yet, my Savior. This truth demands that I believe that mankind is irrepressibly bad; I don’t mean messed up or sick, I mean BAD. I rarely follow the news, but when I do this truth leaps off of the screen with convincing force. I believe there is One called the Holy Spirit, who alone enables me to live a supernatural life that could not be lived otherwise. I also believe that I often resist His monitions in my life and that as a professing Christian I can often look more like Attila the Hun than the Apostle Paul. I believe the church is the earthly locus for the Kingdom of God. Even though my view of the church has changed mildly, and even though I have been patently hurt by the organized church, I still retain that romantic notion that someday the church will be what she ought to be and I will rejoice to see it. I also believe that the reason the church isn’t what she ought to be is ‘me.’
At the present time I am in flux about being part of a local church. My gathering with felons at the local prison each Sunday evening is the closest thing to church that I have ever known. Our corporate belief that we are all hopeless sinners apart from Jesus Christ may be the air in which the Holy Spirit breathes His best. No, I haven’t abandoned the church. I have, however, been subtly accused of treason to the church. But as I think about my life the past year and a half I think it would be more accurate to say the church was the party who committed treason against me. I was betrayed by a group I once implicitly trusted. I never saw it coming.
So to play off of one of Schaeffer’s books, you are looking at a man who has ‘escaped from treason.’
And where was that treason? Right there at the Lord’s Supper where an knife-wielding heart smiled and reached for the sop of friendship and then the dagger. Right there at that holy courtyard fire where a devotee turned on the only person who had ever treated him rightly. Yes, right there in the church. I’m almost ashamed to say it.
Many factors contribute to this proliferation of treason. Let’s for now call it the cult factor.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a cult as,
“A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.”
Few churches actually qualify as a cult. David Koresh, John Robert Stevens and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh are a few extreme examples of a true cult leader. Churches rarely sink to that level. What I have discovered over the years, however, is that a church may not qualify as a cult while exhibiting many cultic characteristics. Sadly, the church down the street may indeed be cultic.
Cultic tendencies in churches are the precursor to spiritual abuse. A cultic church by definition becomes ingrown, self-focused, organizationally oriented, and devoted to a engaging leader. All of these things build invisible walls in the body, walls that separate the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’ the groupies from the critics, the starry eyed from the realists, the unquestioning from the investigators. All of this is the beginning of sorrows, and echoes “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas.”
Cultic churches have ‘our way of doing things’ which are often subtle and rarely clearly expressed. The ‘our way’ usually derives from the leadership, who use their authority to form a ‘culture.’ Once that culture takes root it is difficult to break it apart … and always impossible to critique.
It has taken me months to think about what I have gone through. A polluted city will imperceptibly cause a person breathing problems and it is not until one moves to the country that he can understand why he was so unhealthy in the city. So it is with a ‘cultic’ church. It seems healthy, many brag about its benefits, and it is often held up as superior to other churches. It may seem Spirit-filled on the outside as many seem happily busy in ministry work. And the more one breathes the air of a cultic church, the less likely it is for one to detect the pollution. When lungs are damaged one is more prone to sit down and rest than move away. That is why so many sheep simply tolerate what is going on. They think everything is fine; there is no yelling, no mud throwing, and no alarms going off. It is mundanely suffocating and that is okay. All flows like a river, but somewhere deep in the mountains lies the source fed by toxic waste.
So how does one know that his/her church may have cultic tendencies?
These are the characteristics that I have discerned after thinking about this for many months.
First: The presence of an engaging, visionary, charismatic, affable, optimistic leader. It is not inherently evil for a man to have a winsome, charismatic personality. Yet this is the one characteristic is the common denominator of every cult. The reason is obvious. For a group to coagulate into a cultic mindset it must have a magnet in the middle, a strong, attractive personality who loves the preeminence. Bees need a queen to make a hive and cults need a widely admired leader to make a highly devoted organization. In America, especially, great emphasis is put on personality over principle. We are naturally attracted to charisma. We are always looking for heros, football players and actresses, and our desire to follow them often obscures their obvious flaws. This cultural phenomenon has crept right into the church. That makes American churches especially vulnerable to cultic tendencies. One sign that this may be indeed happening, is when you begin to hear more about the leader than about God, or Christ, or the gospel. In one church I know, almost all the baptismal testimonies included the influence of the leader. Such devotion to one man ought to raise eyebrows.
