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Goodbye Jesus

Research: Seeking Disabled/chronically Ill People Who Left Christianity


NaomiJ

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I've asked permission from staff to post this. Hope it doesn't offend anyone. Questions welcome!

 

I'm a PhD researcher at SOAS, University of London. I have an MA in Dsability Studies. I'm currently researching the experiences of Christians and former Christians who are disabled or have chronic illness (including long-term mental health problems). This is critical disability studies research - I'm not aligned with any Christian church, but am critically analysing their responses to disabled and chronically ill people. Which, as you can imagine, are very varied.

 

I'm missing a substantial group of people for this research: people who have left churches for reasons connected with disablity or illness. I know from anecdotal evidence that there are people who are leaving in part because of the churches' attitudes to disabled people and illness. However, I can't argue this unless I can find people willing to talk to me about it. I suspected that a forum like this might include some people with relevant experience, or perhaps people who know of some possible contacts. I'd be so grateful to anyone willing to talk to me about it. I'm involving people in any way that they'lre comfortable with, as long as I can ask questions and discuss with them - this has so far included in-person interviews, Skype conversations, text conversations, email exchanges. Accessibility is more important than strict validity, in this project, because so little has been written on the subject and so few stories have been shared.

 

Some notes on my methodology. I'm a qualitative researcher, exploring people's stories (rather than collecting statistics, at least on this occasion). I'm committed to the emancipatory research paradigm, developed by Mike Oliver and other disability studies scholars, Among other things, this means being committed to fair and involved representation of the experiences of participants and the disabled community (such as it is). Although I am not a Christian myself, I have a research advisory group of three disabled Christians advising me on access to the community and ensuring that I don't go off in directions that represent me more than my participants. I'm happy to send people more details on this methodology if they want to read about it before committing to taking part in the research.

 

I am primarily self-funded, but I do have some funding from the St Luke's College Foundation to cover research costs. This is allowing me to refund participants expenses, pay them a small amount for their time, and to ensure that venues are accessible and that accessibility arrangements (like British Sign Language interpretation) can be paid for.

 

Any questions welcome. I'll do my best to answer - but a note of warning that I have Asperger's Syndrome and don't always communicate as clearly as I'd like to. I'll try, though!

 

- Naomi

http://naomijacobs.wordpress.com

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My thoughts are not likely to help your research, but I will offer my perspective based on my nearly 40 year association with hard core Christian fundamentalism in the Bible Belt of the U.S. The American South.

 

I can give a lot of examples of mental abuse & cult like behavior that is common in the fundamentalist versions of Deep South American Christianity but I never witnessed anything that would even come close to abuse towards a disabled person. just the opposite actually. The disabled and seriously ill were loved & ministered to In every possible way. They were provided food, their homes were cleaned, & their yards kept up neat & trimmed. They were taken to their doctor appointments & child care was provided if needed.

 

I can provide a long list of things that are wrong with religion but failing to minister to members in need isn't one of them. That is one thing the do very well.

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This is excellent. I really hope there will eventually be quantitative research too so we get the bigger picture, but these people do deserve a voice either way.

 

I can answer some questions about what I saw and experienced in a rural European Pentecostal church (details on my location by pm only) but I didn't leave that one because of its attitude towards illness. In my later years before deconverting I was a liberal New Age type Christ follower, so that might be out of your scope, but if it's not, I have a thing or two to tell about it that might interest you.

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I have bipolar disorder (type 2) that wasn't diagnosed until I was 32. But it's been an issue since I was a teenager. I left the fundamentalist Christian cult at the age of 34 (I'm 49 now). I was prayed for many times to be healed of what we now know is bipolar disorder. I experienced many intense emotional highs, but of course I never experienced divine healing. Obviously, there is no such thing. I believe my suffering was made worse than it had to be by mental and emotional abuse that I wouldn't have been subjected to if I hadn't been a Christian. No one in 15 years in church ever suggested that I might have a mental health condition. I was never advised to seek professional help of any kind. They just expected God to take care of it, which of course he never did since he doesn't actually exist.

 

I'm more than happy to talk to you. Feel free to PM me here, or we can Skype too. I live in Anchorage, Alaska. 

 

Glory!

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I agree with Geezer, if they acknowledge a disability they go out of their way to take care of and provide for the person. It gives them a sense of prestige, I think, to be able to say they helped someone in need. However, the mental abuse they inflict in the name of God can make for permanent scarring or disability that they refuse to acknowledge but I am not sure if people leave religion for that. Christianity has built-in defenses against abuse beginning with the Lord's Prayer: Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. Any abused person is liable to apply that to him or herself and consider it an obligation to forgive the abuser if he/she wishes to obtain God's forgiveness. 

