Introduction to Spiritual/Religious Abuse

Welcome back, listeners! Season 4 tackles the topic of spiritual and religious abuse. In this introduction your hosts Dr. Arnd-Caddigan and Léa Fae Caddigan discuss their personal relationship with spiritual abuse and the inspiration behind this season's topic. A short and sweet introduction to the material before delving deeply into the topic in subsequent episodes.

Sources for this season are listed below.

Callaway, Ewen. 2014. "Chicken Project Gets off the Ground." Nature 509, no. 7502: 546.
Piller, Ingrid. 2016. Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cashwell, Craig S. and Paula J. Swindle. 2018. “When Religion Hurts: Supervising Cases of Religious Abuse.” The Clinical Supervisor, 37. No. 1: 182-203.

Demasure, Karlijn. 2022. “The Loss of the Self—Spiritual Abuse of Adults in the Context of the Catholic Church.” Religions, 13: 509.

Diederick, F. Remy. 2017. Broken Trust: A Practical Guide to Identify and recover from Toxix Faith, Toxic Church, and Spiritual Abuse. Self Published.

Downie, Alison. 2022. “Christian Shame and Religious Trauma.” Religions 13: 925.

Ellis, Heidi M., Joshua N. Hook, Sabrina Zuniga, Adam S. Hodge, Kristy M. Ford, Don E. Davis, and Daryl R. Van Tongeren. 2022. “Religious/Spiritual Abuse and Trauma: A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature.” Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 9, no. 4: 213-231.

Finch, Jamie L. 2019. You are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity. Self Published.

Johnson, David & Jeff van Vonderen. 1991. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church. Minneapolis: Bethany House.

Knapp, Patrick J. 2021. Understanding Religious Abuse and Recovery. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications.

Kvarfordt, Connie L. 2010. “Spiritual Abuse and Neglect of Youth: Reconceptualizing What is Known Through an Investigation of Practitioners’ Experiences.” Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 29. No. 2: 143-164.

McGraw, Danielle M., Marjan Ebadi, Constance Dalenber, Vanessa Wu, Braindi Naish, and Lisa Nunez. 2019. “Consequences of Abuse by Religious Authorities: A Review. Traumatology, 25. No. 4: 242-255.

Mulvihill, Natasha, Nadia Aghtaie, Andrea Matolsci and M

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Dr. Margaret Arnd-Caddigan (she/her), LCSW is an Associate Professor of Social Work at East Carolina University. Her latest book, Holistic Psychotherapy from a Post-Materialist Perspective is available wherever books are sold.

Léa Fae Caddigan (they/he/she/fae/faer) is a writer/director based in New York City. You can follow them on Instagram and Tiktok.

Artwork by Ray Gonzalez and music by Anton Ashmere.