Our church staff team got together recently to talk about a story we felt was simply too good not to share. It’s not super common for us to pause long enough to record a conversation like this, so I hope you know that tells you it’s good.
On this episode: Clint Schnekloth, pastor, Auren Haynie, custodian, Jessica McClard, church administrator, Bryn Underwood, community liaison
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Transcript:
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So I actually thought that Pastor Clint was going to set us up here, but I guess I'll get us started.
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So yesterday,
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Oren and I were celebrating and feeling a little bit sad about the fact that
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another of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church's residents had moved out and
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it's something to celebrate, but we'll, we'll be, we'll be missing her.
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Yeah.
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Um, we were talking about, you know, what seems to be a really good outcome for this person.
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And I don't know this, uh, and kind of thinking through
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that experience and some of the others that we've had recently,
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it came up for me that there was something about being in this place for a
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substantial period of time that affected,
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impacted positively folks who were dealing with religious trauma.
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And so Oren and I had what,
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I mean,
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I don't want to speak for you,
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but it felt like a really important conversation to me about that.
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And I don't know if you want to chime in at this point and back me up on that.
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Back her up.
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I mean, we talked for at least a couple hours about this and it felt great.
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very important and like a perspective that I don't think either of us have heard or considered before.
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Yeah, which is why we felt moved to bring it to Pastor Glenn's attention and discuss further.
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And like the thread between your story and the resident's story is something around
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healing from religious trauma and being in a church over a long period of time.
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Yes, that's correct.
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I am slightly different from the residence experience,
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but I think my experience has been very similar in that I came to this church out
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of necessity and not a desire to be in a church and came in with religious trauma.
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accepted a job here and over the course of the last couple of years have
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experienced a pretty profound healing from religious trauma just by being in the
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space and being engaged in an affirming,
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safe church.
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And to be clear, so Oren is our church custodian.
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Yes.
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And,
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uh,
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so the law being here long term is about being here on a weekly and daily basis,
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doing custodial work at first and then kind of emerging into other roles,
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programs and,
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um,
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different things that we do here.
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Like, um,
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how much we're able to say on the podcast but we do the rainbow closet for one
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thing which is a free clothing program for uh people who are transitioning um their
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gender identity and want new clothes that fit who they are without having to spend
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a lot of money on fresh wardrobe um and we do other programs like that that are
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just for the queer community and are very um
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don't know healing and empowering ways to interact with the community especially
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out of a church space um doing those has been part of the reason that I've been so
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involved here I mean beyond just working here and has introduced a lot of um
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religious trauma healing for me I mean even the fact that we do those things at all
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is completely out of the ordinary for most churches mm-hmm
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And the things I heard you guys talking about about this that I thought were remarkable.
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One,
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you mentioned that healing,
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even though some of it was in this space,
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that it's translated into you don't feel the same way now going into other
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religious spaces.
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Yeah.
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Is that right?
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So when I started working at Good Shepherd, I was in a position where
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I had grown up in Southern Baptist churches.
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I had experienced religious trauma.
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I had been out of churches for about 10 years and had no desire to ever go back to a church.
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Being near a church was stressful or even triggering.
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And I felt that way for a while, probably at least a few months after I started working here, too.
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But...
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in the process of healing, um, I've found that I'm no longer nervous around churches in general.
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I could go into a church and feel just fine.
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Um, I have better relations with family members who are all, uh, Christian identifying, um,
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I used to feel a pretty significant stress between me and them because they
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identified as Christian and I felt so much pain around Christianity.
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But that's not an issue for me anymore.
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My relations with them have improved a lot and that's been a bit of a surprise in
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terms of outcome from working here.
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the healing has gone beyond what I could and what I did achieve in therapy also and
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I think the difference is being immersed in a safe Christian space versus just
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talking about the trauma with a safe person outside of the space yeah and we talked
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about that yesterday too of like there are some go-to recommendations within the
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therapeutic community about how to address religious trauma and go become the church custodian.
