Requests for Volunteers in a Study on Spiritual Abuse: Dr Barbara Orlowski

Posted on by November 12, 2013avatar

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Approximately two years ago, TWW did a series based on Dr Barbara Orlowski's groundbreaking research into spiritual abuse and the church link, link, link, link, link, and link.

From one of those posts:

"Barbara M. Orlowski’s doctoral research into the problem of disenfranchised believers is presented in her book, Spiritual Abuse Recovery. She defines spiritual abuse as “the misuse of spiritual authority to maltreat followers in the Christian Church.” Orlowski focuses on dedicated Christians who have served in their churches for years before making the difficult decision to leave after experiencing spiritual abuse. She follows them on their journey to find healing and wholeness.

The strength of Spiritual Abuse Recovery lies in the positive outcomes Orlowski presents. Rather than dwelling on the tragic abuse perpetuated by a narcissistic pastor, she shines light on the path to wholeness.

Church leadership must address this issue, so the abuse will stop and those who have come to their church for healing will be understood. The abusive patterns such as hierarchical leadership style focused on power and control, insincerity, hypocrisy, kingdom building, heavy handedness, and an inability to handle criticism must be recognized and avoided."

Julie Anne Smith's Spiritual Sounding Board blog here introduced this study via Brad Sargeant's words:

And now Dr. Orlowski is looking for spiritual abuse survivors for a new study. It uses a similar set of questions to her 2008 survey, but she is also looking to research how widespread spiritual abuse is. If you are a survivor and didn’t participate in her original study, please consider helping her with this one. I know from experience that it provides an invaluable opportunity to reflect carefully on what happened to us, and synthesize that with intuitive hunches about issues like:

What made me susceptible to spiritual abuse?
How do toxic leaders capture followers and then keep them under control?
What process did I undergo to bring healing from those wounds by religious wolves?

I believe you’d find taking this survey helpful to you, too, if this is the right time for you to think through the destructive impact of abuse, and how reconstruction has been happening in your personal life. The invitation letter with details from Dr. Orlowski is below.

TWW respects the work that Dr Orlowski and endorse her effort to find participants. It is an opportunity to take your experience and use it to benefit others. 

Request for Survey Participants 2013

Greetings!

You are invited to participate in a New Survey regarding those who have experienced spiritual abuse in your home church or parachurch organization and how you recovered from it.

My initial doctoral research was to confirm how people recovered from the devastating effects of spiritual abuse.  This new survey will seek to verify the numbers of people directly involved in harmful treatment of congregants by the behaviors of church leaders, as well as how those wounded have recovered.

Please consider being a part of this new study. Your responses will be kept in my file for my personal use.  If needed, some pertinent comments may be selected to quote.  But anonymity is assured and your name will not be linked with information you share about your experiences.  Your input will be valued and added to the data regarding this topic.  This information will help to better understand the issues.

Please check out my website: www.ChurchExiters.com and read the articles entitled: FAQ and  What Spiritual Abuse Is and Is Not. With this description in mind, you can consider if you have had the life experience that this research is seeking to track.

As with the original study, ‘criteria for participants’ is important.  This is to ensure that those who participate in this study are reasonably healed and will not be further harmed by doing this survey.

On the lower right side of my website, you will find the ‘Take The Survey’ page. The CRITERIA FOR THIS STUDY will be on that page. If this fits you, then scroll down a bit further and you will find the link in blue for this survey: PLEASE CLICK HERE.

I was recently asked by a researcher in Australia if I could point them to statistics regarding how widespread spiritual abuse was.  At this time, there does not appear to be very many studies that I can point people to, apart from my own.  This is a motivator to request that people–who were not involved in the original study–take the time and be a part of this new research project.

This is my personal study.  This time it will not be connected with a seminary or be for a degree program.  This information will be added to my ongoing research in this area.  You can be a part of it.  Statistics and data assessed may eventually be available to bloggers who are keen on this topic.

I believe that we can all benefit from this intentional effort.  Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Please let me know which blogsite/s informed you about this new study.

You can contact me through my website email: info@ChurchExiters.com

Thanks for your support and feedback in this venture.

            Barb 

Barb Orlowski, D.Min.

Websites:

www.ChurchExiters.com
www.AbuseResourceNetwork.com

Book:

Spiritual Abuse Recovery: Dynamic Research on Finding a Place of Wholeness

Networking with Others to Raise Awareness About Spiritual Abuse and Gender Inequality

 

Comments

Requests for Volunteers in a Study on Spiritual Abuse: Dr Barbara Orlowski — 32 Comments

  1. I likewise whole-heartedly endorse Dr. Barb Orlowski’s research work and her extensive, unsung, behind-the-scenes work on behalf of the spiritual abuse survivors community.

