Thanks David for continuing to peel back the layers on this stuff. It's complex territory.
For a ton of reasons you get into, this stuff is incredibly dangerous and paves the way to authoritarianism, but I also want to note how hard that would have been to see for many of our parents.
It's easy to forget that part of how this became so pervasive was that it was broadcast as the "default option" for Christian parents in a saturated media landscape. This gave it a sense of legitimacy and normality in the church landscape, and tapped into a huge sense of trust in "wise pastoral leadership" by churchgoers who were largely used to following directives on how to do things the right way.
What we now see as completely bonkers and downright harmful was unapologetically printed on cutesy bookmarks and kids books in Christian bookstores (twee-washing?), which made it seem obvious, sensible, wise and firm but kind.
(Obviously, this is all helped by the fact that many/most forms of Christian tradition have an authoritarian backdrop with a vindictive and coercive God figure that will not be questioned.)
Also, bit of a tangent, but I've written here about the way religious fundamentalism and capitalism use the same "if you do it right life will work out, if your life sucks you're the only one to blame" narrative to create a system where we're promised a perfect life, delivered almost zero chance of getting it, but shamed into feeling like it's our fault and preventing us from questioning the system.
Also, for those who need a space to process this, our friends at the Religious Trauma Collective (including the wonderful Jane Kennedy, who we've had on the pod) have an online conference coming up later in the year that you might find helpful.
Thanks Shane! On a sleepless night I’m having atm I’ve started reading your Untethered substack and it’s such an insightful and wonderful read!
Really appreciate you taking the time and effort to express the things so many of us experience in such a thought-provoking yet witty and engaging manner.
Every single part of this episode resonated so much with me! I was very much raised in the evangelical bubble of Focus on the Family, purity culture, Christian music, and veggie tales. So glad to have broken free! One of my best friends growing up is also healing from the same religious trauma; every once in a while we’ll have a few drinks and belt out an old Christian song at karaoke, it’s kind of therapeutic :) Thanks so much for this episode, I love them all but always feel a deep connection to the ones around evangelicalism.
Thanks, Heather. Much love and respect to your friend.
If you ever feel a free subscription here would help them, just email me their address: davidfarrier@protonmail.com
Same goes for anyone else who has someone healing from religious trauma - happy to hook them up if this post and comments section will help, if money is a barrier.
Heather, I am in the same boat! It's so therapeutic knowing I'm not alone and that I'm not some crazy backslider getting indoctrinated by liberal America 😂
For real, thank you so much, David for the work you've done! "In the Shift" has become one of my favorite podcasts around deconstruction thanks to your recommendation. I love following Webworm, but like Heather always feel a deep connection to the ones around evangelicalism, and am so thankful for the affirmation that my hunch that something was off with the megachurch culture I grew up in was correct!
Oohhh, I was raised on James Dobson. My mother decided to buy me some of his audio tapes when I had my first daughter. My second daughter was very spunky, so my mom 'gifted' me "The Strong Willed Child". I have yet to read or listen to any of it. I was raised in a James Dobson home. I would get the shit beat out of me if I "took the Lord's name in vain", sassed my parents, didn't comply with any number of weird things. Of course, there was also (other forms) abuse behind closed, dark doors going on as well. All of it was awful. It was a scare tactic that was taught so we'd fall in line as kids. To top it all off, I was a pastor's kid, so that added to the pressure to really mind my (Christian) manners. I did too! I strived for the A's, I didn't curse, didn't listen to rock music, didn't go to a movie theater, didn't do anything I shouldn't. Grant it, I had so much anger and resentment, but I lived like a Dobson kid should. When I was 16, I went to a secular college, moved out of the house, and started to see how warped and abusive and wrong it all was. It shaped me into quite the opposite of what they would have wanted. I am now a teacher, part-time therapist, and very active voice for love and equality for all. I can relate to most all these pieces on the corruption of religion and the abuse. I saw AND lived it firsthand. I know the behind the scenes of a church, minsters, money, lies, and gossip. It's worse than you can imagine. Thanks for pointing it out. I don't think some people have any idea how awful these views and ideas are. Bill Gaither was another weird, awful person that my parents LOVED to quote and follow. God, (oops, broke that rule) those were some tough times! Thanks for sharing David!
I wanted to listen to the Flightless Bird today, but the warning put me off (kind of a rough morning grief wise), so I'm going to save it for when I'm up for it.
As for FOTF: I was raised by a preacher's widow (my grandmother) in a small town in Illinois - so yeah, Focus on the Family was a huge part of my upbringing. And when I started having my own kids, it was then too - and until I lost my faith at 33 (by that time my kids were 11, 5 & 4 and brought up in church). I probably still have VeggieTales VHS tapes around somewhere. Luckily I'd never really bought into corporal punishment much - it seemed bad (and I later learned it WAS), and there were simply better ways to discipline my kids. In fact, when I told people in the evangelical community that I didn't spank (at least back then), I always felt I had to justify it by saying other methods were just more effective. I also started questioning the "gay is bad" mantra even before I lost my faith (in fact, my change of belief on that was one of the precipitating factors). Today, I'm happy to say my boys are all kind, gentle men in their 20s, and they all believe in the humanity of everyone being worth something that has nothing to do with religion. As for whether FOTF is crazy or totally normal? That highly depends on your world view. It SEEMS normal when you're in the middle of it. A lot of things do.
Losing my faith at 33 was really, really hard. Breaking that indoctrination was tough and took years to really heal from, especially as I was 1000 miles from any family; my church WAS my family. And to this day, I think of a lot of people I knew from there quite fondly. The hard part of a lot of this is that people think they are doing the right thing, and I think many of them genuinely care about others, unaware that they are being manipulated (and in turn, manipulating others). The insidious nature of religion in America makes it really difficult to become a non-believer...it can affect everything - your job, your family, your friendship circle, your budget. I don't think a lot of folks (especially those not raised in religion) realize just how pervasive it can be, and how difficult it is to avoid.
Iam so sorry you had to experience all of that, but so glad that you are free from it now. My Mum turned her back on the Catholic church. She told us about what she described as the evil hypocrisy of religion. She would argue with Christians who came to the door and knew the bible very well. I found it embarrassing at the time. Now I I feel so pleased that we grew up free from the oppression and damage that she protected us from.
