Editor’s note: This article is a 2024 CBE Writing Contest grand prize winner. Enjoy!
A recent conversation with a professor at my new seminary shook me as he described an experience common to fundamentalist church congregants: chronic guilt. I was unsettled by how deeply I related because it was not until that moment that I had connected my nagging guilt with years spent in hierarchical family, church, denominational, and seminary environments. In the months that followed the conversation, I eventually realized that it was the safety of forgiveness I craved, without knowing how to extend it both to myself and to those who had nurtured the guilt.
Hindsight Is 20/20
My husband’s military posting led us to moving in 2023, which released us from hierarchical environments into an entirely new stage of life. We could now prioritize healing for ourselves, particularly my ragged body and soul. Out of the fray, I saw more clearly the effects of those environments, what psychology calls the “fundamentalist mindset” that’s associated with “higher levels of negative affect, uncertainty, anxiety, and distress.”[1]
The hierarchical environments I had been a part of did not set out to cause such effects. Their leaders sincerely wanted to spread the gospel, but the approach was awry, evident in an unspoken fear of disappointing God and failing the Great Commission.
Even gentler forms of fundamentalism favour hierarchical authority in the denomination, congregation, and family. A hierarchical approach says men are ordained by God to lead, which is justified by big-name theologians, pastors, and publications.[2]“Letting” a woman lead or teach/preach to men is viewed as a violation of ‘godly order’; the implication is that such a violation is a sin that brings a curse to the community or family. I was a woman who wanted to learn how to lead, teach, and preach to serve my community . . . well, imagine the angst. And this was in addition to the growing pile of guilt from my fundamentalist mindset, wherein the prescribed solution for sin is to rustle up ever-intensifying, deep remorse as a sort of penitence to discourage future sin.
False Safety in Hierarchy
Hierarchy can feel safe with its clear-cut boundaries, rules, and reasoning underpinned by famed names. However, it also tends to suppress healthy questions whose less clear-cut answers—usually elusive and hard-won—can be necessary to strengthen a doubter’s conviction about God’s goodness and the depth of his love for them.
I was the guilty doubter, questioning not only God’s character and goodness but also that of the male leaders. How could I have felt a calling to enroll as an officer in the military and trained to be trustworthy with millions of dollars of equipment, lethal weapons, and life-and-death scenarios, but not called and trusted to lead in the church? Why is it better for men to mess up church leadership than to let women lead at all? Why would female leaders in the Bible be “just” God’s backup plan for failed male leaders, as has been said of Deborah in the book of Judges?
How to Heal
Seeking healing has occupied the greater part of my time this last year because the effects of unyielding hierarchy have consumed my mental and physical health. When I left the hierarchical contexts, though, I couldn’t see how to heal. I knew forgiveness was involved, but I couldn’t locate a bridge over the chasm that would carry me there.
While spending time in stillness and silence (i.e., sick in bed), I stumbled across a path. First came soaking in God’s word, making space for the Holy Spirit to minister through Scripture’s stories, laments, promises, and exhortations. Then came jarringly raw journalling and prayer about what I was reading and feeling. Finally came worship, softening the edges of the immense anger I hadn’t fully acknowledged yet. When I first changed churches, I cried through whole worship sets for months without knowing why. I couldn’t even handle standing for worship. I just sat and cried. I see now how the tears began to drain my yet-unacknowledged rage and profound sadness.
I started at a new seminary and cried some more in a professor’s office on my first day there. The tears welled up during the first orientation class as I noticed coed staff and faculty tossing jokes around, at ease with themselves and each other. It was so different than the strained seminary environment I’d been in, where the all-male professors expressed concerns about each other behind one another’s backs, and a male student sitting right next to me asked a professor how the pastoral counselling skills we were learning should be overseen if a woman were counselling.
The stark difference stirred something deep in my soul. I rushed out to the hall as soon as the class took a break. Two women were chatting in the hall, and I asked if I could speak with them. One respectfully stepped back and let the other, a professor, usher me into her office. As soon as the door closed, the tears rolled. When she got me seated and gently asked what was up, what came out of my mouth was, “You guys are just so nice! It’s so safe here!”
Safety and Stability
The Manitoba Trauma Information and Education Centre affirms what my psychotherapist and other trustworthy resources have recommended for this healing process: the first phase of trauma recovery is safety and stability.[3] Soaking in Scripture, freedom for honest expression, and worship turn out to be stabilizing activities that establish a sense of safety. It was essential for me to have left the complementarian settings I had been in because I felt in danger and couldn’t stabilize, despite wanting to be as tough as when I joined the military and proved I could handle stressful circumstances and people. Mostly men, in fact. Imagine that: I unconsciously felt the church and seminary environments were as challenging as military deployment had been—and that had been a limited, six-month commitment.