    Taking this survey five years ago truly did change my life. It helped me to think through multiple abuse experiences — in a stage-by-stage way that gave me huge insight into myself, my situations, and the people who perpetrated abuse behind their authoritarian shields of church, doctrine, and leadership. If not for that important experience, I wouldn’t have developed what discernment has emerged for me about spiritual abuse, and wouldn’t have been commenting at TWW the past few years.

    Obviously, I’m a fan … this kind of research information equips all of us. I hope those reading this post will strongly consider participating!

  2. Dr. Orlowski (Barb) is amazingly sensitive and respectful. The articles on her website are also helpful for anyone needing validation for their spiritual abuse experience. I look forward to participating in the current survey.

  4. The fact that spiritual abuse awareness is growing is because God’s people are making their voice heard!

    The internet has aided in hearing stories of harm and distress. The growing statistics demonstrate that there is much that is flawed ‘in the system’.

    Hoping to hear from you!

  5. Daisy wrote:

    When I saw this, I was reminded of a few conversations on this blog where folks talked about preachers and Christians stiffing wait staff at restaurants and what a cruddy witness that makes.

    I heard Jerry Falwell used to deliberately tip big because Christians had a rep for being lousy tippers.

  6. Oh man, this seems like a pursuit with great promise in an area where progress is needed. As they say in high school: you go girl. (And you too D&D of Raleigh.)

    As I perceive my role as one who raises issues for thought, and as one who has not experienced spiritual abuse, or rather who has not defined any situation as abusive (in the sense of being a victim) let me say this. Part of addressing the issue is, in fact, that lots of us have not experienced it. I did not say that we do not believe that it is real, but only that we have not personally experienced it. But once I was accused of not being fair to a student in a non-church setting. It was investigated, the accusation was found to be not grounded, the student was, eventually and for other reasons dropped from the program. So my personal experience is that of the unjustly accused. Now, trying to lay aside that bias, let me comment.

    Should the church try to be all things to all people all the time? That looks pretty impossible to me. And when the church does not accomplish that and fails to meet someone’s needs and expectations, then somebody gets hurt. Sometimes the parishioner gets hurt and sometimes the leadership gets hurt but always the church gets hurt. I am trying to raise the issue of false expectations on the part of, perhaps, some parishioners and the issue of false advertising on the part of the church. If a church purports to offer one stop service therein lies trouble waiting to happen.

    Another problem: who defines what is sin? Am I crazy? Maybe, but I am right about this. The idea of what actually constitutes sin varies from person to person, family to family and church to church. When churches get aggressive about snatching people away from their sins this can be a huge issue. For example, the recent thing at Moody about who can and who cannot gamble. And what is or is not christian liberty. This enthusiasm for sin sniffing is dangerous.

    One last thing. When I was accused of unfairness to the student, there was an authority to handle the situation, the people at the tech school where she was actually a student. When we say that the local church is not answerable to anybody, maybe that is part of the problem. We always think that money corrupts, but so does power. Surely these issues should not be left to be fought out solely between the leadership and the parishioners of the local church. If, in such a conflict, somebody is more right and somebody is less right, who is to decide? Saying the victory is to the strong does not seem compatible with christianity. And “the strong” could be either side of the conflict., whether or not they are actually the more in the right.

    Just raising some thoughts for consideration on the subject.

  7. @ Nancy:
    All of the above is why a church should be organized as a membership organization where all of the members are equal and have a vote, the congregation elects all of the officers, and the pastor is an employee not the boss. And stays out of the business of the church. The church, not the pastor, should decide on its theology, mission, etc., who serves where, etc. And the pastor should be under the authority of an openly elected committee from the church.

    The original concept of elders was all of the people in the church who had been a Christian for a period of time and associated with that church for a period of time. Those periods should be in the low single digit years. And the membership should determine what it takes to be an elder, not the pastor or staff, or the existing elders. BTW, in most Baptist churches the “elder” function was the deacon function.

    BTW, No elder should be paid for service with the church. Takes all staff out of being elders. And the pastor should be at meetings of church bodies only by invitation of the body, so that there can be open and frank discussion.