🫂You are right 👍 Those of us not RAISED in that world find it hard to truly understand, although I did have close friends, workmates, cousins etc. who had lives & attitudes/beliefs that were puzzling to me, because they were otherwise kind, caring, empathetic people - quite apart from "but YOU all are going to HELL as SINNERs" which is the total opposite 😱 Thanks to people like David opening up spaces for people such as you & others to share what it is like I can get an inkling, but constant indoctrination I can't get my head around 🤷
I listened to the FB episode on my way to work. You did a great job on this one!
I’m not sure if my mom ever had any of Dobson’s books, but I know the private Christian school I attended was a big fan of his work. I remember listening to adventures in odyssey as a kid (probably at school). I participated in true love waits campaigns and wore a purity ring as a teen. In fact I largely blame purity culture for why my own personal sexuality and love life has been fucked up for so long—I didn’t come to terms with my bisexuality until my 30s and this year I’ll be turning 40, having never had a serious romantic relationship.
I’m glad you’re bringing more awareness to this as it’s rather insidious the way these toxic views have seeped into every aspect of American evangelical Christianity, which now looks nothing like the Jesus of the Bible. It’s unsurprising that this is all rooted in white supremacy and a quest for power. Thanks for all you do, David. It’s important.
Thanks Alannah. If you dug the FB episode, I think the extended conversation here between Michael and Shane may be of interest - they break things down with empathy and kindness.
I resonate with your experience, particularly for the damaging aspects of purity culture and not fully knowing yourself until much later in life. I lost my purity ring the old fashioned way and my parents laid hands on me (in prayer not violence) to restore my virginity and gave me back my ring. I promptly lost it again, haha.
Oh also, you definitely have to look into veggie tales at some point. I still sing some of the songs to this day. God, Christian subculture was/is so weird. 😂
Thanks for writing this! Purity culture is responsible for fucking up so many people in so many ways. I totally relate to your experience of only coming to terms with your bisexuality in your 30s - that realization only got me at 37, and I consider myself a pretty self-reflective person. The power and depth of the internalised homophobia are absolutely stunning.
Does disciplining with a wooden spoon come from Dobson? I'd love to know if there's a psychological disconnect of using an object instead of your own hands. My mom had the spoon. She still happily tells a story of when I was a young child sitting in a shopping cart, I pointed to a wall of wooden spoons in a store and shouted "look mommy, paddles!"
Also hate "spare the rod, spoil the child" as an excuse to hit your kids. That verse is about a shepards rod--you're supposed to GUIDE them, not beat them.
Parents have been hittings kids forever. But Dobson made it big and acceptable at a time when people were clocking that maybe hitting your kids was shit. Dobson also made sure kids thanked their parents for being hit. Wish I was joking.
Yip, preceded by, “I’m doing this because I love you” and then succeeded by, “give me a hug and tell me you love me”. A truly cruel way of squashing any sense of bodily autonomy, not to mention all the other psychological damage.
This is what disturbs me for kids that this approach "worked" for - those of us who grew up to be fiercely "good" and compliant have often ended up in incredibly destructive relationships, organisations and life patterns because we haven't learned to listen to our bodies/selves about when to draw a boundary, or how to know when too much compliance/loyalty is destructive.
Yeah it's pretty awful. I definitely remember the rhetoric around "this is for you own good". But I just noticed the theme of the wooden spoon in some of the comments, the audio, and my own childhood, and it feels oddly specific. I guess I always assumed until now that most parents who spanked their kids just used their hands.
Mother. Wooden hair brush on a bare behind. Lived in fear of my father who never hit us as she always managed to put the punishment on him. I still find, and I’m very old, it hard listening and reading about this stuff. Spare the rod and spoil the child can hide all sorts of personality and deviant disorders.
Yes Dobson said if you used your hand your kids could flinch whenever you raised it — but a spoon or a paddle was a “neutral” object and your kids wouldn’t equate your hand with pain. He said . . . a lot of shit with zero evidence to back it up which is so egregious to me — he was a child psychologist who knew how damaging corporal punishment was to kids and encouraged parents to use it for his own political purposes.
Okay thank you that's wild! My parents were definitely influenced by focus on the family but thankfully I think it was pretty watered down through my 4 older siblings by the time it got to me. But it's still in there a bit.
We had a “Be Good” spoon that was proudly displayed on our kitchen counter for anyone who visited to see. The fact that it had infiltrated culture to the point that that was socially acceptable is wild.
My mum got dad to make wooden spoons because they kept vanishing. When they got a new fridge there behind it were all the wooden spoons that had disappeared.
I would wave a wooden spoon around in the air but never used it on the kids, I never smacked them at all. The wooden spoon ‘incident’ is still a great source of amusement to me and my kiddos. I was waving it around and banged it down on the kitchen counter. It snapped in two and the spoon part flew across the room. We all just watched it and then I lost it. I laughed so hard the kids must’ve thought I’d gone insane, but they got into the spirit and laughed too
I was raised with parents that worshipped Focus on the Family almost as much as they worshipped God. Well, their understanding of God. I'm looking forward to listening to the podcast later today. It helps heal my soul a lot when I hear from other people who have done the hard work of deconstructing these damaging beliefs. Veggie Tales, Psalty (the blue Psalm book), and Adventures in Odyssey made up a large chunk of my media viewing. I'm still discovering aspects of popular culture from the 80s and 90s that I completely missed. I remember reading some of his books in our church library growing up and just knowing deep in my soul that what he was preaching was wrong, but it wasn't until my 30s that I was able to fully deconstruct all of it. Dobson's beliefs on relationships, sex, and homosexuality informed my relationships in only negative ways. Becoming a parent myself was very helpful in my path towards deconstruction. I knew I wanted to raise my kids to think critically rather than compliantly, and I now realize just how weird it is to be preoccupied with who they want to kiss.
I was raised as a catholic in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I grew up fearing hell and my father. He once said the best way to control kids was to terrify them. As a white man, he did just that and I emerged as a terrified child.
But I was lucky enough to be a middle child so less visible than my siblings. By 18 I was gone. Left the family and country.
I then began the long process of recovery. I’m still not right but I’m free.
