# 97 Understanding the difference between a church and a cult + Anna Kitko PART I

Today I am so excited to talk about cults because what if the most dangerous spiritual abuse isn't going to look like abuse? I have the cult expert to talk about it and a kicker. What if it looks like loyalty and obedience and being quote on fire for God?

Cults, Coercive Control, and Spiritual Abuse

How it actually works, what it actually looks like, how do people get pulled into it, and how do we see examples of this in.

The Bible? I had loved ones caught up in a local cult group and it was vile. I mean it was really really crazy. A spiritually abusive environment is an environment that tries to step in between your relationship with Jesus.

Jesus is your mediator, nobody else is. Wow, so like how.

Does someone become an expert in cults? Hello hello, welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name.

Is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. In this podcast we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

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In exchange for the support, I personally promise to you to always create the highest quality production possible. Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

I'm your host, Cassian Bellino. Today I am so excited to talk about cults because what if the most dangerous spiritual abuse isn't going to look like abuse? What if it looks like loyalty and obedience and being, quote, on fire for God?

So today we're going to get into cults and coercive control within the Bible, how it actually works, what it actually looks like, how do people get pulled into it, and how do we see examples of this in the Bible.

Anna Kitko’s Background and Expertise

Today I have the cult expert. I guess I could call you that. The cult expert to talk about it. Anna Kitko, you have a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Reford Theological Seminary. You have a Master of Science from the Psychology of Coercive Control from the University of Salford in the UK.

You have areas of specialty like Christian apologetics, neurochemistry, PTSD, dissociative disorders, and the world's greatest hair. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you back on. Wow, and I consider this a bad hair.

Day. I'm glad to be back. It's a super privilege and I always have fun on the show, so no problem.

At all. You were just on to talk about biblical canon, which was amazing. There has to be a part two to that episode because it was so wonderful, but now you're here because this was kind of like how we connected.

We connected to talk about cults and this is your area of expertise. I wanted to talk about canon and you brought up this topic. So before we even got on, you were talking about how people really want to bring you into psychoanalyze.

How did you get wrapped up in.

This? Yeah, I have a background that was not in any way, shape, or form going to be in cult psychology at all. I wanted to become a brain surgeon and I was well on my way to doing that, but I had loved ones caught up in a local cult group and it was vile.

I mean, it was, yeah, it was really, really, really, really, really crazy and I just couldn't believe. It was unbelievable what I was experiencing and what I was seeing and then anytime you would try to explain what was happening, you sounded crazy and it was like, I'm not though.

Like, I'm valedictorian of Cambridge in my state. Like, I know I'm not crazy. Like, what is happening? And I could not get away from it. So the too long, didn't read version is that I decided, well, I'll use all of my fancy training to try to help people who are caught up in course of control.

And what you see today is a result of.

All of that. Wow. So like, how does someone become an expert in cults? Do you have to go back to.

School for that? So that's tough. Cause like, how do you, how do you measure expertise? Technically speaking, I tend to do that by some type of standardization so that you can measure me. And it's not just, Anna thinks she's an expert.

Cause I think that sounds nice. So it's more like, okay, what are the tools that you would need to actually be able to be accountable to hire the folks that hire out like a board or some type of like measurement system?

Like, do you actually do have chops in this? Can you measure a mental illness? Can you also be able to tell like, how does brainwashing work? Have you done all the studies? Have you done any clinical research, all those things?

So I just put together what I imagined I would need to trust somebody who claimed to be an expert in this. And then I walked through all of those hoops to the best of my ability, which is part of why you see me wear so many hats and I have all these credentials.

It's not because I really wanted to do that. It's because I wouldn't trust me without those credentials. If I were in a cult listening to me talk. Totally. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So is the work that you do right now, restorative healing for people that are coming.

Out of cults? Yes. Yeah. So we have a clinic locally that where we focused exclusively on that and like in here and you'll hear things that like you might see shadows walk past. That's because it's an active clinic.

And so, yeah, in this office, we specifically treat victims, of course, of control in particular victims of high control groups or what we would call.

A cult group. Oh, my gosh. I have so many questions on like modern day groups that are like arising that we'll have to talk about offline, but I would love to spend time today kind of talking about like coercive control isn't a new thing.

