How religion -- not spirituality-- can be toxic

How religion--not spirituality--can be toxic

There’s a scene in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump when Jenny and Forrest arrive at the rundown, rural, and isolated house where Jenny was apparently abused by her father. Jenny never explained to Forrest why she threw rocks at the house, but as an abuse survivor, the scene is silently understood. After throwing the rocks and fistfuls of dirt at the place, she speaks something unintelligible, cries, and then collapses in the mud. Forrest approaches and comforts her with his voiceover saying, “Sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.”

In the summer heat of 2024, the church of my childhood was being razed in Akron, Ohio. Simultaneously and synchronistic, the literal Dark House of my high school days was also being razed. In this house, I experienced some of the incidents detailed in my novel Living in a Dark House. Like Jenny and Forrest, we had a similar, yet less dramatic scene, as my husband and I happened one day, by coincidence, to drive by the foreboding façade of that church. Suspended there for probably one more day with a wrecking crane hovering nearby, I must admit, I channeled my inner Jenny in that Forrest Gump scene. It was a sick mixture of sadness and justice that seeped through my soul and my brain.

I know churches can do so much good. I believe that the founder of this particular church set out to do good things: to save souls, to comfort widows, to teach and preach right from wrong. I believe in God and the power of prayer. Both have worked in my life.

When the church was founded in the late 1930s, Akron was a rough and tumble factory town, and many people needed reform of the gospel and the loving example of Jesus. Like the past corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church, the human beings in this growing Akron church began to interpret God’s love through their flawed human eyes, hearts, and souls, and somewhere the mission changed. Was it greed? Power? Influence? It left many of us with more questions than answers.

In Chapter 28 of Living in a Dark House, Del asks for help from a church she has attended since childhood, which I fictionalized into the Mega Church of the Salvation. Del asks if she could borrow money to repair the windows on the Pinto after Jim Dandy smashed them for spite.

The smug “Female Assistant to the Pastor” turned Del away saying that Jim Dandy was basically in the right. “The Bible, the Ten Commandments, in fact, speaks of honoring your father.” She goes on to say, “Young girls come in here and strut around and think that because they go to college, they know everything.” Del was angry and confused when she asks, “Was I strutting around?”

The Female Assistant to the Pastor asks Del about salvation. Del says, “I pray, and I believe in God, but I need to talk to a person about my anger. I need to get my car fixed….”

The whole conversation continues with the “Female Assistant to the Pastor” telling Del, “This isn’t made up. It’s in the Bible, written by God in a lightning bolt. We all have our problems, and we deal with them…I can tell you that the Lord’s wrath is equal to the transgressions you have committed.”

Finally, Del has had enough after the “Female Assistant to the Pastor” tells Del that “Men have dominance over women. The Bible says it to be true.”

The anger and confusion that the fictional character Del felt were the subject of many a journal entry in my childhood. Because of my gender in the church of my childhood, men were automatically right. My education and intelligence were often belittled. Being female, I was lectured in this church that if a man lusted after my 14-year-old body, it was my fault. My feelings were not important. Women were put on earth to serve men. If I was told by my father to do something –even if it was wrong like be a racist or to commit a transgression against by better wishes—I was supposed to obey without question or “back talk.”

It is my experience that in the modern classroom as a high school English teacher, it is rare to find a student who can explain Biblical allusions because church attendance is so low. We might read, for example, Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and few students are familiar with Moses or Noah’s Ark. I will explain the allusions, so students understand Dr. King’s reasoning and connection to the essay. Here’s a concrete example: King alludes to the Apostle Paul to best convey his desires to spread the message of freedom like Paul spread the message in the gospels. He was hoping this influence and message from Scripture would help alleviate racial segregation. Information needs to travel and become familiar.

It is not my place to teach the Bible, but when allusion is present in curriculum, it is my job to explain how the reference adds dimension to Dr. King’s words. Many students tell me that their parents had bad experiences in church, and that is the reason they don’t attend. I can relate. It struggled with religious education with my own daughters.

According to a March 2024 Gallup Poll, three in 10 Americans attend church on a regular basis. The same article said that two decades ago, 42 percent of all Americans attended religious services every week. I would have been in the latter category as a child and as a young mother.

Ironically, churches and religion can do damage to the human psyche. For all the good works of my childhood church, and there were many good things it did, it left the younger more vulnerable version of me hurt and confused. I’m still processing the effects. It’s not just me who was injured by religious abuse. It has infiltered far-reaching arms from my generation to those younger than me. Even though we supposedly live in a country that separates church and state, certain political leaders are trying to connect the two together. That, in my opinion, can cause friction, insecurity, and fear.

I have found answers for myself in being spiritual but not religious. I respect the beliefs (or lack of) of other people. I believe in a Power greater than myself, but when humans get involved or in the middle of that relationship and call it religion, it becomes tainted and twisted. It becomes about money or prestige or judgement or power structure. It becomes corrupted.

Yes, Forrest, sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks. For me, there are not enough words to convey the depth of my experiences, to express my convictions, but some of those feelings and beliefs, break through, I believe, in Living in a Dark House..