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Is it not necessarily like one of the recommendations, right?
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Right.
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Uh,
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is,
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is it predominantly to not engage,
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to just create the distance or the space or what,
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what was my experience?
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Yeah.
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It was to create a healthy boundary by not engaging and,
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and um exploring the pain and the trauma in the safe therapeutic environment to try
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to heal from it and i did have some success in that but it's nothing compared to
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the success i've had just being here just the time and and the content kind of
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combination i think so yeah when did you like first really realize that it happened
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like how long were you here
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Are we allowed to talk about camp?
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Sure.
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Okay.
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For me, it was at Queer Camp, which we've had at Good Shepherd for a couple of years.
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And that would have been roughly six or seven months of me being here at that point.
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It just kind of hit me, mostly in conversation with other
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adult volunteers at the camp who had experienced religious trauma themselves and
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were expressing to me and others how impactful and different it felt to be in a
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church where they didn't have to feel afraid and where they saw this just love and
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acceptance and welcoming of all of the queer kids and themselves and that
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highlighted for me the impact in my own life that I didn't feel afraid anymore.
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I felt very comfortable here and I felt a sense of deep community here.
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And I think that is an important aspect of the healing process too.
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You're nodding.
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You want to slide into the shot?
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Sure.
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I'm Bryn.
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Hello, podcast people.
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You can tell we all do this all of the time, right?
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I mean, I used to record YouTube and Twitch stuff.
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I'm used to this.
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I had a much different setup.
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So I connected with Good Shepherd Lutheran Church about, was it two years ago?
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Yeah, about two years ago.
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I was in an abusive relationship with an individual.
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And it got bad enough that I needed to leave in an emergency.
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And lost most of the items I possessed at the time because of it.
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And I didn't know where to go or what to do.
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But by this point, I had already been homeless twice before.
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So I just assumed I would go back to being homeless.
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Something I...
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can already deal with while keeping down a full-time job,
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because I did that for a year and a half as a teenager.
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But one of my friends who was connected to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church told me to
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not assume that and to give them a moment,
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and some phone calls were made,
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some stuff was organized,
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and I found myself being allowed to stay here.
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I expected to stay here for a few days,
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long enough to find a storage unit and get some stuff worked out.
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That way I could keep stuff at work and then shower before work.
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And I had this whole big plan in my head of how to survive and all this other stuff.
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And then I was just going to do that for a couple months while I work on saving up
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enough to find an apartment.
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It ended up being far more than a few days.
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I ended up staying here for about seven, eight-ish months, I think.
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I had grown up in a very unhealthy religious environment.
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The...
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If any of y'all know about the BITE model,
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Behavioral Control,
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Information Control,
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Thought Control,
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and Emotional Control,
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the church I grew up in scored very high on all points.
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It was, by definition, a cult.
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And there was a lot of very not good stuff taught there.
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Led to me having a lot of stuff that I had to heal from.
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And that,
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as well as a lot of exposure I received to religion in my teen years,
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and especially the first time I was homeless,
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which is when I was,
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well,
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that wasn't the first time I was technically homeless as a kid for a portion of my life,
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but the second time I was homeless,
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which was as a teenager,
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but this time I had some level of autonomy over myself.
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There was a lot of negative religious experiences,
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being proselytized to in exchange for food and services,
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Um,
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people calling the cops on me if they found me sleeping in an area and then I
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wouldn't let them proselytize to me because they thought they were doing me a good deed.
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Um, bunch of other stuff.
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So coming into the space,
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I was coming in with this assumption that I built up over years of exposure and
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whatnot that I need to be on guard when around religious people.
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I don't view religious people as inherently bad or stupid or anything like that,
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but I had very much developed the stereotype that if you are deeply religious,
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then you are very prone to magical and illogical thinking,
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and I need to be prepared to engage with you as such.
