Hey beautiful, welcome to my podcast, Queerly
Having Issues. I believe we all have our issues
because we all have a story. My name is Jafeth
and it's time to tell you about mine. Hello everyone,
welcome to a new episode. Today I want to talk
about my thesis which is on the topic of religious
trauma, deconversion, and the queer community.
This past week, I was giving a guest lecture
at the Free University of Amsterdam in a trauma,
violence, and religion class. And there were
some of you who were interested in this guest
lecture but couldn't make it. So I thought it
would be a good idea to basically record the
lecture that I gave. So I started my lecture
by telling my students about something that Sir
John, who was my mentor while writing my thesis,
he said. To speak about trauma is impossible
and not to speak is impossible. That is sort
of the two sides of the scale that I find myself
on often. There are times that I really want
to let go of this topic altogether and forget
about it and give it some rest. And while I graduated,
I thought that was going to happen, that I could
just let it go for a bit. But then I got offered
to write a chapter for an academic book that
will be... published in 2026 it's on gender and
religious exits and they asked me to write a
chapter on my thesis together with Sir John who
will be the second author of the piece and then
also I was asked to give this lecture so I felt
like okay the work isn't done yet and at the
same time I'm also very grateful that they asked
me to speak on this topic which is important
to me and I think it's important to voice my
story but also the story of my participants and
the story of many others with us and also i thought
it was important because i felt while i was doing
these monsters in peace trauma and religion i
felt this subject to be non -existent so i was
grateful that these professors created a space
for this topic to exist within the monsters what
i did is i started off my lecture asking the
students what the term religion meant to them
personally like what's the first word that pops
up when you think about religion I just basically
was writing these things down on the whiteboard
so most of the words were positive what I sort
of expected so you know people would be like
religion to me means hope or love or relationship
but then there were also people who said things
like struggles rules, patriarchy. But then again,
I was also not expecting anything less from these
students, to be honest, as they're all in this
sort of peace, trauma, and religion track. And
the other part of the students were spiritual
care students. But in general, most of the words
were more positive. It is also what I realized
while I was researching on the topic of religious
trauma. I felt, okay, there's a lot of research
on how religion can be beneficial for people
who've experienced trauma. But there was not
a lot of research on how religion itself can
become the source of trauma. So my question was
more like, what happens when religion becomes
the source of trauma? That is my field of interest.
Actually, it was also during this class, the
trauma, violence, and religion class that I was
teaching in. It was during that class while I
was myself still a student. I remember our professor,
she spoke about the theory of trauma. She mentioned
Judith Herman. And I was also reading books like
The Body Keeps the Score. And I could really
relate to a lot of these symptoms and the things
that were said in those books. But at the same
time, I was like, I have not had any major traumatic
event happening to me. So it was actually in
that class that I sort of came to a diagnosis
for myself. I asked the professor, like, what
happens when... God becomes the perpetrator,
what happens when the source that is supposed
to protect you and love you becomes a source
of fear and shame. Then she mentioned the term
complex PTSD, complex post -traumatic stress
disorder, and basically that helped me to realize
that my struggle wasn't necessarily about a one
-time traumatic event, but more about repeated
and prolonged. emotional and psychological stress,
but I will come back to that term in a bit. My
struggle came forth from growing up in an evangelical
Christian environment, being a gay person, suppressing
that queer identity for a very long time in order
to fit in and conform to my environment. Also,
I felt like there was no chance in hell that
I could be both queer and an evangelical Christian.
What research suggests is that leaving your religion
then may not be a choice, but it's an inevitable
conclusion as you want to survive. So if you
want to embrace that queer identity, you have
to leave the evangelical environment. So basically
that was the source of conflicting identities
within myself between my sexual identity and
my religious identity. So the aim for my... research
was to understand how queer individuals from
evangelical backgrounds in the Netherlands experience
religious trauma, how it contributes to their
deconversion, and how they reclaim agency over
their sexual and or gender identity. For those
of you who are not familiar with these terms,
I know it's a lot, but I will try to break it
down for you and I will explain it in a bit.
