Bullying in the church

Bullying/mobbing: Beige wooden peg "people" grouped on dark concrete so that it appears a whole crowd is against one

It was a Tuesday when all hell broke loose against me at my workplace. Tension had been building for several weeks, but that day brutal behavior erupted. By evening, I arrived home feeling like I’d been dragged behind a Mack truck.

The truck kept going – and dragging me behind it – for nearly 15 months. The abuse stopped only when I left the abusive situation.

I worked for a church organization.

Four years later, I learned a name for what I had experienced. It’s called mobbing, or adult bullying. I learned how prevalent this type of abuse is and how devastating to the person bullied or mobbed.1

Five more years had passed when I came across a post titled, “Grown-up Bullying,”  in which author Lynne Shallcross interviews Jessi Eden Brown, a licensed counselor and Professional Coach with the Workplace Bullying Institute.2

In that piece, Brown describes what I experienced – and the damage such experiences can yield.

Subtle, insidious, persistent

To begin, she references this definition:3

Workplace Bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is:

  • Threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, or
  • Work interference – sabotage – which prevents work from getting done, or
  • Verbal abuse

With the note that such bullying can sometimes include all three types of misconduct and can also happen in the church, that nails it. So do these excerpts from “Grown-up Bullying”:

Brown calls workplace bullying a form of psychological violence. “Although popular media frequently portray the workplace bully as a volatile, verbally abusive boss, in actuality, the behaviors tend to be more subtle, insidious and persistent.”

“Examples include stealing credit for others’ work, assigning undue blame, using highly public and humiliating criticism, threatening job loss or punishment, denying access to critical resources, applying unrealistic workloads or deadlines, engaging in rumors and gossip, endeavoring to turn others against a person and deliberate attempts to sabotage someone’s work or professional reputation.”

“There is a significant body of research linking workplace bullying to physical, mental, social and economic health harm for the bullied target,” Brown says.

Studies have linked repeated exposure to stressful events such as bullying to severe physical ailments, including cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal problems and increased levels of cortisol, among other things.

The psychological harm from bullying can be just as devastating. “Panic disorder, general anxiety disorder, major depression, substance abuse and dependence, acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder are but a few of the diagnoses encountered when working with targets of workplace bullying.”

“The stress and exhaustion that targets endure is often isolating and paralyzing. After all, it is generally the bully’s goal to disempower the target. Even when they do speak up, targets of workplace bullying tell us their employers, family and friends do not often believe them nor understand how it could be so distressing.

“In most cases, the target has done nothing to deserve the treatment [he or she is] receiving,” she says. “The bully chooses the target, timing and tactics. Also, the target may have very little control or influence over these factors. The responsibility to stop the abusive behavior rests with the employer … [However,] 72 percent of bullies are bosses, and standing up to the boss can easily be misinterpreted as insubordination.”

It’s agonizing to be mobbed. The agony multiplies exponentially when you have believed the abusers and their colluders to be godly Christians. The pain of such a betrayal cannot be overstated.

If

If you’ve been bullied/mobbed in a church or ministry setting, know this: You did not deserve what has been done to you. It does not reflect who God is. He hates that such abuse has been done in his name. He is not fragile. He is not narcissistic. You can go to him with your grief, your anger, your questions, your complaints. He will hear you. He will love you. He may not answer in the time or the way you would like. But he is faithful and just.

If you have not been bullied in a church or ministry setting, know this: It is so common as to be epidemic. What’s more, it’s often well-hidden by the godly appearance of the perpetrators and the whisper campaigns used to discredit and isolate the target. Before I was bullied, two people came to me and told me how badly they had been mistreated by the person who later instigated the mobbing done to me. I wanted to believe them, but I could not see it. I still thought the abusive leader godly. Bullying in a “Christian” setting may well have devastated someone you know.

If you’ve participated in bullying in a church or ministry setting, know this: Bullying exposes control issues and cowardice. It exposes misplaced loyalties and divided hearts. What you did, or failed to do, reveals a hidden idol in your heart – something you’re so eager to protect that you colluded in hurting someone deeply and in dragging God’s name through the mud. I urge you: Ask God to show you what has hooked you into participating in such a thing. Choose to see, and to turn.

Culture of bullying

The bullying I experienced 15 years ago stopped when I chose to leave the abusive situation. But then it reoccurred, more than once, in different settings.

