From: rpattree2@gmail.com   
      
   THETALKINGLLAMA   
   An ongoing exploration of faith, culture, myth, life, art. An advocate for all   
   who are trapped in nightmares.   
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   SPIRITUAL ABUSE SURVIVOR'S NETWORK   
   ROLLING STONE   
   FLOWERS OF EVIL   
   28   
   FEB   
   2014   
   10 Great Books on Spiritual Abuse & Mind Control   
   posted in Abuse, Art & Entertainment, Books, Charismatics, Christianity,   
   Church Issues, Cults, End Times, Evil, Faith, Fundamentalism, Healing,   
   Injustice, Lists, Literature, Manipulation, Mind Control, No Longer Quivering,   
   Reading, Religion, Spiritual    
   Abuse, Uncategorized	 by Boze Herrington   
   5129ufB6BEL._AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-49,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_The summer after   
   I left the dangerous group, I read a ton of books on the dynamics of spiritual   
   manipulation within Christian cults. Books are a great way of finding one's   
   way back to reality.    
   Through them I was able to get a better sense of the nightmare in which I had   
   been living for the last three to four years of my life. And when tragedy   
   struck at the end of that year, I wasn't wholly unprepared to deal with it.   
      
   Tonight I wanted to share some of my favorite resources on spiritually abusive   
   groups. Some of these are fictional and some are not. Stories are invaluable   
   to a right understanding of cults because it's so hard to grasp conceptually   
   how these groups    
   function unless you can see it laid out.   
      
   1.      The Children's Story (James Clavell)   
      
   My first exposure to the subtle power of mind control was a chilling   
   twenty-minute movie that I had to watch for a Gifted & Talented class in the   
   fifth grade. The entire book can be read in under half an hour and takes place   
   within a single classroom    
   where a group of grade school students discover that America has been taken   
   over and their teacher is being sent away to be re-educated. By the end of the   
   story, each of them has also been re-educated, although it happens so subtly   
   that none of them    
   recognizes it.   
      
      
      
    2.      The Wave (Todd Strasser)   
      
   This is the notorious true story of a history lesson that got way out of hand.   
   In 1967 in Palo Alto, California, high school history teacher Ron Jones was   
   struggling to explain to his students why so many ordinary Germans followed   
   the Nazis. He finally    
   hit upon the idea of starting his own movement, called "The Third Wave."   
   Within three days it had taken over the school.   
      
   The story has been made into two movies, one American and one German. The   
   American version is on Youtube.   
      
      
      
   days-of-fire-and-gloryjpg-c1c8777bb2fb5f423.      Days of Fire & Glory: The   
   Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community (Julia Duin)   
      
    I ran across this book in a university library the month I was asked to leave   
   the group. Julia Duin was the Religion editor of the Washington Times and for   
   a while a member of a charismatic church in Houston, Texas with a dark and   
   shadowy past. As she    
   started interviewing old and former members, she uncovered a story of a   
   zealous group of young people swept away in the fervor of a Holy Spirit   
   revival. But the authoritarian rule of one man threatened to undo all that   
   they fought for, creating an    
   abusive discipleship system that shattered marriages and ruined the faith of   
   dozens.   
      
   4. People of the Lie (M. Scott Peck)   
      
    A classic work of popular psychology, this is an indispensable examination of   
   what Peck calls the phenomenon of evil people, those who are chronically   
   narcissistic, predatory, and abusive. What makes them "people of the lie" is   
   that to all outward    
   appearances these are genuine, kind-hearted men and women who are the pillars   
   of their civic and religious communities. Yet their inability to empathize   
   with others makes them the perpetrators of unthinkable cruelties. They will   
   never admit to being    
   wrong, and they use their reputation as a shield to evade being exposed for   
   what they truly are.   
      
      
      
   9781453695166_p0_v1_s260x4205. The Seduction of Eva Volk (C. D. Baker)   
      
   Recommended by psychologist Diane Langberg in a lecture on narcissists and the   
   systems they breed, this novel uses the structure of a fictional love triangle   
   between a poet, a young woman, and a Nazi officer in the days leading up to   
   the Second World War    
   to examine the untold story of how Hitler used religion to seduce Christian   
   Germany.   
      
   6. New Science of Politics (Erik Voegelin)   
      
   Easily the most academic book on this list, this is nevertheless an invaluable   
   look at the dangers of the heresy of millenarianism throughout history. Put   
   simply, millenarianism is the radical idea that an elite group of people is   
   going to take over the    
   leadership of the earth after a period of global catastrophe. (It's the   
   devastation wrought by this idea that Marius was lamenting in his song at the   
   end of Les Mis). The Puritans, Nazis, and Soviet communists were all   
   millenarians. Voegelin exposes why    
   this ideology is so persistent, and so dangerous.   
      
   7. Destroying the World to Save It (Robert J. Lifton)   
      
   Along the same lines, this book by renowned psychiatrist Robert Lifton   
   (inventor of the famous eight warning signs of mind control) examines the   
   dangers of millenarianism in the twenty-first century through the prism of Aum   
   Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult    
   that released sarin gas in the subways of Tokyo. According to Lifton, groups   
   that begin by believing that a violent event must precede a new world will   
   eventually be inspired to create that new world through violence.   
      
   8. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (Jon Krakauer)   
      
   Investigative journalist Jon Krakauer (author of Into the Wild) explores a   
   similar idea in this sobering true story of two fundamentalist Mormons who   
   murdered their sister-in-law and her children because God told them to do it.   
   Krakauer argues that in a    
   religion based on divine revelation from heaven, anything is permissible   
   because no one can argue that God isn't speaking to you directly. And lest you   
   think this only applies to Mormons, keep in mind that the book was recommended   
   to me by someone on    
   Twitter who noted the eerie parallels to my own prayer group.   
      
    9780310874089_p0_v1_s260x4209. Twisted Scriptures (Mary Alice Chrnalogar)   
      
   Published by Zondervan, this window into the dynamics of abusive religious   
   environments written by a former cult member brings clarity to the question of   
   whether or not one is suffering from spiritual abuse. At the end of the book   
   she offers a six-page    
   checklist. Dangerous leaders shield themselves from accountability while using   
   mind control, guilt, fear, and the language of Christianity to imprison their   
   followers.   
      
      
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