Second: The presence of a fiercely devoted group of leaders that surround the central personality and defend him at al costs. Narcissistic personalities must surround themselves with a hedge of leaders who support him in every way, never challenge his authority, and stroke his delicate ego. When you see this be sure you have the makings of a cult. Good leaders go in the other direction. They desires critique. They don’t want their ego to run loose. The invite other opinions and actually listen to them. One of the greatest leaders America has ever known was Abraham Lincoln. Few saw his leadership qualities in the beginning. But Lincoln’s genius emerged when he built his cabinet of men who not only were of the opposing party but who had run against him for president. This made for bumpy cabinet meetings, to be sure. But there was safety in a multitude of counselors, and Lincoln understood that. He was a great leader because he surrounded himself not with “yes men,” but those who often challenged him. This story is outlined in a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin titled Band of Rivals.
Third: The lack of transparency among the leaders. Cults thrive on secrecy. Cultic leaders keep information from the people in the name of having a superior calling and more access to facts. In cultic churches information flows in one direction only, downward from leaders to the people, and even then the information is selective. In cultic churches you will often hear people say, “I didn’t know anything about that. Boy, is that a surprise!” This model of leadership arises from the long defunct theory of the Divine Rights of Kings. This theory said that leaders are placed in their position by God and are therefore not accountable to the opinion of others because their legitimacy comes from God Himself. So many leaders in churches love to adopt this idea. One can see why. Pastors are often taught in seminary that they are called by God to a church and therefore are the enlightened leaders who know what is best. The allows the pastor to make many decisions in private and over a long period of time he will actually begin to think his opinion is Holy-Spirit guided. The bottom line is that institutions that have cultic tendencies tend to have leaders who make decisions unilaterally and secretly.
Fourth: A climate where repentance among leaders for specific sins is absent. Leaders often see themselves as a cut above the flock in knowledge and holiness. As a result of this dangerous and faulty self-evaluation, leaders feel they must justify their perceived spiritual superiority by never admitting to specific sins. They believe that admission of faults will weaken their hold over the people. This causes leaders to live hypocritical that can only lead to spiritual disaster. Such a tact only serves to deepen the divide between leaders and people, the people who get it and the people who don’t. If you are dealing with a leader who never admits to common human frailty, then the best idea is to run and look for another.
Fifth: Ungodly way of treating those who leave the institution. To those who raise their voices and leave the group, cultic leaders react in one of three ways: public shaming, subtle slander or silent treatment. However it plays out, cultic churches almost always find it an act of betrayal when someone leaves their ranks. How could anyone leave such a good, gracious, optimistic and holy man? The harshest treatment comes to those who were active in ministry. Those who were insignificant are usually allowed to leave but treated as they had died. One sign of a cultic church is when people ask the whereabouts of a former member and hear something like, “Oh, they left a year ago.” To the leaders of cultic churches, those who leave are not worthy of mention. Many slip out the back door and are never heard from again. On occasion a cultic church will announce the faults or perceived doctrinal distortions of a departing person who was well-known and well-loved. This gives the leaders a solid justification for allowing the person to leave.
Sixth: There is no sense of history or tradition that governs the vision of the organization. Cultic churches thrive on being innovative behind visionary leadership and therefore have no need to attach themselves to historic or traditional precedent. Cultic churches often eschew tried and true confessions of faith and are relatively ignorant of church history. The legitimacy of cultic churches always rests upon the vision of the central leader and his board. This allows any innovation to enter the church unchecked because it is endorsed by leadership. Often these innovations are unscriptural or strictly pragmatic and they give no thought to what the church has believed through the ages. Be aware if a church is always trying to find ‘new ways’ of doing things without ever consulting the thinking of great saints of yore.
Seventh: It is drilled into the people that the most important Christian virtue is unity at all costs which is implicitly defined as subservience to the leaders. Criticism is always frowned upon in cultic churches. The leaders know what they are doing and to question them is tantamount to betrayal. On the other hand blind allegiance to leaders is considered the greatest virtue. Cultic churches often label those who question leadership as divisive and thus with the quick stroke of their verbal pen they marginalize their critics and shut them down. If your church extols the merits of unity so forcefully as to shut down legitimate critique, then beware. The orthodox sounding statement that people are to obey their leaders no matter what, is an opiate that turns thinking people into compliant doormats. This emphasis is one of the hallmarks of a cultic church.
These listed seven characteristics of a cultic church are in no way inspired. They are born out of the blood, slander, pain, disappointment, isolation and confusion that inflict many who have come out of a cultic situation. These seven characteristics are strictly observational. There are perhaps many more. What is certain to the author is that we live in a hero worshipping culture, and cultic leaders play on this cultural phenomenon to build their empires. To fight this trend, I find no easy answers. All I know is that Protestants once understood that the only thing worth dying for were the truths of the word of God and the Christ to which they point. Perhaps it would be a good idea for us to follow in their footsteps and rediscover our Reformation heritage all over again.
As for me? I am thankful to God that I am free. I have escaped from treason.