Five Hallmarks of Spiritual Abuse

This was taken from a spiritual abuse group on the web. After seeing these, I'm convinced that in some way or another, Milestone fits each description.

There are five hallmarks of abusive religious systems. Those hallmarks are:

Authoritarian: unconditional submission to leaders is expected.

{There's really not much to say here. "Yes" is about it. We were constantly praised for being "teachable." Which is really code for "easily influenced" and "obedient to leaders." It's ironic how we could be so "teachable" for four years and then start thinking differently about something and become the enemy.}

Averse to criticism: the person who dissents becomes the problem rather than the issue being raised.

{I would say that this one probably hits the closest to home. It makes me sad.}

Image conscious: protecting the reputation of the leaders or church is more important than truth or justice.

{Image consciousness is a hold-over from Maranatha/EN. It is an understood rule that we are to look GOOD as leaders. Be sharp, look sharp. After all, we want to be appealing to those around us. Things are to be done "with excellence." The tricky part of this is that, of course, things should be done well. Of course, we don't want to look like slobs all the time. It's hard to explain the differences, I guess. I knew women in leadership who were like a revolving door for the latest fashions. Expensive jeans, expensive hair cuts, expensive manicures, etc. The same was true for men. Everyone who was in any kind of leadership caught on. You would just watch people morph from, when they arrived at Milestone, to wearing just kind of plain-Jane clothing to getting really "hip" and becoming very concerned about how they looked.}


Perfectionistic: individual worth is determined by performance; there is no compassion for weakness or failure.

{I addressed this more in the post on Dysfunction and Brokenness. I wouldn't say that this was as bad as other aspects or as severe but there was still a very strong push to be hush-hush about your weaknesses. I was told once to quit broadcasting my struggles to the Mom's group. The idea is that you only talk about them after God "heals you" from them. The premise is that this will give people hope. While just sharing your struggles makes people despairing. CR has taught me that this is utter nonsense. In fact, the most effective leadership says, "I'm just as broken as you. Let's walk this out together."}

Unbalanced: they will try to distinguish themselves from other groups by putting excessive emphasis on some minor point of theology.

{I think I saw some of this as well. There was obviously a lot of emphasis on the Great Commission/making disciples (harkening back to the EN roots) but an equal emphasis on building "family." Again, this is tricky because those are both good, valid things that every Christian should be concerned about. The difference is there was this attitude of "we are better at this than most people." They should be taking lessons from us.}