So we see examples of it in the Bible, but I want to kind of use that of what was it like back then for that course of control? Like, was it any different than what we see today that like the modern cults and then kind of relate it to today of, OK, based on the biblical example, does that still happen today?

How is it a little bit different and how do we recognize it? How do we know if we're in it? So I do want to talk a little bit about. The Bible to use it as a framework for modern churches, but before we get into some scripture, let's do a little bit of definitions.

What Counts as a High-Control Group?

OK, so how do you define spiritual.

Cults or high cortisol groups or high control groups? Yeah, it's OK. Also high cortisol groups. That's a great. So the definitions are people are still really trying to come up with one single way of articulating what it means to be in something like this.

And because it's so complex, that's really, really difficult. For the most part, you are looking at groups that are attempting to assert or destroy your autonomy using spiritual language to control you as though they are speaking on behalf of God.

And so like they're not controlling you. It's really God that's doing it. They just have a secret ability to talk to him that you don't have. And so you need to come under their authority and do what they say.

And there are stipulations through this that we can talk about things like milieu control. And I can go into some more details later. But overall, a spiritually abusive environment is an environment that tries to step in between your relationship with Jesus.

Jesus is your mediator. Nobody else is. So watch for people who are forcibly trying to tell you that you require they require you. So like any leader that's like, oh, I have special knowledge that you need in order to access Jesus or I have special authority in your life that you need to come under in order to access Jesus, anything like that.

You're immediately like a key to unlock a door. Yeah. Yeah. Like you need them as for something special that they can only tell you about. You're in a dangerous environment then.

OK, so with that example, you know, I'm just going to play devil's advocate like we both know which team I bat for. But what's like somebody walks in and this pastor is like really unlocking somebody's faith.

They're they're part of this deep commitment to facilitate someone's faith versus coercion. You know, how do we kind of recognize like, you know, that pastor that's like on fire for a church, but like you kind of develop a codependency on him because he's facilitating so much or her.

And then you have, you know, what you're talking about,.

That coercion, that that key, that locked door. Yeah. Excellent. So that that leader, if that leader is not actively protecting you from them, so like actively protecting you from that codependency, actively protecting you like, hey, I am not the Messiah.

You need the Messiah. You are going to move on from me. You will if I'm a good teacher or a good discipler, then there should be a point where you arrive at the same level as me and move past me. Otherwise, I'm just enjoying the fact that you're boosting my ego.

Like they should be protecting you from them. They should be actively making you strong enough to not need them anymore. Does that make sense? That totally makes sense, because I could see.

How someone could get like high off of that power that they have over someone. And that do you think. I mean, I'm interpreting that as like that's where the enemy kind of comes in and takes advantage of that situation, like takes advantage of somebody's pride.

Absolutely. Yeah. The leader should be aware of their impact in the life of the person who is vulnerable in front of them. They should be protecting their vulnerability. So if they're saying I'm stepping into a position of authority in your life, they should also be saying, and therefore, this is why I am not going to speak into things that are none of my business biblically like your marriage.

I'm not just going to insert myself into your marriage. I'm not going to start telling you exactly what to do after hearing a story that you've told me for two seconds. I'm not going to be making judgments on things that are not my business to make judgments about.

Instead, I'm going to be emboldening you to know your Bible well enough to make winsome judgments yourself. And I'm going to step back. Your relationship is with Jesus, and I'm facilitating that. Your relationship is not with me so that.

You can access Jesus better. Got it. Got it. Do you think there's like, do you think there's areas with like high control within the church that are necessary?

I don't think there are areas of high control that are necessary, except from a leadership to leadership perspective. So like, not the parishioner, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Big distinction. So like once you step into the role of a leader, now it's high scrutiny.

It's a different standard in the scriptures that you're held to. And from a leader to a leader, a thousand percent, there's a lot of control. Well, from a hierarchy down, like a bishopric, a ton of, but as soon as you get to a leader and a parishioner, no, there should not be any high control going on.

They're too vulnerable, and they have not been called into that hypercritical space. It's completely inappropriate to take advantage of the vulnerable that way. Wow. That's a, because some.