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And while being in this space,
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seeing the way that members of the community acted,
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seeing the respect they showed,
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the forethought they showed,
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the way they didn't just throw their hands up,
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pray to God,
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and hope everything would be fixed,
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and instead actually admitted that there are a lot of systemic issues going on,
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a lot of issues that we need to fight for and fight against.
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Just so many things came up
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that completely defied the stereotypes I had come in here with.
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And with time,
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my worldview concerning religious individuals was able to change and shift enough
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that now I feel very comfortable entering the space.
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I still definitely don't feel super powerful entering most churches.
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I go in there very much thinking, okay, there's a chance I might get assaulted here.
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That's happened before.
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Um...
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I can come into this space, though, and I can feel safe and open.
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I can be openly queer and openly different.
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I bring people in here that have a wide variety of gender expressions,
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gender identities,
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personal identities,
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personal ways of viewing and interpreting the world and their place in it.
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And I never feel like we are under threat.
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And whenever I do enter other religious spaces...
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It is with the knowledge that I can definitely impose boundaries and set these
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expectations from these other individuals.
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I can expect the pastors of other churches to act in a certain way.
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And if they don't, I can hold up Clint as an example and say, I expect better of you.
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So I'm going to be disengaging from this.
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Whereas previously that would have been completely unheard of.
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So this church has definitely made me feel empowered.
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and has helped me heal through a lot of trauma.
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I have attended services here that I have cried during,
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not because I am having a coming of faith,
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but because I see people experiencing and partaking in faith,
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and I know full well that these people who are partaking in stuff that I partook in
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as a kid,
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they would not expect me to internalize all this,
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take it in myself,
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and then exalted in the world around me or else face fury and wrath from them and their community.
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I know that they're going to experience it themselves,
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and then they're going to go about the world trying to do good.
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And if I don't share this belief system and value,
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as long as we can agree on the basic ethics of people deserve human rights,
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everyone deserves to eat,
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so on and so forth,
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the stuff that matters...
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we're going to be good and I'm going to keep being welcomed here and they'll be
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continuously welcomed in my spaces.
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And I feel connected here in a way I don't feel connected in other spots.
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There's a thread in there in those stories about, which I hear this a lot.
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And I think it's maybe a big part of the,
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what,
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whatever you want to call it,
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like the climate that needs to be created in order for it to be an actual healing space.
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Um,
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One of them sounds like it's the non-proselytizing piece,
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that you're not instrumentalizing like feeding people in order to reach them or
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housing people in order to reach them or hiring them as a custodian in order to
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reach them or whatever the agenda is,
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but just feeding people because they're hungry or housing people because they need
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housing or employing
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somebody because they'll be good at the job, that kind of a thing.
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It's dehumanizing otherwise.
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That's dehumanizing.
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But then there's also kind of the long-term aspect of it.
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It sounds like it's being able to trust that that will, in a continuing way, be the case.
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We're not going to reach some point where I turn off the non-proselytizing switch
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and be like,
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okay,
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now I'm going to try to.
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Yeah.
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reach you or something like that which is that's just baked into our theological
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worldview like that in the same way that you say that you'll respect where i'm
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coming from even if you don't agree with it that's that's basically how i think of
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it in in reverse
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I think the only thing that I think of,
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though,
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too,
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as a Christian pastor that's a little bit different is I would be dishonest to say
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that I don't have this one agenda,
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which is that when I hear that the main thing that people are recommended in terms
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of religious trauma is to disengage,
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I worry about that because I hear these stories that for some people,
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not everybody,
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but for some people,
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healing from religious trauma includes...
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like re-engaging.
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So I want to make that more widely known,
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I think,
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just because otherwise people are staying stuck,
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essentially.
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I don't think they're staying stuck.
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I've met people that have healed from religious trauma without ever engaging with a religious individual.
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Oh, no, yeah.
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What I mean is that there are
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individual response patterns so if somebody needs to reconnect and is told by their
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therapist not to then that can end up leaving them oh yeah in that situation it's
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just when four out of five southern churches say hate the sin not the sinner and
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you know that they're talking about you as a person is the sin it's there are no
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safe spaces to return to yeah yeah and taking a chance
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could get you seriously hurt, injured, killed, freely re-traumatized.
