Today’s post is mostly behind a paywall because a). it’s a perk for the paid subscriber community and b). these essays tend to be more personal. This week’s essay goes into a bit of the research I have been doing on cults, coercive control, and thought reform—and connecting the dots to evangelical Christianity here in the US. If you would like to be a paid subscriber but can’t afford it for any reason, please email me at dlmmcsweeneys or reply to this email, and we will get you sorted.
The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized, and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.
Robert Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Chapter 22, Ideological Totalism (1961)
Definition of brainwashing:
Having a single-minded devotion to something, with one person exuding an undue influence on you1.
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Jesus was a bracelet, tied around my wrist. What would he do? It was the question I was supposed to ask myself before every decision I made. It cut into the flesh around my hand the older I grew, but I couldn’t take it off. What would Jesus do? I didn’t know, he was a bearded, pale man in a white robe with a blue sash on it. He loved blonde little children, he told stories about sheep and seeds, and he died because of me. He suffered terrible, terrible agony because of my sins, and then he came back to life. He wants me to tell every single person that to believe in his name and trust in God was the only way to avoid an afterlife of eternal conscious torment. What would he do? He made every moment of his life about living for God, and therefore so should I.
When I was younger it was: be kind to your sisters. Obey your parents. Never complain. Be sweetly holy, like the children in the stories my mom read to us at night2. When you were scared or sad, imagine Jesus was with you, and try to not feel those emotions anymore. Jesus’ every thought was about saving the world and doing the will of God, and that’s what I should do.
In middle school and beyond it expanded: what music I listened to, what movies I watched, the feelings I felt towards others all got filtered through the lens of “what would Jesus do/think/say about this?” Every second lived for God, to expand God’s kingdom, to share the good news with those who hadn’t heard it before.
I saw other kids in youth group with the WWJD? bracelets on their wrists and I judged them. I saw what they were doing—swearing in the parking lot while they practiced their skateboarding, giggling about crushes on non-Christians, applying lip gloss while gossiping cruelly about a girl they were friends with. They were teenagers who were living for themselves, I saw. Bodies changing, hormones surging, emotions and physical sensations begging to be let out. Experimenting with clothes and kisses and music and aesthetics and questioning authority figures. Jesus wouldn’t do any of that, I thought. Jesus wanted us to obey. Obey the pastor who was the voice of God. Obey our parents, who God put in our lives. Obey the Truth with a capital T, which is what all the male pastors I ever heard preach said time and time again.
What Would Jesus Do? That question ruled my life, and my internal world. I didn’t spend much time hearing about the actual life and words of Jesus beyond his death and resurrection, I just had other people explain to me what he wanted me to do. Jesus, the pastors and theologians were fond of saying, emptied himself of his humanity. He had the ability to do whatever he wanted, and he chose to become a perfect vessel for God’s will. Everything he said or did was perfect, connected to scriptural tradition, and all a part of a long plan to fulfill God’s sacrificial system. What Would Jesus Do? He would meekly submit to a life where he was born to die, never have his own thoughts or opinions, and give it all to the cause. He would be a perfect foot soldier in God’s army, the most perfect one ever. And whatever he did, I must do as well.
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