Church Trauma and Spiritual “Knowledge” (#317)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this powerful return conversation with Heather Griffin, I revisit our popular "Mount Rushmore" of evangelical epistemology concepts: knowledge is easy, Bible facts, sincerity culture, and sanctified common sense. Heather shares her devastating experiences advocating for abuse survivors within the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), revealing how institutional structures that appear to provide accountability often fail catastrophically. She describes the ACNA's unique problems where bishops operate with little oversight while clergy take vows of obedience, creating a system where speaking out against abuse can end a priest's career. The conversation takes a deeply personal turn as Heather recounts her husband Paul's near-death experience and the beautiful community response that surrounded them—creating a painful contrast with how that same community has failed abuse survivors. Heather's story highlights how even good people who demonstrate Christ-like love in crisis can become complicit in institutional failure when confronting systemic abuse, raising profound questions about spiritual transformation and institutional integrity. In the second patron-only half of the episode, Heather details her disillusionment with Christian leadership after experiencing narcissistic abuse from a bishop she trusted, explores her crisis of faith in light of these betrayals, and reflects on finding new pathways to spiritual connection despite her profound grief and disappointment. Previous Episode with Heather | “Bible Truths,” “Sanctified Common Sense,” & “Evangelical Insta-Trust: (#123) Highlights 12:26 Advocacy Work and Institutional Breakdown 24:19 Challenges within the Anglican Church of North America 45:05 Navigating Spiritual Abuse and Betrayal ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Edited by Josh Gilbert (joshgilbertmedia.com -- he is accepting more work!) Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to You Have Permission, the show that aims to take both Christianity and the modern world of science and culture very seriously.
0:13.7	My name's Dan Koch. I'm a licensed therapist and a post-evangelical liberal Protestant trying to make sense in a world of hard knowledge,
0:24.1	not easy knowledge, Heather Griffin. Heather Patton Griffin, thank you for being back, Heather.
0:30.1	Oh, so good to be with you all. The first time we spoke was three years ago for episode number
0:34.9	123, 123. It is a listener favorite, it is a personal favorite
0:39.8	episode. You came back a year later to talk about the concepts from that first episode as they
0:47.8	related to what then was the unfolding Southern Baptist Convention scandal, basically abuse cover-up scandal. If people will
0:56.8	wind their mental clocks back to 20, 22, they will remember a pretty big hubbub there. And then
1:03.7	we also did a patron-exclusive episode since then, but you haven't been on the main feed for two
1:08.6	years. Producer Josh, Josh Gilbert, was like, Dan, you got to get Heather back on.
1:12.9	And I was like, duh, of course I do.
1:14.7	So credit to Josh.
1:15.8	Thank you, Josh.
1:16.6	Hi, Josh.
1:17.5	And what we're going to do today is your version of one of these still Christian episodes
1:23.0	with special reference to the ongoing, I would say very important.
1:27.2	And as we're going to hear
1:28.5	quite demoralizing work that you've been doing with both the Anglican Church of North America
1:34.4	and survivors of the International House of Prayer, abuse scandals. Oh, and also the Episcopal
1:41.5	Church. And that's right. Let's throw one more in. Yes. And the Episcopal Church. And that's right. Let's throw it one more in.
1:44.8	Yes.
1:45.2	And the Episcopal Church.
	...

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