43 Comments
Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Hi! I've been following you for a few months (I found you through D.L. Mayfield's substack) but this is my first comment. Thank you so much for your writing! I always find your posts encouraging and they relieve some of the isolation I've felt after leaving my non-affirming church 1.5 years ago.

I liked what you shared here: "I’ve developed a great radar for finding spiritual groups that don’t care so much if you believe the 'right things.'" I think I feel hesitantly curious about plugging into a less-rigid spiritual group after my whole-hearted absorption into conservative Christianity for the first three decades of my life. I feel like I'm not ready yet to put my trust into another spiritual leader, but might be interested in connecting with other people of faith (who don't position themselves as authorities). Anyway, just wanted to share where I'm at and to offer thanks for you putting your thoughts out there for people like me. Please keep writing!

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Hi Rebecca! I'm so glad you're here, and thanks for commenting! I don't know where you're at or what's available to you, but unprogrammed liberal Quakers were a gift to me in the immediacy after faith shattering. No pastors, and depending on the particular meeting (that's their word for church), can be a really nice mostly quiet hour of meditation. Lots of not-quite-Christians tend to attend (in my experience). Every meeting is different though. Anyway, I guess I say that to say that when you do feel ready, there are places and groups that can feel good for us to be part of that don't have that authoritarian attitude! I wish you all the best in your next step of your journey...do keep us posted!

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Mar 14, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Thank you so much for responding! It feels so good to be seen. I definitely am interested in exploring the Quaker tradition. My husband and I have been to a few meetings, but found it challenging to do the quiet-sitting part with our two littles in tow. Perhaps we can go back when they get a little older! I look forward to seeing what plays out... and feel encouraged by this warm community to comment more often. :-)

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Ah, you have two littles in tow also! Ok yes I completely empathize. And many Quakers tend to draw...more elderly folks. (the one I went to in Indy was a rare one that tried to offer Sunday School programs to the kids, which was awesome!). At any rate, I feel the same about waiting for my kids to get older, when bringing them to church spaces feels more of an actual thing instead of me watching my kids in a different location 🤪

Very glad to have you here and read your comments!

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

I relate to this. I’ve found it hard to find communities post-church because my bull shit radar is so strong!

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Good comment, Rebecca. I have visited some groups and sought information, but I will never join or follow an “authority” again. My higher self is the only authority I need on my own spiritual path.

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Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Thank you for your touching and very transparent share about your faith struggle, Christine. You speak for so many of us. I still struggle with a bit of lingering fear of damnation and of worrying family and friends if I express outright rejection of that one crucial “belief”: Jesus as ”savior.” I equivocate and say, “I’m OK with Jesus,” not admitting to them and maybe not even fully to myself that I no longer see Jesus that way—that we really don’t need a savior or the accompanying mythology to be loved by the divine. (Guess I’m being pretty direct about it here though!). I’ve moved on in my personal spiritual journey and am in a much more uplifting spiritual place, but my hesitancy to admit out loud that I no longer “believe in Jesus” illustrates how difficult it is to get those Christian “worms” out of the brain! Thank you for sharing your journey and for giving us a safe community where we can talk about our “recovery.” 😊

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Thank you, Chuck! From what you've shared with me about your background and current setup, it would be reeeeeally hard to express outright rejection of Jesus as savior! I don't know if I could do it myself! (haha I just surround myself with people who either agree with my beliefs or don't care if I don't believe the same as them...much easier...and not something that's available to you!) And I'm thinking... I do believe in Jesus....that is, I believe he was an actual person (based on historical likelihood) and also that he did some really important things while he existed on earth. I just don't believe the mythology that surrounds him! Details, details, right?! 😅

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Thanks for understanding and empathizing, Christine! My understanding (avoiding the word “belief”) about Jesus sounds similar to yours--extremely important historical figure in human spirituality, a wise and loving spiritual guide, but (speaking for myself) not a savior--nor is one needed. There! I said it!

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Perhaps this sounds arrogant, but when i find a doctrine i dont like (as in "men are the head of the household) i declare it WRONG and go ahead without it. That said, it took me many years and trials to get to that point but when i realized said doctrine was ruining my marriage, i knew that whatever it meant, that wasnt it.

