Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
"Subscribe to Red State Religions here"
What is “love-bombing,” and how does it operate to reinforce high-control Christianity? How is it used in an attempt to discredit those undergoing faith deconstruction, whose questions and critiques threaten to undue high-control religion? And how does it operate to insulate preserve the institutions and practices of high-control religion? Listen to this week’s episode to here Dan’s answers to these and other questions.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163
Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As always, I want to say welcome to everybody listening in.
This is It's in the Code, a series that's part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name, as you probably know, is Dan Miller.
I'm a professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
As always, delighted to be with you.
As always, welcome your insights, feedback, comments, concerns, questions, ideas for upcoming episodes, whatever you have.
Daniel Miller Swatch, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com, as well as if you're a subscriber and have access to the Discord.
I try to fish things out of there as well.
And as always, if you're not a subscriber, we'd ask you to consider doing that.
Help us do what we do if you find the content useful and informative.
And if you are a subscriber, I want to thank you.
And again, just thank everybody who's listening.
Everybody who's hearing my voice right now, you could be doing something else.
There's something else you could be listening to.
We're really aware of that.
We thank you so much for giving us the time and letting us be this kind of small part of your lives.
I want to dive in to today's episode.
We're continuing this series looking at sort of negative responses to so-called faith deconstruction.
I call it a series Who's Afraid of Deconstruction?
And as I've outlined in previous episodes, these represent efforts essentially to gaslight those who are undergoing so-called faith deconstruction, efforts to discredit them, and efforts really, at the end of the day, to insulate high-control Christianity from the criticisms and critiques they raise.
Like, those are the...
Sort of the three goals.
Again, the best outcome for the critics of deconstruction is to convince somebody that their own intuitions and insights and criticisms and critiques and concerns and so forth are not well-founded and to bring them back into the fold.
Barring that, you want to discredit them so that others don't listen to what they're saying.
And by doing that and by basically like ostracizing them from the group, essentially getting them to leave.
Your high-control context, insulating that context from that critique.
That's the function here, okay?
And a couple episodes ago, we considered the response that tries to insulate high-control religion from critique by arguing that criticisms are aimed at humans who practice the religion and not the religion itself.
And you can go back, you can listen to that.
I argue that that's an abstraction.
There is no kind of religion itself.
But that general logic, that effort at insulating a so-called, maybe we might call it a core of the tradition, from critique, and basically saying, well, you know, all these criticisms you have are valid in some ways, but they don't really get at the core of the tradition.
As a way of preserving high-control Christianity, that logic is something we're going to bump up against for the next several episodes, including the episode today, okay?
And in this episode and the next, they really go together.
This is another one of those times where I had an episode idea and I'm putting it together and I kind of look at my notes and I'm like, that's not going to fit in one episode.
So two episodes, what we're really looking at is the dismissal of faith deconstruction and the criticisms and questions that people raise on the grounds that it doesn't really touch the core of Christianity.
This is one of the really obvious efforts to insulate the tradition from critique, to say, well, there's a core of the tradition.
That these criticisms don't get to.
And that's basically the argument that deconstructionist questions and critiques don't apply to the central teachings or doctrines of high-control Christianity.
Christianity has long, for centuries, understood itself really in terms of doctrine and belief and so forth.
It involves much more than all those things.
I say this all the time.
Religion is not only or even primarily about belief.
But within the Christian context, the idea of belief or doctrinal truth has sort of loomed large.
And one of the ways to try to insulate high-control Christianity from critique is to say the core teachings, the core doctrines aren't touched by that critique.
And this is the person to say, you know, those of you who deconstruct or you raise these concerns, you might have some valid points to make, but those points really only touch on marginal or peripheral issues or maybe like teachings or doctrines or interpretations that are one or two steps removed from the sort of central tenets of Christianity.
Yes, we could debate those things, but all your criticisms, they don't really mean that the core of the tradition is a problem.
And so you shouldn't walk away from the tradition.
That's the idea.
They don't touch the heart of Christian teaching.
That's what we're aiming at today.
That's what we're looking at.
And this is another response that is obviously, as I say, intended to insulate Christianity from criticism.
If the earlier dismissal, that one about, you know, you're criticizing Christians, not Christianity, if it really tried to insulate Christianity from its practice, to say that the way it's practiced is one thing, the concrete things that people do may be problematic, but the tradition itself is not the problem.
This dismissal tries to preserve the core teachings or the central message by insisting that this message is what is not actually targeted by deconstruction, that the core teachings are not targeted.
And as we've also seen over and over by now, but I'm going to repeat, this dismissal is not offered in good faith.
