Trigger Warning
Writing horror as an Ex-Fundamentalist
This is a late one.
If you’re new here, welcome to Kindling. I’m glad you’re here.
This post is a little different from what I usually write. I got bad news this weekend, and it totally derailed me in a way I didn’t expect. I missed my Saturday post because of it, and I wanted to write in part to explain why.
On the outside, everything is okay. It’s not a death in the family or a call from the doctor that held me up. Instead, it was a message from a dear friend. He and I met when I was nineteen at what I can now comfortably call a Christian cult. Maybe not the Jim Jones kind, but bad enough that almost all the friends I met there have gone to therapy after. Many have left the church altogether, unable to attend worship services or pray. We all bear scars, but if you met us recently, you probably wouldn’t know—until you invite us to church ;)
I joined right after high school, drawn in by the intensity of the message. This church, Evangelical and charismatic, believed that we are living in the end times, and emphasized the importance of a 24/7 prayer movement that would usher in the second coming of Jesus. The leader of that movement claimed to have received visions from God and interacted with angelic beings who told him he would be the leader of that movement.
I spent years of my life fasting and praying, sometimes for 12 hours at a time. I didn’t go to college, lived in poverty, and put my family and friends aside to dedicate my life to Jesus. I became depressed, isolated, disassociated from society. We didn’t watch TV, avoided anything secular, and even restricted our reading to certain Christian teachers. To say that I was damaged after five or six years there is an understatement. Until very recently (three years ago or so) I wouldn’t allow myself to openly reject that movement and its place of authority in my life. For years I would wake up panicking, imagining I was on the path to hell for leaving.
As many of you who have been here from the beginning know, books helped save me. I owe so many writers for putting down thoughts that ground that stone of fundamentalism into a smooth path, and led me back to my own mind. The ability to think and feel, to rebel against authority, is precious. I never want to take it for granted.
So what was this bad news? For many, it won’t be surprising. Honestly, on a certain level, I’ve come to expect this.
The pastor of that movement, Mike Bickle, has been accused of decades of sexual abuse. In letters from other pastors he has worked with and mentored, all of whom have gone on to start their own churches and various Christian ministries, it was alleged that he not only wooed young women under his care, but crafted messages from the pulpit that would prevent him from being criticized or outed for his behavior. They wrote that he may have narcissistic personality disorder, that he attempted to isolate and intimidate other victims when he was confronted, and that he should be removed from ministry immediately. His sermon the week before this all came out publicly? That “a black horse” would come to accuse him and divide the church.
A lot of my healing has been centered around letting go of what I believed were genuine people with goofy beliefs. I always referred to the place as cult-like, but never quite relegated it to the level of Manson or Heaven’s Gate, even after church leaders performed an exorcism that led to a false murder confession. (Seriously. Rolling Stone wrote about it.) Knowing that the movement that stole years from my life and mind was crafted to feed this one man’s ego, and worse, to enable him to abuse young women? It’s intolerable. It’s hit me harder than I ever thought it would.
Ever since I found out, I’ve been pulled back in time, remembering things I haven’t thought about in over a decade. The first night, I couldn’t sleep. I still can’t get my thoughts around it, so I thought I’d share this post with all of you. I wrote it late last year, and it summarizes so much of how I feel tonight. If you know someone who is similarly struggling, feel free to share this with them.
For the rest of you, thank you for being here, for supporting writing that I was too afraid to attempt in that old life. Thank you for letting me explore weird topics and scary books. So much of my life was about hiding darkness. This next chapter is about shining a light.
Moving on with my life post Christian fundamentalism hasn’t been easy.
I’m over a decade into this journey, but the scars are still there. Deeply engrained beliefs that serve no other purpose other than to make me afraid of the unknown. I withdraw sometimes. Keep to myself. Hold certain “unfavorable” opinions close when I know they won’t be received well. In the right circumstances I can lash out angrily. Scold and lecture people about ideas I once held dear. When I do it, I’m always embarrassed and sorry. I know I’m really punishing my former self.
It’s hard to be honest with people when you change, especially when the consequences of a wrong belief are eternal damnation. There isn’t room in my old worldview to be wrong. To make a mistake. Not when it comes to absolute and total belief in the Bible, the Church, and Jesus as the Son of God.
Emerging from that world was like waking from a bad dream. When I look back, all I see is bondage. I don’t want to think of it that way. I believe that everything in life can work out for good. Teach you some invaluable lesson. I’m sure that with more time I’ll get clarity and come to appreciate the good that I learned, but this close up, it’s hard to see.
A couple of years after stopping my church attendance altogether, I still woke regularly after falling asleep with the reverberating thought that I was deceived and going to Hell. Now mind you, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe at that point. It was that I didn’t go to my specific church. I didn’t pray the way they wanted. I had started reading Christian theology outside of their prescribed beliefs. I’m sure to many, I was falling away.1
The specific church I left has been written about in newspapers for years, named a cult for its call to extremely long hours in prayer and meditation, routine fasting, celibacy, and the constant focus on end times theology. The belief that the modern church will usher in the second coming of Jesus through 24 hour prayer and worship. I didn’t give up my driver’s license or my money. I gave up my mind. My thoughts.