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I actually resonate with that to some extent - more so now I think than I used to! I guess I have never been able to conform to things that I either didn't agree with or just didn't make sense to me, but I used to feel the need to do a lot more mental gymnastics to figure out certain things (e.g. theology), kind of like Sarah's saying. I hate being wrong about stuff, so I had to make sure I was right...or at least right enough!

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It's admirable that you're able to do that. For me, when I declare something "wrong," I still feel the need to explain why it's wrong, and to untangle it from connected issues. But maybe I'd be better off just moving on!

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Yours is perhaps the more mature approach.

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

I relate to this so so much. The earnestness, the diving even deeper through college, the incessant existential questions! “faith wasn’t just some adjective about you but the noun of who you were at the core.” Yes!! I would join you in that church-adjacent, non-Christian book club! LOL

I just wrote a post this week unintentionally processing some ex-fundy stuff and wow, was it hard ...and therapeutic. Take care of yourself this week and thanks for sharing!💜

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It's so nice to find like-minded people! I will have to go read your post. And I will say, I have processed all of this a lot through writing my book (book on hold...my manuscript, technically) so it's not nearly so emotionally charged now. (Like EMDR's effect??) But thank you for caring about me!

And if some of us could create a book club like this.... that would be awesome. Might have to start collecting some names of participants! 😂

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Oh, this is so true! I remember the first time my therapist told me about enmeshed communities and how the belief = belonging paradigm matched that term. Thank you so much for your writing on this subject!

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Ooh that's really interesting! I haven't heard that put that way (I mostly think about enmeshed families, therapy-wise) but makes so much sense. Thanks for being here!

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Now that you mention it, I think my therapist had said enmeshed families, not communities, but I had started to apply it more broadly because of the lack of boundaries my family had with church and volunteering there. Thanks again for your writing on these important topics!

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Enmeshed communities!! Wow, never heard that phrase before but seems like it perfectly captures it.

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Hi! Thank you for writing this. It gave me a lot of comfort.

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Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

You've laid it all out so clearly here. This is exactly the same process I went through: growing up in high-control religion, digging in in college, then questioning more later. While I'm still wrestling with staying in my church or not because I don't agree with the doctrines anymore, I'm starting to think that the more important thing is just to stay, because I'm in a community with people I can relate to, in the same life stage and with similar cultural experiences (especially since it's the only English-speaking church in the city!)

Something you wrote here really strikes a chord with me: how confusing it is that everyone else doesn't struggle with these things??? How people can just be "casual" Christians without wrestling with theological questions on a deep level?? I'm not sure I will ever understand it, especially for these religious groups that believe "belief" is the most important thing -- some people simply accept the beliefs and go on with their lives, and it honestly bewilders me how they can just accept things like eternal conscious torment and "being gay is a sin" without dealing with the underlying moral issues.

Thank you so much for writing this all out -- your writing style is so straightforward and relatable, and really helps me with thinking through some things I took for granted in my childhood, that actually don't make sense looking back.

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Ah yes, you wrote some about this in your post this week! I think you get an extra challenge as an expat trying to find community especially with language differences. I get why you'd want to stay! And people DO seem more open to your ideas than you'd thought...maybe there's a shred of hope??

Hahaha I'm so glad to be joined in that feeling of bewilderment. But seriously. I for the life of me cannot understand why people are casual about either of those things you identified (the theological questions, or just claiming themselves to be Christian but like it's a real low-key thing for them... and also not examining the horrible moral/ethical consequences of some of their beliefs. Especially the latter thing I do.not.get. at all.)

I'm very glad you're here, Sarah!

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Mar 11, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Yes, I do not understand casual Christian’s either. I remember asking my spouse - how can people just sit in church believing that the majority of people are going to burn in hell. And he was like - most people don’t think about it.

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To be fair, that's what I used to do too - just not think about ECT, because it was so terrifying. Then again, for some reason, everyone else didn't think it was terrifying, so they didn't feel any pressure to become a missionary to evangelize unreached people groups like I did. In my head, the only possible, logical way to be a Christian was to be a radical missionary, because whoever I missed was going to hell. - What's even more confusing to me is the people who do think about it, face that concept of hell head on, still choose to believe that's how things work, and then just live their lives.

