Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith-and for Freedom
320
Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith-and for Freedom
320eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781634311717 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pitchstone Publishing |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
Guilt, Shame, and Psychological Pain Candace Gorham, LPC
We look for peace, but find no good, for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.
— Jeremiah 8:15
Guilt and shame are two words that are often used interchangeably. A response like "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I hope you feel guilty" shows how the words can often be used in ways that seem to mean the same thing. However, the two words actually have significantly different definitions. Shame involves how one feels about oneself. It is painfully intense embarrassment and humiliation that arises from having done something wrong. People full of shame have done something wrong, and they feel bad about themselves for having done it. Guilt, on the other hand, is about feeling responsible for something wrong. Guilt involves feeling remorseful and deserving of blame. When observing the psychological impact of religion, we must start with guilt and shame, as many religious traditions thrive by playing upon them to manipulate the minds and prey upon the emotions of their followers.
The Bible introduces readers to concepts of guilt and shame as early as the third chapter of the first book of the Bible. Genesis chapter 3 is the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, becoming aware and ashamed of their bodies, and being banished from the garden after they are found guilty of defying god's orders. The stage is then set for a relentlessly recurring theme that becomes painfully entrenched in the hearts and minds of followers. Not surprisingly then, in my clinical practice, I find that clients who struggle with guilt and shame are quite frequently influenced by beliefs and traditions based on religions that include the Adam and Eve story in its lore, Christianity among them. Since my personal and professional experiences primarily involve Christian traditions, this essay speaks specifically to the impact of Christian beliefs and practices.
People feel guilt and shame for a wide range of reasons, and some people have more shame- or guilt-inducing triggers than others. In addition to what I've learned about religious triggers from my clinical practice, in my book, The Ebony Exodus Project: Why Some Black Women are Walking Out on Religion — and Others Should Too, I share first-person accounts of Black women's experiences abandoning their religious beliefs. All of these women reported struggling with these emotions during their time as believers. Quite often we find that those who come from highly conservative religious traditions are likely to experience more guilt and shame than liberal believers and nonbelievers. In Christianity, this is because the Bible lists literally hundreds of actions or events that would be deemed illegal, immoral, or detrimental to one's relationship with god. The Bible sometimes goes into great detail about these laws and mores so that when believers commit a violation — and they most certainly will violate something — they are aware of the crime and guaranteed to feel guilty.
While a Christian who breaks a law, also known as committing a sin, might publically wear guilt like a scarlet letter, when the violation is damaging to one's relationship with god, the person is much more likely to struggle with shame. Since shame is such a deeply felt embarrassment, it's quite common for believers to be more ashamed of secret sins than for ones of which everyone is aware. When god is disappointed in us, we are ashamed of ourselves. Since religion is often deeply tied to one's personal and cultural identities, the psychological impact of its precepts can run deeper than those of any other influence, including family.
Christianity taps into a childlike urge to please our parents, hence god being referred to as a father throughout the Bible. We learn to value our parents when we are small children and depend on them for everything. We quickly understand that doing things that make them happy helps us feel more bonded and connected to them. When we do something wrong and they punish us, I'd dare say that it is the sense of disconnection and fear that they will stop loving us that terrifies us the most. So it is for many people when it comes to their relationships with god the father.
Depression and Anxiety
By far, the most common mental disorders are depression and anxiety. These two disorders often go hand in hand and can occur as a single episode with a specific trigger or be part of a chronic, lifelong cycle of recurring episodes with no clear triggers. Depression involves experiencing daily life in a variety of unpleasant ways, such as increased irritability, generally low mood, lack of enjoyment, weight or appetite changes, changes in sleep patterns, decreased energy, decreased concentration, thoughts of death, and suicidal urges. Isolation, increased substance use, or interpersonal problems are often observed in depressed people as well. To do a quick self-check for depression, look up the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) online. It is a short screening tool consisting of nine common depression symptoms.
Anxiety, like depression, is a common experience. Worry, fear, and anticipation are everyday experiences for nearly everyone, and acknowledging this is often much more socially acceptable than talking about depression. However, once anxiety becomes disruptive to a person's life, it too can rise to the level of being a diagnosable disorder. There are a variety of types of anxiety including phobias, trauma responses, panic, obsessions, compulsions, and generalized anxiety. Thankfully, study after study show that a combination of basic talk therapy and medication are 70 percent, 80 percent, and sometimes even more effective at alleviating depression and anxiety and facilitating long-term recovery.