  9. @ An Attorney:

    Well said! This is especially important in independent churches with no denominational affiliation and in denominations where the denomination has no authority to oversee the ministers in its denomination (other than to strip them of their ability to call themselves a minister in that denomination, a drastic step rarely taken – except for women ministers in the SBC, PCA and the like)

  10. In the SBC, it is the local association or the state convention that typically disfellowships the CHURCH (not the pastor) for having chosen a woman to be the pastor. They do the same thing with churches that extend Christian love and acceptance to people with a same-gender preference. The SBC also will not seat messengers (similar to delegates, but different) from churches with either of the above situations IF there is a complaint filed with the credentials committee of the particular annual Convention. Further, the Executive Committee of the SBC may elect not to accept donations from such a church, which is really strange — as in “your money is not acceptable to us”.

  11. There is absolutely nothing strange with refusing to accept money from someone.

    The SBC is not a denomination, but a voluntary association of churches. So if a church gets “kicked out”, unlike many denominational churches they keep the building, the grounds, the members, whatever.

    You have to remember that to a Baptist, all religious association is voluntary. You can get to heaven without being a church member. A church can function quite well without being part of any convention.

    It isn’t true that they kick out churches that extend love and acceptance to people with same gender preference, either. But they do state up front that churches that marry same gender couples or ordain them may not be part of the SBC. Ditto women’s ordination.

    Look at it this way: suppose you love football, and love to play football. There is a neighborhood team in your area, and it is part of a larger group of neighborhood teams. They tell you straight up that they believe eating hot dogs is wrong for football players, and neither the local team nor the larger group let’s hot dog eaters play. You disagree, start your own team of hot dog eaters, and then want the larger group of non hotdog eaters to accept you.

    Same thing. SBC overall accepts the Bible’s clear teaching on homosexual activity (not orientation.) They believe the teaching on women’s ordination is also clear. And they tell the world that.

    Now, you might disagree with them, and might even believe the Bible doesn’t teach what they say it teaches. OK, so don’t be SBC. That simple. That easy.

    But no need to demonize them for disagreeing with you.

  12. As a life-long Baptist, and for most of that time, a Southern Baptist, I am quite aware of the verbage that they put out, and of the actual practices. I have been the church representative to the association and state convention for three churches in two states, and was a messenger to the SBC as well. I know what the policy says and I know the actual practice. And what I did was to describe the actual practice.

    One church that I was in was an extremely generous congregation in terms of supporting the state convention and the association. When the church considered whether to change its bylaws to allow women to be DEACONS, the state convention leadership threatened to find us out of fellowship and take the building away due to a deed clause they interpreted as allowing them to do that. BTW, there have been women deacons in SBC churches since the convention was founded, particularly in North Carolina. BTW, meals on wheels was established in the 1950s by a Baptist deacon and one of her friends.

  13. I repeat. I know what the SBC, state conventions, and some associations actually say, and I also know what they actually DO. And what I wrote is the reality at the associational and state convention level, and that gets respected at the national convention by the credentials committees; the Exec Bd has its own verbiage and its own practice, and the two are not completely aligned.

  14. The SBC is run by boards and committees and votes and politics behind the scenes and is laced with good ole boy-ism. It is not like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The SBC is a good example of what happens when everybody and his uncle try to get in there and get it done his way. I fail to see how that sort of system works well. It does not work any better than the catholic system at preventing abuse, for instance. Take your pick of either system, neither seems to work all that well.

    The French had the monarchy and then they had the mob. We all know how that turned out. Do I really have to choose between the tyrant and the mob? In legal circumstances, my father used to say get a bench trial if you can rather than a jury trial. Thing is, there needs to be a judge, not just he said she said and not just public opinion. Also there needs to be written law, and contracts and constitutions instead of just personal opinion or unfettered power. Or, as in my field, reliance on research and outcomes analysis and such, not just personal opinion.

    I do not trust either the pastoral staff or the congregation. We seem to be trying to have some kind of representative form of church government with no constitution, no bill of rights, no judiciary and no appeals process. Since when did that work well?

  16. Barb Orlowski wrote:

    The fact that spiritual abuse awareness is growing is because God’s people are making their voice heard!
    The internet has aided in hearing stories of harm and distress. The growing statistics demonstrate that there is much that is flawed ‘in the system’.
    Hoping to hear from you!

    Guess I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly what “spiritual abuse” is and how it is to be treated “systematically.”

  18. Nancy wrote:

    I do not trust either the pastoral staff or the congregation. We seem to be trying to have some kind of representative form of church government with no constitution, no bill of rights, no judiciary and no appeals process. Since when did that work well?

