How spiritual violence can impact us all: a family story

People who know me, know that I was once studying to be a Catholic priest in the early 1980s. By the end of that decade I no longer identified as a Catholic or a Christian. The reasons for leaving the church were many, but one of them was because of the harm of spiritual violence.

My introduction to organized religion as an adult, was because of my brother, who also introduced me to the Catholic Worker movement and other more radical aspects of the Christian tradition. My brother introduced me to Direct Action and fostered my growth in critical thinking. It is safe to say that if it wasn’t for my brother, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

My brother has been a truck driver for some 30 years and he recently began posting videos where he talks about spiritual/religious violence and how he was traumatized by it while he was a teenager. 

In the mid-1970s, our mother took us to a religious revival or sorts at the Hershey Arena. We heard the non-denominational preacher Jack Van Impe, a longtime televangelist. Van Impe was a fire and brimstone preacher and spoke in very black and white terms about heaven, hell and the influences of the devil.

The Van Impe revival that my brother and I attended also included an alter call, where people were invited to meet with spiritual counselors with the goal of dedicating your life to Jesus. I wasn’t buying what Van Impe was selling, not because I was skeptical, it was just not something that I could relate to. Unfortunately, my brother was deeply traumatized by the notions of hell and eternal suffering, which he discusses in this first video.

In his second video, my brother explores the impact of the spiritual violence he suffered, where he talks more about the concepts of hell, Dante’s depiction of hell, what other writers have had to say about it and how this apocalyptic view of the world has grown in the US, finding its way more and more into the dominant culture.

I am inviting people who read GRIID to check out these videos and to even offer some feedback in the comments section of the YouTube videos included in this post, as I think it would be welcomed by my brother. Thanks for your consideration.