All these years later and I still find myself wondering what made me do that. I’ve watched documentaries on cults and see the slippery slope, how they start versus how they end, and I feel grateful that I was still so young when I got out. I watch as people in their fifties describe losing family and friends to isolating beliefs that bound them in such limited, unhappy lives. They come from different backgrounds. Some have strong families and some are alone. Some were successful and others were working minimum wage jobs. There is no one race or gender or belief that can account for the phenomena that is cult thinking.
Emerging out of that world and into what I would call “normal American culture" was a relief. I can remember starting Grey’s Anatomy for the first time. I would watch it at night on my couch after putting my son to sleep and feel nervous that someone might catch me. A show like that would have been totally frowned upon in the circles I ran in. Because the doctors are all sleeping together.
Fast forward to where I am now. A proponent of learning, exposure, strange ideas, and pursuing curiosity without fear. You can not love art or literature or human freedom without encouraging the exploration of knowledge and ideas. But horror is still in a category all its own. In fact Instagram censors the hashtag horror. Did you know that?
I’m working on marketing this newsletter, coming up with strategies to grow my audience over the next year. One of the ways I plan to do that is with Instagram. I have largely been off social media since the 2016 election. It was toxic and I was going crazy with all the political swirl, so I exited and made my life much happier as a result.
But the other reason, the one I’ve never been totally honest about, even with myself, has to do with leaving the Church altogether. I didn’t want people from my past talking to me about how I was failing God, or worse, headed to Hell. In short, I was a coward.
Writing is important enough to me that I’m willing to put myself out there again. I also feel strong enough to face personal criticism and attack from my old communities of faith. I don’t hold things against the people. In fact, I have no interest in arguing or tearing down Christianity. I see it as a deeply personal and beneficial spiritual journey for many. But I have not been able to set foot in a Church since 2011, and may never again. We’ll see where life goes.
I started my social media accounts again to share this newsletter. It was like a scrapbook from a decade earlier. My circles there are small. Many are still devoted Christian believers. Horror is probably not what they’re looking for. Most of the people I knew in those days didn’t even read fiction. On top of that, I know that I might be inviting criticism from people who haven’t seen or heard from me for years.
I decided not to share my posts initially. The thought of people telling me I’m satanic or possessed (real possibilities) put me off. I also didn’t want to offend them. And then I started Book Burn, the portion of my newsletter where I read banned books and review them. And I decided, fuck it.
If I’m going to be pro-free speech, pro-human expression, pro-art and a horror writer, I’m going to have to get over myself. You don’t get anywhere creatively by being sheepish. You certainly don’t learn anything. So in opposition to my old cowardly ways, I have started sharing these posts on my social sites. It’s small, I know, but for me it’s meaningful. As you can imagine it hasn’t been super productive in terms of subscribers. But it’s been entirely freeing for me as a writer.
Writing horror has been my next step in the journey of reclaiming myself. Living out a unique purpose that flies in the face of my past beliefs. But it has brought up some old wounds as well. I have had some insomnia on and off again. Thoughts of self-doubt that creep in and tell me I’m on the wrong path.
This isn’t the deep knowing or intuition in my gut that told me to start this newsletter. It’s the silly voice that holds you back from doing the things most important to you in life. The one that keeps you invulnerable, isolated, alone and working dead end jobs you don’t care about.
I have made it my goal to always work in favor of true intuition. To never listen to that anxiety that plagues us and keeps us from pursuing the things we truly love. I haven’t worked through so many of the issues that fundamentalism created for me mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I’m feeling the truth of that statement this week.
I’m working on a post for the end of the week that involves a murder, the devil, and an exorcism. The book I read about it shows a clear bias in favor of demonic possession as an explanation for the killing. Reading through the religious logic has honestly been triggering. My relationship with faith is so complicated now.
It has had an effect similar to an abusive relationship. The trauma resembles other triggers I have from growing up around erratic and sometimes violent adults. I thought about it last night, and the quote from This Boy’s Life came to mind. Tobias Wolff was raised by an abusive stepfather, a man he hated and who hated him. When he reflects as an adult in his memoir, he describes his feelings as follows.
We hated each other. We hated each other so much that other feelings didn’t get enough light. It disfigured me. When I think of Chinook I have to search for the faces of my friends, their voices, the rooms where I was made welcome. But I can always see Dwight’s face and hear his voice. I hear his voice in my own when I speak to my children in anger. They hear it too, and look at me in surprise. My youngest once said, “Don’t you love me anymore?”
— Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life (emphasis mine)
You carry the shit with you. It comes back in a thousand different ways. Crashes over you when you least expect it. Wakes you up when you’re sleeping and whispers that you’re doomed. So I wake up, blink the nightmare away, and write.
A term from the the Bible used to describe a great apostasy (turning away) from the faith that will signal the end times (the second coming of Jesus).
I believe writing is truly the best form of therapy after enduring the traumatic experiences you've endured. It is a tool for repairing what damage is able to be repaired and a tool for building a better life going forward. I'm happy you've undertaken this journey to reclaim yourself and I hope this new path you've chosen brings you true happiness.
I can relate to what you've been through. I grew up Catholic and had deep issues with guilt. Later, becoming Christian also led to more psychological trauma. I even went through a phase where I was a Scientologist. In the end, all religions are nothing more than a cult. We want human connection, and we all need to be okay with knowing that, in the end, no one knows what happens next, meaning after death. Thank you for sharing, and I'm sure you'll turn your past struggles into something extraordinary. You're already doing that.