The effort, very often very convoluted and twisted to insulate core teachings of Christianity, in my view, they reveal the very real concern that deconstructionist critiques do get at the heart of the tradition.
In other words, the very effort and the contortions that people will go through to try to suggest...
That if you have critiques or questions or hard queries or whatever it is about the tradition, the efforts they will go to to tell you that they're not really about the tradition, that for me becomes the evidence that they really strike close to home for the adherence of high-control religion.
Okay? And I think that's significant.
Because my contention is that faith deconstruction...
Absolutely hits the heart of the teachings advanced within high-control Christianity.
And we're going to talk more about that next episode.
Next episode, we're really going to get into that.
Okay? My argument is that the elements of high-control religion that are the focus of deconstructionist critique are central to this articulation of Christianity.
They are, as we'd say in this series, they are in the code.
They are written into the structure of high-control Christianity.
You cannot have high-control Christianity if you actually took to heart the criticisms and critiques that are raised by those who are undergoing faith deconstruction.
I'm going to try to show that more in the next episode because there are two movements to this dismissal.
There are two movements to this effort to insulate the core teachings of Christianity.
The first movement...
And that's what I'm looking at this episode, is what I'm calling doctrinal love-bombing.
Okay? And if you're like, what in the world does that mean, Dan?
We'll get to that in a minute.
The second movement, then, is the bait-and-switch.
So, in other words, there's this kind of love-bombing move, this presentation of what high-control Christianity is about, that sort of sells you on it, that draws you in, that is intended to keep you there.
And then there's the bait-and-switch of what you really get with the tradition.
And that's what we're going to look at next episode, is the bait-and-switch movement.
What I want to talk about this episode is what I'm calling doctrinal love bombing.
Now, what do I mean by that?
I am going to use Laura Anderson's book, When Religion Hurt You.
You've heard me talk about Laura Anderson's work.
You've probably heard me interview Laura Anderson.
Maybe you've heard her interview me.
Laura Anderson, founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, helping people work through and process religious trauma.
Full disclosure, I'm a practitioner with CTRR as well.
That's another thing that I do.
But her book, When Religion Hurt You, she highlights what she calls the love-bombing phase that operates within high-control religion.
And so, Laura, if you are listening, thank you for your book.
You know I use your book.
You know I love your book.
And I'm now going to cite your book for a few minutes here.
And what Laura talks about is she talks about how in an abusive interpersonal relationship, okay?
Love bombing is the phase during which a perpetrator, and this is her quote, shows intense displays of affection, including giving compliments and gifts, seeking connection, and demonstrating a complete understanding of who you are.
That's her quote of what that love bombing phase is.
And of course, this feels great, because who doesn't want to experience displays of affection and get compliments and gifts and experience connection and somebody who understands us?
The result of this is that the victim, who she points out, often does not know that they are a victim.
The victim, quote, may feel belonging, connection, and understanding that they have longed for but never received, end quote.
Okay? Now, all of that's good.
There are real and healthy relationships where people, you know, feel connection and an understanding of who we are, and of course that feels great and we belong and it's real.
The abusive relationship is the one in which the love-bombing phase gives way to abusive components as that relationship unfolds.
We'll get to that.
But the point here is that the same process can play out with religions and religious institutions.
And this is a key dynamic within high-control Christianity.
The love-bombing phase is the phase—when I say phase, this can go through huge sections of someone's life.
This can be the phase that is intended to convert somebody or that first brings them through the doors.
It can take a lot of different shapes, okay?
But it is the phase during which high-control Christianity gets its hooks into individuals.
And in many ways, the love-bombing phase, the doctrinal love-bombing, is the public-facing dimension of the tradition.
It's the dimension of the tradition that is presented to outsiders so it looks innocuous or so that they don't believe those who come from the tradition and tell them different things.
It's that discrediting mechanism.
them.
I'm Leah Payne.
I'm a historian who studies Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the United States and beyond.
What I've learned is that what happens in churches shapes the American political and social landscape.
Some trends have been developing over decades, and others are brand new.
Spirit and Power is a limited series podcast from the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement made possible by generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.
Beginning on Thursday, March 6th, we'll explore the technicolor world of the prosperity gospel, the surprising faith of mama bear activists, apocalyptic responses to the Trump administration's deportation policy, and much, much more.
Join me for in-depth conversations with journalists and scholars exploring the intersection of charismatic religion and politics in America.
So when the adherents of high-control religion are trying to win people over, when they're trying to convert them to the faith, when they are trying to defend the faith to outsiders or when somebody's starting to slip away, this is the dimension that's front and center.
And it has a practical dimension to it.
