How America Reminds Me Of My Past Religious Extremism
We are used to thinking of abuse as between one person and another. But what if it's possible that an entire society is engaged in abuse?
I’ve been thinking about this tweet by Chrissy Stroop, a vocal and thoughtful ex-evangelical writer whose voice has been massively transformational in my own journey.
I can’t help but think about how this thought applies to my own experiences, and the communities I have been part of.
Sadly, since the Jewish world is so much smaller and is still recovering from massive communal traumas, we have far less literature around abuse. And even fewer around abusive communal structures.
When I first left Orthodox Judaism, I felt alone and confused. I knew I had experienced something horrible, and I had left something very problematic behind. But I didn’t really have a unified theory as to what had happened. I knew I was traumatized, and I had the word “cult” in my head without really understanding what it meant.
So I decided to do some research into what cults were. I had a feeling I had just left one, but I didn’t really understand what a cult was or how to define it.
It was two groups that opened my eyes as to what I as experiencing: ex-evangelicals like Chrissy Stroop as well as those who have devoted themselves to speaking out about the dangers of cults, like Stephen Hassan, the famous ex-Moonie who wrote the pivotal Combatting Mind Control and Sarah Edmondson, one of the first whistleblowers against the NXIVUM cult who now hosts a podcast with her husband called A Little Bit Culty.
The experience of researching extremism was revelatory. Suddenly, I had words and ideas to clarify what I was thinking.
One of the most important ideas I learned in this process was what Chrissy shared with her wise words, and one that is extremely hard to convey to people who have not experienced it (or who cannot see it in their own lives), and that is the way in which an entire communal structure itself can be abusive.
I have become convinced since I learned these ideas that this knowledge isn’t just important for the Jewish community to arm itself with, but for the world to be aware of.
As I became more outspoken around my issues in the Hasidic community I was recruited into, I received plenty of predicable blowback. One of the common critiques I received was, “Okay, that life doesn’t work for you. It works for me. It works for other people. So why don’t you just let people live their lives?”
This argument always put me back on my heels. It seemed like a totally fair point: why did I think it was okay to critique the way of life of others if it worked for them?
This is indeed very hard to argue with. It’s hard to look at a society where many of the most outspoken people proudly proclaim their happiness with the way things are and tell them that they’re wrong. It seems wrong, and it makes dialogue very difficult.
And yet. As these people will themselves say, all communities have their problems. And in the same token, all communities have their happy members. In fact, it could be argued that the very structure of abusive communities is to make a class of people happy at the cost of others. If every single person was miserable in a community, then there would be no point to the abuse. The point is to make some people happy at the expense of others.
That is where Chrissy’s tweet comes in and why it is so insightful. The idea of any form of conservatism, and especially of extremism, is to allow those at the top to hold onto their power no matter the cost. “Power” in this context does not only mean leaders: it can mean those with wealth, influence, or in the case of Hasidic communities, families.
In the case of America, we are willing to sacrifice children in school shootings, women in abusive situations, Black people in just about every realm, working class people in exploitation, and on and on. The list of the victims of America’s conservatism is long, and it all comes down to who we have historically kept at the top (I’ll let you figure out who that is).
In the case of conservative religious communities, at the absolute baseline, it is often those who adhere to collectivism while forgoing their individuality. In other words: follow the rules, listen to the leaders, and don’t try to change things. If you do these things, you are likely to have a “happy” life (I would define it more as a life in which you don’t experience the victimhood that comes with the repercussions of stepping out of line as opposed to actual happiness).
In many ways, conservative religious communities are largely based around a mythology that this is all a perfectly logical and normal way to run a community. After all, their beliefs and communal structures are handed down by God Himself. The philosophy of such beliefs by definition argues not only that it should be a simple matter to follow this way of life, but the this way of life is there to make life better. We are “saved,” “chosen,” and “privileged” for having been given this way of life. In fact, we are the lucky few who have found our way to this belief system and community.