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Right.
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Another,
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if you've completed that kind of line of thought,
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another kind of component seems to me the time.
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Yeah.
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And the fact that both Bren and Oren were here for a pretty long,
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good chunk of time before any of that ever started to happen.
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And both,
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well,
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in the case of Oren for employment and Bren was living here,
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um,
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like both in some ways,
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like kind of had to be here.
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Um, as Oren and I were talking,
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that made me feel pretty sad.
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Um,
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like that,
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that this other positive outcome for the two of them who I love so much,
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um,
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that it was a function of that kind of captivity and that there were whole swaths of,
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of people who could be experiencing a similar kind of healing,
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but who would not,
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um, be in a position where they were like kind of forced.
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I don't,
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not articulating that very well,
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but,
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um,
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I'm so,
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so grateful that that was something that happened for the both of you.
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So what does that mean for people who aren't, uh, by necessity, uh,
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in the space,
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you know,
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like if you've had experienced religious trauma or experiencing religious trauma
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and you're trying to go back to a church and you have some of those common
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reactions that people have of disassociation or whatever happens when you come into the,
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or it doesn't feel like you can come across the threshold or whatever.
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What does that, does it have anything to offer for them?
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Jessica and I talked a little about this in comparison to exposure therapy.
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And I think that's a helpful metric to compare to.
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With exposure therapy, you do very gradual increased exposure.
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So step one could be coming to the church and not even entering the doors and just
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getting through that reaction.
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And doing that even a few times and then step two could be going in the doors and
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walking around and saying hi to people,
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but not going to the church service and you could continue to increase the steps
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like that.
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That would be very typical in terms of the method used for exposure therapy, and I think.
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when we're talking about like,
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what's the barrier keeping people from coming in and experiencing healing from
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religious trauma in a church,
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that that could be a helpful tool.
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So you don't have to just come get right into church and immediately immerse in the
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community and kind of just be thrown into the deep end,
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which is what Brynn and I did out of necessity,
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but it could be a much slower and,
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um,
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easier process if someone wanted to try if they found a church that they felt was
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probably safe not just any fucking southern baptist church that's going to
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re-traumatize them but somewhere they think they can trust then they could slowly
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ease into it maybe also the foreknowledge that it is going to take a long time yes
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yeah
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I mean,
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those first experiences and even months are going to feel like nervous system
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activation because that's how trauma works.
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And it just takes time to relax.
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I mean, I've talked to people for whom both the reactivation and the time component, it's really long.
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Sometimes it never even goes away,
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which I think is true for trauma more generally that for some people,
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trauma was such a big thing that it's always has potential activations,
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but,
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um,
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Maybe be here for two years and then suddenly you do one thing that you never did before,
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like come up to the lectern and talk.
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And you're a woman and you grew up in a church that didn't allow women to speak from the pulpit.
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And that's both very empowering and then also activating at the same time.
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And then you have to kind of process that.
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I remember the time I spoke at the podium and after church had ended and I left for
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the day,
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I had to go and just sob.
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Uh-huh.
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Yeah.
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Or even it arising out of nothing that you can identify.
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So people are like just here and a year and a half in,
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they're like,
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whoa,
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I'm having some kind of reaction to religious trauma and I can't even really
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identify what it is.
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I think that's typical for healing because healing isn't linear.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I think that that's big.
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And disclaimer, none of us are, I don't think anybody at the table right now is a professional therapist.
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So we mentioned the exposure therapy thing,
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but we're not assigning that or recommending that in any professional capacity.
(00:25:57):
It's just observation that I tend to agree with.
(00:26:00):
And I've seen people do that over the years too.
(00:26:02):
People will tell me that they wanted to visit church,
(00:26:06):
but all they accomplished on one Sunday was to drive through the parking lot.