As I struggled to understand, “Why does this keep happening?” I finally realized:

Bullying of adults by other adults doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Bullying thrives in abusive systems where manipulation, coercion and control are practiced and accepted as the norm. The abusive system may be a family, a workplace, a school, a community, a culture, a church culture.

Here’s the tell: When someone speaks up about bullying in such a system, the people with power to stop the abuse do not. Instead, the bullying escalates and expands into mobbing. Vicious but insidious pummeling by a growing crowd continues – until the “troublemaker,” who dared to ask that a wrong be made right, knuckles under, or leaves, or dies.

I grew up in a toxic system and did not know it. As an adult, I accepted coercive control as the norm – until the trauma of repeated bullying propelled me to do what I otherwise would never have done:

Run to God, asking to see. Press in to the awful truth as he has showed it to me. Cling to him and go with him, as he has worked to free me from a culture of bullying. Especially a culture of bullying in the church.


The original version of this post was published March 29, 2013.

See also

Footnotes

  1. For an in-depth look at adult bullying in the workplace, see Mobbed! by Janice Harper. ↩︎
  2. Lynne Shallcross, “Grown-up Bullying,” Counseling Today, March 1, 2013. ↩︎
  3. What follows is the definition of workplace bullying as it appeared on the Workplace Bullying Institute website when this post was first published. ↩︎

This Post Has 10 Comments

  1. Julia

    Thank you for your article. It touched me deeply as I have been experiencing a very subtle insidious type of bullying for years which has caused me a great deal of emotional distress. In my case, it happens even when I change churches. I have stopped going to church but continue to study the Bible on my own. I don’t understand why this is happening. I have tried confronting individuals in the past, which only led to denial or smirky faces. I need some specific advice as to what I can do. Is there anything I can do besides pray?

    1. keytruthsblogger

      Julia, thank you for speaking up. I’m very sad that you too have experienced this type pain. I’m still learning why this happens so often, especially to women in the church. I believe there’s a mindset in our church culture that denies women adulthood and even personhood. I believe that’s one root of bullying.

      1. Josie

        I agree. I think churches do not value women . They see them as extensions of the men in their lives. I left yet a second church. But I think it’s women who primarily target other women. Not saying men don’t harass women. But I have found over the years women or a leading female who for whatever reason feels threatened by me or another female due to better talents or whatnot will start a mobbing campaign. I have never understood why other women do not learn to think for themselves and go along with such women

        1. Deborah

          Thank you for speaking up, Josie. My own experience of bullying in the church was launched by women who targeted me – and enabled by the male leaders who gave them authority to do it. I’ve written about it in the post, “Behind the facade in the SBC.”

        2. Liv

          I am a woman and I think women in the church are despicable creatures.

  2. Allison

    Thank you for sharing your experiences and your knowledge. I am currently going through something similar, and one of the hardest parts is that the bully is someone that I considered my friend. Being ostracized, humiliated, and ridiculed has been the hardest thing I have endured, and I am a very strong person.

    I continue to pray for those who participate in the bullying, and I pray for a Christ-like work environment where everyone is working together to make the community a better place.

    Please keep me in your prayers, and please know that your braveness in sharing your story is helping.

    1. Deborah

      Allison, yes I will pray. My situation involved betrayal by a close friend, as well. Step by step, may you overcome by the grace and strength of the Lord.

  3. Linda

    It’s so sad to read this and know that it happens, why are those bullies not name the organizations that allowed this or even encouraged this behavior? We know of those forced to sign NDA’s but don’t they usually have a time limit?

    1. Deborah

      I wish it were that simple, Linda: “Expose the organization. Warn others. See justice triumph.” But in this abuse dynamic, like others, the people in power are able to manipulate the story to make the target appear to be the problem. People in the system who know better will not speak up, for fear of getting the same treatment. So if a target of bullying goes public, they are disbelieved, discredited and further abused. And the “exposed” organization suffers no ill effects. In fact, people will often rise up to defend it. Sadly, all of this is especially true when the abusive organizations are churches or ministries.

  4. Rowena

    I agree Deborah, I believe it’s epidemic. What made it worse in my case, and no doubt in yours (and many others) was that people immediately try to make you look at what you did to “attract” it to yourself. What I’ve learned is that usually the narcissist/sociopath or even psychopath that are dishing out the abuse have targeted you because of your good traits (quite often empathy and good work ethics, rather than unhealed areas or lack of boundaries in your life). These people are NOT rational human beings. You cannot reason with them. They do it to you to receive their narcissistic supply and it’s really as simple as that. It’s really ugly.

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