I've never heard of the guy, but am aware of Evangalical Christians in NZ who definitely believe in compliant children and women and who advocate for corporal punishment still which is sick stuff. I'm a boomer and was raised with corporal punishment, and the belief that children di not speak out or question authority. Mum was a practicing Methodist who believed in prayer and Dad a fallen Catholic. However, although compliance was expected we didn't introduce christianity into the home rather it was something for Sundays which really pissed me off as I had much better things to do on a Sunday. Mum administered amy corporal punishment and Dad did not lay a finger on us although I'm sure as I grew up he was tempted as I began more and more to challenge authority. Methodists were wowsers but did not preach wacky stuff and although priests would occasionally visit Dad to try to bring him back to the fold he never waivered and we never went near a Catholic Church. It was as a teenager I got influenced by an evangelical preacher to "accept God into my life". I tried but the idea that I was sinning (especially with teenage mastubation) and therefore off to everlasting damnation fucked with my head badly (although not badly enough to stop the habit lol!). It wasn't until I left home and in my twenties as a young teacher that I realised atheism was a choice and the right one for me. The apostolic and evangelical churches are nasty evil organisations in my opinion which sponge off their followers. Thanks for today's piece, I'm going to take a listen to the podcast on my walk. Keep up your work David.
I listened to the podcast this morning, and it's nice to hear the full interview (still listening as a type).
I was not aware of focus on the family, but I definitely recognise some of the things involved through the churches I grew up in. Northern Ireland was, and in certain generations still is, *extremely* religious and very conservative. I was absolutely smacked as a kid! I feel like most Irish people shudder at the idea of the wooden spoon. Luckily my mum didn't try and break our will - god how my heart absolutely *broke* hearing that phrase. My mum's will was broken as a child, and she was determined not to do it to us, and I'm forever grateful for that. I don't think she'd have had great success if she'd tried given all four of us kids were some flavour of undiagnosed neurodivergent. My heart hurts for all of the autistic and ADHD kids whose parents tried, and maybe succeeded, to break them. For all of the kids, neurodivergent or neurotypical. I look at my 5yo son and I can't imagine anyone wanting to break their child down, when their sense of wonder and imagination and their drive to explore is so precious. I'll be giving him an extra strong hug when he gets home from school today.
Veggie Tales was absolutely part of my childhood! If I remember correctly, the creator now spends a lot of time arguing with right wingers and evangelicals online. I also remember a cartoon called something like the Story Keepers all about how the stories of Jesus were kept alive even when the Romans killed people for it. Weird to look back and think how ready me and my pals were to die for jesus at any point 😅
As the parent of an AudHD kid with a nervous system disability (PDA), who absolutely would have been categorised as a "strong willed child", I shudder to think what a Dare to Discipline approach would have done to him. The only possibility of compliance would be via so many layers of trauma that he'd largely be incapacitated.
Ironically, even in "best case" scenarios like myself, who grew up into good, obedient, complient teenagers, we've paid a huge price for the amount of suppression, absence of knowing ourselves, and growing up too fast too young that has led to a ton of complexity as we try and find our way back.
I just want to say thank you for writing about these issues, and I wish I could say something more about them, but there's a weird glitch that happens every time I try to post a comment about my religious trauma, or certain parenting stuff (that was not religious but very bad anyway). I write, and then something happens and the comment (2 or 3 now, at least) just goes away, mysteriously. But it's not really a mystery to me, because the glitch is in me. It's like one person wants to write but is too scared, the second one does write, and the third swipes it away, the fourth brings it back again, and the fifth punches all of the others down so that there will be nothing but Silence. Except that I'm here sitting alone in it, and I'm not happy about it, at all.
But I'll say this, I did listen to the FB podcast and read (and listened too) here, and the way you deal with these things never do hurt me, I appreciate so much the warnings and all. It's the saying them out aloud myself that cannot happen at this point. I have to accept that, to protect myself. Still, I'm interested to know more.
And to answer just one question, I did not know Dobson before reading Webworm, last year or so, or didn't know about FoF before this. Still, strangely, everything seems very familiar. Like somehow all around the world same things have been happening anyway.
And, this morning when I saw what the FB episode was about, I just said "right, David, I know, we all fight our own inner fights don't we", and clicked play. And then a little later you posted this.
(I'm on my laptop now, and the text keeps jumping up away from my sight but now I will just send this GODDAMMIT.)
Now that a couple of days have passed and I'm slowly trying to overcome a nervous breakdown - that was much more than just this unhinged comment I left here - I need to say something to make it more sensible. (This is for my own sanity, that's been missing lately, and I want to regain as much as I can of it now.)
1) What I wanted and tried to write, at first, was that the national church here in my home country is the Evangelical Lutheran Church. I have a clear memory of writing this here, and that in my mind growing up as a kid it felt usually pretty basic and kinda boring, nothing too much or weird. But when it was time for me to go through the confirmation class, which is something many people do whether they're religious or not, I ended up in a youth group that was everything that is described here. I didn't know the church would be the next one to crush my soul, because it wasn't the common thing you'd think of a church. I have no idea how common it was or is, but not common knowledge at least. I was already broken, due to bullying in school and a broken home.
Anyway, as a preteen you'd then go to this place and they'd tell you all these things about purity and sexuality and you'd think for years to come that you must be evil or something. (I'm also bi, although I didn't realise it until later.) To somebody not having safe home and parents and being mercilessly bullied by peers, it was... crushing.
I hated everything church-related for years, and I only spent a couple of years there. I don't remember leaving, like at all. I just remember I didn't go there anymore and hating all of it. There's a gap in my memory in between these things.
2) The parenting stuff here; I don't know where and how it had creeped into the Nordic culture where I was growing up, but even though I knew nothing about this subject here earlier this week, I recognise it very well. I lived it. I was an undiagnosed AuDHD child living in a place where you were supposed to just not be yourself but do as you were told, and apparently I failed. When I was a young adult, I found my way out through literature that broke it all down, explained how the will of a child (me) had been crushed and how wrong it was. It helped, to understand, but it was too late for my sanity, which is the last thing I will add here now, and then take a break from being active online for a while. I could just delete my earlier comment, but I don't want to do that anymore. So...
3) What I was describing in my first comment, is structural dissociation of the mind. I have more than one personality living in my head, it was not meant as non-literal. I'm not ashamed of this, but earlier I was already too far gone into my breakdown that I didn't have it in me to even explain it. This is not something that will be cured, it's something to live with. And usually I can handle it better.
I will now take a break, and hopefully regain memories/understanding, of what's still a little murky to myself about the last couple of days. This was not because of this post or the podcast, it was all just one trigger more. To me, they're everywhere. I just try to handle myself the best I can, and sometimes my best is really poor. But I don't blame myself anymore, which is the most important piece of healing I have needed. I didn't do this to myself, I am not the culprit.
