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Writer's pictureRuth Wise

Shunning and other culty practices

Updated: Aug 24

I am watching a documentary about Jehovah's Witnesses, and I am so sad and even shocked how many parallels there are between that group and "the" church I grew up in and was wholeheartedly devoted to for over 40 years.


A main characteristic of cults is high control.


"Is this a high control religion?" Duncan Corbett - a former elder in the Jehovah's Witness organization encourages people to ask this key question. He continues, "How do you leave? And if there is no gracious way for you to leave with family and friends relationships intact, then yeah, that's high control."


When people, even close family members are "disfellowshipped" by JWs, devout, loyal JWs have to be "prepared mentally to view them as dead," John Viney shares from his own experience.


"You... treated me as disposable," one victim wrote, before dying by suicide.


I have been told by my husband to consider his parents dead to me. Those individuals (my husband and his family) are faithful devotees to (and leaders in) the church community which I considered my real family. And my in-laws were my “real” family. And I am treated like I don't exist any longer.


JWs deny the implication that their beliefs related to shunning cause or contribute to suicide, but there are facts that indicate otherwise.


I strongly believe multiple suicides of which I am aware are direct results of culty practices in “the church.” God knows and will judge.


JW's handling of sex abuse allegations"lacks compassion for the victim and serves to protect the perpetrator."


"I feel like I am the perpetrator. I am literally being shunned because I reported a child abuser within their organization," a victim and former member named Laura shared.


I know of too much (and directly experienced ) - rampant - sexual impropriety and sexual abuse that has been reported to leading ones, and the reporter has been ostracized, ignored, silenced, or shamed and made to feel like the perpetrator rather than who they really are: a victim or a witness who can't and shouldn't have to tolerate maltreatment of others EVER... but least of all in a church community.



Another documentary, Vain Glory, also reveals too many parallels to my experience in what I believe is a genuine Christian community that has too many culty practices. Vain Glory features a group called "The Walk." In it, Rev. Harold Bussell, D.Min., explains:


"They want you to become part of the group, and the group identity is what is so central, it's not the individual, whereas in Christianity, ...God affirms our individuality. That is never negated. Our sin is negated but never our humanity nor our identities."


Later in the documentary, the same brother shares: "...In the church, in Scripture, the leaders were always held to a position of accountability. They could be confronted, whereas, in a cult or in a group leaning in a cult direction, the leaders are beyond confrontation."


A former member continues, "... the focus started becoming on Brother ____ instead of on the Lord Jesus Christ."


The film's narrator states that it becomes very difficult to leave a cult; in members' minds, "to leave a cult is to leave God."


Another parallel:


"Finally, there is what I call 'the dispensing of existence,'" Robert Litton, Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University explains. "And in cult formation, that dispensing of existence tends to be symbolic existence. If you don't join the cult and stay in the cult, if that presssure is strong enough and the indoctrination is succeeding, and is of a powerful kind... then one can internalize the feeling that if I don't go in this direction of the cult, I do not exist as a moral human being... The equivalent of feeling annihilated in a psychological sense can be experienced by people if they do not move along with the promise of the cult, which is the promise of truth and the promise of life."


Again, I have felt, after confronting the abuse I have experienced, that now I don't exist to people who were once very close to me - including my own husband of nearly 30 years.


In "The Walk" there was an obsession of the founder to get every leader directly bonded to him. He was obsessed that everyone come under his control. Direct submission to the leader and to the leader's word is required, a former member explains. But these practices were never revealed to new members.


A former "Walk" member was told by leaders that they feared for his future, and that he was committing the sin of Korah. Leaving a cult based on one's conviction in their conscience can be viewed by those loyal to the cult as repeating the sin of Korah, who, in Exodus, rebelled against Moses and the earth swallowed him up. Stories from the Old Testament are misapplied, and fear through those stories is tactically used to threaten members from resisting or leaving, to manipulate and to control them.


After the leader died, his influence continues through his converts, tapes and publications.


We should follow and serve Jesus only. There should be no coercion. There should be no fear. We should be able to confront anything unscriptural and communicate until there is mutual understanding, sin is exposed and repented of, and unhindered fellowship in genuine love is restored. Such fellowship, such care for one another and for the truth, builds up the Body.


I never have had any heart to expose anything or anyone. I simply wanted to live in peace, with believers with whom I had been built together over many years, including my husband. But the shunning and other mistreatment made speaking out necessary and unavoidable, to prevent further stumbling of younger and more vulnerable ones.


Speaking out then led to further shunning, to the point that I am treated like I no longer exist.


That is not how my Father God treats me, and thankfully, it is not how believers treat me who lack a superiority complex and any hint of exclusivity toward other Christians.


Thank God.







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