I hope to post several blogs inspired by the American Atheists Conference, but for right now, I’m going to write about the experience that was the most meaningful to me.  I mentioned before going that I was anxious to hear Nate Phelpsspeak, and I have to say that his speech was much more than I expected.  For one thing, I learned afterwards that this was the first time he’s spoken publicly about his experiences.  For another, in speaking with his wife, I learned that they had driven forty-one hours from British Columbia to Atlanta so that he could speak.  

Nate Phelps

Nate’s speech, which lasted for around forty minutes, was sometimes painful to listen to.  He spoke of horrible, despicable acts of abuse, both physical and mental, and of the tyrannical, sociopathic dictator of a father who literally made the lives of his wife and thirteen children a living hell.  He read his speech, rather nervously, and it was obvious that he is still living with the mental scars of his upbringing.  At one point, he showed us the kind of  handle Fred used to beat his children — a four or five foot long piece of wood not unlike an axe-handle.  He explained how his father learned the most effective ways of causing excruciating pain;  for instance, he would hit his children in one particular spot enough that a bruise would raise up and blood would accumulate over the course of ten or fifteen minutes, and then he would hit them again in the same spot, causing the skin to break, and inflicting terrible pain.  When he was particularly irate, he would hit them behind the knee, or on the small of the back, where the pain would be the most searing and brutal.

Like everyone else in the room, I listened with a mix of shock, rage, and pity.  We all felt sympathy for him, and also pride and admiration at the physical bravery and mental courage he’s shown since deciding to leave the family.  But I felt an additional emotion, and after the speech was over, I was lucky enough to be able to tell him personally what it had meant to me.  In listening to Nate, I discovered something about myself that was deeply disturbing, but has instilled in me a new sense of determination to end the power of parents to indoctrinate their children into religion.

As I’ve said before, I don’t like talking much about my own life, but I must do so now to make my point clearly.  I have nothing on Nate Phelps.  I was mainly raised by my mother, who loved me and doted over me and never once, in my entire childhood, did anything with the intention of causing me pain.  Though I was probably over-sheltered, anyone looking at my upbringing would probably say that it was about as good as anyone could expect.

However, I was indoctrinated into religion.  We were in church every Sunday morning, and most Sunday nights, as well as Wednesdays at various points of my life.  In many ways, church was my most frequent social activity, and though my indoctrination was not mean-spirited, it was thorough.  By the time I was in high school, I was a full fledged born again Christian, and I thought quite poorly of everyone who was not (and many who were, but didn’t live up to my standards).  I went to Vacation Bible School, and summer camps not unlike that in Jesus Camp.  We went to healing services, prayer services, Bible studies, exorcisms, Christian Values seminars, Christian Finance seminars, evangelism crusades, and Christian music concerts.  My mother and my grandmother, despite being warm, compassionate, loving people, brainwashed and indoctrinated me into not only the Christian faith, but also the Christian mindset — nonrational, repressive, patriarchal, divisive, and exclusionary.

Back to Nate Phelps.  As I was listening to his speech, there were several moments when tears welled up in my eyes, my heart raced, and I felt as if I was having trouble breathing.  At first I thought I was feeling sympathy for Nate, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case.  I wasn’t moved to tears at hearing about how Fred beat his children, or about how he made them run 20 miles a day after selling candy in strip clubs for seven hours.  I was moved to tears when he spoke of the mental anguish he felt while his child brain tried to work through the cognitive dissonance, and the outright absurdity of the beliefs that his father had brainwashed him into accepting.

I was not feeling sympathy.  I was reliving my own childhood.

That realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and brought a whole new set of emotions.  Even after more than a decade of being an outspoken atheist activist, living hundreds of miles from home, and leaving my Christian life behind, I am still moved to tears when I remember how hard it was for me to break free from religion.  My chest still constricts when I recall the cold sweats that came unbidden when I pondered the “reality” of hell as a true believer.  I feel rage when I remember sitting on the toilet after masturbating, feeling intense guilt at having succumbed to weakness — again — and even more guilt for enjoying it, and even more guilt for not being good enough to remove myself from my own sexual desires.  I remember the first girl who wanted to date me in high school.  Mary.  (I can’t recall her last name.)  I was terrified of her, and even more terrified of holding hands with her or kissing her, because I had been taught in church and in Bible Camp that even such seemingly innocuous activities could lead to the fires of hell, since they were gateways into premarital sex.  I held hands with Mary once, and then told her I couldn’t go out with her.

My mother didn’t intend to cause me mental distress.  She had no idea that after hearing one particularly charismatic (and fundamentalist) preacher, I would — for nearly three weeks — keep myself awake at night for fear that as I drifted off to sleep, my thoughts would stray to something sexual (and therefore wrong) and I would be possessed by a demon.  She had no idea that I would marry the first girl I dated seriously so that I wouldn’t feel guilty about having sex anymore.  How could she possibly have known that even though her own views were substantially more moderate than many of our preachers, my vulnerable brain would soak in and accept the most draconian views with which I was presented?

The answer is that she couldn’t know.  She is innocent of the charge Intent to Cause Mental Harm.  Nevertheless, I was mentally harmed, and decades later, when I listened to someone who I should have almost nothing in common with, I felt the same emotions he was feeling, because I had experienced them, too.  Make no mistake — Nate Phelps has been abused in far more ways than me.  He was the victim of intentional, mean-spirited, sociopathic physical, mental, and emotional abuse.  He was the victim of intentional brainwashing, fear-mongering, and vicious repression.  His father is a horrible, horrible man who should be locked up.

Yet, as I sat there, I realized that I, too, was abused.  My abuse was unintentional, but does that make the tears I shed yesterday any less real?  Even as I type these words, I feel a pang of guilt.  Even though I am emotionally distant from my mother, and have been so since leaving religion, it galls me at a very deep level to admit to myself, much less to thousands of readers, that my mother subjected me to brainwashing and emotional abuse.  I want desperately to clear her of the charges, for she meant well.  She never wanted anything but the best for me, but because she, too, was brainwashed, she unintentionally heaped on me the same baggage she has carried her whole life, and still carries to this day.

On one level, I can’t empathize with Nate Phelps.  I have no frame of reference from which to try to imagine what he went through.  On another level, I know precisely what he experienced because I went through it, too.  Nate’s wife told me that he had been feeling as if he didn’t have anything meaningful to say to a bunch of atheists, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.  He is a product of one of the worst kinds of religious abuse, but his story casts glaring light on the dirty fact that even the most well-intentioned religious indoctrination is still religious indoctrination — and therefore,still abuse.

I am now more firmly convinced than ever that any pretense of religious moderation is a lie.  Religious indoctrination is child abuse.  Religious indoctrination that includes lies about human sexuality is sexual abuse.  Abuse committed by those who did not intend to abuse is still abuse.  Those who would dismiss Nate Phelps as the product of a mentally ill extremist would be partially correct.  Most theists love their children and try not to cause them harm.  However, the stark clarity of Nate’s religious abuse cannot be so easily dismissed.  If we are honest, I believe that most of us who grew up in a religiously indoctrinating environment would have to admit that we suffered.  Perhaps not everyone was as sensitive as me, but does the sensitivity of the victim change the nature of the crime?   Do we punish rapists based on how much mental trauma was suffered by the victim, or by the nature of the crime itself?  We can no longer look at religious indoctrination and turn a blind eye.  It is abuse, and if we are not standing firmly against it, we are silently condoning it.