So first, how did I do my research? I spoke to
10 queer individuals with evangelical backgrounds
in the Netherlands and I basically asked them
to tell me their life stories. So I took the
narrative approach and I recorded the sessions.
They were like one and a half hours, one on one.
And then afterwards I transcribed everything
and I started coding these stories and their
narratives and I started looking for common grounds,
but also for differences in their narratives.
And then I divided these stories into three stages.
I will elaborate on that in a little bit. First,
I want to quickly break down the term religious
trauma, complex PTSD and deconversion. So you
have an idea what we're talking about if you're
not familiar with these terms. So first of all,
religious trauma, leaving a religion isn't easy
for anyone. But for some of us, it might feel
like we are losing our minds and our safety and
our sense of who we are. and psychologist Marlene
Weinold. She came up with the term religious
trauma syndrome in 2011. Even though the phenomenon
existed long before that, there were already
other health professionals who were speaking
with people who had a hard time letting go of
their religious indoctrination. And 2011 might
not seem that recent, but because there's not
a lot of research on this topic, it's still relatively
new and relevant. Religious trauma basically
happens when Someone is struggling after leaving
a religion or belief system that was controlling
or damaging. And often in these environments
there are two very powerful messages. One is
you are not okay and the other is you are not
safe. And these messages often are reinforced
with ideas. When we look at the Christian theology
it's the idea of original sin and eternal damnation.
So these environments require strict obedience
and often they are tying survival in the group
but also hope for the afterlife to perfect conformity
so these individuals have to do everything to
fit into the environment in order to survive
and in order to go to heaven this group is tightly
controlled and questioning it can feel dangerous
or even sinful so if i look at my own story i
remember i was struggling with my sexuality i
remember struggling in silence for many years
trying to suppress these feelings and um then
i opened up to my family about this about this
struggle and then i remember my sisters and my
mother they were crying and um very soon i was
you know being prayed for and of course i myself
also still believed that this was a phase or
that god would heal me as i didn't know any better
i sort of um I just moved along with the whole
process and subconsciously knew that I was not
okay. And also, I think especially when I started
questioning certain ideas and slowly started
to deconstruct my beliefs, I started to feel
unsafe. So I remember not being able to sleep
at night because I was scared that I would go
to hell. I've mentioned complex PTSD before and
Marlene Winall. she also compares religious trauma
syndrome to complex PTSD. Complex PTSD is a psychological
disorder that can develop in response to prolonged,
repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in
a context in which the individual has little
or no chance of escape. When I look at my own
situation, that meant that the idea that I was
not safe and that I was not okay and... that
there was actually no escape because it was either
you conform and you deny that part of yourself
so you can survive in the group and have hope
for the afterlife or you leave and you will be
damned and you will go to hell. When you look
at religious trauma, the trauma often comes from
people who are supposed to protect you. So you
can think of your indoctrinated parents or church
environment. Symptoms that people who have experienced
religious trauma often have are symptoms of anxiety,
depression, numbing, dissociation, panic attacks,
but they can also even contemplate suicide. And
these symptoms were very evident within the stories
of my participants, even though none of them
had heard the term religious trauma syndrome
before. So for some of them, it was like, oh,
okay, so... That is sort of a name for what I've
been experiencing the last couple of years. When
you look at deconversion, which basically means
you are leaving a religion without joining a
new one. Heinz Treib has called this disaffiliation
without reaffiliation. So basically you leave
your religion and you're not going to join another
one. So when you look at conversion versus deconversion
with conversion. People, they convert to a religion
or from one religion to another. And often the
process of conversion comes with a sense of gain,
a sense of growth, a sense of comfort. And when
you look at deconversion narratives, often their
stories highlight struggles with rejection, alienation,
and grief. And it's a very complex process. Often
it involves loss of community. intellectual doubt
but also emotional suffering and biographical
change so you do know the facebook memories in
which facebook is like hey this is what you wrote
15 years ago and in my situation often the things
that i wrote on facebook like 15 or 20 years
ago i'm like who the hell is this person like
i have no idea it feels so weird and of course
i think we all to a certain degree cringe on
what we've written you know 20 years ago but
because of the sentiment of the the facebook
posts that i made about god and jesus and everything
i'm like i cannot relate to this person at all
so when we come to the results of my research
i divided their stories into three stages one
stage was the pre -deconversion stage I felt
that all of the participants within their stories,
there was this certain stage in which certain
things happened, which eventually led to them
leaving their religion or their deconversion.