Thank you to everyone and especially that nobody's been shitty to me here, ever. I know I can be a lot. <3
Oh noooooo this resonates with me in a frightening way. As I’ve mentioned before on here my job is a bookseller. There’s a long list of titles I’ve had to continually search up for customers over the years to see if we stock them (and some get asked about so often I immediately know we don’t, but I still tap the computer keys and go through the charade).
I regretfully report that I’m often still asked for this author by the New Zealand public, probably once every few months. We don’t stock any but it’s fucked that people are asking for them now that I know what the content is.
We get a lot of requests for Fingerprints of The Gods which we’re told they saw on Netflix and from what I can tell it’s ancient aliens vibes and Mayan calendar sort of stuff.
There’s a weird recurring request for “the book about the girl who was kept in a basement for years as a slave and escaped” but they never know details or the name. I’m pretty well versed in true crime cases (so I’m somewhat aware of all the big cases like this) but it’s never those ones. I always have a feeling they don’t actually want the book they just want to talk about it.
The saddest ones are New Zealand young adult books which are in the system but are long out of print. A lot look really good and address important topics but only ever received one print run and would probably be loved by this generation. One that springs to mind is Ted Dawe’s Into The River which was Family First temporarily had banned in 2015 (that was a wild time!).
They may be referring to "Room" as the book about the girl in the basement? It's fiction and a good read, told in the perspective of her child. The author was inspired by the real Austrian case of Joseph Fritzel.
I'm so glad you are writing about this, as this resonates deeply with me. I was raised in a church that embraced everything Dobson; from the wooden spoons to the dancing, animated cucumbers in VeggieTales, the fear of pornography, and repression of any emotion other than the "fruits of the spirit". When I was a teenager going through a rebellious phase (meaning, I was skipping church youth group to participate in a sport I was working to become a professional at), my parents got me a subscription to "Brio" magazine: a Focus On the Family magazine for teenage girls that extolled the virtues of the nice, quiet Christian girl. One particular article I remember discussed creating a box of party supplies to celebrate your first kiss with the man god would bring into your life to marry you (which should also be your very first kiss, of course). Yuck. Repressed much?
I was fortunate enough to not fit into the mold of "nice and quiet" no matter how hard I tried, and was able to leave religion behind. Sadly, many of the girls I grew up with were transformed into quiet and compliant women who still attend the toxic church I grew up in. It is heart breaking, and a small example of how damaging the doctrines taught by Dobson and Focus on the Family are. Thanks for taking on this topic.
The difference in the two magazines (Breakaway was for the boys) is incredibly striking. Brio was obsessed with talking about purity culture for girls while breakaway was mostly about . . . extreme sports?
David I’m so glad you did this episode! I hear from a lot of folks raised evangelical that they wish there was more attention on James Dobson/Focus on the Family. Shiny Happy People and the new Ruby Franke documentary both highlight how abusive these religious authoritarian parenting methods can be, but we definitely need to reckon with how widespread it was (and still is!)
Literally just watched the Ruby Franke thing last night and was crying my eyes out at the last episode. Holy shit was that horrible. Just incredibly upsetting.
Yeah. I'm a very broken person because of religion, I think. Especially in the sex, sexuality, gender, & identity department. And I was also a VERY strong-willed child that questioned everything which did not go very well for me. It was only in the last ten years that it occurred to me that I was not "bad" and maybe I was not problem.
I knew who Dobson was. His influence was everywhere. I was raised in grandma's Baptist church and went to preschool at the Baptist church in town. Also, because I'm in Virginia & my grandparents are from near Lynchburg, I knew about Jerry Falwell & Liberty University.
My mom wasn't really into the Focus On the Family or church stuff when I was a little kid because I think she was too concerned with her own shames and maybe even shunned a bit. Once she got married to my first stepdad, they started going to church and playing the part. Then divorce and shame and leaving church/religion, then getting married and getting super into it all over again, repeat. I've had my dad and three stepdads. I learned from an early age that church and religion are for straight married people with kids. I used to cry in my late teens/early twenties if I went to church because I hated myself for being single and not wanting kids. I hated myself because church wasn't for me. I would just cry the entire time I was there because I felt so much guilt and self-loathing about all the things.......and my mother would get so mad and yell at me and tell me how embarrassed she was but also she would be the one that dragged me there.
There is soooo much more I could say, especially about sex, abuse, and trauma.......but I don't really want to tell those stories here.
My parents are liberal Catholics, so growing up I had heard of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, but mostly through the news because they thankfully weren't a presence in our house. (Although oddly enough my very liberal dad did read the entire Left Behind series. Future Webworm/FB maybe?)
Maybe it's too simple, but I think Focus on the Family and Evangelical Christianity in general is so popular because it simplifies an increasingly complex world. There's Good and there's Evil, and it's easy to tell which is which, and if you can't decide for yourself don't worry because I, James Dobson, can decide for you. Every day we're overwhelmed with decision and choice, and there can be something very comforting about substituting someone else's judgment for your own. Some people don't want to lead, they just want to follow.
And on the flipside, you have Dobson types who react to uncertainty by trying to control everything and everyone around them. It's almost like a symbiotic relationship.
Thanks David for continuing to peel back the layers on this stuff. It's complex territory.
For a ton of reasons you get into, this stuff is incredibly dangerous and paves the way to authoritarianism, but I also want to note how hard that would have been to see for many of our parents.
It's easy to forget that part of how this became so pervasive was that it was broadcast as the "default option" for Christian parents in a saturated media landscape. This gave it a sense of legitimacy and normality in the church landscape, and tapped into a huge sense of trust in "wise pastoral leadership" by churchgoers who were largely used to following directives on how to do things the right way.
What we now see as completely bonkers and downright harmful was unapologetically printed on cutesy bookmarks and kids books in Christian bookstores (twee-washing?), which made it seem obvious, sensible, wise and firm but kind.
(Obviously, this is all helped by the fact that many/most forms of Christian tradition have an authoritarian backdrop with a vindictive and coercive God figure that will not be questioned.)
