Mega-Churches: Conferences, Cults, & Controversy - Part 2 - Ep. 60

Mindful Minds

TW: religious trauma, church trauma, peer pressured emotional trauma, coercion, manipulation, sexual abuse/assault, abuse of power, purity culture trauma, sexism, cult-like behaviors, miracles + healings trauma

Happy New Year all! I hope your 2022 was peaceful and mindful, and if it wasn’t, I hope you are able to find that in 2023. I wanted to welcome you to 2023 with a special 2 part series. I received a lot of feedback recently about deconstruction and religious trauma, and how so many of you wanted to talk about these topics. Specifically, after a megachurch series I posted on my Tik Tok, you all expressed a sincere interest in talking about the coercion and abusive nature of megachurches. So, let’s talk about it.

Yesterday I released part 1 of this mini-series, and if you haven’t listened to that episode, it gives some great context for this conversation. We chat about healing culture, the capitalism of Christianity, and the fabrication of supernatural occurrences.

In this episode, we dive into the beast that is megachurch & mega-pastor production including tours, conferences, and altar calls. We also go in quite a bit, on the similarities between charismatic Christianity and cults, including some conversation surrounding purity culture and blind obedience. And lastly, we talk about how blind obedience and respect for authority leads to a lack of true accountability and therefore leads to abuse and the misuse of power. We also talk a little bit about how the urge to forgive all and wipe one’s slate white as snow leads to a cycle of abuse.

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