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Mar 11, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Exactly. I had friends who were (are) hard core missionaries - also infuriating how women can risk their lives all over the world for missions, but could never be pastor. EYE ROLL

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Omg... Don't even get me started 😂

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Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Such a helpful, helpful post, Christine. Thank you for this!!!! You manage to say a lot, yet have it be succinct.

I greatly resonated with what you wrote here because the high-control, high-demand, low/no support, hyper-individualistic, mind control-practicing, all-or-nothing, extremist sect I was raised in was all about belief. Belief was everything. It was the decisive factor as to whether you were in or out, whether you were competent enough or not, and whether you were moral enough or not. If you believed correctly and with 100% conscientious earnest, willing sincerity, you were enough/acceptable and if you for any reason did not believe correctly and with 100% conscientious earnest willing sincerity, you were worse than worthless morally and so would have no one to blame but yourself when you found yourself being tortured in hell for all eternity, or so they said.

My sect of origin is filled, still, today, with people who continue to double down to keep themselves believing correctly as they understand it. They are at war with themselves, trying by sheer force of will to white-knuckle keep on clinging to the correct doctrines for dear life even though believing these doctrines offends their logic, and--if they had the courage to do what you did and be honest with themselves--even offends their morals as the humans they are, in terms of what is true of all of us, our basic human goodness. By clinging to the correct doctrines as they understand them, holding their own feet to the flame, they are selling out their values and inducing moral injury in themselves.

They have not yet had the courage to do what you did, which is to stop, step back, start to peer just one nanometer outside of the belief framework and wonder if there is maybe, *maybe* some hint of a hint of a possibility that what they've been taught they ***have to**** care about and ****have to*** believe OR ELSE they'll be doomed and they'll deserve what's coming to them, whether these beliefs might... not.... be.... fully 100% true. That type of miniscule deviation from lock-step acceptance of doctrines is terrifying to undertake. You have to have so, **so** much courage to even think about thinking about doing something like that. How amazing that you did! And then shared with the rest of us about what you've learned on your journey since. I, for one, as one of these others in your orbit, am so grateful to you for your courage and your generosity in sharing what you're learning. What you write always helps me, me with all my D's (ADHD, C-PTSD, GAD, and, well, also a PhD ;).

I have been thinking about you a lot the past few days, actually, with much gratitude, warmth, and tenderness as I continue to make connections between earnest, full-being, what-you-believe-yourself-to-be-at-your-very-core belief on the one hand and what the, um, opposite of that might be. I initially wrote you a long note about my insights here, but then thought the better of it, and harvested it into a Word document. If you're interested in hearing about it, e-mail me, I guess. (The insights center on there being a connection between holding in "correct" beliefs and a phenomenon beginning with the letter "e" that you and I share a phobia about.)

Thank you for all you do. You are not alone and your work is making a difference for others. Much, much care to you.

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Oh goodness, ALL OF THIS!!!!!!!! Thank you for your comment and the thought you put into it, and also for thinking of me with such warmth recently 🥰 It means a lot to me to be able to share part of my journey with other people and connect in such deep, meaningful ways.

It strikes me that in our high-control sects, we're basically told that belief is a choice, but really I don't experience it that way -- it feels more like something that you just come to and not something you can force. Which is why I love what you said about the white-knuckling people have to do to hang on to what they "supposed" to believe, even at the expense of their own sense of logic and morals. That's what it looks like to force belief, when really, belief is a natural and often passive process (changed by what we're exposed to of course, but to force yourself to believe the basically unbelievable...it's just so false!).

Please do send me the insights you've thought about! I'd have to dig to discover your email, but if you either reply to the emailed version of this newsletter or write to christinegreenwald@substack.com, both of those land straight in my inbox. Also, you made me chuckle with the bit about all your "Ds" -- I'm trying to remember if you shared in the past what your PhD was in?? We'll chat further!