And it takes some familiar forms, forms that we've talked about a lot in this series, what we've talked about in the podcast.
If you come out of these high-control religious contexts, you will be familiar with these.
These are the things like an episode I did a long time ago called Cool Kid Church, the church where everybody's just kind of cool, and they've got the little coffee house and everything else, and it just seems kind of hip and laid back, and the pastor's wearing like...
Black jeans and a t-shirt or whatever.
It is the consumerism that's rampant within conservative Christianity.
It is the professional-grade music and production in large churches.
It's all of those kinds of things.
It is the entertainment culture.
It is the subculture that offers a full range of pop culture...
Gosh, I'm getting really tongue-tied today.
A full range of pop culture alternatives to so-called secular culture, whether that's Christian music, Christian film.
Christian books, whatever it is.
It's the youth events that are intended to draw in and engage kids and youth.
And we've heard Brad, who was a youth pastor within a large evangelical church, talk about those mechanisms.
It's the social programming that is aimed at connecting with individuals at every stage of life, very targeted, almost as if you've got a target audience and you are crafting your message to them, okay?
All of that is part of the love bombing of high-control religion.
But it also has a form that is expressed in teaching and doctrine.
And that's what I'm interested in here.
I've done lots of other episodes listening, you know, talking about those kind of popular expressions and so forth.
You want to hear more about that?
You got ideas about that in terms of, like, the faith deconstruction stuff?
Let me know.
Email them to me.
I'll take a look, and maybe it's something that we can add into the series.
I'm still adding episodes as I hear from you.
But here I want to talk about the kind of doctrinal love bombing.
And if you grew up within the world of conservative, high-control Christianity, this form will sound very familiar to you.
If you knew somebody who grew up within this, or you've encountered it, or you've been sort of in a cultural space adjacent to this, or if you have engaged, you know, the Uncle Rons of the world, this will also be familiar to you.
And it presents, it's present, rather, this love-bombing phase.
And really the ready-to-share slogans and doctrinal formulations that young Christians are taught within these contexts.
Within these contexts, Christians are taught that they should always be ready to defend their faith, to articulate their faith, to win others to the faith, and so forth.
And there's a lot of coaching and training that goes on about how to do that and what to say in that, and really scripts you can run through for trying to convert others and so forth.
And this doctrinal love-bombing is front and center in that kind of material and that kind of approach.
And so, like, here, more or less, is the kind of thumbnail sketch of what this sounds like.
And again, if you grew up within this tradition, this is going to sound really familiar.
And in fact, if you're listening to this and you hear what I'm saying, you're like, I don't understand how this is what you're calling love bombing.
This is just what the tradition teaches.
Then hold on for next episode when I'm going to get into what I'm calling the bait and switch.
Okay? This is the public-facing, positive-sounding...
Articulation of high-control religion that is supposed to draw you in.
And when people ask, why would anybody be sucked into high-control religion or stay within it, I would argue that one reason, there are lots of reasons, and there's a lot of complexity to that, and the same answer is not going to be true for any two people, okay?
But one part of it is this doctrinal love bombing.
This is one of the reasons people stay within high-control religion.
This is one of the reasons why they are drawn to it.
So here it goes.
The bad news, of course, is that all human beings fall short of what God desires.
But the good news is that it doesn't matter because God unconditionally loves us and offers unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice for everyone.
So all that language about Jesus being your Lord and Savior and so forth, that's what it is.
And the great thing is that humans don't have to do anything to earn this forgiveness.
In fact, they can't.
So again, the bad news is humans are fallen.
We can't do anything to win divine approval.
But the good news is we don't have to because God did it for us.
It's called grace.
It is God's free gift of salvation that comes to us.
And it gets even better.
You're like, oh, wait, so I don't do anything?
It's just grace?
It's a gracious gift of God that brings about this spiritual reconciliation?
Well, that's awesome, but it gets better.
And if you hear the infomercialness of this, then that's intentional.
Because this isn't just about life after death or going to heaven when you die.
This is not just about what happens in some other world.
No, God desires you to have life and to have it more abundantly.
That's biblical language.
He wants you to have an abundant life.
And you often get this wrapped up in like kind of therapeutic language, self-help language.
This is all part of the kind of consumerism within contemporary high-control Christianity.
You might say it this way, God wants you to live your best life.
God wants you to be happy.
God wants you to be fulfilled.
God has someone in mind to be your life partner.
God has a glorious plan for your life.
And that is the message that you will hear in churches.
That is the message you will hear from people.
In short, they will say, God loves you and has a plan for your life.
And when we live, they'll say, you know, the real danger is when you live according to the dictates of a fallen world, when you live according to the dictates and ideologies of secular culture, we're in an endless rat race that you can never win.