Religious traditions exploit our natural tendencies by tapping into primal parts of who we are as individuals and as a collective. Upon gaining access to those parts of our psyche, religion can implant all manner of unrealistic expectations for ourselves and others, landing us in situations where we've violated a law or expectation, or damaged our relationship with someone. For example, it is natural to want to feel special, uniquely valuable to those we love, and Jeremiah 1:5 is often invoked to do just that: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." However, that feeling comes at a cost. The believer is also subject to unrealistic expectations of perfection. "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Since no one is perfect, Christians can often find themselves feeling guilty that they've violated a law, and they worry that their imperfection will damage their relationship with god the father.
These experiences inevitability lead to depression and anxiety. It is a common occurrence for me to have clients who talk quite a bit about their religious beliefs. They talk about their religious upbringing, their desire to live according to sound religious doctrine or spiritual guidance, and their dependence on their faith as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, what they don't realize — or are unwilling to consider — is that it might be that very faith that is at the root of the oftentimes contrived or artificial dilemmas that create the guilt and shame that fuel the depression and anxiety with which they are struggling.
Treating Mental Illnesses
When it comes to treatment for mental illness, some people who belong to church communities suffer because of explicit and implicit messages that tell them their psychological distress is merely a crisis of faith. Perhaps people's faith is being tested by god the way he tested Job in the Bible. Maybe people are going through a tough time because they are being punished for committing a sin. Even more sinister is the suggestion that some people are struggling with psychological distress because of direct demonic influence in their lives. When people are closely tied to an organization, they are at an increased risk of being plagued by shame because of the community's tendencies to assume guilt when people are going through hard times.
The first place many people in these communities turn to for help is their pastors. Even those who decide they want to seek professional counseling, outside of the pastors from their church, enjoy the great privilege of knowing that any given counselor in the United States is quite likely to be a Christian or to believe in a higher power simply due to the fact that we live in a Christian- or spiritual-majority country. Nonetheless, formal pastoral counseling programs and mental health training programs at religious institutions offering graduate level degrees from accredited colleges and universities have proliferated within the past decade or so. Schools such as Liberty University and Oral Roberts University produce thousands of clinicians each year who are trained to let their spirituality guide their practice.
While I have no doubt that there are high-quality training programs for licensed professional pastoral counselors who are just as prepared to handle mental health issues as any other clinician, I am more concerned about the concepts they draw from to inform their practice, namely the Bible and Christian doctrine, than I am about how well the counselor is trained. Supervision and continuing education can address clinical skills deficiencies, but it won't ensure that one trained in a religious program will use evidence-based treatment models over spiritual practices such as praying and reading the Bible.
I have worked with and supervised a number of graduates of the Liberty University counseling program, and I can attest to the fact that their religiosity is reflected in their work, even when they don't mean it to be. In fact, the Secular Therapist Project, of which I am a member, was founded specifically because it can be so difficult to find even traditional mental health workers who do not let spirituality slip into their practice one way or another. The demand is so great that over eleven thousand clients have registered on the website to connect to one of the over three hundred therapists who have listed themselves as committed to providing only secular, evidence-based psychotherapy.
Another more extreme form of Christian mental health "treatment" is called deliverance, a protestant variation of exorcism. It is the process of breaking the influence of demons from a person's life and is common among the Pentecostal, charismatic, holiness, and evangelical sects. Some believe that there are demons physically inside of the body that have to be forced out, and others teach that demons can become energetically attached to a person or an object and cause problems in a person's life by way of influence. In both cases, this casting-out process involves a minister with spiritual gifts from god necessary for successfully casting out a demon, a Bible reading, and frequently some talisman such as anointing oil or holy water. If you've ever been to a "shouting church," you'll know just how disconcerting it can be to see a person running around, screaming, flailing about on the floor out of control, supposedly the result of either a demon resisting being exorcised or the Holy Spirit overpowering the physical body as it cleanses. I've had many people tell me that merely observing such a scene was traumatizing. Despite that fact that these manic outbursts supposedly indicated that a person was being blessed, healed, or delivered, they saw it as proof that their problems could be caused by demonic influence in their lives, up to and including being possessed themselves.
The overall theme of the Bible is that you should put all of your trust in this supernatural power and worship him. In exchange for that worship and adoration, Christians who believe in faith healing often expect that god will keep them happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise as long as they trust, worship, and adore him. The converse is that if they waver in their trust and faith in god, they may find that when they need him the most, he isn't there. Perhaps that is why some Christians place such heavy importance on the practice of faith healing. In their minds, there is no better way to demonstrate the depth of their faith than by forgoing (or at least minimizing the use of) scientifically based treatment and risking their lives.
