Under Their Thumb

So I've been thinking a lot about why I feel like I must be the only person in the blogosphere (sp?) who has anything negative to say about Reformed churches in my area. As I've thought about people who have left our churches that we've attended over the past 20-ish years I realize they were mostly told the same thing..."You cannot speak of this to anyone." Using biblical texts that supposedly support their position Reformed churches silence opposition. It's hard, of course, to get anyone to tell you what they say to them, but I will tell you what I was told, coz, well, I suppose I'm stupid that way.

When one of our issues was finally dealt with I was reprimanded for talking to other people about the problem. Forget that I brought it up with an elder AND with a pastor. Not enough. Anyway, I can imagine what goes on in other meetings where the people are most likely threatened with a bad mark on their record if they breath a word of it. There have been some people who, if you ask, are not as silent and I might try to interview them at some future point but most of my close friends who left have said they weren't allowed to say anything.  And so the disease continues and spreads and eventually more people are pushed out of the church.

I wonder, if one were to do, say, a personality assessment of those of us who have left, if one sort of personality is more likely to say something than another. What about personal history. I have a history of abuse. My parents were abusive and I have a fairly typical "abusee" mentality. I think it's how I tolerated things that bothered me in the Reformed church for so long.

But I have another part of me, my natural personality, that has a strong sense of justice. This sense is often suppressed when I am in an abusive relationship, for obvious reasons. Eventually something snaps and I walk...no, more like I run...away...quickly. However, I notice even now, like most abused people, I am inexorably drawn back toward it. If not for my children, I would probably have returned, or at least considered it more than for a fleeting moment.

All that said, I will do a more thorough search of the internet to see if there might be others out there who are as disgusted as I am and are willing to put their reputation on the line as a result.  It's not an easy thing. Hell hath no fury like a neo-Calvinist who has been called out. (Hence the anonymity of this blog. Seriously.)