News Conference: Tim’s Statement
This bill does not require clergy to report information reported to them during their duties as a faith leader. It would require them to be mandatory reporters for the same reasons that teachers, day care workers, doctors, and nurses are already mandatory reporters: because they are the trusted authority figures an abused child may rely on for help.
News Conference: Michelle’s Statement
Church should be a place where children are safe. Where children are protected and where the evils of the world stop at the door. Pastor, elders and leaders are the gate keepers. They have an obligation to protect the least of these. During this divisive political climate it's important to stress that reporting CSA is not now nor has it ever been a political issue.
Broken Arrows: Our Emotions
By “othering” personal thoughts, CFC trains children and adults to be constantly at odds with themselves in a state of passive indecision that looks for outside direction. CFC leadership then offers church-approved philosophies, practices, and opinions as though they are God-ordained truth, keeping members trapped in the vicious codependence of high-control authoritarian communities.
Broken Arrows: Our Bodies
When parents deny children basic human rights of bodily autonomy, agency, and privacy, their children learn that their bodies are not their own but always under the authority of someone else. The practice of deliberately humiliating and breaking a child’s spirit lays harmful groundwork for their future relationships as adults, teaching them that love means submitting to abusers who claim authority over their bodies.
Broken Arrows: Obedience
Training children to respond to instructions with nothing but immediate and cheerful obedience (under threat of physical and emotional harm) leaves no room for a child to question whether the instructed activity is safe for them.
Training children to obey adults without questioning the why behind the command prepares them to do the same with any authority figure in the future.
Broken Arrows: High Control Religious Communities and Abuse
The Broken Arrows series names and identifies the layers of harm contained in CFC’s approach to child training. This type of child training sets children up for abuse by teaching them erroneous beliefs about themselves and their place in the world.
The Lord is my courage
Honesty about our hurt empowers us to hope in God who stretches out a staff to comfort us. Courage is a continuous choice to be honest about the reality of harm while reaching for hope, even when it is inconvenient and even when it bristles against cultural and religious expectations that equate goodness with niceness.
We are all complicit
One of the most complicated truths to acknowledge is that we have harmed others, yet this is an essential step in the journey to wholeness. There is freedom in acknowledging that we have been complicit in harm. It allows us to seek forgiveness, offer restitution, and find grace for ourselves and for others.
Rethinking Discipline
As parents emerge from CFC, one of their common laments is that they spanked their children. At the same time, learning how to parent without fear and physical pain can be daunting if that is all that you have ever known. If you have been spanking your children but would like to stop, here are some places to start.
Why we support the CARE Act
The Child Abuse Reporting Expansion (CARE) Act is a proposed New York State law that eliminates the mandated reporting loophole to include members of the clergy.
Counting the Cost
For those of us who still identify as Christians, we understand that our lives are dedicated to Christ. We understand that Christ calls us to seek justice, even when it’s uncomfortable. We understand that our faith often puts us at odds with political parties. Our faith calls us to support the people around us – we help them move with our pick-up trucks and fifteen-passenger vans, we bring meals and take care of their older children when they have a baby, we lend them our generator when their power is out.
But there is a hidden cost that we didn’t count on: the cost of leaving Christian Fellowship Center.
Book Review: A Church Called Tov
In A Church Called Tov, by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, it’s all about the root and the soil. It’s all about character and culture and what is allowed to thrive and what is tamped down into compliance and told to hush because ‘we don’t talk about such things,’ ‘that’s gossip’, ‘you need to trust that we as leadership have this in hand.’
This book may not be for everyone, but it’s pretty darn close.
Understanding Domestic Violence
Domestic Violence impacts every community regardless of race, culture, or socioeconomic status. On average, nearly twenty people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. One in four women and one in nine men experience some form of severe intimate partner violence at some point in their life.
Is this biblical?
Christians often use the word “biblical” to indicate that our approach to an issue is a simple outworking of scripture. While there are absolutes in the Christian faith, most of the time this use of the adjective is deeply problematic.
On Grieving the Loss of a Church
If you are feeling shame or disillusionment over leaving your church, you are not alone. Spiritual abuse and other types of abuse destroy lives. They leave a trail of broken souls in their wake.
Librarians are the best
If you’re interested in a book-length exploration of a certain topic but you don’t have the financial resources to purchase your own book, never fear! The librarians at Potsdam Public Library have purchased many books from our resources list and they can be requested from anywhere in the North County Library System.
Researching the effect of trauma
It is projected that people who have experienced trauma are up to seven times more likely to develop chronic health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.
Trauma is more likely to cause health complications even in people who maintain a healthy diet, stay active, and do not indulge in drugs and alcohol. Young people are more at risk for the effects of trauma specifically because our brains are still developing and will not be fully developed until age 25.
The upside of nepotism?
I know of no clearer way to state my thesis about familial privilege in the church than this: Nepotism is the way of kings, not servants. It is of the world, and sows worldly weeds among the seeds God is planting.
I am sorry
People have been reaching out and asking questions and I urge you to do so as well. I would be honored to hear from you and apologize to you face to face. The Truth sets free! Verbalizing your pain to an understanding heart is a good step toward embodying Truth. I will gladly keep you anonymous and protect your vulnerability if you choose to share with me.
What is an enmeshed family?
Enmeshment is usually repeated inter-generationally. In families with unprocessed trauma or enmeshed roles, children often find themselves repeating the cycle with their own children because that is all they know. Breaking the cycle of enmeshment is hard and painful work.