Post by kisekileia on May 14, 2009 22:27:23 GMT -5
Hi. I'm a 25-year-old woman in Toronto, Canada. I grew up in a liberal church with a moderate evangelical family. I became a Christian for myself at an evangelical (not too radical, run by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) summer camp when I was 12, and got into conservative evangelical culture after that. I did that camp's leaders in training program at 16, initially believing that God was transforming me into a wonderful camp counselor of God. What actually happened was that because of various medical and psychological issues that had not been adequately diagnosed and treated at the time, I wasn't able to be a cookie-cutter camp counselor, and I was treated cruelly as a result.
The way I was treated at the LIT program amounted to profound spiritual abuse on top of emotional abuse and physical neglect, and it totally devastated the spiritual narrative in my head. I've been sort of...lost, spiritually...since, and have gradually shifted from still-fairly-conservative evangelicalism to liberal Anglicanism. I find it hard to trust anyone or anything related to spirituality or religion, and I frequently find myself avoiding religious engagement that I actually WANT because it triggers my trauma issues from that LIT program. I've also realized in recent years that the conservative evangelicalism I believed in as a teen really cut me (and everyone else involved) a raw deal with regard to sexuality and a lot of other things that are taboo in that culture. I'm still in the process of breaking free from those taboos and figuring out what I want my life to be like (and how far I can stray from the evangelical lifestyle without devastating my family).
The way I was treated at the LIT program amounted to profound spiritual abuse on top of emotional abuse and physical neglect, and it totally devastated the spiritual narrative in my head. I've been sort of...lost, spiritually...since, and have gradually shifted from still-fairly-conservative evangelicalism to liberal Anglicanism. I find it hard to trust anyone or anything related to spirituality or religion, and I frequently find myself avoiding religious engagement that I actually WANT because it triggers my trauma issues from that LIT program. I've also realized in recent years that the conservative evangelicalism I believed in as a teen really cut me (and everyone else involved) a raw deal with regard to sexuality and a lot of other things that are taboo in that culture. I'm still in the process of breaking free from those taboos and figuring out what I want my life to be like (and how far I can stray from the evangelical lifestyle without devastating my family).