So all of the participants, they mentioned to
feel different from a young age. They felt like
they didn't fit in into their environment, into
their families. often they didn't know why they
couldn't put a finger on it yet they were just
too young but unconsciously they knew they were
different to their peers then also there were
stories of negative framing within the family
so there was a negative perception of queerness
often the participants had stories of parents
switching the tv to another channel or just turning
off the tv when there was a gay character or
a gay famous person on tv as mostly they were
you know gay Lesbian individuals on TV back then
as the other members of the community weren't
that visible yet. Then also there were evangelical
teachings on sin, also mostly on same -sex attraction
because of the scriptures in the Bible. And because
of these negative perceptions, 9 out of 10 participants,
they understood, often on an unconscious level,
that being queer could mean going to hell. And
the only participant who did not have these issues,
this person was not raised in an evangelical
Christian environment. So because they understood
that being queer wasn't a positive thing in their
environment, they decided to box up their feelings
and keep these feelings locked away. And all
but one participant, the one who didn't grow
up in the evangelical environment, they reported
experiencing depression, suicidal thoughts, while
reflecting on their early queer experiences.
There was even one person who was hospitalized
because they couldn't take the struggle anymore
between their sexual identity and their religious
identity. However, 6 out of 10 participants,
they shared their secret with their family members
because they couldn't deal with the secret anymore
and they just wanted to open up about what they
were struggling with. All of them were met with
rejection. Even though often the parents, they
meant well and they didn't know any better, but
mostly they were like, okay, we love you, but
this is not an option for you. And we're going
to do everything in our power to make sure that
you become quote unquote normal. So what I've
heard often was the quote, love the sinner, hate
the sin, which was the sentiment within the environment
that I grew up in. So yeah, we love you, but
we are hating that part of you that wants to
sin basically. And in 2020, the Canadian Centre
of Gender and Sexual Health Equity, they offered
a more inclusive definition of conversion therapy.
They said that conversion therapy is any treatment,
practice or sustained effort that has the express
goal of changing or repressing a person's core
identity, specifically related to who they are
attracted to and their sense of self as male,
female or another gender. So when we look at
that definition of conversion therapy, we can
conclude, or I can conclude, that within the
stories of my participants, for 9 out of 10,
this conversion therapy started within their
homes, with their loved ones, within their safe
environment. You know, parents were praying over
their children, they were having discussions.
So parents were doing everything in their power
to sort of help the children, make sure that
they find a way to heal them, you know. And because
of that, nine out of ten participants, they sought
help. And often in their stories, they were saying
things like they had a therapist who would try
to get rid of the demon of homosexuality or they
would address queerness as perversion. There
was even one guy who was sent to official conversion
therapy in Amsterdam when he was only 11 years
old. And then what came up in their stories is
the theory on why they were struggling with these
feelings for the gay male participants. Often
it was the story of you have a bad relationship
with your father, so that's why you have this
kink in your brain. This is why you struggle
with your sexuality. You should do things together.
You should try to bond more. Even though this
theory is not at all supported by empirical research,
it does still continue to circulate within the
evangelical environment. Then also there was
another theory that I hadn't heard before, but
there was a transgender woman. She mentioned
that when she was a child, her stepbrother sexually
abused her. So her father told her, because of
that experience, you are experiencing gender
confusion, even though she mentioned to have
felt more feminine. since she could remember.
So as a result, these individuals are basically
faced with a choice of where to seek affirmation,
so they can find their identity within Christ
and within God, or they can find affirmation
from a partner or, you know, a queer lifestyle.