Would even say that like, you know, if I undergo a major transformation, but I'm not necessarily in a leadership role, I have a higher standard that I'm being called to because now I'm, you know, now I have, you know, a holiness, you know, a set apartness that I need to set apart, but even,.

You know, still kind of maintain that, like I'm not a leader yet. But that autonomy should remain with you. So that accountability and that autonomy stays with you. So like, if you go against your conscience and you begin to act in a way that is not as holy as you ought, that moment is for confession.

It's coming to the people of God for help. It is not you surrendering your autonomy to somebody else for them to then control you in your potential backsliding or in your sin or however they want to phrase it.

That's that it remains with you. Yep. Okay. Let's get into what.

Jeremiah 5 and False Prophets

I think is an example of a cult in the Bible. In Jeremiah five, we see fear, false authority, we see manipulation, all of which is being used to control God's people. How do you view.

Jeremiah five? No, I love it. I go there first, as far as the Old Testament is concerned, because it's such a remarkable breakdown that the Lord anticipated. I mean, it's a lot of our frameworks mirror, like our current modern frameworks for understanding cults and measuring them mirror are mirrored in, in Jeremiah five.

So we have, you know, maybe not one cult, but maybe several, there are lots of different gods that the Lord references that are being worshiped. So it's like Jerusalem has been overrun. Right. And then on top of that, the prophets in Jerusalem at the time that Jeremiah is concerned with, and that the Lord is deeply concerned with is that they are prophets who are prophesying lies.

And he makes a note that this is a critical component to the structure that he's being upset. He's upset with the Lord's upset with the structure because he has warned his people about this. They recognize the lies and they're still willing to put up with the leadership continuing to behave this way.

So it's not just, yeah. Oh yeah. It's not just the leaders messing up. It's that the people who hold the leaders accountable are going, nah, we're, we're going to just go ahead and give up that framework.

We don't need to do that. We'd rather like this and they're staying. So like the whole group has been given over to coercion. For those that aren't familiar with Jeremiah five, do you mind just kind of giving some contextual background of like what's going on?

We're getting ready to jump into in the history of the people of God, the Babylonian exile, which is one of the darkest chapters in the history of the church. And Jerusalem has been given, Jerusalem is acting as basically the representative of all of Israel and the context of that city and how the people are behaving in that city is being used as emblematic of everybody's internal disposition all the way through the people, the Hebrew people.

So the Lord is very concerned and he's giving final warnings beginning with Isaiah and then moving on through Jeremiah and it's getting, it's getting like more and more and more severe, the warnings, because the people are ignoring him and he's being very, very clear about what he is expecting of them and they're going, we don't care.

So this is like a really defiant, really ugly moment in the history of the church and Jeremiah's role is to just weep and grieve and beg and like there's no, he doesn't parse words, right? You know exactly what's going on and this is the most defiant like middle finger to God moment in this city's history.

And so that's where Jeremiah is when he says, here's what's going on with your people, here's what your leadership is behaving like, here's what the parishioners are purposely, like this is willful blindness, this isn't just like a naivety.

They're aware that their leaders are doing this, I have made you aware and you're doing absolutely nothing about it. So that's the context. A lot like what we're seeing going on today with the NAR stuff going on where we've got some, we've got accountability building up, right?

The new episode. What is the NAR? I'm sorry. That's okay. I'm just going to make context for your, for your listeners because it's happening right now. So there's a whole movement in Christianity, it's the biggest church in the world right now, which is Bethel, Reading, where and their extensions, what's going on at the International House of Prayer.

There's several extensions, Todd White, these guys that came all came through the Bethel framework and they've been exposed. And so there's this question of, are you actually going to repent and do something about this on a really, really public level or are you not?

And so far the not part is a way stronger answer than the yes, we are going to be accountable and actually talk through all of these other prophets who we have allowed to, we've knowingly allowed them to falsely prophesy.

So it's literally Jeremiah five going on right now in America. Okay. This is.

Perfect. We can kind of use this as like a parallel. It's like what's happening in the Bible and what's happening now, because I'm pretty ignorant about this. Actually, I don't know much about this going on, but okay.

So the earliest warning signs that someone is entering a coercive spiritual environment, what are we seeing in Jeremiah and what are we seeing today with the NAR?

