Episode Details

Back by popular demand, David Hayward, the NakedPastor returns to the Arise Podcast. 

You can listen our first conversation with David HERE.

David is a cartoon artist who uses his art to challenge the status quo, deconstruct dogma, and offer hope for those who struggle and suffer under it. After 30 years in the church, he left the ministry to pursue his passion for art. He holds a Masters in Theological Studies. He is also a writer with several books, and is based out of New Brunswick, Canada. 

We wanted to circle back with David to explore and expand the idea of Spiritual Abuse which often appears in his art. Maggie asked him to start us off with a working definition.

David said he knows religious abuse or spiritual abuse intimately and from both sides: he has been on the receiving end, that is he has been personally harmed as well as he has participated in the structures that have inflicted spiritual abuse. 

As for a working definition, David said Wikipedia’s definition is a good place to start: “Religious abuse is abuse administered under the guise of religion, including harassment or humiliation, which may result in psychological trauma. Religious abuse may also include misuse of religion for selfish, secular, or ideological ends such as the abuse of a clerical position.” There are so many forms of abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, etc.) but it can be simply said that abuse is when someone’s self is being violated in some way. Spiritual abuse is then when anything that falls under the spirituality / religious realm is used as a weapon to violate another person’s freedom, dignity or their physical or emotional self. 

Some people, he says, have a hard time accepting that Christianity, Faith, the Bible or religion can be used as a weapon. “Right of the bat, their defenses go up. ‘Impossible! Because ‘Christianity is a good thing.’” Religion, like any good thing, can be turned around and used to harm another person or people group. 

Abuse of power, like the clerical position and spiritual leaders, can be used to harm others. This is an overt and severe expression of spiritual abuse like you see in the examples from the cases of clergy with their membership, especially in the Roman Catholic Church with sexual abuse of boys by priests. There are also more subtle or as David says “mild” forms of spiritual abuse that just comes off as “uncomfortable” feeling, like “something doesn’t sit right” as would be the case in someone feeling the pressure to give of financial resources or time and energy to the church. 

Danielle says David has named that spiritual abuse is an abuse of someone’s identity, who God created them to be, and therefore it encompasses a range of things that can violated making it all the more devious. 

David says that people would categorize sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape or sexual harassment under the category of sexuality but he believes there’s something even more foundational than that and it is human dignity, their self-space, their pride and freedom is being violated. When you consider the sexual abuse of the Roman Catholic Church, it is being done under the guise that there is a spiritual union happening. This adds another layer to the abuse – it is both sexual and spiritual violations. There’s a clear abuse of power when a pastor has an affair with one of its members—there can’t be consent with the power dynamic. This is the same as a professor with a student. It’s not just rare cases, this is happening all over the place.

Maggie says she thinks of the word rampant—it’s happening all over and it’s happening all the time. One of the things that is hard to identifying is abuse when it’s subtle. She says it’s easier to identify spiritual abuse in cases like t