Media Interviews with Julie Anne

Drew Marshall Interview and Welcome

Julie Anne

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If you are stopping by after listening to the interview on The Drew Marshall Show, a warm welcome to you!!

These are not fun subjects.  They have affected me and a lot of my readers to the core.  But if you took the time to look up  my blog, perhaps something struck a chord.

Yesterday, Drew asked me to send him my most popular posts with a brief summary.  I thought I’d post part of the e-mail I sent him in case newcomers wanted to dig a little deeper.  There was not enough time to delve into these topics in the interview.

In Honor of Hannah:  I cannot read this without crying, Drew.  This is my very deep and personal story of how the spiritual abuse in our church caused my adult daughter to go crazy and leave our home abruptly.  In this culture (Homeschool Movement), parents think they own their adult children.  It’s horrific and you can read how I come to grips with what we did to her.

Calvary Chapel Pastor Bob Grenier Sues his Son and Former Member:  In this post we read personal testimonies from Calvary Chapel Visalia Pastor Bob Grenier’s adult children about the alleged physical and sexual abuse they incurred by their father.  The abuse of his children in addition to spiritual abuse of church members and staff is well-known, has been brought to elders, pastors, even to the head pastor of the 2,000-church empire, Chuck Smith, who says his hands are tied and can’t remove him.  He has removed other pastors for far less.  He chooses to look the other way.  This case is a microcosm of probably hundreds of cases of abuse within the Calvary Chapel franchise of churches as reported on Calvary Chapel Abuse blog.  The Calvary Chapel authority structure allows for no accountability for head pastors and so abuse continues just like we see with the  Boy Scouts, Catholic Church.  Media has been very quiet on these cases.

In this post: Homeschool Movement, I expose a subculture within the general umbrella of homeschooling which includes ultra conservative, fundamentalist teachings and agendas:  Patriarchy, courtship, quiver-full, modesty rules, emphasis on girls remaining virgins and having purity ceremonies, etc.  A whole generation of kids who have grown up in this culture (like my daughter, age 26) and are now coming to grips with the legalistic and cult-like culture in which they were raised.  Some agendas went too far and a lot of these kids are having real problems with addictive tendencies, difficult mental health issues, etc.  Parents are sometimes abandoning or shunning these young adults who have chosen a different path than which they were raised.  It looks and smells cult-like.  The end result is the same as with cult victims, with detoxing and therapy sometimes necessary to recover.  I am partner on Homeschoolers Anonymous blog.

Sovereign Grace Ministries is another church group that is now being sued by a group of sex/physical abuse victims and their families in a class action lawsuit.   Church leaders allegedly failed to report abuse cases and even interfered with parents who were trying to report  cases to police.  This lawsuit is growing and more names/churches have been added.  In the last year or so about 25 churches have left cutting half of their total population, yet former President CJ Mahaney (and defendant) continues to speak publicly at conferences as if nothing is wrong and his friends give him a free pass. This story is connected with the lawsuit, but also connects with the Homeschooling Movement (owning adult children) and deals with spanking of adult children.  In the comments, you read more of our personal story.  Painful and disgusting,  I’m so glad I am free from that craziness.

Spiritual Sounding Board has become  a community.  People comment when something connects with them.  Personal stories are shared here, we discuss unhealthy agendas and trends in church, we discuss all sorts of topics related to spiritual abuse, unhealthy church trends, etc.

Feel free to comment at any time (whether it pertains to the topic or not).  I welcome your communication and personal stories (send to spiritualsb @ gmail.com)    Thanks for stopping by.  Feel free to hang a while 🙂  ~Julie Anne

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18 thoughts on “Drew Marshall Interview and Welcome”

  1. Thank you for standing up and speaking out about abusive pastors and churches. The harm they do is hard to believe or understand until your soul is crushed and you are left in the the dark despair of depression and/or ptsd from what they have done to your soul. I had never seen such evil as I did in the church, the place that should be all love and trust. Finding your way back to life takes a lot of work and support. Standing together as we continue to process what we experienced and being there for others is so important. Bless you!