In that worldview, it should thus not be surprising that for those who are bought in, it would be hard to explain why anyone would deviate from the norm. In fact, it would appear to be downright preposterous: what could possibly motivate a person to stray from the incredible privilege that comes with this religion and its community?
The only logical answer, if you accept all the assumptions above, is that anyone who deviates is deeply confused (“lost”), stupid, or evil.
But the problem, of course, is that religious communities can’t ever be fully perfect or in line with reality. And thus all those beliefs, laws, and cultural norms are unlikely to actually make everyone feel like they have been chosen or privileged. Quite the opposite.
Think of a queer person living in a religious community where beliefs dictate that queerness is a sin. The beliefs of that community would require any other explanation for this person’s identity than the scientifically valid one: that they don’t have a choice in the matter, and that the only way for them to live a truly healthy life is for them to fully embrace their identity.
In such a community with such beliefs, it would be impossible to both fall in line and live a happy, fulfilled life. They wouldn’t be privileged or saved in any respect: they'd suffer.
This is a real life, real world reality. Not imagined.
A study in the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel revealed that 1 in 5 queer Orthodox Jews in Israel attempted suicide. That is a staggering number. An organization devoted to helping queer Orthodox Jews in the United States estimates that 70% of its members have either contemplated or attempted suicide. Again, staggering.
This is what happens when beliefs are out of sync with reality.
What happens when communities are confronted with these numbers? While there have been some promising organizations and leaders who attempt to make space for these marginalized people, the simple reality is that if a community is truly committed to its conservatism, it is unlikely that there will ever be anything truly meaningful that will change those numbers. Quite the opposite: when confronted, many such religious people will literally deny the very existence of queer people in their communities. That's because there is no way to maintain your beliefs in their crystalline fashion without finding a way to deny reality.
To a lesser extent, this also applies to anyone who does not find that the beliefs of the community actually fit their inner moral or intellectual compass. Let’s say someone who recognizes the ways in which queerness is by definition punished in such a society. Or someone who recognizes the abusive behavior of leaders who have been elevated to the point where they cannot be questioned without it cracking the vision of the communal structure as holy. Or someone who simply does not believe.
Such a person must completely adapt and change their thinking in order to fit in, pretend they don’t feel what they feel, or leave. There is no universe in such a community where that person will be able to be who they are meant to be, and rather they must make the “choice” to give up their autonomy if they wish to stay.
This is conservatism as abuse. It is not a singular person beating a child, but rather a communal system by which the denial of the humanity of others is a feature, not a bug, that exists in order to maintain the belief system and structure of a society. To be a member of this community is to be engaged, on a certain level, in the abuse. You are part of a system that denies the humanity of others, whether you realize it or not. And perhaps, if you have had to suppress your own thoughts and feelings, you are also abusing yourself.
And this is the answer to those who say that their community works for them, makes them happy. If they are truly happy as they suggest, it is likely because they are not one of the marginalized people. They are the lucky few who happen to both have their inner reality match the outer reality of the religion as well as be in a position of some sort of power. In their inability to see what they are part of, and in their refusal to accept those who break their communal norms, they are upholding a system where others are being sacrificed for their religion and community. In other words, they are like past idol worshippers who would sacrifice children to their gods. The difference is now the deaths are unseen and unacknowledged.
It would be easy to end the discussion there: extremist religions do the things above, and we should be careful not to entangle ourselves in them.
But what if there are ways in which such dynamics are actually part of our lives even outside of religion? What if this is about something much wider?
This, again, is the genius of what Chrissy wrote: this is not only about extremist religions. It’s not even only about extremism. It’s about conservatism.
Many of us watched with hope and were deeply inspired by the #MeToo movement. It felt literally revolutionary: women were talking openly in ways that broke a mainstream taboo, and it seemed they were becoming more and more empowered to speak out about abusers. Some high profile men were outed, and it seemed like some truly permanent change was occurring.
And yet, today the Supreme Court is on the cusp of overthrowing the autonomy of women, with two accused sexual abusers being part of the coming voting majority. Today, we talk more about “Cancel Culture” than we do about #MeToo.
