Contributor Ronald Burks reviews the book Understanding religious abuse and recovery: Discovering essential principles for hope and healing by the author Patrick J. Knapp.
On the first day of class, my philosophy of religion professor addressed a frequent complaint made about his course being a requirement for graduation: “If you stay in this field very long, you will meet people who have been hurt by bad ideas. Bad ideas hurt people (dramatic pause); bad ideas kill people, and this course is required so you can tell a good idea from a bad idea.” Readers of this book may appreciate this sentence more than the average person, but they will find in this book that my professor’s quip is far more complicated than they might think.
We have come to expect authors of books about leaving abusive Bible-based groups to have also left all aspects of their faith behind. Certainly, some do find it helpful to make a clean break. I caution the prospective reader not to be put off that this author’s own journey out of abuse was facilitated by his faith. While author Dr. Knapp’s experience may be troubling to some, rest assured, open mindedness will be rewarded. The author uses the terms “religious” and “spiritual” interchangeably. His analysis and approach provide a theoretical basis for all professional helpers and their clients, Christian believers or not. Those tasked with helping survivors of spiritual abuse suffered in any setting must reflect respect and at least a basic familiarity with the context in which that abuse took place. Understanding Religious Abuse and Recovery does this well, this and much more.
On the other hand, those who approach this book from faith will also be challenged, especially by the first section of Chapter 1 which takes a scholarly and scathing look at the negative side of Christian history. The author presents an unblinking look at the long history of abuse perpetrated by the leadership of both the Catholic Church and its Protestant reformers, up to the more recent tragedies of Jonestown in the 70s and Waco in the 90s. While this view of Christian historical abuse is no doubt disturbing, remember that any religious or spiritual group that qualifies as “high demand” or “high control” eventually becomes abusive. And the specific context of religion or spirituality is not necessary either: self-help, human rights, political, and wealth generation groups cause their fair share of emotional, sexual, and physical mayhem too.
“Dr. Knapp’s work is a carefully researched exploration of the complexities of what happens psychologically to people in totalist environments.”
Those who expect an easy, feel good, and entertaining read filled with “just believe this” or “let go of that” will be disappointed. Books written from such perspectives are little more than subtle appeals designed to suppress the internal emotional anarchy that accompanies betrayal by a religious peer or professional with platitudes randomly drawn from the Bible or other sources. On the contrary, Dr. Knapp’s work is a carefully researched exploration of the complexities of what happens psychologically to people in totalist environments. It also explores what works, what doesn’t, and why, in recovery from religious abuse. And yes, this book advocates that there can be a place for the resources of the religious abuse survivor’s faith in his or her recovery. But empowering that recovered faith is far more complicated than some Christian writers would have us believe.
After reviewing the history of Christian abuses, in the remainder of the first chapter, the cultic studies literature over the last fifty years is reviewed. Four perspectives to understanding recovery from a coercive or manipulative experience were found and described: thought reform/mind control perspective, conversionist conceptualization, psychosocial/need-based understanding, and the dynamic systems perspective. The remainder of the book focuses on these four perspectives, provides tools to critically analyze each, and proposes a fifth perspective—Dr. Knapp’s own integrative approach.
Chapter 2 addresses multiple worldviews, philosophical perspectives, and social science research. Dr. Knapp concludes that philosophical context or presuppositions, logical coherence, comprehensive evidence, practical applicability, and conceptual wholeness are all necessary to analyze the four approaches to religious abuse and recovery described in detail in Chapter 1.
The third chapter decries the lack of research into the effectiveness of any of the four approaches on the recovery outcomes of survivors. The chapter begins by bringing the reader into a mainstream, academic worldview of Christianity and uses it to compare each of the four approaches to recovery from religious abuse. One would expect this would be relevant because the book is about recovery from abuse that occurs in a Christian context. This analysis is clearly applicable to other contexts as well. Using the insights presented in Chapter 2, the author goes on to evaluate each abuse and recovery perspective. The rigor of the first two chapters is rewarded by the author’s exploration in the light of how each is confirmed or denied by “history, psychological research, and general life experience or the natural world” (p. 72). How does each fit in the real world of human existence? Dr. Knapp then asks how each perspective takes into account the emotional health of the survivor. Finally, he explores how each perspective provides a foundation for the survivor to derive benefit from the ashes of their experience of religious abuse. He calls this “redemptive profit.” This is where natural resilience or the survivor’s remaining faith resources might facilitate recovery.
The conclusion of this evaluation exercise is that none of the four perspectives is adequate in itself, but each has something to contribute to understanding recovery from religious abuse. The author says the point of the third chapter is: “to provide a means by which professionals in the field can better understand and thereby construct a more helpful and cogent approach to recovery for those who have experienced abuse in religious environments” (p. 83).
In Chapter 4, the author introduces and promotes a fifth approach to understanding and treating religious abuse and recovery by means of the acronym SECURE. Each letter is a component of and contributes to recovery: Safe haven, Emotion, Cognitively focused, Unconditional positive regard, Relational support system, and Education on attachment and family systems theory. This approach is thoroughly described and evaluated using the same tools drawn from Chapter 2. SECURE synthesizes the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of the four perspectives described in the first chapter. The final chapter frames SECURE as a work in progress that would benefit from research into each of its components, furthering the application of this approach and benefiting cultic studies in general.
Understanding Religious Abuse includes three appendices. The first is a thorough glossary of terms that should be very helpful to those trying to understand the implications of Dr. Knapp’s approach. The second is a brief summary of the SECURE model. The third is a lengthy list of resources that appear to have provided its intellectual foundation. This is in addition to the references section. An exhaustive index of subjects covered and an index of names should make this work easy to reference. Finally, an index of biblical and secular ancient references should prove to be helpful to understanding how “bad ideas” were addressed 2000 years ago.
SECURE is not presented as a sequence of interventions that can be applied systematically to each case of religious abuse. Rather, it provides a broader context for helpers and their clients to work from as they progress through the stages of recovery together. The elements of SECURE should foster rich dialogue between practitioners who want to sharpen their skills for helping this population. Hopefully, dialogue will lead to further research into the best practices for each intervention included in the SECURE acronym, as well as the clinical effectiveness of SECURE-guided practice in comparison to the other approaches listed in Chapter 1.