(00:26:11):
or come to an event.
(00:26:14):
There's a lot of people that that's where they stay, too.
(00:26:17):
Like,
(00:26:18):
maybe they'll prepare meals with an org that uses the building,
(00:26:21):
but they're never going to go to worship or something like that.
(00:26:26):
And I think that's okay.
(00:26:29):
Yeah.
(00:26:29):
Like,
(00:26:29):
I think part of why I can be here and be safe and comfortable being here is because
(00:26:35):
I know you aren't going to experience
(00:26:38):
me to attend a service.
(00:26:39):
You are treating me as an adult.
(00:26:42):
You are treating me as a human person.
(00:26:44):
You are not dehumanizing me and viewing my existence here in this space as a
(00:26:49):
prelude to proselytization or getting me to attend a service.
(00:26:54):
And that's not what I would get at other churches.
(00:26:57):
Everything would be seen as an excuse to lead me towards the path of righteousness,
(00:27:03):
as my sister puts it,
(00:27:04):
because she is very involved with religion and has tried to use my involvement with
(00:27:07):
this church to reconnect.
(00:27:10):
But she's very much the hate the sin, not the sinner.
(00:27:13):
And I've had to put down further boundaries because she will talk about
(00:27:19):
things like wanting to provide food and all this other stuff and how it's such a
(00:27:22):
wonderful opportunity to proselytize.
(00:27:26):
Everything is just an excuse for proselytization.
(00:27:29):
But I can come here and I can go up to the loft and play video games.
(00:27:32):
Or I can go check out books in the library, which I do every other week.
(00:27:36):
I can go and do stuff.
(00:27:39):
Exist here.
(00:27:39):
Use the showers here.
(00:27:41):
Cook a meal here with friends and use the movie room to just watch some movie that just came out.
(00:27:48):
And at no point...
(00:27:50):
Are these services going to be denied me because I don't attend a service?
(00:27:54):
At no point are you going to say, if you don't attend this, you don't get to partake in community.
(00:28:00):
And I think that's another thing that we need to recognize as being very unique
(00:28:05):
about GSLC,
(00:28:07):
is you have taken great effort to make this a spot wherein community is practiced
(00:28:13):
actively and lovingly,
(00:28:14):
and that is seen as just as valuable as the church service going on.
(00:28:21):
I have kind of a corollary to that.
(00:28:24):
I mean,
(00:28:24):
I think if as a Christian community you feel that healing is your calling,
(00:28:33):
then saying yes to all of the kinds of things that Bryn just described,
(00:28:39):
to Queer Camp,
(00:28:41):
to the Rainbow Closet,
(00:28:42):
to programming that is not worship,
(00:28:48):
is actually accomplishing your mission.
(00:28:51):
of healing so um why wouldn't you say yes to those things if if that's what what
(00:29:00):
we're for yeah yeah yeah and i think we walk around it a little bit carefully only
(00:29:07):
because we have regularly seen how some religious traditions put those things in
(00:29:14):
place again in order to
(00:29:17):
there's always a instrumentalization.
(00:29:19):
Like,
(00:29:20):
so you put in a nice,
(00:29:22):
like say gym and weight room and that's attractive to people to come and like work out.
(00:29:31):
But then there's some kind of process they're engaging to try to get you down the
(00:29:36):
road of some conversion process.
(00:29:40):
Um,
(00:29:41):
And there's a difference between that and literally and authentically just saying
(00:29:46):
we're going to be a community center that happens to have a chapel in it.
(00:29:51):
And we're never going to try to get the people that are playing video games in the
(00:29:57):
loft to come to church just because we need to affirm ourselves with more people in
(00:30:04):
the sanctuary or something like that.
(00:30:10):
there is no pipeline here.
(00:30:15):
And membership is nebulous.
(00:30:18):
I consider myself a member of this church.
(00:30:22):
Yeah.
(00:30:24):
I'm an atheist and I don't attend most of the services,
(00:30:27):
but I still consider myself a member here and I would do quite a bit to defend this place.
