When Faith Language Becomes a Cage
Before you read: This piece discusses spiritual abuse, domestic abuse, and coercive control. If you are experiencing abuse, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 800-799-SAFE, by texting START to 88788, or through thehotline.org.
This is the second in a three-part Soundings series about pastoral power, spiritual abuse, and the systems that allow both to grow. You can read Part One, “When Care Becomes Control,” here.
This series began while I was watching Death of the Pastor’s Wife. I know better than to treat a documentary as a conclusive account of everything that happened. But as I watched, I kept returning to questions that reach far beyond one case.
Part One asked what happens when someone gains control over another person’s spiritual meaning, mental-health narrative, credibility, relationships, and access to help.
This piece asks how that control learns to sound like faith.
“You need to forgive.”
“Don’t cause division.”
“Honor your leaders.”
“God has placed them over you.”
“Love keeps no record of wrongs.”
Every one of those sentences can sound like faithful counsel. Some point toward something genuinely true, difficult, and beautiful.
And every one of them can become dangerous in the mouth of someone whose power depends on your silence.
A sentence can be theologically true and still be used abusively.
That is the part Christians sometimes resist. We assume correct words must produce righteous outcomes. If a sentence came from Scripture, or at least sounds as though it did, questioning how it is being used can feel like questioning Scripture itself.
But Scripture can be quoted accurately and applied dishonestly.
Forgiveness can be invoked to erase consequences. Unity can mean everyone except the wounded person gets to feel comfortable. Submission can become a blank check for control. Protecting the church’s witness can become protecting a leader’s reputation. Trusting God can become a reason not to trust your own eyes.
The words are not the problem
I want to be careful here because these words matter.
Forgiveness matters. Unity matters. Authority matters. Churches need leaders and shared commitments. Christian faith calls people toward things they might not choose if personal comfort were the only goal.
The problem is not that Christianity sometimes asks difficult things of us.
The problem is what happens when one person gets to decide which difficult things God is asking of everyone else.
I know this language from both sides of my work. I have spoken it in ministry settings, and I have listened to people trying to untangle it in therapy rooms. Most pastors who talk about forgiveness, unity, or submission are not trying to control anyone. Some are offering sincere guidance in complicated situations. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes they are clumsy. Sometimes they are speaking outside their competence without realizing it.
Not every bad sermon is spiritual abuse. Not every theological disagreement is coercive control. Not every uncomfortable expectation is evidence of an abusive church.
Researchers have described spiritual abuse as an ongoing pattern of coercion and control within a religious setting. It may involve enforced accountability, pressure to conform, interference with decision-making, the use of Scripture to control, or the suggestion that a leader occupies a uniquely divine position.
The question is not merely whether religious language was used.
The question is what that language was being used to accomplish.
A cage does not need to be built from lies
We tend to imagine manipulation as something obviously false.
But some of the most effective forms of control are built from truths stripped of context, applied in only one direction, and delivered at the moment they most benefit the person in power.
A cage does not have to be built from lies.
Sometimes it is built from good words, one bar at a time.
Forgive.
Submit.
Be patient.
Don’t gossip.
Protect the church.
Trust your pastor.
Check your heart.
Those ideas may each have a place in Christian life. But when every spiritual instruction moves in the same direction, toward silence, compliance, isolation, or continued access for the person causing harm, the pattern matters more than any individual sentence.
This is why spiritual abuse can be difficult to recognize from the outside. The language sounds familiar. The leader may appear calm and pastoral. The person raising concerns may look angry, confused, reactive, or unwilling to “move forward.”
The system sounds faithful.
The wounded person sounds difficult.
And the more they resist the story being told about them, the more their resistance can be presented as proof that the story was right.
Forgiveness is not the same as access
“You need to forgive” may be one of the most complicated sentences in the Christian vocabulary.
Forgiveness can be real and liberating. It can release a person from being consumed by vengeance and become part of profound spiritual healing.
It can also be used to rush someone past the truth.
When forgiveness is demanded before harm has been named, it protects the person who caused the harm. When it is treated as proof that consequences are no longer necessary, it becomes a shortcut around accountability. When it is measured by whether the wounded person restores access, stops talking, or acts as though nothing happened, forgiveness has been turned into compliance.
Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.
It is not the same as trust.
It is not the same as restoring someone to leadership.
It is not permission for continued access.
Reconciliation, where it is possible and safe, requires truth, responsibility, changed behavior, and enough safety for relationship to become possible again.
A person can forgive and still leave. They can forgive and maintain a boundary. They can forgive and report what happened. They can forgive and still believe that someone should never again occupy the position they misused.
The person who caused the harm does not get to set the timetable for the other person’s healing.
Neither does the church.
Unity that requires silence is not unity
“Don’t cause division” is another phrase that can sound obviously Christian.
Churches should not fracture over every disagreement. Conflict can become petty and destructive. Gossip can cause real harm. Communities need people willing to pursue repair rather than escalate every injury.
But naming a fracture is not the same as causing it.
Sometimes the division began when the harm occurred. The person who speaks about it is simply the first one unwilling to keep pretending the wall is intact.
A church can become so committed to appearing unified that it loses the ability to tell the truth. The concern moves quickly from “What happened?” to “Who knows?” The person reporting harm is warned about gossip, bitterness, damaging the ministry, or giving outsiders the wrong impression.
Confidentiality can protect people.
Secrecy usually protects power.
Healthy confidentiality protects someone’s privacy while allowing concerns to reach people capable of responding. Secrecy isolates the person raising the concern and prevents anyone with meaningful authority from seeing the pattern.
The church’s witness is not the same thing as its reputation.
A reputation is the story people believe about an institution. A witness is what that institution reveals about its convictions when telling the truth is costly.
If preserving the church’s image requires silencing someone who says they were harmed, the image has become more important than the person.
That is not unity.
It is quiet.
When one person gets to speak for God
The most powerful spiritual language may be the language that places a leader’s judgment beyond ordinary challenge.
“God told me.”
“God has given me a word for you.”
“I am your spiritual covering.”
“You are resisting the authority God placed over you.”
Those statements do more than communicate an opinion. They attach divine authority to the speaker’s interpretation. Disagreeing with the leader can begin to feel like disagreeing with God.
Pastors should offer spiritual guidance. They should teach Scripture, exercise discernment, challenge harmful behavior, and help people think about what faithfulness may require.
But spiritual authority should produce more humility, not less.
The more serious the consequences of a leader’s interpretation, the more willing that leader should be to have it questioned. A pastor should be able to say, “This is how I understand it, but I could be wrong.” They should welcome wise counsel, outside expertise, and the possibility that someone else sees something they do not.
No pastor should need divine certainty to win an ordinary disagreement.
Any system in which one human being’s interpretation of God cannot be questioned has made that person functionally unaccountable. The leader may still say that God is the highest authority, but in practice, the leader has become the only person authorized to explain what God requires.
God’s authority and a pastor’s authority are not interchangeable.
Confusing them is how guidance becomes control.
The cost of leaving is part of the control
Churches are not simply places people attend for an hour on Sunday.
They can hold friendships, family relationships, employment, identity, purpose, history, and a person’s sense of connection to God. Leaving may feel like losing nearly everything at once.
That cost matters.
If questioning a leader means losing your community, people may stop asking questions. If setting a boundary means being described as bitter, unstable, rebellious, or spiritually deceived, people may learn to doubt their own perception.
If leaving one harmful relationship means losing every relationship attached to it, staying may feel like the only survivable option.
This is why spiritual abuse cannot be reduced to a few harsh words or an overbearing personality. The language is powerful because it is attached to belonging.
Sometimes nobody says, “You are not allowed to go.”
They simply make going cost more than the person thinks they can bear.
These stories keep raising the same questions
The people, allegations, evidence, and outcomes in The Secrets of Hillsong, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and Death of the Pastor’s Wife are different. These productions are not courtrooms, and their stories should not be flattened into one explanation of what happened.
They do not prove one another.
But they keep raising some of the same questions.
What happens when loyalty to a leader becomes indistinguishable from loyalty to God? When protecting the ministry matters more than examining what happened inside it? When forgiveness is expected from the wounded but repentance remains optional for the powerful? When raising a concern costs someone their community while dismissing it costs the leader almost nothing?
