Bath Water, Dog Turds and Madonna

My friend bought me a turntable for my 57th birthday this year, similar to the one I had when I was little. I hadn’t seen an old-fashioned record player for decades, let alone owned one. I wanted to cry, right there in the bar where we were sitting, right there in front of the millennial couple at the table next to us drinking gin and tonic with cucumber ribbons slithering up the side of the glass.

When I was a child (and yes, I mean a child, not a teenager) I had a huge record collection. As the youngest of six, I inherited all the teenage cast offs of my handsome, hippy brothers – Rubber Soul, Bridge Over Troubled Water– as well as my older sister’s rejects – Al Green, Barry White, Marvin Gaye. Or maybe I had nicked those from her? Anyway, the point is, (unsurprisingly, given I'm a professional singer now) my bedroom was always ringing with music, while I played with my Pippa dolls, pretending I was a Headmistress in a very austere, Victorian orphanage. The image of a small child standing over a menagerie of dolls instructing them to learn their times tables or “it’s cod liver oil for everyone” accompanied by the sultry seductive sound of Let’s Get It On, is a slightly weird one I know. But hey. It was the 70s. Everything was weird.

By the time I was fifteen, my collection was pretty respectable. I’d added Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and the Commodores into the mix, as well as the exciting new sounds of Adam and the Ants, and that delectable trio, The Police. But then, everything changed. I found “God”. Rather, he/she/they found me, apparently. I had always had an innocent spirituality. A belief in a God who loved me, made me feel safe, looked after me, a faith that helped me when I was troubled, or scared of the punk rockers on the tube, or worried about the rioting on the streets of Brixton (yes, I was a bit of an anxious child). But around 1979 my parents were recruited into a high control, fear based Christian group called a Covenant Community, and I, albeit reluctantly, went along with them. And then I got “love bombed”. When you’ve just turned fifteen and you're worried about … well, everything… and your guard is up because you’re just waiting for the next jeer about the hair on your upper lip/ the spot on your chin/ the weird bend in your “spazzy arms”, being in a place where everyone is basically nice, is pretty heavenly really. It’s a huge, wonderful relief. Nobody commented on the fact that my top was from British Home Stores and not Chelsea Girl, or that I couldn’t catch a ball to save my life. In fact, the opposite. I was showered with compliments, attention and love from people who were just that bit older than me to make them cool and not so old that I thought they were boring. And then I had a religious experience which sealed the deal.

I stayed in the group for almost twenty years of my life.

It has taken me a further twenty years to process it all and be brave enough to start talking about my experiences in that group. Firstly, because it was a bit like being a member of a gang. Granted, a happy, jolly, friendly, food-sharing, singing in tongues kind of gang. On the surface. But in the words of Phil Mitchell, “nobody likes a grass”. A gossipy, trouble-making, angry female with issues, grass. Secondly, my 84-year-old mum is still in it. And so are some of my godchildren and lots of people that I love. I’m aware that speaking out is going to offend or disappoint a lot of people, and possibly lead to my being culled from their FB friendship group.

I’m willing to take that risk.

Because nobody talks about spiritual abuse, do they? Not in detail. Not many people know what it is, or even believe it exists. That's because even experts who have studied it struggle to define it and the people who have suffered under it don't realise they've been abused. We don’t address the real issue, or talk to the people who abused us, or even get help, because we don’t think we need it. We wonder why we feel confused, traumatised even. We wonder, if we keep seeking out a religious context, why certain aspects of that context make us fuming, panicky, anxious, raging. We wonder why we can’t sleep, or our stomachs hurt all the time, or we why we wake up scratching our hands until they bleed (yes, these are my symptoms folks). Perhaps we put it down to stress or busyness or the pandemic. Perhaps we blame ourselves. I’m over sensitive. I’m menopausal. I’m an over thinker.

When I was in the Covenant Community (1980-1998 ish), and especially when I was recruited, I was subjected to intense thought reform. Even though at first I lived in a normal house on a normal street and went to a normal school I cut myself off from the real world, from all my siblings and my friends at school who weren’t “saved”. I was subjected to fundamentalist teaching both explicitly and implicitly. Through teaching courses and preaching at prayer meetings, through the repetition of songs that expressed the group’s ideals, weekly confession groups, through “prophetic words”, and significantly, through the overpowering example of those around me, those who were already fully recruited. These ideals indoctrinated my beliefs about how to behave, think, feel, dress, talk, etc..etc.. to the extent that I adopted a pseudo personality. Up until that time, even though I had been fearful, I was a passionate, interested, open, emotional, free young girl, excited by literature and music, full of dreams and ambition, driven by a desire to make my mark on the world. By the time I was seventeen I had become demure, measured, filtered, guarded and submissive, set on only one purpose in life – pleasing God. Which meant being obedient to the leaders. Which meant getting married and having babies, and nothing much else. Which assumed a base line belief that I was fundamentally displeasing to God unless I did those things.