(00:30:32):
Yeah.
(00:30:33):
Yeah.
(00:30:36):
Well, uh, this conversation, when you guys brought it up, uh,
(00:30:41):
In the staff meeting,
(00:30:42):
it made me think of,
(00:30:43):
I've only ever read really one kind of study that looked at religious trauma and
(00:30:49):
healing from religious trauma in this perspective.
(00:30:54):
Brooke Peterson did this case study where she interviewed a lot of folks in
(00:31:03):
progressive church spaces who had returned after they had been estranged.
(00:31:09):
And some of it parallels what you've talked about in terms of the time piece and that kind of thing.
(00:31:16):
The other one that she really highlighted,
(00:31:19):
which I think you can actually see this for sure in both of your cases anyway,
(00:31:24):
is also part of the healing was finding a role that matched your vocation.
(00:31:35):
A lot of the stories in her book
(00:31:37):
were focused on people who had been in ministry in non-inclusive churches.
(00:31:43):
And when they came out, they were rejected.
(00:31:45):
That was the estrangement side.
(00:31:47):
So part of their healing was finding a leadership role that was like what they had before,
(00:31:51):
but in a progressive church space that was affirming of their gender identity or
(00:31:56):
sexual orientation and their call to ministry.
(00:31:59):
And that's definitely been true.
(00:32:03):
for both of you even though it may not you may not understand it quite as a
(00:32:07):
ministry in the same way as a Christian might but like the service that you do and
(00:32:11):
the mutual aid within community yeah your leadership of the closet and camp yeah
(00:32:28):
I'm very open about some of the stuff I engage with outside of this space,
(00:32:34):
both in the local kink scene as well as in activism and stuff like that.
(00:32:40):
And I've been very open about my gender identity and how weird my gender fluidness
(00:32:44):
is and stuff like that.
(00:32:45):
And whereas every other church would have treated these as things that I need to
(00:32:50):
hide away or things that I need to be ashamed of,
(00:32:54):
the very most I've gotten from here is, oh, okay.
(00:33:03):
And I remember bringing up boundaries and consent once and tying that into stuff I have experienced.
(00:33:08):
both in my past as a sex worker and in kink here, during a parish meeting.
(00:33:14):
And the looks I got, and then you as a pastor just kind of rolled with it.
(00:33:20):
I was like, okay, cool, so let's talk about that then.
(00:33:22):
How do you think consent would apply to... And it was just...
(00:33:27):
At no point while existing here have I thought that I wouldn't be treated as a person,
(00:33:32):
and at no point have I ever felt like anyone I brought here would be treated as if
(00:33:39):
what is innate to them needs to be shamed.
(00:33:42):
This is very much a space in which what is valued and treasured
(00:33:47):
is human existence and experience.
(00:33:52):
That as long as you are not hurting anyone,
(00:33:54):
as long as you are not trampling on anyone else's personhood,
(00:33:57):
authenticity,
(00:33:58):
right to their self and to their space,
(00:34:02):
you're going to be treated as an equal here.
(00:34:05):
And that is valuable.
(00:34:11):
And your gifts are so valuable to us and to everyone in the community.
(00:34:16):
I mean,
(00:34:21):
we're just very fortunate.
(00:34:26):
Well,
(00:34:27):
yeah,
(00:34:27):
by,
(00:34:28):
by you being who you are,
(00:34:29):
it's helped a good shepherd be who it's called to be,
(00:34:32):
uh,
(00:34:32):
especially around the shelter and housing space.
(00:34:37):
That's big.
(00:34:37):
Yeah.
(00:34:40):
That's, I think really a key part of it is like essentially, um, the notion that
(00:34:51):
I or we need to convert you to something is kind of it's inherently patriarchal as
(00:35:02):
if I have something to give you and you are the receiver who has to finally get
(00:35:09):
this thing that I've had to myself and oh lucky you you now have it also if you
(00:35:14):
want it accept it the right way versus kind of a mutuality of we're discovering who
(00:35:20):
we are
(00:35:21):
I think that mode is like kind of in here's in the,
(00:35:29):
the like client service provider client type language,
(00:35:36):
which I find problematic.