The recurrence of a question does not establish that every allegation in every case is true.
It does suggest that churches keep building systems vulnerable to the same kinds of failure.
Healthy faith language gives agency back
Healthy spiritual care does not need to control the conclusion.
It can teach without demanding that another person surrender their conscience. It can challenge without humiliating. It can name Christian convictions while allowing questions, time, outside counsel, and disagreement.
It does not punish someone for talking with a therapist, attorney, advocate, denominational official, or another pastor. It does not insist that every concern remain inside the system being questioned.
Healthy care can tolerate, “I need to think about that.”
It can tolerate, “I see this differently.”
It can even tolerate, “No.”
Good spiritual care helps a person become more honest before God, not more dependent on the person offering the care. It strengthens their capacity to discern rather than requiring them to borrow the leader’s certainty.
Faith can ask difficult things of people. But coercion begins when someone claims the exclusive right to decide what faithfulness must look like, and makes belonging contingent on agreement.
A church is not safe because its leaders are kind, gifted, sincere, or trusted.
It is safe when the system can survive someone telling those leaders no.
Can a member question a pastor’s interpretation without being labeled rebellious? Can a staff member report a concern outside the pastor’s chain of command? Can a spouse seek independent help? Can someone leave without becoming the subject of a warning campaign?
“No” is not always correct. Neither is the person saying it. But a system that treats every refusal as disloyalty has lost the ability to distinguish leadership from control.
Good leaders should want a church where people can say no to them.
Because the moment nobody can tell the pastor no, the church has a much larger problem.
That is where we are going next.
Where this leaves us
Faith language is powerful because faith is powerful.
Words like forgiveness, unity, submission, repentance, trust, and grace shape how people understand God, themselves, their relationships, and what they believe they are allowed to do.
That is exactly why those words must be handled carefully.
Faith language becomes a cage when it determines what another person is permitted to see, name, question, remember, report, or leave. It becomes a cage when one person controls the interpretation, declares resistance sinful, and sets the cost of disagreement.
The answer is not a church without authority, accountability, forgiveness, or shared conviction.
It is authority that remains accountable.
Forgiveness that does not erase truth.
Unity that can survive honesty.
Leadership that does not pretend it speaks with the voice of God.
Good theology does not need frightened people to survive.
Faith can be a shelter. It can give people language for hope, courage to face the truth, and a community willing to stand beside them when doing so is costly.
But when someone else controls the words, the meaning, and every available exit, shelter becomes something else.
Faith language becomes a cage when somebody else keeps the key.
Next in the series: “When No One Can Tell the Pastor No.”
Go deeper
Start with Part One. “When Care Becomes Control” examines what happens when pastoral authority, mental-health language, marital power, and access to help become concentrated in the same hands.
For a research-based definition of spiritual abuse. Lisa Oakley, Kathryn Kinmond, and Justin Humphreys, “Spiritual Abuse in Christian Faith Settings: Definition, Policy and Practice Guidance”, The Journal of Adult Protection (2018). It describes spiritual abuse as an ongoing pattern of coercion and control in a religious context and emphasizes the need for stronger safeguarding practices.
For a clinically useful framework. Daniel Koch and Leihua Edstrom, “Development of the Spiritual Harm and Abuse Scale”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2022). The study identifies dimensions including maintaining the system, controlling leadership, internal distress, harmful God-image, violence, and gender discrimination.
For the foundational church-facing treatment. David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. An accessible account of how shame, performance, false spiritual authority, and systems built around compliance can distort Christian community.
For authority and institutional power. Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church. Langberg distinguishes using authority to protect people from using people to protect authority.
For the recurring institutional questions. FX’s The Secrets of Hillsong and Christianity Today’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill examine different churches and events, but both raise questions about celebrity, loyalty, power, institutional protection, and accountability.
For immediate support. The National Domestic Violence Hotline’s guide to spiritual abuse includes warning signs, safety-planning guidance, and ways to connect with an advocate.
If you lead in a church and want to build safer, clearer ways of responding when power, mental health, and spiritual care collide, Open Harbor’s free When Crisis Comes to Church training was built for that tension.
