I spent 20 years as a member of the United Pentecostal Church.
What follows on this page is my story - how I got sucked into this cult, why it is indeed a cult, and how I finally developed enough courage to get out. I hope this story can help others to see that the UPC is not the wonderful organization it portrays itself to be. If my story can save one person the heartache I went through at the hands of this "church," it will have been worth it.
Tell a story of religious trauma and you are bound to get at least one person who says that you were just doing it wrong, in a bad church, or “following man instead of God.” I’ve gotten dozens of such comments on this very blog. My most recent was yesterday on […]
My younger son asked me that question just a bit ago. If you don’t know, he’s 17, but is on the Autism Spectrum, bipolar, and a few other things that cause him to be less mature than his age, overly tender-hearted and generally anxious as fuck. I asked why on […]
I grew up 30 minutes from The Cove, the “Training Center” in Asheville, NC where Billy Graham and his family lived. I have relatives that live off the same 1-40 exit you take to get there. My paternal grandparents were the type of Southern Baptists Graham spent his lifetime trying […]
I woke up this morning to the new trending hashtag #MeAt14 on Twitter. Many of the tweets are just images of girls at 14, who are obviously too young to be in any kind of sexual situation with a man in his 30’s such as Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. […]
CW: Non-consensual physical contact, emotional abuse. It could begin over anything. Sometimes it was over some youthful indiscretion on my part. Sometimes, my dad would even be laughing and joking one minute, and the next minute it was as if a switch had flipped and he was full of […]
If I had $1 for every Christian who, since I left the church, has said to me some version of, “You were hurt by people because you were following traditions/ false doctrines/ human error.. I know better because I know the REAL Jesus…” I’d be Joel Osteen. This morning on […]
In a dream, I was in a primitive cabin, possibly in the mountains where I grew up. A woman named Molly was sitting in a rocking chair near the hearth, where there was a blazing fire. Molly was clearly a wise woman, and she had something to share with me. […]
This is the second article discussing how the United Pentecostal Church and it’s teachings caused trauma in my life. I’m laying bare these old injuries in an effort to understand, and hopefully, heal from them. You can read about what caused this need here. “Are you sick?” The question, […]
The other night I had a dream. I was supposed to attend a service at my old church, but overslept and didn’t go. As people started returning from the service, one was the Pastor’s Wife from when I attended. Only it wasn’t her. It was a very old, very disfigured […]
When I was a small child, growing up in the mid 70’s in rural Western North Carolina, segregation was still an unspoken rule. My elementary school was all white, and I rarely if ever encountered African Americans. My maternal grandmother took me shopping in Asheville once, and we passed a man […]
