Arterburn Stephen - Toxic faith: experiencing healing from painful spiritual abuse

P RAISE FOR T OXIC F AITH

Steve Arterburn plows new ground with this book.

B ILL H YBELS , pastor of Willow Creek Community Church,
author of Too Busy Not to Pray

The hot topic! The urgent issue! All tackled by the right man for a GREAT book.

D R . R OBERT S CHULLER , pastor

This man speaks with wisdom. He is one of the most relevant voices addressing the inner pains of both youth and adults.

D R . T ONY C AMPOLO , professor of sociology, Eastern College

A bold confrontation Integrating the principles in this book will be a major step in restoring spiritual and emotional health.

D AVID A. S TOOP , P H .D., clinical psychologist

With the utmost clarity Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton expose the hazards of a toxic faith and point us back to a real faith.

D R . A RCHIBALD H ART , author of Healing Lifes Hidden Addictions

Toxic Faith
P UBLISHED BY W ATER B ROOK P RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

Some of the stories in this book are composites of several different situations; details and names have been changed to protect identities.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78604-3

Copyright 1991, 2001 by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arterburn, Stephen, 1953
Toxic faith: understanding and overcoming religious addiction / Stephen
Arterburn and Jack Felton.
p. cm.
Originally published: Nashville: Oliver-Nelson, 1991.
1. Religious addictionChristianity. 2. Christian life. I. Felton, Jack, 1953
II. Title.

BR114 .A77 2001
248.2dc21

00-047700

v3.1

I would like to dedicate this book to Denny Bellesi,
pastor of Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo, California.
After a very toxic church experience, you asked me
to do nothing but heal in your church.
You were my first real pastor, and I did heal.
Thank you for your heart and integrity that restored my faith
and led to the creation of this book.
S. A.

Dedicated to my wife and children, Robin, Jack, and Christy
who make my life so enjoyable and helped me realize
the importance of healthy faith in my life.
J. F.

In 1989 Victor Oliver, my publisher with Thomas Nelson, called me with an idea for a book. Several authors already had turned him down, but he thought I might be interested. He suggested that I create a book to help men and women stuck in sick churches, to throw out a lifeline to hurting believers who had been used and abused and robbed of their relationship with God.

Victor knew that many believers struggle to find a real relationship with God because their groups rules, regulations, and religious rituals become the main forces in their lives, displacing a powerful and personal God. They grow blind to practices that misplace faith in faith, structure, false leaders, good works, and many other spiritual substitutes. Such false practices have the scent and feel of God, but they lack his holy presence. Victor knew that many religious folks are good people doing some very good and right things but for all the wrong reasonsresulting in a paradoxical separation from God rather than intimacy with God.

The discussion with Victor ended with my commitment to consider the project and pray about it. The authors he had contacted first had not wanted to write the book because of its negative topic, and negative topics do not produce bestsellersor so they thought.

But I knew a book like this needed to be written. I knew it because I had discovered that some of my own problems with the church (and by no means all) were not really my problems. That may sound smug, but I had come to realize that some of my thoughts and feelings about manipulative church leaders and practices were accurate, and that realization freed me to develop a real and authentic relationship with God.

Although I knew such a book could be vitally important for the body of Christ, I also knew that by myself I could not do justice to the subject. Therefore I turned to a counselor and theologian, Jack Felton. Jack not only supplied the information that I lacked, but he also came up with the title for our joint project: Toxic Faith. I suspected the bruised and broken would connect immediately with the title just as I did.

Toxic Faith was first released in 1991. To our surprise (and that of many others), it quickly grabbed a spot on the bestseller list. Publishers Weekly called it a future Christian Classic. Soon I received invitations to appear on television shows such as Oprah, Geraldo, Jenny Jones, Sally Jesse Raphael, and many othersgolden opportunities to share my faith with hundreds of millions of viewers. What a privilege to declare that the extremes of toxic faith featured in the media did not represent authentic faith or a focus on a real God!

Letters came pouring in from wounded readers (this was before the advent of the Internet)heartbreaking stories that ended with hope. I read story after story of leaders, husbands, family members, and pastors who used Scripture erroneously to grab or maintain control of others lives. Hundreds told us the book literally saved their lives. God had led them to the book just before a suicide attempt or after they had abandoned God altogether. Many days I cried over the long-term grief and newfound joy described in these letters. For the first time, these individuals realized that God loved them, no matter how someone in power had misrepresented God or used the Lords name to control and manipulate them. The book had encouraged these readers to refuse to judge God or the church on the basis of the toxic behavior of people who did not really know God and were not close to what God wanted the church to be. Freedom, healing, strength, and hope replaced bondage, shame, fear, and despair. We had cut in on the dance of self-deception and introduced tired dancers to a God who could not be manipulated and whose love could not be earned.

To this day, people still tell me stories of how the book changed their life and their relationship with God. To date I have published thirty-five booksand Toxic Faith is by far the most important and fulfilling of them all. If I could have published only one book, it would have been Toxic Faith.

Some time after the hardback edition of Toxic Faith came out, the publisher issued a paperback version under the title Faith That Hurts, Faith That Heals. Why the title change? many asked. The reason was simple. Some bookstore owners did not like the original title, even though it drew thousands of struggling believers to it. In order to reach a wider audience through the stores that never carried