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  2. Thank you, Ang. You are so right. Some of this is so heavy. Having others who understand the pain is helpful because it would be easy to think we’re going crazy. It is THAT intense for some. I have felt that way at times.

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  3. i missed it, ja. . and it doesn’t look like they’ve posted today’s interview yet on their site. . if someone doesn’t beat me to it i’ll drop a link to it here as soon as i discover it available. .

    Ang, what you said—I had never seen such evil as I did in the church, the place that should be all love and trust.

    this is why i’ve set myself to fight against spiritual abuse in high places—against a spiritual darkness that as a rule is rarely at all recognized as evil within their perspective church cultures. .

    an Isaiah Five thing

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  6. I had never seen such evil as I did in the church, the place that should be all love and trust.

    “Nowhere do we tempt as successfully as at the very foot of the altar!”
    — Screwtape (Nya Ha Ha, My Dear Wormwood…)

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  8. Sergius, how cool is that?! I’m wondering if I can post .wmv files here. I’ll check that out.

    Ok, I just checked. It looks like I can only upload: .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, or .wav

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  9. Well a lot of sound programs allow you to convert to those files. Another way to get around it is to post the audio as a video on YouTube and you can post a link to it on your blog, so that all the readers have to do is click on the link. Essentially it’s the same thing as posting the audio directly to your site, but you have an extra step or two on your end.

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  11. just finished listening to the interview. .

    Julie Anne. . good narrative!

    What you said: churches, families, lives being tormented and torn apart!

    and how we need to drink the pure milk of the Word to discern for ourselves what is right from what is wrong. .

    not allowing pastors acting like gods control over our lives. .

    Drew Marshall said: we are just dumb dumb sheep! we all want to be led. . we all need some leader in our lives.

    Yes, Drew, however for me (since boyhood) in all spiritual matters—the One leader in my life has been none other than our Master—Jesus Christ. We have his Word, Spirit, mind, heart and counsel of a community of believers to lead us through life.

    Drew Marshall talks about this blindness and stupidity in the hearts and minds of the sheep who are unable to go into a “church” and SEE the very visible danger signs—still blind to it even after seeing member after member devoured [by the wolves]. But others can go in to the same haunt and in the matter of minutes see danger signs EVERYWHERE. Why are we blind to this? Drew asks.

    I love how he ends the segment telling us how if he had unlimited wealth there would be two things he’d do: He’d float around small towns and hang out at the pubs and whatnot and secretly find out who really needs the help—then anonymously hook them up with the needed cash and split town. .

    at the same time he said, I’d go around and find out town from town who the spiritual abusers are and I WOULD MESS THEM UP!

    Now that is most beautiful. . most beautiful, indeed!

    related thought:

    I don’t know how I got clued into this suspect pastor (maybe through Julie Anne’s or Samantha’s twitter feed), but I began following a Dr. Marc Monte on twitter a few days ago. Why? Because on first sniff he smelled like a mean and nasty wolf. Yes, a spiritual abuser! So I’m tracking him for the moment like you would a wolf.

    I have no idea why he said this, but this is what @drmarcmonte tweeted yesterday:
    https://twitter.com/drmarcmonte/status/325575259313025025

    To be unfollowed can be a complement. Jesus said, “Beware when all men speak well of you.”

    I wonder how complemented he’d feel knowing some follow him for being a suspect spiritual abuser?

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  12. at the same time he said, I’d go around and find out town from town who the spiritual abusers are and I WOULD MESS THEM UP!

    Now that is most beautiful. . most beautiful, indeed!

    Monax, we definitely agree on what is beautiful!!!

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  15. FYI: Chuckie is taking sermon notes from Julie Anne’s latest blog post…
    “Compassion with Shoes On”

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  16. Hilarious, SGM!

    And I bet that is one of the top most difficult words to pronounce. I’ve tried to say it since and it is just plain hard to say. It’s all good…..and humbling. Lol. It was fun to laugh during such an intensely troubling subject.

    Do you give private lessons? 🙂 sign me up.

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  17. Drew Marshall ends with this hope for SSB and the true church—that a ground swell of resistance might rise up as a result of this.

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