How to Identify & Prevent Spiritual Abuse in Religious Contexts: Review of Michael Kruger’s Bully Pulpit
Written with religious leaders as his primary audience, I found Michael Kruger’s book Bully Pulpit to be a compassionate, helpful resource on how religious communities can identify and prevent Spiritual Abuse. Kruger doesn’t just focus on stories of Spiritual Abuse–although those are well-incorporated–but instead spends extensive time on why churches fail to identify and expose spiritually abusive leaders, as well as the steps they can take to prevent Spiritual Abuse in their context.
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Kruger defines Spiritual Abuse as “when a leader–such as a pastor, elder, or head of a Christian organization–wields his position of spiritual authority in such a way that he manipulates, domineers, bullies, and intimidates those under him as a means of maintaining his own power and control.” (24) In light of this, how do we identify Spiritual Abuse? Kruger lists five characteristics of spiritually abusive leaders:
Hypercritical – Leading through fault-finding, hypercritical leaders will eagerly call attention to people’s character flaws, justifying their behavior as a “pointing out” issues in the person’s life that need correction. Hypercritical leaders also denigrate others to demoralize those below them as a form of control (28-29).
Cruel – Spiritually abusive leaders are often cruel, using manipulation tactics and severe language–such as cursing at their staff repeatedly or screaming at them–as a means of control and abuse (29).
Threats – Whether these threats are overt or implied, threats have a unique ability to intimidate and silence victims from speaking against the abusive leader (29-30).
Defensive – It’s often the irony of the situation that leaders who are unable to take criticism are quick to be highly critical of everyone around them (31-32).
Manipulation – Whether through structural (committees of ‘yes men’ to uphold what the pastor does) or relational manipulation (building loyalty through exclusivism), manipulative leaders often involve other leaders in their schemes, making abuse even more widespread.
Leaders accused of Spiritual Abuse will deploy a number of tactics to cover their tracks, such as building a coalition of defenders (79), insist due process wasn’t followed in investigating the complaint (80-84), claim to be a victim of slander (84-89), and even attack the character of victims (89-83).
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Kruger also provides some recommendations for preventing Spiritual Abuse from leaders, such as character evaluations, accountability, transparency, and seeking third-party investigations. Results from these approaches are mixed, but still some religious leaders might find the suggestions helpful.
As Spiritual Abuse stories continue to circulate, Kruger challenges readers to be aware of the warning signs of Spiritual Abuse, while taking preventative measures to ensure their religious community is not another national news story. I found this book to be an accessible, compassionate guide to preventing Spiritual Abusee in religious communities, and trust it will be helpful to some readers.