(00:35:41):
So, yeah.
(00:35:44):
Um,
(00:35:46):
I'm a big proponent of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
(00:35:48):
which is the idea that the language you use directly impacts your way of thinking
(00:35:53):
and your way of perceiving others.
(00:35:58):
We're all just folks.
(00:36:02):
Yeah.
(00:36:03):
Yeah, at least so far.
(00:36:05):
The way we've modeled,
(00:36:06):
like,
(00:36:07):
or kind of been stepping into that shelter space and other things has been just as
(00:36:12):
more as pure as
(00:36:14):
friends yeah community members i'm happy whenever they reach out and i'm lucky
(00:36:20):
enough to be able to help them and i'm grateful that that same help was given to me
(00:36:24):
whenever i was in need there's no shame in it there's no oh i'm gonna help you
(00:36:28):
because this is my job it's i get the opportunity to partake with you in the active
(00:36:34):
community and safeguarding each other because i know you would do the same if you
(00:36:39):
had the ability
(00:36:44):
Well, so circling this finally back around just to make sure.
(00:36:47):
Um,
(00:36:48):
so we kind of the goal here is for people to hear,
(00:36:53):
uh,
(00:36:55):
that at least in some ways,
(00:36:57):
this process of healing from religious trauma can take place in church spaces and
(00:37:05):
maybe understand how it happens.
(00:37:07):
Um,
(00:37:08):
meant in the time component and a lot of the stuff around mutuality.
(00:37:14):
Is there anything else before we wrap up?
(00:37:22):
The only thing that I will say, because Oren and I did talk about this and it seems kind of critical.
(00:37:30):
I think the both of us are just by nature folks who
(00:37:39):
are prone to the ick whenever someone suggests that being in community is healing.
(00:37:46):
Oh yeah.
(00:37:48):
You mentioned this.
(00:37:52):
And I just really had to sit with like the realization that,
(00:37:57):
you know,
(00:37:59):
actually there's something to that.
(00:38:01):
Um, and I'm still kind of sitting with it.
(00:38:07):
Um,
(00:38:09):
But it does seem to me to be a critical piece that is not necessarily easy for everyone.
(00:38:19):
I do want to hear more on that.
(00:38:21):
Because as someone who loves partaking in community, what do you mean you get the ick?
(00:38:26):
Is it like just sitting in community in general or like...
(00:38:31):
For me, I tend to be kind of a solitary creature.
(00:38:34):
Yeah, same.
(00:38:35):
And so my natural instinct is not to go be amongst a lot of people.
(00:38:40):
But that really has been instrumental in my healing.
(00:38:44):
And I'll even put out there,
(00:38:45):
like,
(00:38:46):
I've not just healed from religious trauma,
(00:38:48):
but from a lot of mental health issues while being here.
(00:38:51):
Because I've been in such a good community of people who...
(00:38:55):
value me,
(00:38:56):
who love me,
(00:38:57):
who empower me,
(00:38:59):
and who see that I have something to give,
(00:39:02):
not that they need to give me the gift of Christianity.
(00:39:08):
But there is a low-key way in which this is a conversation about how going to
(00:39:12):
church could be good for you.
(00:39:14):
Yes, it could be.
(00:39:15):
That's what I'm saying.
(00:39:17):
That's what I'm saying.
(00:39:18):
Yeah.
(00:39:19):
Yeah.
(00:39:20):
Uh-huh.
(00:39:25):
It could be good.
(00:39:26):
If you have the right space,
(00:39:28):
the right kind of people and community,
(00:39:30):
if you have a church near you that is not going to proselytize you,
(00:39:33):
who is going to humanize you,
(00:39:35):
and is going to treat you as an equal regardless of your religious beliefs,
(00:39:39):
it can be very good.