I was called to the highest levels of purity in every sense of the word, not just sexual purity, but moral and spiritual purity which meant that everything I did, thought and said had to be filtered because I was told I was special, chosen. I switched off my ability to think critically at a key time in my life when my brain was still forming its opinions, ideals and identity. I am certainly no neuro-scientist, but I understand (from my husband's research) that adolescence is a key time in the brain's development. Neurons and synapses are embedded during these years, in a process known as "pruning" - the brain will take on and programme new ideals disregarding old ones. During those years in the Communiy I was specifically taught not to trust my emotions, not to seek personal happiness and to largely ignore my own well-being. I was encouraged not to trust my instincts, and told I was a “new creation” who needed to change every part of myself because the old me was dead. I was told my siblings who were "unsaved" were not trustworthy, were broken and unreliable. This last lie was still embedded in my subconscious until about a year ago. It led me to emotionally distance myself from my family, filter what they said, and judge them.

Over the past year or so, through long conversations with each of my glorious siblings I have realised how much I can learn from them, how wise and wonderful they all are. They have been devastated to hear the truth of what I've been through, not realising the full extent of what I was being indoctrinated with. They thought I was fine because I got out twenty years ago. This is one example among thousands of other distorted thought patterns. I am only now beginning to understand why it is so very hard for me to change them.

The people who taught me that God loves me like a father (an accepted universal Christian truth) also said that God was going to allow Satan to “unleash his fury on me, engulfing me in darkness, confusion and war” if I didn’t accept God’s “radical call” to Covenant Community. It wasn't the normal, generally accepted Christian doctrine taught across the churches. It was twisted, hybrid, peppered with fundamental truths but mostly emphasising the ideals of a small handful of men, communicated and emphasised coercively and manipulatively.

I am reluctant to use this very strong term (and forgive me if it is triggering or seems exaggerated) but the effect of all of this on me has been akin to mind rape.

I have been told, more times than I care to mention not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I listened to this warning for many years, worrying I would lose my faith and beliefs that had been so precious to me. The trouble is that when you have been spiritually abused you can’t always tell the difference between a rubber duck and a bar of soap. You don’t recognise a loofah from an exfoliating mesh sponge. You don’t trust the smell of a lavender bath bomb in case it’s a dog turd. So babies, bath water… sometimes all the same to someone like me.

Something definitely got washed here, and it sure as hell wasn’t a baby.

This is my first step into talking about these things publicly. There is much more. There is worse. I’ve sat on it for a very long time, but feel my silence is complicit. I can’t sit around and watch it still happening, (and it is still happening) walk away and wipe that time from my memory. I can’t take the advice that some well-meaning friends have tried to give me:

“Think of the all the great things that you got out of being in a Covenant Community, Jess. Surely you’ll find peace if you try to forgive and move on.”

Can I just flip that concept around: Why is it always the victim’s responsibility to take the higher ground? Why is it the victim who has to back down, shut up, stop causing trouble, move on, sort themselves out, stop whining. We didn’t do anything wrong. We just believed the BS and trusted the people. Is it so unreasonable to say: “My abusers need to take responsibility, stop victim blaming, making excuses and trying to protect their organisation from bad press. My abusers need to turn away from their behaviour. My abusers need to stand down from being leaders and people of influence in the church, hold their hands up and say they were wrong.”

It is not enough for them to say "mistakes were made and we don't do that stuff anymore". My brain has been physically altered because of their mistakes.

So, what has all this got to do with my friend buying me a turntable?

Well, around 1981 I took a hammer to my precious record collection. I smashed all my vinyl to smithereens with an almost Maoist zeal. I ripped up my tapes of the top 40 that I had meticulously recorded from the radio since the age of 10 or 11. I obliterated all the influence of “secular” music from my life, because I had been told that I was part of a “fallen generation”, a “lost generation” that was ruled by its animalistic desire to procreate, smoke cigarettes, take drugs and dance naked. The evils of Teen Culture meant I was in danger of being brain washed, ironically. I didn’t realise that the washing of my brain had been going on since I joined the group at fifteen, and would continue, relentlessly for the rest of my teens and most of my twenties.

In 1987, when I was employed by the group as a staff member, working with the University Outreach and recruiting people into it, I lived in a flat with five other women in Earl’s Court. Downstairs there were some lads who loved to play Madonna very loudly. Of course, I didn’t realise it was Madonna at the time because I’d never heard any. But I knew of her and did not approve. She was a symbol of everything I stood against – promiscuity, sexually alluring clothing, blasphemous lyrics etc.. etc… Anyway, these boys played “Holiday” on repeat, but all I ever heard was the bass line and the beat. It was a harsh reminder to me that I was on the outside. That an exciting, free life was being lived outside my world and all I knew of it was a muffled bass line. It was a reminder to me of the life I had before I’d been recruited, dancing to Songs In The Key Of Life in my bedroom, writing stories and dreaming about Richard Gere, (before he was old and grey-haired obvs) a life I wished I still had, truth be told. But going back to that life felt like letting God down. I believed I was called to live sacrifically, to give up my selfish plans for a career. I'd been taught that God required that of me. So I stayed. For another twelve years.

Over thirty years later my bestie beams at me from across the table.

“Open the lid” he says. He can’t contain his excitement.

Inside there is a lone, single record. A 7 inch, 45 rpm. Pre-loved. Well- worn but in decent condition.

I know what it is, before I even look at the title.

I know that bass line like the back of my hand.