Agenda-Driven Theology and Celebrity Leaders

Yes. So it agenda driven theology. So this is like we're seeing that people are more interested in their own personal movement and their own kingdom building. They'll call it kingdom building. They're building little fiefdoms to themselves, right?

I've got an idea for a movement or the Lord's given me some special revelation. It's going to be this, it's going to be things like the seven mountain mandate. It's going to be, you know, like I got this really special vision and I'm prophetically going to walk this out.

And then they proceed to do that beginning with the belief that their personal revelation from God is for the whole world. So they begin to behave like they're shepherds to the world after like a single prophecy.

And that's a real, that's a really, really bad sign because there's only one shepherd to the world and that's Jesus. So for sure, if the message was, this is for the whole world, that was not from Jesus.

The last person I know who gave you messages for the whole world and you weren't Jesus was Satan. So we gotta.

Really slow down. Oh my gosh, because it's tough when you feel an overwhelming power of God gave me something, it'll benefit not just me, but other people. And then the people receiving that see it also as almost a gift.

So they don't even feel like they're being deceived. Would you say, you know, like people in Jeremiah, in Jeremiah five, they, they willfully and honestly knew that they were kind of buying into something that wasn't right.

Whereas like people within the NAR with Bethel, it sounds like they think they are buying into something that is actually good.

Yeah. And I'd say that does happen. I, and in some capacity, I would imagine that happened a bit in Jerusalem. However, the critical component was that it's for the people being warned. It's the people who do have a knowledge.

They have a knowledge that they're, they're, because they are getting a following for themselves. They're garnering their own followers, not followers for Yahweh. It's the people who were willfully blind.

He does not, in Jeremiah, he does not comment on the people who are genuinely being taken advantage of. And we can talk about some of those protocols in the New Testament, because the Lord actually designs protections for the people who have been taken advantage of, and that they will be spared from these things and that he loves them and that he's held holding the leadership accountable.

That's first Timothy five, for example, and the book of Jude as well goes into it. So I would point out that in Jeremiah five, and then into six, the crux of that context is for the people who know what's going on.

It's not for the people who are being taken advantage of.

Okay. Cause I mean, I've gone to a couple of churches that have just like blown up. They have just become so big. And would you say that it really is just like the heart posture of the leadership that has to be watched?

Cause it's like, they are becoming kingdom builders, you know, but how do we know that? Yeah. Why does, why does your,.

Why does the kingdom of God need t-shirts? Why do they need marketing strategies and branding? I'm not saying that everybody who does this is not building for the Lord. I'm just pointing out, those are questions that the leadership should be panicking about and really discerning over.

So these guys that kind of just like walk into their celebrity and they're just fine with it. That's called pre-list and pre-list is warned about in the history of the church. Pre-list is the sin that comes over a church leader with their not paying attention to where Satan is.

And it's the sin of feeling your oats. It's the sin of, of being overcome with your own celebrity that you begin to forget who's in charge and that you're not actually needed. And they begin building little kingdoms to themselves.

It's called pre-list. Yeah. Whoa. Okay.

Would you say that this is happenchance or do you think that this is very targeted in who these kingdom builders are using to build their kingdom? Like, is it targeting these specific vulnerable groups or is it just kind of like, well, if the message is big enough, you know, build it and they'll come at, I don't care who comes, you know, as long as the kingdom's being.

Built or is it more targeted? Yeah, that's a tough question. In, in the cases of, I think that people can have stumble into accidental celebrity and it can overtake them. So I, I do believe that, but in those cases you see when it really, when things start falling apart, you see them repent and show contrition and go, here's what happened.

Like this, the fact that the Holy spirit resides in them shows up really in a really, really big way. Um, and so although it's tragic, what happens, like they step into major sin or something happens under their care, you see the leader show repentance, like genuine contrition walked out, they step down, they take responsibility, right?

The guys that are forming cults, cults don't form by accident. We're talking like the scary ones. Okay. These are guys who stepped up with a game plan about how they were going to lie to the masses and pulled it off effectively.

So these are guys like, let's take a historical example. Joseph Smith. Did he know what he was doing? Yes, he did. He fabricated a lie. He fabricated the whole thing. He kept the lie going. It's a mess.

