Read the next installment in our Broken Arrows series:
cfctoo.com/blog/broken-arrows-abuse-is-not-love
CW/TW: self-harm
Rick Sinclair recently asserted to the media: “Child abuse of any kind is a heinous sin. We have never covered up any abuse. God hates abuse, and so do we at CFC.”
wwnytv.com/2022/10/21/rally-pushes-law-requiring-all-clergy-report-child-abuse/
It is possible that Rick believes his own statement, because CFC identifies abuse as love. CFC explicitly teaches that physical violence, emotional neglect, and isolation are necessary tools if loving parents want to make their children become faithful disciples of Jesus.
When high control religious communities twist scripture to create an image of a jealous God who chastises people in order to gain full submission, then parents as God’s delegated authorities must use the same tactics.
Rick Sinclair’s oldest daughter describes this approach in a Mom and Us blog post:
web.archive.org/web/20101205195928/http://momandus.com/2008/04/23/childtraining-a-look-at-our-hearts/
CFC teaches parents to implement corporal punishment as soon as “a baby begins to get around on their own."
web.archive.org/web/20101205194438/http:/momandus.com/2008/06/04/a-few-more-questions-on-discipline/
Such “baby training” practices often use violent methods to discipline and curb a baby’s natural curiosity. Instead of taking developmental needs into account, parents expect complete obedience to their own adult expectations.
CFC children as young as 6 months receive this kind of training that normalizes abuse even from a preverbal age. These core experiences form a child’s understanding of the world, even if their young minds do not have words for the memories.
CFC parents dispense abuse with two lies: 1) parents have no choice but to spank, indeed it is a matter of biblical obedience, and 2) spanking is done in love.
CFC compounds the damage by teaching parents to link physical violence with physical affection. At a Mom’s Cadre meeting, Darlene Sinclair offers the disturbing comment that “some of the most precious cuddling times were always right after a spanking.”
subspla.sh/mt6n8sc
Wren highlights the natural consequences of this abusive behavior: "How could I end up vulnerable to such a man? Because I was used to abuse at the hands of the church. The church told me throughout my whole life that I was nothing without God."
cfctoo.com/stories/wrens-story
Conflating abuse with love destroys the development of a healthy concept of self-love. A child learns that violence is a necessary follow-up to making a mistake or associates the feeling of injury with things being made right.
Many children who routinely experienced violence when they didn’t meet their parents’ demands feel the urge to self-harm once they graduate from their parents’ physical punishments.
Non-suicidal self-harm (NSSI) has long been thought to be a self-soothing response to difficult or unwanted emotional stimuli. Children who grow up in the shadow of violence learn that punishment resolves the conflict with their parents.
capmh.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13034-018-0261-0
When these children do something wrong, however that is defined, or experience something that is bad or unpleasant, they are more likely than their non-spanked peers to seek distraction or relief from the bad feelings by self-harming.
They essentially take their punishment into their own hands. This can feel like a resolution to the unpleasantness; they have learned well that if a child does something bad, the child should get physically punished and then can move on.
Children raised at CFC live in suspense; they are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and for punishment to be administered. Engaging in NSSI can be a way to claim some amount of agency over that cycle of abuse and control over their bodies.
Rates of adolescent NSSI also increase in environments where children feel isolated or rejected by their caretakers. Isolation and/or shunning is a practice that CFC regularly uses to discipline adults and children in their community.
In an interview with RNS, Sinclair shared her personal experience of being isolated and cut off during her young adult years by her father and other CFC leadership.
religionnews.com/2022/08/25/an-insular-quiverfull-church-in-new-yorks-north-country-faces-a-reckoning/
“There is an attempt at cutting members off who aren’t behaving properly & punishing them so they feel like they’re in a position where they need to either come crawling back to the community or they have to start anew & start their lives over again, which is what happened to me.
NSSI rates increase in environments where children feel pressured, unwelcomed, or bullied by their peers. Mae describes how Christian Fellowship Academy negatively impacted her child so much that they turned to NSSI for release from the pain: cfctoo.com/stories/maes-story
Abusive parenting practices are the farthest thing from loving. High control religious groups like CFC teach families that abusive behavior should be received as love.
This does not result in the love-filled lives that CFC expects for their families, rather it results in people who fundamentally do not understand how to express or accept love in healthy ways.
CFC’s abusive parenting teachings have been used to raise generations of traumatized children who struggle to define love, let alone to love themselves or others.
The impacts of abusive parenting on children hinders their ability to build healthy relationships that are based on mutual trust and respect as they grow into adulthood.
Teaching children that God equates love with abuse is an excellent way to drive a wedge in their relationship with God and the Church. Phrases like “God is love” become weaponized and confusing.
The expectation that Christians should “love their neighbor” becomes code for controlling other people. The complex interweaving of abusive theology with abusive practices leads to a community continually giving and receiving abuse, not love.