Our Broken Arrows series names and identifies the layers of harm contained in CFC’s approach to child training. This type of child training sets children up for abuse by teaching them erroneous beliefs about themselves and their place in the world.
cfctoo.com/blog/broken-arrows-intro
Children raised in high-control religious communities like CFC learn in a myriad of ways that their worth is tied to their obedience and their ability to perform. High-control religious communities preach “dying to self” such that martyrdom and suffering become virtues.
Stripped of bodily autonomy, these children are taught that they cannot trust their emotions. In fact, natural responses to abuse—anger, arguing, complaining—are identified as "sins" to be rejected and replaced with contentment, compliance, and gratitude.
High-control religious communities frequently isolate children—sometimes by expecting families to homeschool or by limiting socialization to other families within the community— in a context where abuse masquerades as love.
In addition, distorted teachings on forgiveness, pressure members, especially children, to love, honor, and pursue relationships with those who injure them.
Abuse that occurs in high-control religious communities is particularly insidious because it is done in the name of the ultimate authority: God.
As described in their teaching literature, Christian Fellowship Center approaches child training as an arduous task in which sinful children must be stripped of their autonomy and beaten into submission for God.
Churches like CFC claim that every life has dignity and worth, but their practices of violence and coercion reveal that this dignity is not extended to children once they are born.
Consider Christian Fellowship Center’s starting place: unless parents follow CFC’s arduous practices, which include divinely-delegated authority and high eternal stakes, their children will stray off the narrow path and into damnation.
In this handout from CFC’s 2015 handout on Forming Straight Arrows, CFC promises parents that their child training method will produce CFC’s version of an ideal Christian.
Note the emphasis on respect for authority, being “teachable,” and accepting responsibility, all values that permit people to continue submitting to high control religious teaching.
Communities like CFC are all too eager to define for their members what things are “good” and “evil,” but CFCtoo rejects that there is anything “good” about their child training.
Instead of giving children confidence in their parents’ love, this method of child training instead produces a warped understanding of love, resulting in traumatized children who are vulnerable to future abuse.