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Mar 13, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Hi, Christine. Thanks so much for responding to my post, here. I am honored. I did not hit "reply" to try to e-mail you the Word document of my best emetophobia self-help insights using *this* post, but instead backtracked to the post you did about your excitement over EMDR, since it was in that post when you most explicitly mentioned your struggles with emetophobia. Please let me know if you don't find the Word document there on your EMDR enthusiasm post and I'll see if I can e-mail the Word document manually to christinegreenwald@substack.com instead. Oh, and ha ha ha. I never shared what my PhD is in. It's in sociology! :)

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Hmm I don't see anything additional on the EDMR post...sorry! Yes please do just email me directly. Ooh sociology - if I were getting PhDs (lol) that would be a field I would definitely be interested in! Neat!

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Mar 14, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Shucks. Thanks for letting me know. I was hoping replying to the EMDR blog post would do the trick. Sorry the content didn't come through, there. OK, so, using my sociology PhD super-powers [ ;) ], I have cleverly written an old-fashioned e-mail to christinegreenwald@substack.com with a Word document attached containing the content on religious trauma, emetophobia and EMDR. I hope you get it! Please let me know when you receive it and/or if it has not reached you by, say, Thursday March 16 midnight your time--as occasionally (and this can be so hilarious), the e-mail servers Yahoo uses can incur weird delays in getting e-mails out. Let's keep trying to find a way to get this content to you. If all else fails, I can print it all out on paper and snail-mail it to you and we can pretend it's 1989! :)

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I’m curious to hear your thoughts on Brian Mclaren’s new book! I saw he is doing a conference here in Portland with a bunch of speakers called Can Christianity Be Saved and I’m pretty sure they don’t have anyone speaking who would say “no”😂😬😫

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Ok first I'm jealous you're in a city that puts on events like that and I had to go look it up. I'm intrigued - looks like lots of pretty diverse guests! But yeah the chances of someone giving a full-throated "no" at such an event seem...quite unlikely 😅 I asked a friend to borrow the book - I will report back once I've given it a look!

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Me too! I vote for a book review 👋🏽

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Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Thank you, Christine! So glad to be part of your group!

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Apr 10, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

This is my current struggle in a faith community. My beliefs have changed and I would say are a bit of a slippery soupy mix right now. I am in a church where right beliefs are really important and other Christian traditions are seen with suspicion. I was once like that too. Its difficult as my husband is in a different place. He is less interested in questioning things and has this gift of simple faith. I have grieved over changing beliefs mainly because belonging is so intertwined with 'right' beliefs. I have mostly accepted the leaderships guidance on beliefs and only lately have been honest about the fact I dont actually believe some things but have gone along so that I can belong

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I think it would be so challenging to be going through this at a very different pace than one's spouse! Also, I really truly wish that belonging did not hinge on "right" beliefs in these communities. It just feels so unfair... but they're not going for fairness, are they.

Hope you can find a sense of community here (among other places), Jen!

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Apr 13, 2023Liked by Christine Greenwald

Thank you, it does make a huge difference to have companions on the road.

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I grew up in a church that didn't have that focus on belief - in fact, it emphasised the opposite, the freedom of belief. The idea was, if I understood it correctly, that freedom of belief would let the liturgy do its thing far better. But also, it wasn't one of those churches that wanted a lot of members, it just wanted to be there for the ones there. I keep learning how lucky I was.

That said, I also wonder about religion a lot. It's complicated for me, and perhaps it always will be - and I think I am on the path to learning to be okay with that.

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That sounds like a really lovely way to experience church growing up. I wonder how things would feel different for me now if I'd had that -- though religion is still complicated for you, so there's really no easy / straightforward paths or answers!

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Yes - it might not solve religion being complicated, perhaps because it inherently is, at least to some of us, but it can still avoid some of the traps you describe in your post. Still, there are other traps - I met several people around that church who had this odd sense of spiritual superiority, for instance.

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Oh yes I can see that being a thing (the spiritual superiority complex). Sigh. There's just no way around being human, is there....

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No way to stay pure, at least. Perhaps our humanity means we dismantle the traps faster than new ones can show up, or avoiding the nastier traps even though that means exposing outselves to less nasty ones - something like that. I don't know if that's the case, though.

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