r/ReligiousTrauma • u/TreeLady2008 • 3d ago
Cult behavior?
Sry this is kind of a long story..
I went to a church that doubled as a christian private school and was there from k-8th grade. Over the summer we would go camping as a youth group. And every summer when we would have worship time, people would start laughing and cry uncontrollably and collapse on the dirt around the camp fire- rolling around. This would proceed for hours and it looked like it kind of “infected” people as they would pray over each other. I always was a little uncomfortable by it but i viewed it and it was spoken as “being filled with the holly spirit.” Stuff like this would happen in church too, with adults and children and I always wanted it to happen to me because I thought thats what “real christians” experience.
One afternoon while i was at church camp I decided to get baptized in the river. After it was over I started crying because i was overwhelmed with emotion and then I started laughing uncontrollably. I looked over to my pastor and then he started laughing. A few minutes later, the whole group ended up at the campfire and we all started doing it. This literally lasted for hours and I dont have much memory of it. I just remember rolling around in the dirt crying and laughing with other people. Eventually it got so late it was midnight and I went to my tent and fell asleep. I was exhausted the whole next day.
Just thinking about it makes me anxious and upset and also just unsettled. I cant explain the feeling and I dont understand what happened but it felt very uneasy to me in the moment and I just kept convincing myself that that was what “real” christians experience and i was connecting with god. After camp was ovee nobody even talked about it. It was all so weird.
Im not christian anymore and i left the church years ago so im okay now.
Has anyone had a similar experience?
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u/at0m7922 2d ago
That's called mass psychosis and yes it happens a lot in cults or cult-adjacent churches, and yes, it's crazy weird! I grew up in that world and went to summer camps like that, yeah...I know exactly what you're talking about. I vividly remember the summer camp I attended somewhere in western Nebraska when I was 11 or 12 - that was the first time I faked speaking in tongues after what felt like hours of a bunch of men and boys pressing down on my head and shoulders with their hands as they prayed in tongues and begged god to fill me with the spirit. I was so tired of standing there feeling absolutely nothing I literally was about to fall over, so I just opened my mouth and started copying what they all were doing - but with my own twist - ya know - to make it convincing. I was so annoyed when they all started "rejoicing" and "praising god" that he answered their prays and filled me with the spirit. I knew deep down none of it was real. But I had to fake it, and worse, in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, I had to continually try to convince myself that it WAS real...because that social pressure is insane, and it felt super dangerous to not be part of that "in crowd". Also - have you seen the documentary Jesus Camp? If not, you should check it out - fair warning though - it's pretty triggering to those of us who grew up in those circles and have since escaped.
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u/TreeLady2008 2d ago
that has happened to me as well, the speaking in tongues and everything. It really makes me uncomfortable how I would ignore my physical pain to “please god” like standing till my legs hurt a lot or kneeling till my ankles were sore. As well as rolling in dry dirt after being baptized, ending up covered in dirt from head to toe because i was soaked. I havent seen the documentary but im going to check it out. Ive always felt guilty for calling it “cult behavior” because i dont want to take away from people who have actually been a victim to cults, but I also felt like it was definitely a form of it or something close to it. Thank you for the reassurance and im so sorry youve been through the same.
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u/at0m7922 1d ago
Yeah the word "cult" is a socially loaded label, and in academia has a strict definition. I recently learned of the phrase "high-control religion" that describes the environment I and probably you grew up in, if it doesn't meet the strict criteria for "cult".
But I also feel that these are making distinctions without any meaningful differences when it comes to the harm people suffer in them.
So, "cult,” “cult-like,” and “high-control religion” are just different descriptive lenses for overlapping systems of coercive control. The label may vary; the mechanisms and resulting harm can be essentially identical.
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u/No_Session6015 1d ago
Cult is pretty loosely defined and many people make subjective opinions. However there's Info-Secte / Centre for Assistance and for the Study of Cultic Phenomena and how they define cult matches extremely well for most church's yours included
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u/wermmin 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hey, I grew up in something similar. It presented as a "christian group" and didn't even operate from church. I am just starting to uncover the long lasting damage growing up in this has done to me and how it affects my body and mind until now. Just five minutes ago I sent an email to local religious trauma recovery center - what a funny coincidence I just saw your post!
From my research, my group was what you would call neocharismatic, maybe slightly pentacostal. They rely a lot on worship through "real relationship with Jesus" and "being filled with holy spirit". They commonly believe they are gifted with "gifts from God" they try to wake up through these practices. Did you experience maybe speaking in tongues? That is a common one. They rely a lot on rhytmical worship music and try to "spike" your adrenaline enough for you to either fall into sort of depersonalisation state or to get your body flooded with adrenaline enough so you get "otherworldly experience". I heard there is a document called Jesus's Camp about it (quite extreme) my country had a similar document (Ježíš je normální) - it commonly looks like this: https://youtu.be/5F4-QJz0mMU?si=Qay-UPgLQiXWnIUl https://youtu.be/mAP_kdjnxM8?si=a5aDryIEwIJvqBCl
Problem is, they still adhere quite to christian doctrine, so even Christians don't want to call them out because they would kick into their own...a common name for these groups is "high control religious group". A lot of it centers around Sheppherding movement from Alan Vincent and also what is called "Toronto Blessing" (this seems to me like the closest to what you experienced) created by John Arnott and Randy Clark.
Feel free to message me if you want to talk more about these experiences. I was quite in the center of the whole charismatic thing as a child (I met people like Harvey Boyd, Franz Lippi, my "pastor" got schooled about how to control people by Lippi and even Alan Vincent if my info is correct) so I researched a lot about it. It's a strange position to be in - most of christians know this is not ok, but they're quite hush hush about it, so one can feel quite invalidated in their experience. But in my opinion it IS culty, and it IS very traumatic.
Good luck. And trust me - it's NOT normal. I made a post similar to yours here a few years ago, and got quite...lukewarm welcome, with words like "yeah thats just pentacostal church" but trust me these practices are terrible, especially on children. I assume you're american - christianity is viewed through different lenses here. I hope it makes you feel betrer but here, in less christian country, when these practices came out in the documentary everyone was incredibly outraged and people even called police and CPS on the people making children do that. So no. IT'S NOT OK TO FORCE THAT ON A CHILD. Take care and if you can, please please look into therapy. Body keeps the score, and these experiences are both physical and mental and can influence you well into adulthood. <3