are you sending yourself an ask just so you can have something nicely formatted for when you talk about the cult you grew up in
sure am! in all seriousness, i was asked by someone recently about growing up in a cult, and then one of my followers asked some follow up questions, and i just figured i'd lore drop here. i want to preface this with acknowledgement of the fact that there is no One Definition of "cult", and the word itself is not necessarily pejorative (though it often is in the west). some people view all organised religion as a cult; some people only assign the word 'cult' to extremists. what i grew up within landed somewhere kind of in the middle. i call the sect i grew up in a cult because it follows the BITE model of authoritarian control, which is often used to check if something is cult-like or a cult. this means that i grew up in a group that controlled my behaviour, information, thought, and emotion. you can read more in depth about the BITE model here. i will not name the particular church i grew up in, simply because the name of my church does not have any one cohesive definition. unlike a lot of 'denominations', my church's name means virtually nothing-- churches with the same 'name' are vastly different, and therefore my church was not unified with every other church in the same name. to keep it very, very short: i was told i was a part of the only true church, and that everyone else was going to hell. as someone raised as a woman, i had absolutely no voice within the church. my purity was crucial to my salvation, and it was my responsibility to avoid tempting men. you were, under no circumstance, to question or disrespect men, ESPECIALLY men within the church. divorce was STRICTLY forbidden under EVERY circumstance. if it did not say it explicitly in the bible, it was forbidden. king james version only, for some fucking reason.
in the worst iterations of my time within that church, i was explicitly told that my parents were allowed and actively encouraged to shun or disown me if i was to stray from the church. we were also told it was okay and perhaps even best if we cut ties from any family member who did not adhere to the church (which was not a problem, as every member of my family was part of this church). again, we were the only people getting into heaven. i was also consistently love bombed and psychologically and emotionally manipulated by older members of the church as a child, wherein it was standard practice to exploit vulnerability publicly-- think, like, encouraging thirteen year olds to talk about their worst fears and shames in front of everyone-- in order to instill a sense of "we understand you and love you better than anyone ever will". but anything admitted in those moments was used against you, and you were made to feel awful about having those moments, too. and so on. very fun! this may seem like standard fare for some people, and it may be horrific for others. again, my personal use of the term 'cult' is for my own growth and healing. it is more than religious trauma for me. i was specifically indoctrinated into something that wanted to make damn sure i never questioned or left it, because my involvement in the church was needed for the church to continue. good church girls grow up to be good church wives. good church wives are trapped in marriage with horrible church men who then get to exploit their power and authority into harming the next generation. etc etc etc. "how did you get out?" 1: in some ways, my mother was the gateway. she got divorced from her first husband, and, as said above, divorce was STRICTLY forbidden. she was disowned by a large portion of my family because of this divorce. when she remarried my father (derogatory), she was often told of how illegitimate their marriage was. (she, thank gods, divorced him too, but stayed with him FAR too long because of the guilt). my mother still adhered to the church despite the conflict, and still holds guilt to this day in some regards, but because of her 'discretion', the hold the church had on us was lessened ever so slightly. 2: i'm queer. thank gods i'm queer. i realised very early on that i could never be who the church wanted me to be so long as i was queer. i tried VERY HARD to not be queer and, surprise, this did not work. a turning point moment for me was hearing an elder member of the church say that parents had no obligation to their children if their children chose not to be of the church-- that your duty was to god and god alone, and anyone who was not within that scope was not yours to care for or love. i remember being so incredibly viscerally angry in that moment and it was like the string broke.
i still went to church up until i was 18-- i didn't have much choice-- but by the time i was 13/14, i knew i was no longer a believer. from there on, it was just survival mode. i still went three times a week to church, was sent to camps, did missions, etc, but i got VERY good at 'acting' and dissociating. and when i became an adult, i never went again! this isn't a trauma dump. i have processed this all on my own and will continue to do so. you are more than welcome to give your condolences if that makes you feel better or nice, but my saying this wasn't to garner sympathy or lean on strangers. i think it's important for me to call what i grew up in a cult in the same way that it was important for me to name what i went through at the hands of my parents as abuse. there was 'abuse' in the abstract sense-- this big, enormous, harmful thing that was undeniable, extreme and violent and visible-- and then there was what i experienced, which had subtleties that i was not taught to look out for. and yet it was abuse all the same. i didn't get sworn in by a megalomaniac leader who wanted my devotion and money. i wasn't told to jump off a cliff with every other member on the second full moon of the month. our views were radical, but we were taught that everyone else was radical and we were the only sane ones, and there was enough overlap with 'traditional' and 'mainstream' christianity that the red flags kind of appeared more pink. it took me a while to feel comfortable saying "what i grew up in wasn't normal or healthy, and it was that way because of the concerted effort of a group of people who sought to control me for their own gains". cult! you can always ask me stuff, bc i'm p open about it, but that's my story i guess. every now and then i'll remember something and be like oh wow that was a LOT weirder than it felt at the time. and so it goes!