What happened after the massive marches following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer? Politicians are running on platforms of funding the police more. This includes Democrats, and the president himself.
As COVID rips apart our country, with a million dead, the rich have gotten richer while the working class continue to struggle.
As guns proliferate, leading to our children being cut down to pieces, leading to more and more mass shootings, nothing is changing. More than any extremist religious group, we allow our own children to be sacrificed to satisfy the gods of our society.
All of this is a form of societal abuse. And all of this is rooted in the conservatism that Chrissy indicates.
You can’t have a true #MeToo movement without actually changing the power structure of our businesses, government, religious institutions, and just about every place where power is concentrated in America. You can’t transform the safety of Black Americans without challenging the hierarchy of policing and government, not to mention the basis America itself was built on: that white men are the rulers of this nation. You can’t change gun laws or address inequality without addressing the fact that the people in power currently benefit from those things.
And so, Americans who want to think their country is special and chosen have to deal with a similar conundrum as a person in a religious community. Do they admit that their country is abusive to the vulnerable? How can they possibly hold that America is a special, privileged, chosen country without facing the way its vulnerable people are treated?
Very similar to extremist religious communities, some of the most common reactions are a denial of a reality that they can’t square with their vision of a perfect country. We hear people say that bringing up racism is “divisive” as if the problem is created by talking about it. And that calling out abusers is a “witch hunt.”
More and more, we are seeing the same attempt to erase the existence of queer people from America in much the same way I experienced in my Hasidic community.
Those are descriptions of the more mild reactions. What we are seeing today, as the conservatism morphs into extremism, is considering the vulnerable, and those who speak up for them, the abusers. This is what the “great replacement” conspiracy does (the motive of the Buffalo shooter, believed in by half of Republicans). What the MAGA fear of an immigrant invasion does. Book bannings, an obsession with trans “grooming,” and on and on.
All of this allows people who need to see America as itself perfect, and their patriotism as justified, to deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing how abusive their systems are. And by doing so, they perpetuate the abuse.
Just as key and just as with extremist religious communities: it allows them to continue to be abused themselves. There are very few people for whom the current hierarchical system in America actually benefits. But if you associate your identity with America’s conservative values, you will be more invested in maintaining its current form than in taking care of yourself. So, inequality can rise and you can keep losing. You or your daughters may be more vulnerable to abuse. Your own queer children may commit suicide. Your children may be shot up at school. You may be shot just living your life.
Doesn’t matter. You’ve preserved your identity and resolved the cognitive dissonance.
That’s the power of conservatism as an identity: it is abuse, but it is abuse that relies on a society to buy into it. In that sense, we are all the abusers, and we are all the victims. It’s just a question of whether we’re aware of it or not.
Unlike a religious extremist group, most of us don’t have the option to leave this particular form of abusive culture. Maybe that is why it is easier for us to talk about religious and political extremism than to expand the camera’s scope and see the full picture.
We have an entire genre of ex-cult documentaries, memoirs, and more. As we should. But their existence and popularity may actually be due to the fact that Americans are afraid to face their own extremism.
In many ways, my story is very much about leaving an extremist religion. If you follow this newsletter, then you know how invested in telling my story I am. I believe that I am definitely freer than I was than before I left. I am beyond grateful.
But since I left my extremist sect, and spent more and more time trying to dissect what actually made the extremism extreme, I have become convinced that much of the same systems that I faced within the Hasidic community exist in some form in America. It’s just that, like in the religious world I left, it is difficult to see how a society itself can be abusive. It’s even harder to see our own role in that abuse.
But it is within the constructs of abusive insular cultures that we can perhaps learn an important lesson: that admitting the nature of a society is the first step in repairing it. Or revolutionizing it.
And maybe now, as we hear the stories of children being murdered because America has still refused to change anything about its hierarchical system that benefits the few at the cost of these children, we can start to finally admit that we live in an abusive country.