Episode 218 (Transcript) Faith, Control and Identity—The Impact of a High-Demand Religion | A Conversation with C.A. Larson

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Amanda Davis, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

---

CAL: The fear-based compliance, like, it affects so many aspects of our lives. Like, when we give our authority to an external source, we often look to them to make all our decisions. There's also a sense of belonging that is lost if you see things differently than the majority of your faith community. This can ignite fear because we worry if we don't obey these guidelines, we fear punishment, and that bad things will happen to us.

And this is religious abuse and it's based on fear.

CW: Hello, I'm Cynthia Winward. 

SH: And I'm Susan Hinckley. 

CW: And this is At Last she Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today's episode is “Faith, Control, and Identity: The Impact of a High Demand Religion, A Conversation With C.A. Larson.”

Welcome back, C.A.!

SH: Welcome!

CAL: Thank you. It's nice to be here. 

CW: It's always nice to have our resident therapist come back on and give us more goodies to think about. And I think it was our last episode you came on episode 194 and that one was called “Religion, Spirituality, Mental Health.” Well, it was a combo of all that. “Oh, my,” I think it was actually in the title, “Religion,Spirituality, Mental Health, Oh My!” 

SH: Yes. 

CW: Because we kind of packed a lot in, but one of the things there we couldn't pack in and we decided we would have you back on next season, which is today, was to talk about kind of the control part of it. The abuse part. Am I gonna say the A-word right away? Abuse. 

I mean, high demand religions, that's who we are. We're part of that. So we're gonna just cram it all in again, another hour with you, C.A. So thanks again for being here with us, so much. 

CAL: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

CW: So do you wanna go ahead and give us a less sloppy intro than what I just said to our topic today? And then we'll jump in. 

CAL: No, I think I would just say that in preparing the podcast on religion and spirituality, it led me to thinking about a book I had recently read called When Religion Hurts You, by Laura Anderson. And I think that then kind of informed that part of it that we decided needed to have its own space.

And so today, I think, is, yeah, and I think that's what, exactly, the impact of high demand religion is. Does it hurt or help? And it isn't that there aren't lots of ways it helps, but today we are really gonna focus on the ways that, mostly, on the ways that it hurts. 

CW: Okay. 

CAL: Okay, so I think, you know, probably everyone knows what we refer to when we say a high demand religion, but I just wanted to give a brief definition of that. And so this is the one that I like the best: 

“A high demand religion is a religious group that exerts significant control over its members' beliefs, behaviors, and daily lives. These groups often require strict adherence to doctrine, discourage independent thinking, and use social, psychological, or spiritual pressure to maintain compliance.”

And in addition to that, Laura Anderson, in the book I mentioned, wrote, “Religion has traditionally been considered a protective and pro-social factor that helps individuals cope with distressing and harmful situations. Because of this, religion's potential harmful effects have remained relatively untouched, as have the nuances of religion that lead to abuse and trauma.”

CW: That makes sense. 

SH: I feel like a lot of people right now are thinking, “Our church doesn't, nobody controls me. Our church doesn't do that.” But the thing that I thought of immediately when you were reading that definition is that when we have a setup where we have the temple recommend process as a bar for entering the temple, where you're very specifically asked about beliefs that you have to assent to in order to gain access to that level in our church, then yeah. 

CAL: And it's beliefs and behaviors, 

SH: They're pretty controlling of belief. It's both. Right. 

CW: I think both.

SH: And behaviors I can sort of see, but I always feel like beliefs, even like, ratchet the pressure up a little bit more, because that's trying to control, you know, even what you're thinking and how you feel about things.

Right? Or at least what you feel at liberty to express. And that's a different thing but that's control of a kind that, in my opinion, can be really damaging over time. 

CAL: Yeah. You're right. It's kind of like the external is the behaviors, right? That's always going to be part of a, especially a high demand religion where they expect certain behaviors but the beliefs is an internal thing.