    I think that we do have that in our churches. The Bible. The problem is interpretation just as controversy over our country’s constitution sometimes.
    As long as there are people who refuse to keep researching and analyzing as you say we need to do, but just hang on to their pet biased notions while they sit in the judges seats provided by our own lazy intellects we will have abuse.
    One of the ways that I fell into a church abusive situation was that I had stopped analyzing because after I had been ‘encouraged’, ‘exhorted’, and even reprimanded for being too analytical by three different leaders in different places in a short amount of time, I thought that was a sign from God that they were right. When I began to climb out of the hole I fell into I came across 2 Tim 2:15 saying rightly divide the word of truth and the original expands that to mean earnestly analyzing. I see these abusive churches just gobbling up our young people with young families who are at such a busy time in their lives that they trust these leaders who themselves have stopped researching, blind leading the blind. For example, just a simple study into the verses that Doug Wilson proof texts is all one needs to do to find out the errors in his interpretations. Maybe five hundred years ago I could forgive those mistakes if he had never attended school and a rough reading of out of context passages was all he had to live by, but today with all that is available, there is no excuse for not revisiting the studies that we use to guide our way of life.

  23. One of my specializations is organizational systems, so I’ve written a lot about how spiritual abuse can be inflicted through:

    * Individual leaders who are malignant ministers.
    * Weak, absent, or toxic infrastructures (processes and procedures that fail to prevent people from misusing organizational resources and/or fail to have transparencey or accountability).
    * Theologies that are inherently lead to legalism or license instead of to true liberty in Christ.
    * An entire congregational culture of control – whether through rules and compliance, or through no rules and chaos.

    Here’s a link to an index of articles I’ve posted, with a description of each. Maybe there’ll be something here that matches the questions you’re having:

    http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/index-spiritual-abuse-recovery-posts/

  25. @ Scott Shaver: I would suggest, then, that you read the book by Dr Orlowski. Another classic is The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. This is a subject that is complex and it takes some effort for some folks to understand the issue if they have never experienced it.

    Within the next two weeks, we will be discussing the actual story of an ACTS 29 church which abused a family. The family is going to go on record. If you do not understand it after that story, you will need to start reading.

  26. @ dee:
    Thanks: I’ve read enough with the provided links to remain a little uncomfortable with the concept of “spiritual abuse” as presented.

  27. Scott Shaver wrote:

    I’m sorry, but still doesn’t explain for me how spiritual “abusers” have any more control than is allowed by their “victims” through a plethora of a various personality issues. I’m lost on this one.

    Blame the victim. Same could be said for spousal abuse. Variation on the same thing. Look at what’s been inflicted on victims of spiritual abuse and tell me that what was done to them is OK, they must have consented because they stuck around. You need some empathy with the power dynamic involved.

  28. @ Scott Shaver:
    Hey, Scott, people can be confused by the idea of spousal abuse. They say that the woman is an adult and essentially a free agent, so why doesn’t she just leave? Yet she doesn’t, or keeps going back.

    We are deeply relational creatures. We develop trust in others and come to rely on them. We are vulnerable to them and their opinions. If one member of a relationship slowly takes control and convinces the other that it is the right thing to do, destruction will result. And since the person taking control has already established himself as power-hungry, the amount of destruction depends on the extent of his pathology.

    Power-over in relationships can happen anywhere. In a church, it is made more complex by the fact that friendships are made in the community, which creates broader attachments. Plus, abusive church leaders invariably drag God into it, using Him to further entrench their power over others.

    Spiritual abuse can happen to a child too, when his parents tell him that God is on their side, not his, and/or that God doesn’t like him because he does something wrong, etc. My abusive pastor-father told me that if I revealed his abuse, I would destroy the ministry of God. That is a clear-cut example of spiritual abuse.

    Hope that helps.

  29. I don’t believe Scott Shaver is really interested in information on the subject. He already has an opinion.
    Dr. Barbara Orlowski, on the other hand, did her doctoral research on spiritual abuse. Her “opinions” are far more valuable. 🙂

  30. @ Scott Shaver: Dr Orlowski is an expert in this field. It is also recognized by Calvinists, Arminianists, and many of the denominations. The ones who do not like to discuss it are usually heavy handed authoritarian, pastorcentric churches which can be found everywhere.

    Anne Graham Lotz has just written a book in which she discusses the problem, and now admits, that she was part of the problem. Here is the link to the book on Amazon.

    http://www.amazon.com/Wounded-Gods-People-Discovering-Hearts-ebook/dp/B00BW294DE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384547565&sr=1-1&keywords=wounded+anne+graham+lotz

    I am curious. What sort of church do you attend? It does surprise me that you have not come across this heavily discussed topic.

  32. @ TedS.:
    Yes it is. Perhaps not complete, but it covers a lot of the territory in a short and concise way and it accurate.