And you can see that because the story changes over and over and over again. And when he was 14, he went to jail for exactly the same thing, but nobody talks about that. Um, like, Oh yeah. So like things like that, like, no, this is, this is a perpetrator.

Like this is somebody who is, who is actively trying to succeed in an endeavor that amasses for them wealth and power and sex and whatever else they're going after. Um, so yeah, there, yeah. If you see, if you see a movement that gets started on one man's prophecy, be really careful, like go really, really slowly because that, yeah, predicating an entire, like a move of the people of God on one person's private revelation, that's very dangerous.

How do you double check that? We're supposed to test all things and hold fast to that, which is good. How is he checking that? Right? Angels of light appear to lots of people. So what we're warned that they're going to be angels of light that appear to people who are not angels of light, what happened to all of those details of that moment of their personal Lord or whoever they encountered really matter.

Why are they under the impression? This is for everybody and not just for them or just their local congregation. You see what I mean? Yep. We got to have some frameworks in place. It's more than just, yay.

I'm excited that there's a.

Prophecy. So, I mean, I would say like, I mean, you're a smart person. I would say I'm a smart person. We're both, you know, God fearing people, but why are, would you say, I mean, disagree with me if like you think, but why would you say like Christians there that kind of fell victim to Joseph Smith?

Why are they especially vulnerable? Like why not? Like atheists who just are trying.

To find meaning in the world, but like specifically Christians. So with Joseph Smith's case, he actually was predatory over the most vulnerable. Part of the reason why he kept heading West is because he was using the pioneer framework of the time period to take advantage of the people who did not have access to local congregations or Bibles in a lot of ways.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

And a lot of, so he was kind of picking up like the stragglers that needed community.

Yes. He was also targeting women who didn't have husbands. He was targeting families that were in dire straits. So one of the ways he did this was by doing what's called glass viewing glass viewing is that you walk up to a farm that's struggling that, you know, locally is struggling.

You say, Hey, I'm a prophet. And I can see that you have buried treasure on your property. And for a fee, if you'll just pay me a fee, I will find the exact location. And then you can just go dig up your treasure.

Like that's just, it's how I apply my craft, right? I'm going to, I'll prophesy on demand for you where this treasure is. And at the time period, this was like fairly normative, like a belief that was kind of superstitious in the culture of where he was at the time was New York.

There's a whole series of, of New York state called the Burnover district. And this was very common in that district. Um, so he would go and he would say, okay, yeah, give me my money. And they'd pay him up front and he'd say, yep, it's over under that Oak tree.

Have a nice day. And then he'd leave and then they'd go dig up. And sure enough, there's no treasure. And then where do you find him? He's already gone. And he, now he has your income for now. Yeah. So glass viewing, that was, that was what he was famous for doing.

So yeah, he's, he is targeting the vulnerable. He is targeting the people who are, um, I don't want to say that this was gullibility, but it's more like desperation. And when you're desperate, you are very, very, very suggestible.

And people who are in leadership and care for the desperate know that and protect them from themselves, right? This is like a therapeutic environment. You don't become friends with your therapist for a reason.

It's because the therapist is protecting you from them. You are vulnerable. You're going to feel all the feelings of like transference and counter transference in a session, because you're talking about the most intimate details of your life with someone who is showing you an actual place.

It's safe to do that. And intimacy is going to be developed automatically. That's how neuroscience works. So the therapist then goes, I'm protecting you from me. We are in a professional environment and go on your way.

Right. And if we happen to see each other at target, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to acknowledge it so that you know, you're safe and you don't have to be in a therapeutic environment all the.

Time. It's too intense. And Jeremiah five was their target there, or was it just pure ignorance.

And people just kind of going with the whims of their heart? I can't tell from the text exactly what's going on. There are a couple of moments in Jeremiah where the Lord does. He, he implies, and he might say it outright.

I have to double check. Um, he implies that it is their hearts that are so turned against him. They don't want him. Like this is an active rejection moment. This new flow, what was going on? But with the leaders, this is a targeted thing.

The leaders know they are lying. They are profits who are established profits. And they know that they're not telling the truth about their prophecies and that he is like, that is completely unacceptable.