Also, bit of a tangent, but I've written here about the way religious fundamentalism and capitalism use the same "if you do it right life will work out, if your life sucks you're the only one to blame" narrative to create a system where we're promised a perfect life, delivered almost zero chance of getting it, but shamed into feeling like it's our fault and preventing us from questioning the system.
https://theuntethereddilemma.substack.com/p/the-blame-game
Also, for those who need a space to process this, our friends at the Religious Trauma Collective (including the wonderful Jane Kennedy, who we've had on the pod) have an online conference coming up later in the year that you might find helpful.
Keep an eye out here, they're rad: https://www.thereligioustraumacollective.com/
Really appreciate you taking the time to have that conversation with Michael. It's all pretty bleak but somehow you both made it approachable.
Thanks Shane! On a sleepless night I’m having atm I’ve started reading your Untethered substack and it’s such an insightful and wonderful read!
Really appreciate you taking the time and effort to express the things so many of us experience in such a thought-provoking yet witty and engaging manner.
Highly recommended!
Wow! That's such a kind note to read!
I'm really glad it's making some kind of sense (even if I wish it weren't so familiar to many of us. Lovely having you along for the ride!
(And hope you got some sleep.)
Every single part of this episode resonated so much with me! I was very much raised in the evangelical bubble of Focus on the Family, purity culture, Christian music, and veggie tales. So glad to have broken free! One of my best friends growing up is also healing from the same religious trauma; every once in a while we’ll have a few drinks and belt out an old Christian song at karaoke, it’s kind of therapeutic :) Thanks so much for this episode, I love them all but always feel a deep connection to the ones around evangelicalism.
Thanks, Heather. Much love and respect to your friend.
If you ever feel a free subscription here would help them, just email me their address: davidfarrier@protonmail.com
Same goes for anyone else who has someone healing from religious trauma - happy to hook them up if this post and comments section will help, if money is a barrier.
Heather, I am in the same boat! It's so therapeutic knowing I'm not alone and that I'm not some crazy backslider getting indoctrinated by liberal America 😂
For real, thank you so much, David for the work you've done! "In the Shift" has become one of my favorite podcasts around deconstruction thanks to your recommendation. I love following Webworm, but like Heather always feel a deep connection to the ones around evangelicalism, and am so thankful for the affirmation that my hunch that something was off with the megachurch culture I grew up in was correct!
So glad it's been helpful Abby.
I’m a big believer in belting out the Christian songs that get stuck in my head. I feel like it helps me process it in a weird way?
I love seeing all my anti-James Dobson stars aligning like this!
Oohhh, I was raised on James Dobson. My mother decided to buy me some of his audio tapes when I had my first daughter. My second daughter was very spunky, so my mom 'gifted' me "The Strong Willed Child". I have yet to read or listen to any of it. I was raised in a James Dobson home. I would get the shit beat out of me if I "took the Lord's name in vain", sassed my parents, didn't comply with any number of weird things. Of course, there was also (other forms) abuse behind closed, dark doors going on as well. All of it was awful. It was a scare tactic that was taught so we'd fall in line as kids. To top it all off, I was a pastor's kid, so that added to the pressure to really mind my (Christian) manners. I did too! I strived for the A's, I didn't curse, didn't listen to rock music, didn't go to a movie theater, didn't do anything I shouldn't. Grant it, I had so much anger and resentment, but I lived like a Dobson kid should. When I was 16, I went to a secular college, moved out of the house, and started to see how warped and abusive and wrong it all was. It shaped me into quite the opposite of what they would have wanted. I am now a teacher, part-time therapist, and very active voice for love and equality for all. I can relate to most all these pieces on the corruption of religion and the abuse. I saw AND lived it firsthand. I know the behind the scenes of a church, minsters, money, lies, and gossip. It's worse than you can imagine. Thanks for pointing it out. I don't think some people have any idea how awful these views and ideas are. Bill Gaither was another weird, awful person that my parents LOVED to quote and follow. God, (oops, broke that rule) those were some tough times! Thanks for sharing David!
This sounds like my childhood also. I wish you the best in the awesome life and family you've built for yourself now and in continued healing <3
I wanted to listen to the Flightless Bird today, but the warning put me off (kind of a rough morning grief wise), so I'm going to save it for when I'm up for it.
As for FOTF: I was raised by a preacher's widow (my grandmother) in a small town in Illinois - so yeah, Focus on the Family was a huge part of my upbringing. And when I started having my own kids, it was then too - and until I lost my faith at 33 (by that time my kids were 11, 5 & 4 and brought up in church). I probably still have VeggieTales VHS tapes around somewhere. Luckily I'd never really bought into corporal punishment much - it seemed bad (and I later learned it WAS), and there were simply better ways to discipline my kids. In fact, when I told people in the evangelical community that I didn't spank (at least back then), I always felt I had to justify it by saying other methods were just more effective. I also started questioning the "gay is bad" mantra even before I lost my faith (in fact, my change of belief on that was one of the precipitating factors). Today, I'm happy to say my boys are all kind, gentle men in their 20s, and they all believe in the humanity of everyone being worth something that has nothing to do with religion. As for whether FOTF is crazy or totally normal? That highly depends on your world view. It SEEMS normal when you're in the middle of it. A lot of things do.
Losing my faith at 33 was really, really hard. Breaking that indoctrination was tough and took years to really heal from, especially as I was 1000 miles from any family; my church WAS my family. And to this day, I think of a lot of people I knew from there quite fondly. The hard part of a lot of this is that people think they are doing the right thing, and I think many of them genuinely care about others, unaware that they are being manipulated (and in turn, manipulating others). The insidious nature of religion in America makes it really difficult to become a non-believer...it can affect everything - your job, your family, your friendship circle, your budget. I don't think a lot of folks (especially those not raised in religion) realize just how pervasive it can be, and how difficult it is to avoid.
Iam so sorry you had to experience all of that, but so glad that you are free from it now. My Mum turned her back on the Catholic church. She told us about what she described as the evil hypocrisy of religion. She would argue with Christians who came to the door and knew the bible very well. I found it embarrassing at the time. Now I I feel so pleased that we grew up free from the oppression and damage that she protected us from.
🫂You are right 👍 Those of us not RAISED in that world find it hard to truly understand, although I did have close friends, workmates, cousins etc. who had lives & attitudes/beliefs that were puzzling to me, because they were otherwise kind, caring, empathetic people - quite apart from "but YOU all are going to HELL as SINNERs" which is the total opposite 😱 Thanks to people like David opening up spaces for people such as you & others to share what it is like I can get an inkling, but constant indoctrination I can't get my head around 🤷
I listened to the FB episode on my way to work. You did a great job on this one!