Because recovery is believed to be the result of divine intervention, followers of faith healing traditions sometimes teach that believers should not even consult with professionals for a diagnosis or medical advice. In these traditions, physical or psychological illnesses are believed to be curable by praying, reading the Bible, worshipping, and fasting. The problem with this approach is that life is full of adversity. Some problems are solvable, and some aren't. When the adversity someone experiences is believed to be directly tied to how well they follow spiritual laws, they are at a heightened risk for experiencing guilt and shame — they must have brought the adversity on through lack of faith.
The reasoning goes that sick people will be healed if they have enough faith and that they won't be healed if they do not have enough faith. So, as time goes on — it might be hours, days, months, or years depending on the illness — if they aren't healed, they begin to consider that maybe it is not simply a matter of being patient; maybe they are not getting healed because they are disappointing god in some way, either by committing a sin or by failing to trust in him completely. At this point, these people are not only ill, but they are also riddled with guilt and shame. Imagine how much worse the intensity of depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness would get if your hope is to be healed from a mental illness but no healing comes.
Beyond depression and anxiety, strict Christian doctrines can lead to numerous other mental illnesses and disadvantageous situations that negatively affect church members, particularly women, including posttraumatic stress disorder, abuse, loss of identity, and financial and medical danger.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Decades ago, the public knew very little about posttraumatic stress disorder. It was typically referred to as shell shock and believed to affect only men coming home from fighting in a war. Today, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is getting increasingly more attention and media coverage, especially in response to the rise in PTSD-related suicides of military veterans, but it can affect many people without military experience too. Simply put, PTSD is an extreme anxiety reaction to a life-threatening event, whether real or perceived. Common causes of PTSD include fighting in a battle, catastrophic events such as natural disasters, car accidents, rape, and victimization from a violent offense. It is key to keep in mind that sufferers do not have to have been victims themselves in order to develop PTSD — the threat only has to be perceived as life-threatening regardless of whether it was or not.
People suffering through untreated PTSD episodes might experience periods of hypervigilance, hyperawareness, being easily startled, paranoia, angry outbursts and rages, or fear of leaving the house. Sufferers often also battle with intense flashbacks, nightmares, and sometimes even hallucinations. If the trauma can be linked to a specific person, place, or thing, PTSD sufferers will often avoid those trauma triggers by refusing to physically put themselves in such situations, refusing to talk about the event, and trying not to even think about the traumatic event. Luckily, there are a number of empirically proven treatments for PTSD.
In truth, PTSD is difficult to treat because of the complexity of its etiology, the specific traumatic situation itself, the progression of symptoms, and related physiological changes. Because of brain imagining, scientists can pinpoint the areas of the brain with abnormal levels of brain activity and note neurochemical changes typical of PTSD sufferers. As with many of the most common mental and psychological disorders, there are quite a few psychotropic medications that are highly effective at treating PTSD. Since PTSD is essentially an intense combination of debilitating anxiety and endless mood instability, anti-anxiety medications, mood stabilizers, and antidepressants reduce reactivity, nervousness, insomnia, low mood, and suicidal ideations.
Because of the difficulty in treating the disorder, many specialized and alternative therapies have been used either as primary treatments or to augment a traditional course of psychotherapy and medication. One such treatment process is called exposure therapy, in which patients slowly increase their exposure to an anxiety trigger and learn to eliminate the anxiety by pairing the exposure with relaxation exercises. Exposure therapy is a very slow and deliberate process and absolutely should not be tried by an untrained professional because of the risk of re-traumatizing a person during the exposure portions of treatment.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Women v. Religion"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Karen L. Garst, PhD.
Excerpted by permission of Pitchstone Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction Karen L. Garst, PhD 13
1 Guilt, Shame, and Psychological Pain Candace Gorham, LPC 23
2 Half Human: How Jewish Law Justifies the Exclusion and Exploitation of Women Lauri Weissman 47
3 Women v. Indoctrination Alexis Record 73
4 Owned: Slaves, Women, Children, and Livestock Valerie Tarico, PhD 99
5 Women in Islam-Unveiled Hibah Ch 127
6 Negotiations with God Aruna Papp 145
7 Black Women and Christianity in the United States: A Historical Perspective, Part I (Colonial Era to Jim Crow) Valerie Wade 163
8 Black Women and Christianity in the United States: A Historical Perspective, Part II (Civil Rights Movement to the Present) Deanna Adams 177
9 Call for the Rise of Nonreligious Latinas Marilyn Deleija 191
10 Why Hispanic Women Should Abandon Religion Hypatia Alexandria 213
11 Shaking the Ground: Transgender Atheism Kayley Margarite Whalen 235
12 Biology, Women, and Conservative Abrahamic Religions-A Bad Combination Abby Hafer, PhD 265
13 A Creative Departure Gretta Vosper 295
Acknowledgments 319
About the Editor 320