By Andrew Pledger
Have you ever felt like you don’t belong in your own family? Like you are different from everyone else and no one understands you? That’s how I felt for most of my life.
I always felt like an outsider, a misfit, a stranger in my own home. I didn’t know why I felt this way.
Maybe it was because I had different interests, hobbies, and dreams than my parents and siblings. Maybe it was because I had a different personality, temperament, and worldview than them. Maybe it was because I looked different, sounded different, or acted different than them.
In my teen years, I realized what made me different, and it was devastating. I was gay. This was one of the worst things I could be in the environment I was raised in.
My parents were both devout fundamentalist Christians.
My maternal grandparents raised my mom Methodist until they converted to fundamentalist Christianity. My paternal grandmother was a fundamentalist Christian, and my grandpa eventually converted.
My parents met at Hyles Anderson College in the late ’80s. This college was known for being a strict fundamentalist school. My dad was studying to be a pastor, and my mom was going to be an English teacher.
After graduation, they got married in the early ’90s and were excited to have children. To their dismay, they struggled to have kids. After 6 or 7 years of being a childless family, they began considering adoption. They had prayed for years to have children, and it wasn’t happening until it finally did. They had three boys, and I was the middle child. They interpreted this as an answer to prayer and wanted to dedicate their children to the God of Christianity.
Homeschooling was popular among fundamentalist Christians because of the separation from the world and outside influences.
It was honestly all about control of their children’s lives. My whole life I was homeschooled and indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity.
At eight years old, I converted to Christianity after hearing a horrific sermon on the terrors and demons of hell. I had many sleepless nights and nightmares, sometimes having doubts about being saved. It was faith with a foundation of fear, shame, guilt, and manipulation. Little did I know the messages I received in my developing years would affect me for the rest of my life.
I was told I had nothing good inside of me, and ‘God’ saw me as dirty and wicked. I was taught to not trust myself because my heart was deceitful and that the ‘devil’ could plant thoughts in my mind. Shame and fear were used to bring people to the altar of the church. There were times in my childhood when I was told by my parents that I deserved to be burned in hell. I was usually told this when I tried to seek praise for honorable deeds and said I deserved something.
I learned to never ask for praise, but that conforming to fundamentalist Christianity was the only way to get love. I learned that I had to fit myself into a role that was never meant for me.
I grew up in a religious cult that was a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. It was one of the larger IFB churches and was known for its bus ministry that brought in hundreds of kids every week. My parents idolized our pastor and acted like he was Jesus Christ himself.
As I became older, I realized the cult-like obsession my church had with my pastor. I’ll never forget hearing a church member pray in the pulpit and said, “Dear God, help us to be more like Brother Bobby.” What?! What about being like Jesus?! What a slap in the face to God!
The most psychologically damaging was the hateful sermons on the LGBTQ+ community. Growing up gay in fundamentalist Christianity was tough because I was taught very hateful things about queer people. My church painted an ugly picture by describing and generalizing gay people as all perverts going around raping people and hurting children. I was taught that gay people deserved to die of AIDS and that it was God’s judgment.
When I was finally able to meet other gay people, I realized it wasn’t true. The nicest people I have ever met are gay.
Even knowing this did not stop internalized homophobia. All the years of brainwashing to despise gay people began to strongly affect me. All the years of hearing my family say hateful things about queer people were deep in my mind. I was angry because of the lies the church told me and because of the damage to my self-worth.
The self-hatred became so unbearable that my mind started to develop a different identity. This was my mind’s way of coping with the trauma. As I got older, the identity faded away as I learned to love myself, which was a challenging thing to do. Loving yourself is difficult when you feel like the closest people to you find you unacceptable.
As a result of all the years of emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of the church, I fell into a deep depression when I was 16. I stopped eating, my body ached, and I mainly stayed in bed. When I tried to eat, I just couldn’t do it. My dad would yell at me angrily to eat as if this would magically resolve the issue. My parents would not take me to a doctor or a psychiatrist. In two weeks, I lost 20 pounds. I felt like I was dying. I don’t remember how I recovered from the depression, but I somehow managed to recover.
I was extremely hurt that the people who were supposed to take care of me denied me healthcare. All my trust in my parents was forever destroyed, and I became ultra-independent because I felt I could trust no one.
