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One of the best-known horror films of recent decades is Carrie, based on Stephen King’s tale of a lonely and misunderstood pubescent girl. Some of the film’s scenes have become iconic: the naive Carrie shocked by her own first menstrual period; the bucket of blood that pours down on her at a high-school prom. And yet, in many ways the most terrifying part of the film involves Carrie’s relationship with her insane mother, who, obsessed with religious guilt, locks her daughter into a closet with a twisted and sinister crucifix.
While the portrait painted in Carrie is a lurid and sensational one, it hit a nerve in the collective psyche because it had a powerful element of truth. Carrie is one of the mass media’s first portrayals
of religious abuse, a problem that affects an unknown number of Americans.
The form of religious abuse to gain most attention of late is sexual molestation by Roman Catholic priests. According to a 2002 report by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearly 4400 priests—4 percent of all those who had served in the previous fifty years—faced some kind of sexual abuse allegation. But the problem extends far beyond the Catholic Church, and religious abuse can take many other forms as well.
“Religious abuse is the crushing inner psychological, spiritual and emotional damage suffered by members of authoritarian communities of faith whenever its spiritual authority is twisted by
spiritual leaders to achieve a desired goal through unethical, cruel and damaging means,” writes Rafael Martinez, director of Spiritwatch Ministries, an evangelical Christian organization based in Tennessee. “Sometimes these may be physical or sexual in nature, but much more often it is more clearly seen in the many various forms of mental and spiritual trauma that are inflicted upon church members, often through the practice of abusive leaders using personal influence upon a community of faith.”
Christian sociologist Ron Enroth, author of the book Churches That Abuse, observes, “Abusive practices ... appear to be far removed from the world of conventional churchgoers, and, it is hoped, they are. Yet, I am