I’m not sure if my mom ever had any of Dobson’s books, but I know the private Christian school I attended was a big fan of his work. I remember listening to adventures in odyssey as a kid (probably at school). I participated in true love waits campaigns and wore a purity ring as a teen. In fact I largely blame purity culture for why my own personal sexuality and love life has been fucked up for so long—I didn’t come to terms with my bisexuality until my 30s and this year I’ll be turning 40, having never had a serious romantic relationship.
I’m glad you’re bringing more awareness to this as it’s rather insidious the way these toxic views have seeped into every aspect of American evangelical Christianity, which now looks nothing like the Jesus of the Bible. It’s unsurprising that this is all rooted in white supremacy and a quest for power. Thanks for all you do, David. It’s important.
Thanks Alannah. If you dug the FB episode, I think the extended conversation here between Michael and Shane may be of interest - they break things down with empathy and kindness.
Thanks! I didn’t realize it was an expanded version of what was on the episode. Just listened. Very appreciative of the empathy and kindness.
I resonate with your experience, particularly for the damaging aspects of purity culture and not fully knowing yourself until much later in life. I lost my purity ring the old fashioned way and my parents laid hands on me (in prayer not violence) to restore my virginity and gave me back my ring. I promptly lost it again, haha.
Oh also, you definitely have to look into veggie tales at some point. I still sing some of the songs to this day. God, Christian subculture was/is so weird. 😂
Ohmygosh "oh wheerrrre is my hairbrush?" (x2)
"oh where (x8) oh wheeeerrrre... is my hairbrush?!"
You're welcome 😅
Thanks for writing this! Purity culture is responsible for fucking up so many people in so many ways. I totally relate to your experience of only coming to terms with your bisexuality in your 30s - that realization only got me at 37, and I consider myself a pretty self-reflective person. The power and depth of the internalised homophobia are absolutely stunning.
Does disciplining with a wooden spoon come from Dobson? I'd love to know if there's a psychological disconnect of using an object instead of your own hands. My mom had the spoon. She still happily tells a story of when I was a young child sitting in a shopping cart, I pointed to a wall of wooden spoons in a store and shouted "look mommy, paddles!"
Also hate "spare the rod, spoil the child" as an excuse to hit your kids. That verse is about a shepards rod--you're supposed to GUIDE them, not beat them.
Parents have been hittings kids forever. But Dobson made it big and acceptable at a time when people were clocking that maybe hitting your kids was shit. Dobson also made sure kids thanked their parents for being hit. Wish I was joking.
Yip, preceded by, “I’m doing this because I love you” and then succeeded by, “give me a hug and tell me you love me”. A truly cruel way of squashing any sense of bodily autonomy, not to mention all the other psychological damage.
This is what disturbs me for kids that this approach "worked" for - those of us who grew up to be fiercely "good" and compliant have often ended up in incredibly destructive relationships, organisations and life patterns because we haven't learned to listen to our bodies/selves about when to draw a boundary, or how to know when too much compliance/loyalty is destructive.
So relatable Shane!
Yeah it's pretty awful. I definitely remember the rhetoric around "this is for you own good". But I just noticed the theme of the wooden spoon in some of the comments, the audio, and my own childhood, and it feels oddly specific. I guess I always assumed until now that most parents who spanked their kids just used their hands.
Mother. Wooden hair brush on a bare behind. Lived in fear of my father who never hit us as she always managed to put the punishment on him. I still find, and I’m very old, it hard listening and reading about this stuff. Spare the rod and spoil the child can hide all sorts of personality and deviant disorders.
Yes Dobson said if you used your hand your kids could flinch whenever you raised it — but a spoon or a paddle was a “neutral” object and your kids wouldn’t equate your hand with pain. He said . . . a lot of shit with zero evidence to back it up which is so egregious to me — he was a child psychologist who knew how damaging corporal punishment was to kids and encouraged parents to use it for his own political purposes.
Okay thank you that's wild! My parents were definitely influenced by focus on the family but thankfully I think it was pretty watered down through my 4 older siblings by the time it got to me. But it's still in there a bit.
We had a “Be Good” spoon that was proudly displayed on our kitchen counter for anyone who visited to see. The fact that it had infiltrated culture to the point that that was socially acceptable is wild.
We got the wooden spoon. Once my brother got smacked so hard it broke. Just normal, evangelical stuff.
My mum got dad to make wooden spoons because they kept vanishing. When they got a new fridge there behind it were all the wooden spoons that had disappeared.
I remember chucking ours in the garden after a minor indiscretion and my parents crossly searching the utensil drawer for it.
I broke the spoon too or my mother did
Same thing happened with my brother
Me too!!!! Thought it WAS normal.
I would wave a wooden spoon around in the air but never used it on the kids, I never smacked them at all. The wooden spoon ‘incident’ is still a great source of amusement to me and my kiddos. I was waving it around and banged it down on the kitchen counter. It snapped in two and the spoon part flew across the room. We all just watched it and then I lost it. I laughed so hard the kids must’ve thought I’d gone insane, but they got into the spirit and laughed too
I was raised with parents that worshipped Focus on the Family almost as much as they worshipped God. Well, their understanding of God. I'm looking forward to listening to the podcast later today. It helps heal my soul a lot when I hear from other people who have done the hard work of deconstructing these damaging beliefs. Veggie Tales, Psalty (the blue Psalm book), and Adventures in Odyssey made up a large chunk of my media viewing. I'm still discovering aspects of popular culture from the 80s and 90s that I completely missed. I remember reading some of his books in our church library growing up and just knowing deep in my soul that what he was preaching was wrong, but it wasn't until my 30s that I was able to fully deconstruct all of it. Dobson's beliefs on relationships, sex, and homosexuality informed my relationships in only negative ways. Becoming a parent myself was very helpful in my path towards deconstruction. I knew I wanted to raise my kids to think critically rather than compliantly, and I now realize just how weird it is to be preoccupied with who they want to kiss.
I will say that Michael and Shane discuss it with compassion and some humour, which is great as this topic can get so dark and, frankly, weird.
Luck of the draw
I was raised as a catholic in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I grew up fearing hell and my father. He once said the best way to control kids was to terrify them. As a white man, he did just that and I emerged as a terrified child.