I slowly moved away from my family’s home church and attended another church regarding youth activities. Before long, I was shunned from that church because of my perceived sexual orientation. I was all alone, and no one knew what I was going through. I had been suffering in silence for years. I just wanted to be loved and truly belong. Eventually, I decided to get away from fundamentalist Christianity by getting a job. I desperately needed social skills and life skills in general because I was so helpless and dependent on my parents. I worked at a fast-food restaurant, and thankfully I was able to find love and acceptance there.
Flash forward, I was manipulated into attending a fundamentalist Christian university, so I chose Bob Jones University, and I was not happy about it. I tried to convince myself that it was fine and that it was only four more years until freedom. I feared the prejudice and bigotry I would experience at BJU.
I was bullied and harassed at college during my first year. I had already experienced two depressive episodes, and I was falling into my third. What I did not know at the time was that I was struggling with repressed emotions, sexuality, and religious trauma.
Toward the end of the first year, I nearly committed suicide, but I managed to call The Trevor Project. I saw no way to escape my personal hell of fundamentalist Christianity.
After that moment, I decided to take my life into my own hands. No more waiting passively or waiting for an authority figure to tell me what to do. I found the courage to explore outside the fold and find community.
I found an affirming church and met a wonderful family who lived within walking distance of BJU. They gave me a key to their house so I could escape BJU when needed. They were my haven. For the first time, I felt like I belonged.
This would soon come to an end when the pandemic started in 2020, and we were all separated. I did not want to go back to an unaccepting home, but there was no option when everything shut down in the US. The summer of 2020 was when I fell into my fourth and worst episode of major depression. There were deep psychological issues I was not dealing with, but I had no education in psychology or mental health. I had to fight to go to the doctor so I could get on antidepressants.
That summer, I discovered the term religious trauma, and I was relieved to know the issue, but I was overwhelmed and wondered if it was possible to heal. This episode lasted several months, and I did not dig into my religious trauma because I was afraid of it. I did not know where to start.
The religious trauma was going nowhere, and I underestimated the power of trauma. I ended up struggling with suicidal ideation my junior year, and I had no options except for Biblical Counseling. After pouring my heart out to this counselor about how I was mistreated growing up, he said I was paying for my sin. He basically said I deserved what happened to me because I existed. Just for existing, I deserved terrible things to happen to me. This was too much to handle with my depression.
This was the moment I decided to leave fundamentalist Christianity. It was not going to be easy to deconvert after all the years of brainwashing. Eventually, I was doing one-on-one discipleship with this counselor, and it turned into conversion therapy. Thankfully, I was able to get out of this situation.
In my senior year, I began working on my religious trauma by learning psychology. I decided for my photography internship to create an art photo series about religious trauma. This pushed me to explore my trauma on a deep level to tell my story through photography. I reached out to Josh Harris, the author of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” to talk about my photo series on his Instagram Live. He was excited to have me on, and I was nervous because I decided for the first time in my life to be authentic.
I was willing to lose everyone and everything to live an authentic life and be where I truly belonged.
Ten days after the release of the video, I was expelled from BJU in January of 2022.
I now live with the family that took me in my first year, and I truly belong. I’ve been in therapy working through my religious trauma, and I’ve become a social media activist to bring awareness to religious trauma, cults, and fundamentalism.
In April of 2022, I was hired by renowned cult expert Rachel Bernstein, LMFT. I help her with social media marketing for her podcast IndoctriNation. In 2022, I transferred to another college, and I graduated with my bachelor’s in May of 2023.
I am currently taking a break from school to do some more healing, but I plan on pursuing psychology to become a therapist and eventually a psychologist. I want to research religious trauma and coercive control to help survivors of religious and cultic abuse.
This story is far from over.
Andrew Pledger is a survivor, content creator, and writer who uses social media to share his story and inspire others. He is a religious trauma survivor who was homeschooled K-12 and raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult (the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement). He brings awareness to spiritual and religious abuse. Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community and experiencing religious trauma has inspired him to pursue psychology to help survivors. After being homeschooled, he found his way to Bob Jones University. He attended the fundamentalist Christian college for over three years until he was expelled in his last semester for sharing his story and denouncing fundamentalist teachings. You can see more of Andrew’s work here.
The Vashti Initiative 