Toxic Positivity in the Church

Much can be said about how churches often discredit their adherents in the face of some unmentionable wrong committed by those in positions of power and influence in the Body of Faith. We have libraries of data and articles, police reports, and televised interviews mixed in with Netflix documentaries documenting just how often bad individuals subvert the moral compass of neutral or good individuals within religious communities forcing them to turn a blind eye to the criminal things happening behind their closed doors.

We can cite the thuggish messiah complex of David Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult from Waco, Texas whose ideas led them to face off against the American federal government. After a lengthy siege and a suspicious fire, their compound went up in flames for the world to see. The autopsy reports of all who perished in the compound listed the cause of death for men, women, and children alike, under the classifications of suffocation as a result of smoke inhalation, blunt force trauma from the edifice falling on them after catching fire, and many, many of them, children, had gunshot wounds listed as their cause of death.

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Jim Jones was a disgraced social revolutionary who integrated previously racially segregated religious spaces through animated preaching and teaching. His animus led many of his most ardent followers…