And then often they see this as a cosmic battle,
so they think Satan is doing everything in his
power to get the participants away from God and
away from the Only right path in life, basically.
So because of the belief that being queer and
Christian were incompatible, most of the participants
they sought an escape. Laurie Fazzino explores
deconversion as a transformative, identity -driven
exit from evangelical beliefs, particularly when
it involves questioning rigid religious norms
and navigating the emotional struggles that follow.
So this sort of... transformative, identity -driven
exit. I think it suits the participants very
well. What came up a lot was the evangelical
identity that was based on a felt need for absolute
certainty. So losing this anchor left most of
the participants feeling lost and they felt like
they had no firm ground to stand on. It was like
the foundation was pulled from underneath of
them. And this experience of letting go of the
evangelical identity and the evangelical faith
led to a sense of disorientation and even physical
insecurity. And this highlights how certainty
within their previous identity was not only a
cognitive, but also a physical anchor. The participants
were mentioning that even after leaving their
religion, the influence of trauma persisted.
One example was a participant who mentioned that
Cognitively, he knows that he's okay and that
he's safe. But then it seems like his body doesn't
get the memo. The body seems to stay in this
fight -flight mode that he had been in for many
years, trying to survive and trying to create
a space where he could be himself. Eight out
of ten participants, they described an exit story
in which the conversion, leaving their religion,
meant not only leaving their religious community,
but also letting go of the identity tied to it.
And I say 8 out of 10 because 2 out of 10 were
not raised in evangelical environments. However,
later in life, they joined an evangelical church.
And while I interviewed them, they were still
a part of it. But recently they have left their
church, but I will address their situation in
a bit. So while I was doing the interviews, there
were 8 out of 10 participants who had a religious
exit in some way or another. There is a framework
that Heinz Tribe uses to outline three types
of religious exits. And two of these exits were
very suitable for my participants. So the first
one is the secularizing exit. Basically, it means
that these participants, they leave the church
and they abandon religious beliefs altogether.
they shifted towards a fully non -religious worldview.
So most of these participants, they would speak
about how they found solace in science. One participant
even mentioned that science had become her new
religion. Then there is the heretical exit. Basically,
it means the participants, they leave the institution,
but not spirituality. So they adopt new, more
personal, or alternative beliefs outside formal
religion. And often they're doing this because
they're trying to fill an existential void. As
you know, we're human beings and most of us have
questions like, what is the purpose of life?
Why are we here? Etc. So deconversion, leaving
your religion, doesn't always mean a complete
rejection of all aspects of religion. For those
who have faced trauma and take the heretical
exit, this path offers autonomy and it allows
them to explore new beliefs without the constraints
of the church. So one example is a participant
who mentioned that his new belief is that God
is love, love is God, and if I love a person,
then how can that be wrong? And he said that
even though it's a beautiful thing to believe,
it took him many, many years to come to actually
believe it and live it. So I mentioned before
there were two participants who did not grow
up in the evangelical church. They were able
to form their queer identity before joining the
evangelical church. They are a gay couple and
they joined the evangelical church later in life
because they adopted two children. And when the
children came to a certain age, they were looking
for a more suitable church, one that is more
fun and modern. So they ended up finding an evangelical
church that was claiming to be inclusive of queer
people. And it's actually the first time that
I hear of an evangelical church in the Netherlands
that is trying to be inclusive of queer identities.
But also I was quite skeptical. And then they
said that even though the church is claiming
to be inclusive, they experienced ongoing tensions
around queer identity and belonging, and they
tried to talk with the pastor, and there just
wasn't a lot of space to have a decent conversation.
And their story, to me, echoed an argument that
another researcher made that meaningful dialogue
on queer inclusion remains largely absent in
the evangelical spaces. And he made this statement
in 2015. So you can imagine how much more work
there needs to be done in order to have an evangelical
church in the Netherlands that is actually inclusive
of queer identities. I don't know if it's ever
going to happen, but let's hope so. I did ask
them, why are you still there? It sounds very
tiring to me. I mean, that is my positionality
and my experience. Like, I could never do that.
