{"id":78584,"date":"2024-06-23T11:38:20","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T16:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=78584"},"modified":"2024-06-23T11:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T16:42:02","slug":"spiritual-abuse-part-1-definitions-and-signs-of-spiritual-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=78584","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Abuse: Part 1\u2014Definitions and Signs of Spiritual Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Word from Bob<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>This is Part 1 of a three-part series on spiritual abuse.<\/p>\n<p>  Part 1, <em>Definitions and Signs of Spiritual Abuse<\/em>: I\u2019ll define spiritual abuse and I\u2019ll share signs of spiritually abusive leadership. Part 2: I\u2019ll collate and share biblical passages about spiritual abuse. Part 3: I\u2019ll collate, link to, and provide a brief summary of several resources on spiritual abuse.  <strong>A Short History of My Acquaintance with Spiritual Abuse<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>While our Christian world seems only recently to be highlighting spiritual abuse, I\u2019ve been thinking about, researching, and writing about spiritual abuse for some time.<\/p>\n<p>I first began studying issues related to spiritual abuse thirty-two years ago in 1992\u2014when I was experiencing spiritual abuse. I didn\u2019t even know the label \u201cspiritual abuse\u201d at the time. Then I read David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen\u2019s book, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Subtle-Power-Spiritual-Abuse-Manipulation\/dp\/0764201379\/\">The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church<\/a><\/em>. First published in 1991, as I read the book, it felt like the authors were looking inside my soul and were privy to my situation. They were so \u201cspot-on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the next two decades I studied, taught, and wrote about what the Scriptures say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spiritual abuse is a spiritual role-reversal. Rather than feeding the sheep, the shepherd becomes the wolf feeding on the sheep.<br \/>\nThe post Spiritual Abuse: Part 1\u2014Definitions and Signs of Spiritual Abuse appeared first on RPM Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":78598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2043],"class_list":["post-78584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rpm-ministries-bob-kellemen","tag-spiritual-abuse","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/spiritual-abuse-652096b67c4a9-12.jpg?fit=768%2C432&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78599,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78584\/revisions\/78599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/78598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}