But I was lucky enough to be a middle child so less visible than my siblings. By 18 I was gone. Left the family and country.
I then began the long process of recovery. I’m still not right but I’m free.
I've never heard of the guy, but am aware of Evangalical Christians in NZ who definitely believe in compliant children and women and who advocate for corporal punishment still which is sick stuff. I'm a boomer and was raised with corporal punishment, and the belief that children di not speak out or question authority. Mum was a practicing Methodist who believed in prayer and Dad a fallen Catholic. However, although compliance was expected we didn't introduce christianity into the home rather it was something for Sundays which really pissed me off as I had much better things to do on a Sunday. Mum administered amy corporal punishment and Dad did not lay a finger on us although I'm sure as I grew up he was tempted as I began more and more to challenge authority. Methodists were wowsers but did not preach wacky stuff and although priests would occasionally visit Dad to try to bring him back to the fold he never waivered and we never went near a Catholic Church. It was as a teenager I got influenced by an evangelical preacher to "accept God into my life". I tried but the idea that I was sinning (especially with teenage mastubation) and therefore off to everlasting damnation fucked with my head badly (although not badly enough to stop the habit lol!). It wasn't until I left home and in my twenties as a young teacher that I realised atheism was a choice and the right one for me. The apostolic and evangelical churches are nasty evil organisations in my opinion which sponge off their followers. Thanks for today's piece, I'm going to take a listen to the podcast on my walk. Keep up your work David.
I listened to the podcast this morning, and it's nice to hear the full interview (still listening as a type).
I was not aware of focus on the family, but I definitely recognise some of the things involved through the churches I grew up in. Northern Ireland was, and in certain generations still is, *extremely* religious and very conservative. I was absolutely smacked as a kid! I feel like most Irish people shudder at the idea of the wooden spoon. Luckily my mum didn't try and break our will - god how my heart absolutely *broke* hearing that phrase. My mum's will was broken as a child, and she was determined not to do it to us, and I'm forever grateful for that. I don't think she'd have had great success if she'd tried given all four of us kids were some flavour of undiagnosed neurodivergent. My heart hurts for all of the autistic and ADHD kids whose parents tried, and maybe succeeded, to break them. For all of the kids, neurodivergent or neurotypical. I look at my 5yo son and I can't imagine anyone wanting to break their child down, when their sense of wonder and imagination and their drive to explore is so precious. I'll be giving him an extra strong hug when he gets home from school today.
Veggie Tales was absolutely part of my childhood! If I remember correctly, the creator now spends a lot of time arguing with right wingers and evangelicals online. I also remember a cartoon called something like the Story Keepers all about how the stories of Jesus were kept alive even when the Romans killed people for it. Weird to look back and think how ready me and my pals were to die for jesus at any point 😅
As the parent of an AudHD kid with a nervous system disability (PDA), who absolutely would have been categorised as a "strong willed child", I shudder to think what a Dare to Discipline approach would have done to him. The only possibility of compliance would be via so many layers of trauma that he'd largely be incapacitated.
Ironically, even in "best case" scenarios like myself, who grew up into good, obedient, complient teenagers, we've paid a huge price for the amount of suppression, absence of knowing ourselves, and growing up too fast too young that has led to a ton of complexity as we try and find our way back.
I just want to say thank you for writing about these issues, and I wish I could say something more about them, but there's a weird glitch that happens every time I try to post a comment about my religious trauma, or certain parenting stuff (that was not religious but very bad anyway). I write, and then something happens and the comment (2 or 3 now, at least) just goes away, mysteriously. But it's not really a mystery to me, because the glitch is in me. It's like one person wants to write but is too scared, the second one does write, and the third swipes it away, the fourth brings it back again, and the fifth punches all of the others down so that there will be nothing but Silence. Except that I'm here sitting alone in it, and I'm not happy about it, at all.
But I'll say this, I did listen to the FB podcast and read (and listened too) here, and the way you deal with these things never do hurt me, I appreciate so much the warnings and all. It's the saying them out aloud myself that cannot happen at this point. I have to accept that, to protect myself. Still, I'm interested to know more.
And to answer just one question, I did not know Dobson before reading Webworm, last year or so, or didn't know about FoF before this. Still, strangely, everything seems very familiar. Like somehow all around the world same things have been happening anyway.
And, this morning when I saw what the FB episode was about, I just said "right, David, I know, we all fight our own inner fights don't we", and clicked play. And then a little later you posted this.
(I'm on my laptop now, and the text keeps jumping up away from my sight but now I will just send this GODDAMMIT.)
🫂👍👏Seems to me you are WINNING the fight... 💪 Doesn't happen all at once but love that David & the community here are giving you space to work at it 💜
Now that a couple of days have passed and I'm slowly trying to overcome a nervous breakdown - that was much more than just this unhinged comment I left here - I need to say something to make it more sensible. (This is for my own sanity, that's been missing lately, and I want to regain as much as I can of it now.)
1) What I wanted and tried to write, at first, was that the national church here in my home country is the Evangelical Lutheran Church. I have a clear memory of writing this here, and that in my mind growing up as a kid it felt usually pretty basic and kinda boring, nothing too much or weird. But when it was time for me to go through the confirmation class, which is something many people do whether they're religious or not, I ended up in a youth group that was everything that is described here. I didn't know the church would be the next one to crush my soul, because it wasn't the common thing you'd think of a church. I have no idea how common it was or is, but not common knowledge at least. I was already broken, due to bullying in school and a broken home.
Anyway, as a preteen you'd then go to this place and they'd tell you all these things about purity and sexuality and you'd think for years to come that you must be evil or something. (I'm also bi, although I didn't realise it until later.) To somebody not having safe home and parents and being mercilessly bullied by peers, it was... crushing.
I hated everything church-related for years, and I only spent a couple of years there. I don't remember leaving, like at all. I just remember I didn't go there anymore and hating all of it. There's a gap in my memory in between these things.
2) The parenting stuff here; I don't know where and how it had creeped into the Nordic culture where I was growing up, but even though I knew nothing about this subject here earlier this week, I recognise it very well. I lived it. I was an undiagnosed AuDHD child living in a place where you were supposed to just not be yourself but do as you were told, and apparently I failed. When I was a young adult, I found my way out through literature that broke it all down, explained how the will of a child (me) had been crushed and how wrong it was. It helped, to understand, but it was too late for my sanity, which is the last thing I will add here now, and then take a break from being active online for a while. I could just delete my earlier comment, but I don't want to do that anymore. So...