But then they said like, yeah, well, if we leave,
who is going to stand up for the queer people
within the church? But I also felt that because
they were able to form their queer identities
outside of the evangelical church before joining
later in life, they had more willpower to fight.
That's also what they said. Like, if we leave,
who is going to stand up and speak up for these
queer individuals who are quite vulnerable within
this church environment? So I was like, okay,
fair enough, that makes sense. But recently,
they left the church. By now, I could say that
10 out of 10 participants have left the church.
I haven't spoken to them, so I'm not sure where
they stand, but it seems like they're sort of
getting into a post -evangelical mindset. So
when we look at the post, the conversion stage,
which for me was the stage that I heard that
the participants were reflecting on their past.
Most of them were mentioning the feeling of a
lost youth. So they felt like because they were
struggling with their sexuality or gender identity
in their teenage years and then tried to come
to acceptance in their 20s or 30s or even later
in life, they were missing out on life. They
felt like they were late bloomers. They felt
like they were behind on romantic relationships,
but also they were behind in their careers. Also,
some of the participants mentioned that they
had shallow relationships with their family members
as a form of self -protection, which is something
that I know very well. Often, they were saying
that if we show vulnerability to the family members
that are still evangelical, it is seen as an
entrance for them to try to get us back to the
evangelical environment or to the evangelical
belief. And as I see it, that is like... wanting
to bring someone back to the perpetrator, to
their trauma, basically. So also I was curious,
like, hey, was it worth it? Like, how do you
feel right now? Are you feeling better than before?
And what became clear to me was that despite
all the struggles that they had within their
process, most participants, they... described
experiencing a deep sense of freedom and empowerment
over their sexuality, and they were letting go
of internalized guilt, they were redefining who
they are, and also reclaiming control over their
own bodies seemed to be central to their healing.
So embracing their sexuality and or gender identity
became a way to persist past shame and affirm
themselves, and instead of seeing sex through
fear or guilt, they were now experiencing it
with joy and connection. One participant, for
example, said that they are now finally able
to enjoy sexual experiences freely and their
understanding that pleasure is natural and not
sinful. Even though there was a lot of progress
that was made, there were also still struggles
with lingering internal conflicts or voices of
guilt when they were doing certain things that
they were not allowed to do while growing up.
So I think the main things that I got out of
my research and to sort of come to a conclusion
for this episode, deconversion is not a single
event. So leaving your religion is not a single
event. It is an ongoing process of rebuilding
identity. And also this sort of what I called
post -deconversion stage does not seem to exist
as leaving your religion, deconversion. does
not result in a neat, happy ending or a perfectly
resolved outcome. It seems to be a very painful
process, but at the same time, deconversion ultimately
leads to liberation and empowerment, and these
individuals are able to embrace sexual agency
and discover new meaning outside of their former
evangelical faith. And then, at the end of that
lecture, of course I had to do some PR. No, I'm
kidding. But I wrote a song called Brokenhearted,
released it in 2020 during COVID, did a low budget
video. And I wrote that song because of the high
rates of depression and suicidal tendencies within
our community. And I was just like, hey, guys,
I'm going to show you this song that I wrote.
And I think if you listen carefully, you will
be able to hear some of the themes that we spoke
about today. Of course, less extensive, but still
very recognizable, I think. So if you want to
watch the video, I will just put a link in the
description of this episode. So that was basically
my first experience of being a guest lecturer.
If you have any questions after listening to
this episode, you can always reach out to me
at queerlyhavingissues on Instagram. And if you're
listening on Spotify, I think there's the possibility
to leave a comment within the app. And again,
thank you for listening. And if you are struggling,
going through sort of the things that I've explained
within this episode. Please do know that you're
not alone and that there are many others like
you and we're all going through this deconversion
process together. Thanks for listening and I
hope to have you with me again in the next episode.
Take care.