That's a dead end.
You're seeking approval from those whose approval can never fulfill us.
You are in kind of classical Christian language that still makes its way into, you know, efforts to proselytize and convert others.
You're seeking to plug a God-shaped hole in your being with transitory, worldly things that can ever actually fill that lack.
So when we give ourselves over to God, all of that goes away.
We walk into this plan that exists for our life, that we don't have to do anything to earn, that is freely given to us.
And again, all of this reflects the unconditional love and acceptance of God.
So God, the maximally perfect, all-powerful, omniscient creator of the universe, is defined by his perfect love for all of us.
And everything above, everything that I just described, is an expression of that perfect Superlative love.
And we could expand on this, okay?
But the point is that if somebody were to say, okay, so like, why would I be in the market for high-control Christianity?
What would draw me to it?
What would keep me within it?
There it is.
And when high-control Christianity is marketed in this way, and folks, it is marketing.
It is branding, okay?
When it is marketed in this way, I think it sounds amazing.
The God and creator of the universe is so into you that God planned reality around your fulfillment and redemption since before the beginning of time.
Who can't be drawn in by that?
Who can't be moved by that notion and that vision and that understanding?
It's everything about love bombing that Laurie Anderson describes.
And I think it would be hard not to be drawn into such a vision.
And of course, it's a vision that draws converts every year.
So, again, why is this love bombing?
Why am I suggesting that this is not a sincere presentation of high-control Christianity?
We'll get into that next episode, okay?
But just stick with me for a few minutes here, because when it's presented in this way, the intention is, I think, and this is the gaslighting, is to make people wonder, why would anybody ever criticize?
Let alone choose to leave a tradition like that.
What's to critique?
That's a beautiful vision.
All I have to do is accept a free gift of God and like the creator of the universe has a plan for my life and things are all going to work out the way they're supposed to and I'm going to prosper and so on.
Man, that's an awesome vision.
What is to critique?
And you can see this, this turns the tables, right?
This is that effort of discrediting those who bring critiques.
And so, The adherent of high-control religion would say, you know, only, again, in Christian languages, only somebody with the hardest of hearts could possibly take offense at this narrative of a selfless, unconditionally loving God who goes to the ultimate lengths of giving up his own son to redeem a world that can do nothing to deserve it.
Man, what kind of monster, what kind of callous person could possibly be opposed to that?
Do you hear how it turns the tables on the person raising the concerns and the critiques?
And so for the opponents of faith deconstruction, for the adherents of high-control religion, they will say, this is the core of the Christian tradition.
This is what is not touched by that critique.
Humans are fallen and imperfect.
And they may not perfectly express or practice God's redeeming vision, and maybe that's worthy of critique.
We're all still sinful, and we don't fully live out this vision that God has given us and so forth.
But this core teaching, this vision, there's nothing there to critique.
The focus is all on God's grace, on the quote-unquote free gift of salvation, and we're going to talk about next episode why I'm putting free gift in quotes, right?
On the extended hand that we just have to reach out and take.
It's like God is just waiting right there for us to accept what God is offering and so forth.
And let me tell you, folks, this is not hypothetical for me.
I have had more than one conversation with the partisans of high-control Christianity, some of whom are very well-versed in this, who articulate the core of the tradition in exactly these terms.
People that I went to college with who are still in evangelical ministry and things, when we started the podcast, I used to get lots of emails and instant messages and things like that from folks, and they would talk, and they'd be like, why would anybody be critical of this?
They would present the tradition basically as I have to.
Why would you ever be critical of this?
How self-centered do you have to be to oppose this?
How much do you have to distort the true teachings of Christianity to turn it into something bad or offensive?
And to many within high-control religion, that sounds plausible.
And this is really effective gaslighting, too, folks.
People who have concerns, they'll hear this and they'll be like, this is what the Christian tradition is.
I mean, tell me what about this it is that you oppose so much.
And all of a sudden, people feel like their questions seem kind of silly or their critiques maybe are self-centered or they start to doubt their own motivations.
to the uninitiated, to the people on the outside, to the person who maybe, I don't know, they come to one of those big outreach events and are drawn into the church and they hear this message, it sounds plausible.
What I have presented there, I think, is a compelling religious view or a kind of religious worldview, if you like.
And I think it is hard to see why a lot of people would sort of deconstruct from that.
If that's what their religion was, why would they leave it?
But folks...
That's the clue that this is gaslighting.
Because it's very unlikely that significant numbers of people would oppose such a redemptive religious vision.
When somebody says, why would anybody leave that?
