UPDATE: This book is now available at this link:

https://diakrisis-project.com/2023/08/23/new-book-swept-under-the-carpet-the-scandal-of-spiritual-abuse-in-churches-today/

JUST SO YOU KNOW…

If I go a bit quiet for these few weeks, it is because I am working hard on completing a book entitled, “Swept Under the Carpet: The Scandal of Spiritual Abuse in Churches Today”. It is being developed out of a four-part series of articles I wrote between 1998 and 2002. I can guarantee that you will find the subject matter of this book to be deeply shocking, and so it should be. So much of what is being carried out in the name of Christ today (and it is far worse now than in 1998-2002) beggars belief. So much that was at one time considered to be utterly wacky has now gone mainstream.

Anyway, watch this space. Hopefully by the end of this month or in the first week of September I will be publicizing the book as being on my website. It should finish at around 120-pages and 35,000 words. This is just being shared here to drum up some deep thought and anticipation. Here are brief extracts from the Introduction:

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“It is common to think of spiritual abuse in churches in terms of the excesses of a tyrannical minister or a manipulative group of elders terrorizing the unfortunate congregation. In terms of that kind of abuse, this is a subject which has been written about many times in books and essays. I have also covered it myself in a number of pieces referencing what is known as “heavy shepherding”. That is when a church slips over the line of exercising legitimate biblical authority into having the basic trappings of a nasty little cult; and it happens a lot. This is what most people identify as “spiritual abuse”.

However, in this book I wanted to cover a couple of more suppressed but no less vicious or prolific aspects of spiritual abuse in churches. Namely, 1) the abuse of a pastor by the elders and/or members of the congregation (Chapters 1 and 2) and, 2) the abuse of members of a congregation through the prevailing religious practices of a church or organisation (chapter 3 and 4).

In terms of #1, it is only in those churches where the truth is proclaimed with power by the pastor that such pastors will be undermined in that savage manner. In the average lukewarm assembly or in those which are pushing phony “revival” with all the ersatz charismatic razzmatazz, or those which are teaching some version of prosperity theology and phony healing, there will be no such vicious attacks on the elders and pastors at the head of those shows. For it is plainly satanic forces which instigate those attacks. If a church already belongs to Satan, he has no need to try to wreck its ministry, for it is already doing his business.

That type of church is the one in which another kind of spiritual abuse flourishes — the second kind that I am writing about in this little book. It goes like this: If you are being told that you are not fully born again unless you can speak gibberish, that is spiritual abuse. If people are putting their grubby mitts on you (falsely calling it the “laying on of hands”) so that you collapse in a heap on the floor or start twitching or laughing uncontrollably, that is spiritual abuse. If that church is running ‘healing services’ in which a few nebulous symptoms are relieved (which can easily be achieved through emotional manipulation anyway, commonly called “faith healing”) while ‘difficult cases’ (i.e., real issues such as total paralysis, congenital blindness, serious disability and disease, etc.) are ignored, that is spiritual abuse. If disciples of Christ are being told to queue up and have their demons cast out of them, that is spiritual abuse. If people are being told that they have so-called “generational spirits” in them, that is spiritual abuse. If people are being told that on condition they give big sums to the church then God will give big things to them because He allegedly wants them to be materially prosperous, that is spiritual abuse. If they are being told that singing effeminate, soppy ditties is “worship”, that is spiritual abuse as such “worship” is merely a ‘warm-up’ to get the audience into an altered state of consciousness so that the hapless folks are ‘prepped‘ for the ensuing ‘ministry’ (“gullibility gateway”, I call it). If a pastor tells you to “leave your mind at the door” of the church, that is spiritual abuse because your mind is as much a part of worship as your spirit. If you are regarded as spiritually inferior because you believe that all the above is spiritual abuse, then that too is spiritual abuse”.

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Anyway, I hope that this little book will be finished in the next three weeks and that you will obtain some encouragement from reading it as it is not just about the abuse itself (a rampant manifestation of apostasy) but there is also much in the way of solid Bible teaching for such a time as this.

Thank you for being there! 💝