The moment arrived abruptly when I became conscious of how the church I then attended did not actually feel safe, despite the hope I held onto for the sake of the people who genuinely strove to be welcoming and safe. The pastor—who often agreed with and expressed his own concerns about complementarianism—affirmed from the pulpit that ours was, indeed, a complementarian church. I had never before experienced the visible flash of red and purple blinding my eyes as when the truth registered. Once I left the church building, waves of pain began to sweep my body every time I thought of going back. Not only did I not feel safe, but the protracted state of danger and instability had peaked to betrayal trauma; that is, experiencing a betrayal of trust by those from whom you expect safety. In this particular case, the betrayed trust caused me to feel that my concerns about complementarian theology—in fact, my existence as a woman—were not important despite so many friendly discussions. I felt emotionally violated. My heart plummeted when I finally acknowledged that I could no longer remain at that church.
I had wondered whether the new church, denomination, and seminary would relieve the burden on my body and soul to allow for quick healing. In fact, I had heard one woman after another speak of health issues resolving after leaving complementarian churches. But I didn’t recover. My psychotherapist helped me identify the experience as complicated grief, wherein the grieving process stalls rather than progressing toward healing. He explained how straightforwardly grieving loss can get muddled by repeatedly, subtly betrayed expectations: I had expected church to be a safe place to explore—even to be embraced for—what I felt God calling me to; I had (albeit naively) expected to feel encouraged as a seminary student exploring that call alongside other students. Instead, some people acted silently confused when I shared excitement at finally having clarity about God’s call on my life for that moment. A raised eyebrow, a blank look, muted or distracted approval; the body language indicating the cognitive dissonance between their personal care for me and the taboo of women preaching and leading in church. When asked what I would do after seminary, I wonder now whether my, “I’m not sure,” answer was conditioned by knowing to avoid the inflammatory response of “Pastor.”
Counting the Losses
To move through complicated grief, I first had to consciously reprocess my losses:
- Lost hope for church leadership acting on their verbalized concerns about complementarianism
- Lost peace with people who were uncomfortable that I attended seminary and preached
- Lost health due to a chronic state of danger and deep discouragement
- Lost opportunities due to all the above
Reviewing these losses and meditating on them until the grief consented to release in tears was key to unlocking my body and its attending thoughts and emotions. Then, there were lies I had unconsciously believed that I had to consciously counter with God’s truth:
- It was not true that I was abandoned by God: God would never leave nor forsake me (Josh. 1:9). Jesus is absolutely present with me (Matt. 28:20).
- It was not true that nothing would ever change: God intends good, a hope and a future for his people (Jer. 29:11), myself included.
These passages may seem trite to the long-term church attendee or seminary-trained Christian, but the power of God to counter despair through them is a lifeline that builds a bridge toward forgiveness. There are reasons African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and other brothers and sisters in Christ who have lived in unstable or outright dangerous situations know so much Scripture by heart and work it into every conversation. They know that God’s Word shifts the atmosphere when meditated on and spoken aloud in the midst of physical and emotional danger, just as much as when safe among friends to edify each other as we share about our perceived emotional danger.
Pressing on Toward the Goal
And so it goes, pressing on toward forgiveness, a concept whose elusive definition is not one to daintily ponder in ivory towers but to walk out with all the gritty, dogged determination God’s Spirit empowers. The Spirit is restoring willingness for reconciliation under right circumstances and a renewed strength to respond to injustice. The restoration has involved inviting deep grief to manifest in safe, trustworthy environments, and gripping tight the truth that Jesus walks the grief with me. It has involved inviting the Spirit to lay bare my most vengeful thoughts, including against myself, and disentangle and release them from my body and soul. It has involved medical and naturopathic help to discern how to support my body; the aforementioned psychotherapist to unravel spiritual, emotional, and psychological aspects; and my family, church, denomination, and seminary as safe, stabilizing communities. All these were necessary to pave the way to first forgive . . . myself, to release that overwhelming burden of chronic guilt and relax into the healing work God is facilitating. And restoration continues to involve resting in Scripture and worship. As the song goes, “You are here, healing every heart. I worship you.”
[1] Magdalena Senderecka et al, “Religious fundamentalism is associated with hyperactive performance monitoring: ERP evidence from correct and erroneous responses” in Biological Psychology, Vol 140, 96-107, January 2019. Accessed online 17 January 2025, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301051118308573.
[2] For example, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth (Wayne Grudem), Women in the Church (Andreas Köstenberger & Thomas Schreiner), Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (John Piper & Wayne Grudem), and Divine Design: God’s Complementary Roles for Men and Women (John McArthur).
[3] Manitoba Trauma Information and Education Centre, “Phases of Trauma Recovery,” Accessed online 17 Jan 2025, https://trauma-informed.ca/recovery/phases-of-trauma-recovery.
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