 

I think it happens quite commonly that a person leaves a strict conservative form of Christianity for a more liberal form if they want or need something that the conservative Christians forbid. In my case, I was from an extremely conservative group that forbade education beyond elementary school. I was unable to find satisfying work inside the community and eventually left that specific group for a much more liberal one in order to get a university education. After some years I ended up leaving Christianity altogether, but not for abuse or due to disabilities but for personal integrity because I felt basic Christian tenets failed to mesh with reality. I was tested at university because disabilities were suspected and confirmed, which puts me in the disabled category. If you are interested in talking to me, feel free to send a pm, though I am not sure how I qualify for the stated intentions of your project.

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Thanks so much for the comments! It's interesting to hear that some of you feel that the church does well with disability. I think it probably depends on the individual churches and denominations - I'm finding some very good work (though it's often very paternalistic), but also some negative experiences such as 'exorcisms', healing prayer imposed on people who don't want it, and so on. One of my aims is to demonstrate the wide range of attitudes towards disability in the churches.

 

R,S, Martin, I'm not sure you'd fit my research, but thanks so much for the offer. Brother Jeff, it would be very interesting to talk to you, perhaps over Skype. I'll PM!

 

yunea, again your story isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but I'd be interested to talk to you about it anyway, as one of my future ideas for research is the 'new age' style of post-Christianity and their healing practices. I'll drop you a PM.

 

Thanks so much again, all!

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Just out of curiousity, what kind of disabilities that people have that you're interested in talking to about? I was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability about five years ago if that matters and wouldn't mind responding to any questions you might have.

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Tiffani: All kinds of disabilities, because of how little research has been done on this subject so far. I'm definitely including specific learning difficulties like yours. I'll send more info about ways of taking part via PM. Thanks!

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If it fits your research, i would be happy to share my experiences of growing up inside the church and having OCD (undiagnosed at the time).

I also attended two churches that believed in faith healing to different degrees, so there are some fun attitudes there.

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SCM, that would be absolutely fantastic. I'm slightly lower on participants with mental health problems than physical, so it would be great to talk to you. I'll send a PM. Thank you so much, in advance.

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That's great if I can be of help later. For future reference, I have practised the healing energy channeling even myself.

In the group I was active in, "help" was offered for the sick in the form of prayer, energy, clairvoyance, past life readings, tarot etc but at the same time they could be strongly against modern medicine, especially psych meds, for various strange reasons.

Looking forward to talking with you via pm.

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Naomi: I think I can give you what you're looking for (what I have to say is too personal to post here) Send me a PM.

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I'm congenitally blind and have Asperger's syndrome. I've had both positive and negative experiences depending on the church I attended. Send me a PM if you want more info.

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I am totally blind. I don't share Geezer's attitude about church people and disabilities. I don't think they were particularly mean about anything, just that I always found myself trying to skirt around some of their advances. I suppose if I had needed certain types of physical things, I might have had a different experience. But they offered rides, often, in exchange for trying to get me to think like them. Get the creationist apologist guy to give the blind computer guy rides and try and talk him into a 6-day worldview.

I had a foray with the healing types in my 20s, and again, they had such a predominant narrative about disabled people being helpless that they had a hard time fitting me into their particular magic show. They wanted a helpless blind guy who, in the words of one of the elder ladies, "couldn't button his shirt," so they could heal that. I was working at the time, had a family, etc. But those are rare, they're the strict healing types.

 

I didn't leave Christianity because of disability anything, even though some Christian people find a blind atheist to be an anathema. I'm not even sure I left Christianity, more like I found I was out of it.

 

Happy to answer any questions you might have. But I don't really play into the identity politics or victim roles that the dominant narratives seem to wish to foist on some of us. Just an average guy, no super senses here, just a middle aged dad who works in the technology industry and volunteers in the emergency services and disaster preparedness field.

 

I admit I don't know anything about this survey methodology but I think you'll find that disabilities are mere characteristics or properties, not roles and behaviors. Consequently they may or may not play a part in why one would lose faith. Certainly some of the optical illusions the pentecostals produce are ineffective if you're stone blind like I am. But most of Christianity doesn't even believe in those anyhow, and I was not raised around that.

 

PM me and I can email you or we can Skype or something like this. Email might be preferable so I can consider carefully your questions, since I'm pretty inexperienced at doing any sort of surveys.

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I can toss in on the mental health issues if you need it, though there isn't much to say. Feel free to message me.

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Guest sylensikeelyoo

I had asthma as a child and a "faith healing" incident that occurred when I was 7 led to my hospitalization for 2 days. I can talk about that if you would like.

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