My response is, yeah, that's a really good question.
Why would they?
And yet millions of people are.
Huh. Maybe it means all those millions of people aren't just all hard-hearted monsters.
Maybe that tells us that this love-bomb-y kind of presentation is not really what high-control Christianity is about.
That's the more straightforward understanding of what seems to many to be a contradiction.
It's not that people are selfish or stupid or hard-hearted.
It's that high-control Christianity isn't really about this core vision at all.
That once you're in it, once you see it, once you feel it...
Once you experience it, once you live through the bait-and-switch mechanisms of it that we'll get into next episode, you find that the love bombing was just a phase.
It wasn't really about the core of the tradition.
And for me, this is how we can know that the partisans of high-control religion aren't acting in good faith when they give us this vision of their religion.
This is the love bomb version that's intended to bring us in.
But again, once we're inside the high-control bubble, we find something very different.
Because let me tell you, folks, you talk to the people who undergo faith deconstruction, or if anybody wants to hear my story or whatever, I can rattle off that love-bombing, doctrinal love-bombing phase understanding of the tradition, and it sounds great, and then I can turn around and tell you, here's how it actually works in concrete terms within high-control religion.
We'll get into that next episode.
Let's draw these threads together.
I think, of course, if that redemptive vision was the vision, I think it is probably true that you wouldn't have people leaving this religion in droves.
And I'm not saying anything here about Christianity being true or better than other traditions or any of that nonsense.
All I'm saying is, I don't think you would have millions of adherents flowing out of this tradition if it was what that doctrinal love bomb vision tells you that it is.
But people are leaving high-control religion in droves, which brings us to believe that maybe this isn't the core of high-control Christianity at all.
And it's very much like—I was thinking about analogies of this—it's when the supposedly perfect marriage falls apart.
You have somebody who's in this relationship, and from the outside it's perfect, and it's all smiles, and they're always holding hands and doing all this stuff that everybody's just like, ugh, isn't that gross?
I mean, awesome, good for them, but kind of gross?
Ugh. And then it turns out that, you know, they split up and people are like, I don't understand it.
They just, they had such a great marriage, have such a great relationship.
Why would this happen?
Well, the answer is they clearly didn't have a great marriage.
They clearly didn't have a great relationship.
There was more to it that maybe people on the outside didn't see.
This is the same thing with high-control religion.
What we find, if we take a closer look at many of these core doctrines, is that they are far more insidious than they appear.
And we see that in the effects that they actually have, the way that they are actually used, in the way that they actually traumatize people and work toward the ends of control and coercion within high-control religion.
That is what faith deconstructors recognize.
That's the bait-and-switch, folks.
When the love bombing stops and the true practice, the true demands of these promises of this tradition come into view, That's what faith deconstructors are after.
That's what we're going to look at next episode.
We're going to look at this kind of rotten core at the heart of high-control Christianity next episode.
For now, again, just to highlight, you will get the love-bombing phase that basically says, why would anybody critique this?
All those critiques, maybe they're well-intentioned, but this, this beautiful vision is the core teaching of Christianity.
There's nothing to critique here.
There's nothing worthy of faith deconstruction in this.
That's the first move.
The second move is the bait-and-switch.
We'll pick up there next episode.
As always, thank you for listening again.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your interest.
Please keep the comments coming.
DanielMillerSwaj, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Thoughts on these episodes, feedback on these episodes, as subscribers know, the supplemental episodes that we do.
I often pick up some of the things I don't have time to get into here or feedback that I get from listeners and I address those things and portions of those episodes are available for non-subscribers as well.
Also, I've added episodes to this series as people have emailed me or reached out and said, hey, what about this?
What about that?
And they're great insights.
Always welcome additional concerns, pushback, all of that.
And finally, always looking for new episodes.
I've always got my eye out for sort of future episodes that we can have.
I have a lot of things kind of in the works and laid out for the next several months.
Please keep those ideas coming.
Again, Again, thank you so much for supporting us, for helping us do all the things that we do.
And please be well until we get a chance to talk again.
Thank you.
The term Bible Belt conjures images of old-time religion and conservative Christianities.
But what if I told you that the Bible Belt is more than holy rollers and holy judgment?
What if I told you that like any other belt, the Bible Belt is filled with holes that lead to unexpected places?
Where pastors and deacons and volunteer ministers demand equality and representation for gay couples, single moms, and anyone trying to get to the ballot box.
My name is Dr. Gillian Frank, and my new limited series podcast, Red State Religions, explores the persistence of liberal religious values and progressive politics in so-called red states.
By telling the stories of faith leaders, lay people, and congregations, and how they put faith into action.
