Last week CNN ran a story online about something called “Rapture Anxiety.”
Here are the opening few lines:
“Thirteen-year-old April Ajoy had a sense something wasn’t right. It was quiet in her Dallas house. Too quiet. Her brothers were gone. Her parents were gone. On her parents’ bed, a pile of her mother’s clothes signaled something terrifying.
Ajoy’s mind began churning, trying to remember, trying to make plans. When was the last time she had sinned? Should she refuse the mark of the beast? At least, she thought, if she was put to the guillotine during the time of tribulation, it would be a quick death.”
The story notes that rapture anxiety is recognized by some mental health experts as a form of trauma. April Ajoy, the young woman mentioned in the quote above, now has a large following on TikTok, where she speaks about overcoming the trauma that has been a product of her evangelical religious upbringing.
If you were raised in evangelical Christianity, do you deal with trauma picked up by some of the theological teaching? There are actually multiple indicators of potential trauma noted in the quote from the article. You may recognize some of them. “When was the last time she had sinned? Should she refuse the mark of the beast? What if she was put to the guillotine?” If you were not raised in rapture teaching evangelical culture, those questions (at least the last few) might seem totally foreign to you.
A quick primer:
Rapture - the teaching within some circles of the Christian church that as part of the “end times” Christians will disappear (be “raptured”) and the unfaithful who remain will face a time of tribulation. (very basic definition)
The mark of the beast - this comes up from a particular interpretation of biblical texts around economy and trade. The beast is seen as a kind of anti-Christ political leader who forces all to have such a mark. The mark is seen a form of allegiance to the anti-Christ.
Guillotine - this comes up mostly due to some popular films in the evangelical subculture decades ago that depicted what they said could happen to those who turned to Jesus during the tribulation.
Rapture anxiety exists because countless people, many of them children, would, during a normal day, upon not knowing where their loved ones were, sometimes fear that the rapture had happened and they had been “left behind.”
There is a word for this kind of biblical interpretation and teaching - psychotic. It is a psychotic kind of teaching that has produced long lasting trauma. It is also not part of most of Christian history and interpretation. For almost the entirety of Christian history, well into the 19th Century, there was no such concept as the rapture. A small sect of the faith, led by one man who came up with the interpretation, began teaching a larger framework of biblical interpretation called “dispensationalism.” Part of that almost entirely faulty teaching was the rapture. The concept took hold in American revivalism that extended to Baptist churches and similar denominations and to various religious educational institutions and to people like Billy Graham (Billy’s crew was largely responsible for the wide reach of the guillotine movies) and voilá, children like April Ajoy become traumatized.
Did your religious upbringing produce trauma? For many, the answer is a resounding yes. Admitting that religious upbringing can produce trauma might actually be a helpful way forward even for those who claim religious faith.
Can you ask yourself the question what teaching produced trauma and consider what might be a distortion of faith? Did you know, for example, that most Christians who have ever lived have not believed in the rapture?
A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a podcast suggestion. It was an episode of the New York Times podcast called First Person. The episode looked at one manifestation of “the great resignation.” The particular focus is the resignation of pastors and the episode presented the story of one such minister. In the pastor’s account of his resignation, he spoke of the amount of stress and of the ongoing attacks and expressions of disappointment from parishioners, even when things were going well. He took some time off. He began going to therapy. After a number of conversations and tests, he was told that his symptoms indicated PTSD. The pastor was perplexed. He could not point to one single incident that would lead to such a response. The clinician pointed out that his PTSD was a form sometimes called CTSD (cumulative traumatic stress disorder). She said that the accumulation of attacks and stressful events in his life as a pastor had led to the same symptoms as more generally understood PTSD.
When I heard the episode, I was struck by that part of the story and suddenly felt that virtually every pastor I know might suffer from a type of CTSD. I am not diagnosing here, but I identified with it myself. Years of constant inability to meet the overwhelming emotional and spiritual needs of a congregation, all while facing consistent expressions of disappointment (or attack) even while things were going well did lead to a kind of trauma response.
As we aim to move forward with hopeful theology and faith, we do well to honestly look at the trauma that has been produced by forms of so-called Christian teaching and by practices and expectations of the community of the church.
This is not to say that the whole thing is terrible. Many families that have produced trauma also have many good and loving things about them. Churches that produce trauma can also be places of love and even true faith.
When the pastor from First Person was told he had CTSD, he could not process it at first. Even though he had faced stress in his job, his faith and his work were among the things that he loved most in life. He said to his wife, after the diagnosis, that he had a hard time believing the thing that he loved so much could do so much damage to him.
In moving towards hope, towards a faith and theology that brings healing instead of fear, one of the important steps is to consider where we have been traumatized and how we may have contributed to the trauma that others are facing.
Finally - a blessing for those (pastors, ex-pastors and parishioners) who deal with trauma from within religious communities. It’s real and it can be debilitating, but there is also help and hope.
Here is a portion of the transcript of the podcast:
Dan White Jr. (ex-pastor)
And they called me in after they received all of the tests, and they were going to go over them with me, and they pulled me into the room, and the neurologist introduced me to a psychologist that was also in the room. And I thought that was weird. And he said, your neurology is showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro (interviewer/host)
PTSD.
Dan White Jr.
Yeah. And I said, what? No. I thought he was smoking something. And the psychologist was there, and she’s like, well, what do you do for a living? And I said, well, I’m a pastor. She says, have you ever experienced traumatic events, very painful events? And I said no. I kept saying, no, I don’t think so.
She’s like, when a veteran comes back from a physically hostile and emotionally hostile environment, they start to have a tremor in their hands because the adrenaline in their forearms and in their legs will not turn off. Their brain is telling them that they’re still not in safety.
She’s like, I think you have CTSD, which is cumulative [sic] traumatic stress disorder. It’s not from one significant violent act.
It’s just consistently being in a very conflict-oriented, painful circumstance over a long period of time. And your body starts to adapt to it. She’s like, would you like to meet with me so we can work through this? She’s like, just three or four sessions. I remember going home and telling my wife, and I just was kind of incredulous, that this is just a joke. I was really having a hard time believing that something I loved had done damage to me.