Hey hey, welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays.
Today we’re unpacking several interwoven topics I’ve explored in my writing before why people get drawn into high-control environments and how forgiveness in Christian culture is often weaponized, not as a path to healing, but as a tool to silence victims and protect institutions. This isn’t just a personal issue; it’s an institutional one.
This came into sharp focus after Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, said she forgives her husband’s killer. I’m not here to critique her grief, that’s her own process. What I want to explore is the cultural framework that makes this kind of forgiveness expected, celebrated, and even demanded in evangelical spaces. I have a MUCH MUCH longer blog linked here if you want to go much deeper than I plan to cover today.
Why Grief Is Ripe for Recruitment
Before even touching forgiveness, let’s pause on why this moment is so primed for revivalist recruiting. Sociologists and psychologists have long noted that people are most vulnerable to high-control groups (whether churches or MLMs) during times of disruption and emotional chaos.
Laura Dodsworth, in her book Free Your Mind, calls this a “blip.” A blip is any disruption that cracks our normal defenses: loss, illness, exhaustion, grief. Even smaller stressors (Think HALT) Hunger, anger/anxiety, loneliness or being tired can chip away at our resistance. Push long enough, and the conscious mind collapses into a state of openness, hungry for belonging and ready to absorb new narratives.
That’s exactly what makes funerals, memorials, and major crises fertile ground for recruitment. Orwell nailed it in 1984:
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in shapes of your own choosing.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses even admit to targeting what they call “ripe fruit”-the recently bereaved. In Brazil, recruiters have driven cars with loudspeakers through cemeteries on All Souls’ Day, broadcasting sermons to tens of thousands of mourners. That isn’t compassion; it’s strategic exploitation. Naomi Klein would call it the Shock Doctrine: trauma as an entry point for control.
We’re seeing the same tactics play out online right now. Someone posts about “returning to church” after years away, and within hours their feed fills with love-bombing-likes, comments, and digital hugs. It feels affirming, but it’s also classic manipulation: vulnerability plus attention equals a wide-open door into manipulation.
And so it’s no surprise that revivalist energy is surging in the wake of Kirk’s death.
Situational vulnerability + orchestrated belonging = fertile ground for expansion.
The Myth of “Christlike” Forgiveness
This brings us back to forgiveness. I want to be CLEAR HERE, obviously Erika Kirk wasn’t coerced into forgiving, but in evangelical culture forgiveness is never entirely personal, it’s baked into the ethos. The more you forgive, the more “Christlike” you appear.
Matthew 6:14–15 “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
That expectation is dangerous. Forgiveness is sacred when it grows out of genuine healing. But when demanded prematurely, it becomes a weapon. Survivors are told to “forgive as you’ve been forgiven” before they’re ready, before their pain is acknowledged, and typically long before their abuser is held accountable.
Pete Walker, in The Tao of Fully Feeling, argues that forgiveness is not a one-time act but a continual choice and that choice only works after grief, rage, and hurt are fully processed. Skip that, and forgiveness turns into compliance, a way to silence anger and keep victims stuck.
In other words: real forgiveness empowers the survivor. Weaponized forgiveness protects the institution.
How Churches Use Forgiveness to Protect Themselves
We’ve seen this pattern across evangelical institutions:
- The Guidepost Report (2022) exposed that SBC leadership maintained a secret list of over 700 abusive pastors, shielding them from consequences while survivors were ignored, discredited, or retaliated against.
- Jennifer Lyell, an SBC abuse survivor, was vilified by church leadership when she came forward. Instead of support, she was publicly shamed, and her abuser faced no consequences.
- Christa Brown, another survivor, spent years advocating for reform after being assaulted by her youth pastor. The SBC’s response? Stonewalling, gaslighting, and further silencing.
- Jehovah’s Witnesses have a longstanding pattern of protecting sexual predators under their “two-witness rule,” which requires at least two people to witness abuse for it to be considered valid. This impossible standard allows abusers to go unpunished while victims are shunned for speaking out.
In each case, forgiveness isn’t about healing. It’s about compliance, silence, and institutional survival.
Nietzsche, Freud, and the Cycles of Guilt
This isn’t new. Nietzsche warned that Abrahamic religions hijacked older wisdom traditions, reframing them into systems of obedience rather than life-affirmation. Freud saw religion as a kind of collective neurosis, trapping people in loops of guilt and repression.
What is ironic, Freud’s own psychoanalytic model looks eerily similar to the religious structures he critiqued. As historian Bakan and others have suggested, Freud may have drawn (consciously or not) on Jewish mysticism, replacing priests with analysts, confession with therapy, sin with repressed desire. In trying to explain away religion, Freud ended up reproducing its patterns in secular form. In other words, the pattern of taking human vulnerability and channeling it into control runs deep.
And this is where Laura Dodsworth’s idea of the “blip” becomes so relevant. The blip is that moment of rupture…when you’re grieving, disoriented, exhausted, or otherwise cracked open. Your defenses are down, your critical mind isn’t firing at full strength, and the brain is searching for something to hold onto. In these liminal spaces, new ideologies rush in.
That’s why this moment is so ripe for revivalist energy. It’s not just about forgiveness…it’s about the total atmosphere of grief and disruption that can act as a blip. And high-control groups know it. It’s why political movements, religious revivals, and even MLMs wait for crisis points: job loss, divorce, a death in the family. The blip isn’t compassionately held-it’s exploited.
So when we watch something like Kirk’s memorial, we’re not just seeing personal mourning. We’re watching a social script unfold, one that revivalists know how to activate. In this script, forgiveness, obedience, and “turning your life over” aren’t neutral virtues—they become instruments of recruitment. Which means the real question isn’t should people forgive, but who benefits when forgiveness and emotional openness are demanded at the exact moment people are least able to resist?
Sources & Recommended Reading
- Laura Dodsworth, Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist It (2023) – esp. Chapter 10, “Watch Out for the Blip.”
- George Orwell, 1984 (1949) – “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces…”
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007).
- Pete Walker, The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame (1996).
- Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887); The Antichrist (1895).
- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927).
- David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (1958).
- Investigative reports on abuse cover-ups:
- Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) scandal (Houston Chronicle, 2019).
- Hillsong global abuse reports (various, 2020–2022).
- Grace Community Church & John MacArthur counseling cases (Christianity Today, 2022).
- Jehovah’s Witness recruitment practices
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