(00:39:41):
I have a vested hope that more churches are held by their community to the same
(00:39:47):
standards that Good Shepherd Lutheran is.
(00:39:51):
So many times we view churches as separate from the rest of the community.
(00:39:57):
Whereas I view this church as having its own sub-community,
(00:40:00):
but being part of the wider Fayetteville community.
(00:40:04):
Other churches try actively to isolate themselves, in my opinion.
(00:40:08):
They try and view themselves as separate from the world instead of a part of it.
(00:40:12):
Just like a lot of humans try to view themselves as separate from nature instead of a part of nature.
(00:40:16):
And...
(00:40:20):
I feel like part of the reason why Good Shepherd is able to do so much good is
(00:40:24):
because if we didn't do good here,
(00:40:26):
if you as a person did something messed up,
(00:40:29):
whether it was you acting as pastor or not,
(00:40:31):
I fully believe that both members of the church and members well outside of the
(00:40:37):
church would be knocking on that door wanting to talk with you and ask,
(00:40:41):
what the heck are you doing?
(00:40:43):
Why did you do this?
(00:40:45):
Whereas if there was any other church,
(00:40:47):
like the one I went to growing up,
(00:40:49):
where they did some pretty messed up stuff,
(00:40:51):
everyone in the church worked hard to hide it.
(00:40:53):
And whenever anyone from outside the community tried to address it,
(00:40:57):
the rest of the community was basically like,
(00:40:59):
you have no right to be here.
(00:41:01):
This is our community, not yours.
(00:41:03):
You need to leave.
(00:41:03):
It doesn't matter what we did.
(00:41:05):
This is not your place.
(00:41:08):
And I think that's valuable, that this church is not separate, but is part of.
(00:41:13):
I think that is very important.
(00:41:16):
That's interesting.
(00:41:17):
So the accountability,
(00:41:20):
the knowledge of accountability kind of up and down the chain of leadership or
(00:41:26):
whatever is a part of that trust building.
(00:41:29):
I would not be able to fully engage with this space if I did not believe that there
(00:41:34):
was no level of accountability or if I believed that you were separate from the community.
(00:41:38):
Uh-huh.
(00:41:44):
Maybe to put it in a better secular context,
(00:41:47):
because I wouldn't want us to leave with this idea that what we've done is just
(00:41:51):
encouraged everybody to go to church because it's good for you.
(00:41:54):
It's like there is a wider conversation happening in the world,
(00:41:58):
especially post-pandemic,
(00:42:00):
about how re-engagement with community is good for people in a variety of ways.
(00:42:08):
And
(00:42:10):
maybe we're trying to be more sensitive now to how different people respond to community,
(00:42:15):
depending on what their personality is like,
(00:42:17):
like in terms of introverts and extroverts and whatever.
(00:42:20):
But nevertheless,
(00:42:23):
there's a lot that's an indicator that like going to concerts and being part of
(00:42:32):
friend groups and having friends and all that kind of stuff is actually
(00:42:39):
healing and human making church is one of those spaces as a pastor I tend to argue
(00:42:49):
that church is unique in some ways that makes it a great like third space in
(00:42:54):
comparison to some of those others but you can find this kind of thing in other
(00:43:00):
spaces and the longevity thing or the time thing probably applies in those spaces
(00:43:05):
too I would imagine
(00:43:11):
first time you go to book group, it's going to be awkward.
(00:43:16):
Yeah.
(00:43:19):
I never heard of somebody saying that they had book group trauma though.
(00:43:22):
That's true.
(00:43:27):
I've read a couple stinkers in book group.
(00:43:31):
So there is something unique about religious trauma that we've been talking about.
(00:43:34):
It really needs to be kind of understood better and honored the stories around it.
(00:43:41):
Well, thanks for taking the time to have the conversation.
(00:43:43):
It's been a pleasure.
Healing From Religious Trauma In Church Space