3) What I was describing in my first comment, is structural dissociation of the mind. I have more than one personality living in my head, it was not meant as non-literal. I'm not ashamed of this, but earlier I was already too far gone into my breakdown that I didn't have it in me to even explain it. This is not something that will be cured, it's something to live with. And usually I can handle it better.
I will now take a break, and hopefully regain memories/understanding, of what's still a little murky to myself about the last couple of days. This was not because of this post or the podcast, it was all just one trigger more. To me, they're everywhere. I just try to handle myself the best I can, and sometimes my best is really poor. But I don't blame myself anymore, which is the most important piece of healing I have needed. I didn't do this to myself, I am not the culprit.
Thank you to everyone and especially that nobody's been shitty to me here, ever. I know I can be a lot. <3
Oh noooooo this resonates with me in a frightening way. As I’ve mentioned before on here my job is a bookseller. There’s a long list of titles I’ve had to continually search up for customers over the years to see if we stock them (and some get asked about so often I immediately know we don’t, but I still tap the computer keys and go through the charade).
I regretfully report that I’m often still asked for this author by the New Zealand public, probably once every few months. We don’t stock any but it’s fucked that people are asking for them now that I know what the content is.
Please share the wildest titles requested that you "haven't been able to find"!
We get a lot of requests for Fingerprints of The Gods which we’re told they saw on Netflix and from what I can tell it’s ancient aliens vibes and Mayan calendar sort of stuff.
There’s a weird recurring request for “the book about the girl who was kept in a basement for years as a slave and escaped” but they never know details or the name. I’m pretty well versed in true crime cases (so I’m somewhat aware of all the big cases like this) but it’s never those ones. I always have a feeling they don’t actually want the book they just want to talk about it.
The saddest ones are New Zealand young adult books which are in the system but are long out of print. A lot look really good and address important topics but only ever received one print run and would probably be loved by this generation. One that springs to mind is Ted Dawe’s Into The River which was Family First temporarily had banned in 2015 (that was a wild time!).
They may be referring to "Room" as the book about the girl in the basement? It's fiction and a good read, told in the perspective of her child. The author was inspired by the real Austrian case of Joseph Fritzel.
I'm so glad you are writing about this, as this resonates deeply with me. I was raised in a church that embraced everything Dobson; from the wooden spoons to the dancing, animated cucumbers in VeggieTales, the fear of pornography, and repression of any emotion other than the "fruits of the spirit". When I was a teenager going through a rebellious phase (meaning, I was skipping church youth group to participate in a sport I was working to become a professional at), my parents got me a subscription to "Brio" magazine: a Focus On the Family magazine for teenage girls that extolled the virtues of the nice, quiet Christian girl. One particular article I remember discussed creating a box of party supplies to celebrate your first kiss with the man god would bring into your life to marry you (which should also be your very first kiss, of course). Yuck. Repressed much?
I was fortunate enough to not fit into the mold of "nice and quiet" no matter how hard I tried, and was able to leave religion behind. Sadly, many of the girls I grew up with were transformed into quiet and compliant women who still attend the toxic church I grew up in. It is heart breaking, and a small example of how damaging the doctrines taught by Dobson and Focus on the Family are. Thanks for taking on this topic.
Brio! I remember that! Also, why was I reading it? I should have been reading their propaganda for boys!
The difference in the two magazines (Breakaway was for the boys) is incredibly striking. Brio was obsessed with talking about purity culture for girls while breakaway was mostly about . . . extreme sports?
There is no propaganda magazine aimed at boys, which is telling!
"Breakaway"!
Ah, thanks, how did I miss that? What an interesting name choice lol
David I’m so glad you did this episode! I hear from a lot of folks raised evangelical that they wish there was more attention on James Dobson/Focus on the Family. Shiny Happy People and the new Ruby Franke documentary both highlight how abusive these religious authoritarian parenting methods can be, but we definitely need to reckon with how widespread it was (and still is!)
Literally just watched the Ruby Franke thing last night and was crying my eyes out at the last episode. Holy shit was that horrible. Just incredibly upsetting.
Yeah. I'm a very broken person because of religion, I think. Especially in the sex, sexuality, gender, & identity department. And I was also a VERY strong-willed child that questioned everything which did not go very well for me. It was only in the last ten years that it occurred to me that I was not "bad" and maybe I was not problem.
I knew who Dobson was. His influence was everywhere. I was raised in grandma's Baptist church and went to preschool at the Baptist church in town. Also, because I'm in Virginia & my grandparents are from near Lynchburg, I knew about Jerry Falwell & Liberty University.
My mom wasn't really into the Focus On the Family or church stuff when I was a little kid because I think she was too concerned with her own shames and maybe even shunned a bit. Once she got married to my first stepdad, they started going to church and playing the part. Then divorce and shame and leaving church/religion, then getting married and getting super into it all over again, repeat. I've had my dad and three stepdads. I learned from an early age that church and religion are for straight married people with kids. I used to cry in my late teens/early twenties if I went to church because I hated myself for being single and not wanting kids. I hated myself because church wasn't for me. I would just cry the entire time I was there because I felt so much guilt and self-loathing about all the things.......and my mother would get so mad and yell at me and tell me how embarrassed she was but also she would be the one that dragged me there.
There is soooo much more I could say, especially about sex, abuse, and trauma.......but I don't really want to tell those stories here.
My parents are liberal Catholics, so growing up I had heard of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, but mostly through the news because they thankfully weren't a presence in our house. (Although oddly enough my very liberal dad did read the entire Left Behind series. Future Webworm/FB maybe?)
Maybe it's too simple, but I think Focus on the Family and Evangelical Christianity in general is so popular because it simplifies an increasingly complex world. There's Good and there's Evil, and it's easy to tell which is which, and if you can't decide for yourself don't worry because I, James Dobson, can decide for you. Every day we're overwhelmed with decision and choice, and there can be something very comforting about substituting someone else's judgment for your own. Some people don't want to lead, they just want to follow.
And on the flipside, you have Dobson types who react to uncertainty by trying to control everything and everyone around them. It's almost like a symbiotic relationship.
I tend to agree. This guest essay from awhile back argued the parallels pretty well I think: https://www.webworm.co/p/worshipping-at-the-church-of-anti