And I will never permit that for my people. You have been warned. So when it comes to Bethel and what's.

Happening with what you're seeing, I mean, I'm pretty ignorant to this entire situation. This is a group of leaders who are just kind of taking advantage of their loyal congregation,.

Or is there a more specific targets there? Yeah, no, they're specific targets. So what they're doing is they're saying things like they're saying prophecies. Like I, the Lord spoke to me that you needed to move to Reading and have, which is where Bethel is, is in California.

Um, you need to move to this city. Like this is a word from the Lord and come be a part of the church. And they go to the most millionaire oriented people to get them to come give money to that congregation.

I'm not kidding. This is like that. They're data mining things off of social media, um, so that they can have prophecy that feels real for the people in the congregation. So they'll preempt to find out who's going to be there and then go on their social media, come, come up with material that they shouldn't know about and then use it in the service as though they have a secret knowledge about people they haven't met.

Um, and we can prove this because, um, they get caught on the regular, almost getting it right. Or they accidentally looked up the social media profile of somebody with the same name, but it wasn't the right person.

And so they, they start rattling off addresses that are wrong. Oh, the angel in my head got it wrong. Yes. Yes. Um, you catch them reading off of their phones, like at podiums, like they, like they forgot what the detail was.

Um, and this is all like the thing about narcissism, which is what I would say this primarily is. Um, the thing about it is that that particular pathology cannot stop recording itself. Like it loves itself.

It loves its face. It loves its words. It wants to listen to it. So like they, they, they set themselves up for failure by recording themselves making mistakes and don't care enough to not send it out to millions of people so that people like us who are monitoring this stuff is like, or like, look at what it's their own video.

Todd white, for example, is one of these that keeps, he keeps filming himself. It's like, dude, like somebody needs to advise you to just stop. Like this is, this is, this is.

Sad. Okay. Wow. Um, but I think like people have a pretty good radar for this kind of stuff. So like dependent, like when things start getting a little like weird when, you know, when you, you know, it's on the nose, people are typically like, Hey, this doesn't feel right.

This doesn't seem right. And you leave, but people stay. Is it like a honeymoon phase? Like, is it just a loyal, is it just like, what is it? Um, that term where like, you've already invested too much.

So you might as well not throw out the, you know, the baby with the bath water. It's more like, well, I've been at this church for 10 years. My community is here. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's,.

I shouldn't really trust my feelings. Maybe it's me that's off. Maybe I'm struggling with some secret sin that I can't tell, you know, they start using like thought stopping techniques of things like the Mormons will say, give brother Joseph a break, which means stop thinking so hard about this.

Right. So things that, Oh, absolutely. Yep. That's called, I don't know much about the Mormon faith. That's thought terminating cliches. Yeah. They've got some really good doozies. Um, but like, um, God is they'll use things like phrases like God is sovereign just to like, have you stop.

You don't need to keep critically like picking this apart. Like you can start telling these, there are problems and you don't really, you want to carry on with your life. Like most of us are not going to church to like become, you know, investigative journalists on our own, trying to figure out what's going on.

We just want to worship with our families and love the Lord and experience his spirit. So like there's, there's an incentive when you hear something problematic to go, yeah, but my children love the children's ministry and the music is so good.

And maybe there's a miscommunication and I'm sure that the leadership will handle it and you go to go to lunch. Like it's, it's, you don't spend a whole lot of time. What going, how accountable are my leaders?

And actually did they prophesy falsely? Cause that's really bad. You know, how long has it been since we sat and studied Jeremiah, for example, you know, for a lot of us that's been like, gosh, I haven't studied that for however many years.

Like the very normal. Um, so like, it's just, we start to get, I think as parishioners and in, we were tired and we're doing, we're working 14 million hours a week in America and you just want to rest and you go to church to rest.

And so there's, there's an incentive to keep doing that, I think. And I, um, I think that that incentive gets taken advantage of by leaders.

Who know that that's going to happen. Okay. So if I, that thought stopping cliche is really sticking with me, I think that's a great word. And I feel like I, I love my church. I love all the churches that I go to, but are they a cult when they say things like, like, and I'm not saying like, it's either one bucket or the other, but like, is it, should the alarm bell come up?