Unscrupulous leaders inflict spiritual abuse through the domination and control of followers who are compelled by induced fear or pride to adopt lifestyle changes that serves their own agenda - not the love of God or the spiritual health of the follower. Ultimately, this exploitation leaves them in a piteous dependence upon their association with the church or religious group to provide them meaning, a relationship with God, and even any notion of personality or significance. This is a tragic and all too common reality in both cultic movements and aberrant churches.
What is even more tragic, however, is that most spiritually abusive leaders of aberrant churches sincerely believe that the degree of unbiblical submission they are demanding of their followers is necessary for their good. There are few more devastating personal intrusions into life then the spiritual trauma inflicted by twisted people who claimed divine authority to gain trusted access into the deepest part of someone's heart, soul and mind and to manipulate them at their will in degrading, terrifying ways beyond belief.
These are the kinds of things you'd expect would occur in "those" people "over there." You'd never suspect to see it anywhere else among a bunch of fanatics in the backwoods of Appalachia or among the neanderthal Islamic jihadi culture. But when it occurs in church settings, it is almost always systemic, generational and deeply entrenched as a pillar of the larger community, in a household of faith harboring hundreds of thousands of souls featuring dazzling programs, well-scrubbed children, and the reputation of being a moral repository of Christian values.
And you'd never dream it could become a global engine of institutionalized abuse that colors the lives of hundreds of thousands, even millions with a blacklight of twisted doctrine and practice that enslaves them, and makes them subject to the dictates of unquestioned and yet highly questionable authority figures.
When I left Chicago for Tennessee in 1986 to go to Lee College to prepare for the ministry, I never dreamed about such a thing. Like many, I thought cultism and religious abuse was something only among "those" out there. Upon moving back to the Hammond area in 2012, I was so completely focused on the transition at hand (buying a home, packing, saying goodbye to the area and ministry partners in the Volunteer State, etc.) that as part of my look ahead, I completely forgot about how great a black hole of anti-spirituality exists downtown off Sibley Avenue. It is a prime example of how excess, sin, depravity and exploitation has been sanctified as "old time religion".
Let this tragically necessary yet altogether disturbing article tell you a little bit more about the abyss called First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana and the "higher institution" it spawned called Hyles-Anderson College. It's not for the faint in heart. But it needed to be written. Stay tuned ..
