TIMES:

I’d been given a religion that was built like a Jenga tower—when I took a few blocks out, it all tumbled to the ground
When I read the Pew Research Center’s report on America’s changing religious landscape, I don’t see statistics. I see Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome.

Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome

• A condition of spiritual injury that occurs as a result of religion, faith, and/or the leaving, losing, or breaking thereof
• The vile, noxious, icky, and otherwise foul aftermath of said spiritual injury
• A serious term intended to aid serious spiritual healing—without tak­ing itself too seriously in the process
  ……..

People who leave or are left by their faith lose a lot more than a place to go on Sunday morning. They lose relationships with family and friends, social status, tribal approval, self-esteem. They lose their God, their identity, their certainty, their gravity. I know because I lost all those things.

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