Resist or Submit: Surviving Religious Scapegoating

By Robyn J Morrison

In Submit or Resist: Authoritarian Leadership in the Church, I share the wisdom I gained from ten years of struggles as a spiritual leader within the United Methodist Church (UMC). In 2003, after a great deal of soul-searching, I responded to a call to full-time professional pastoral ministry. I submitted to a lengthy and often humiliating process that the UMC requires to become Ordained as a full Elder. I would complete a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership in the next ten years. Traveling to Honduras, El Salvador, Rwanda, and Uganda with other spiritual leaders changed me from a country hick to a global citizen. 
After years of resisting the authoritarian power of Bishops and District Superintendents, I found the Church Within A Church Movement, a place without hierarchy, a community committed to dismantling oppression. 

The journey was never easy; it was always costly. Yet, there were transcendent moments I will never forget. Although I suffered from the wrath of the UMC's authoritarian hierarchy, I would also discover hundreds of ordinary Methodists making huge contributions to spreading compassion and grace in their communities and around the world. Sometimes I succeeded beyond my wildest imagination, and other times I was crushed by my own failures. I survived the journey, but the person who survived is not the same person who began the journey. 
This is my story. It begins with my basement flooding in 2003, which I took as a sign that I needed to submit to God's call. Over the decade of submitting and resisting, a great power guided me, but I could not always discern the source of that power. My image of God expanded from John Wesley's rational Triune God to an immense benevolent Cosmic creative force. I may have started by following the Jesus described in the gospel stories, but I ended up simply a speck of stardust in the Cosmic Christ. 
The story is not just about the United Methodist Church. It is about an age of humanity and our evolution to overcome thousands of years of patriarchy, hierarchy, and violent authoritarianism. I finally pulled these pieces together to form a memoir because there is so much work that needs to be done to save humanity and save the earth from a culture of domination and authoritarian leadership. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scapegoat Tribe
• Release date: Mar 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393449157

Robyn J Morrison

Robyn Morrison is an alchemist, someone who integrates the material realm with the spiritual, to create social transformation. An alchemist’s mission is to develop shared visions and collective action founded on diversity and grounded in spiritual practices. Robyn’s work accelerates and expands the impact of other activists, entrepreneurs, leaders, and dreamers. Robyn graduated summa cum laude with a Masters of Arts in Transformative Leadership from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She also graduated with a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion. Robyn has worked as an executive coach, consultant to social change movements, and served as a hospice chaplain for six years.  Robyn is always seeking wisdom and insights into what drives human behavior,  Robyn is a social entrepreneur, a founder of several businesses, including The Brewhouse, BizSavvy Coaching, and Consulting, Genesis of Hope, and Create Initiate Engage. She is also a former State Director for the Montana Small Business Development Center network and former CEO/President of Montana Community Finance Corporation. To read Robyn’s academic work on leadership and spirituality, check out her Academia profile at https://ciis.academia.edu/RobynMorrison. Robyn's blogs can be read at: https://robynmorrison.medium.com

Book preview

Foreword

IN Submit or Resist; Surviving Spiritual Scapegoating, I share the wisdom I gained from ten years as a spiritual leader within the United Methodist Church (UMC).

The title begins to tell the story. It is a story of discernment, submitting to a sense of God’s will for my life, and resisting oppression. Some of these stories were written years ago. Part of me has known that writing this book would help me, and others, heal from spiritual abuse. But there is a voice in my head telling me, No one wants to read your story. You are a failure. You don’t belong. Perhaps you hear similar voices. Maybe we listened too much to other people who said these things to us. In some cases, our parents were the first people to tell us that we were not worthy, or not wanted. If we happen to survive childhood with our self-esteem intact, we still encounter critics in school, our workplaces, and our churches.

This is a memoir about my experience as a religious scapegoat. The perpetrators were Bishops and other leaders within the United Methodist Church. The story is not just about the United Methodist Church (UMC). It is about human nature and our evolution. We have to end our reliance on scapegoating if we want to overcome thousands of years of patriarchy, hierarchy, and authoritarianism. I know many others have experienced scapegoating from the UMC, or other Christian organizations. There is a basic human need to belong, to be accepted. No one wants to become a scapegoat.

In 2003, after a great deal of soul-searching, I responded to a calling to full-time professional ministry within the UMC. I experienced the process to become an Ordained Elder in the UMC as a lengthy and often humiliating process. Over the course of ten years, I would complete a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership. I would also travel to Honduras, El Salvador, Rwanda, and Uganda with other spiritual leaders. These adventures transformed me from a country hick to a global citizen. I believe these experiences shaped me to be a stronger spiritual leader, a woman with the courage to resist authoritarian power.

The history of scapegoating goes back to ancient religious ceremonies. For example, ancient Hebrew religious ceremonies included sacrificing two goats, one was killed, the other becomes the carrier of all the sins of the community. In order to get rid of the sins of the whole community, the second goat, the scapegoat, is driven into the wilderness (where it is likely to perish).

Scapegoating is far too common. Religious institutions often use scapegoating and so do politicians. Fascists control people by scapegoating minorities. Racism generally incorporates many facets of scapegoating. Scapegoating almost always involves the abuse of power. The powerholder(s) project their most challenging problems on a person or minority group (with little or no power). Rather than admit their failures, mistakes, or shortcomings, the powerholders blame and shame the scapegoats.

Individual scapegoats suffer alone. They may be the scapegoat as a child in their family. They may be a student in the classroom with a teacher picking on them constantly. In work groups, the scapegoat can be fired, losing their income and benefits. In every case, individual scapegoats are humiliated, shamed, blamed, and then they are expelled from the family, workplace, or faith community.

I finally pulled these pieces together to form a memoir because scapegoating seems to be increasing. There is so much work that needs to be done to save humanity and save the earth from a culture of domination and rising fascism. We need to understand how and why the powerful abuse scapegoats. There are classes of people who are scapegoated in mass. We refer to these as racism, xenophobia, trans phobia, LGBT phobia, misogyny, and partisan politics. With these categories, the scapegoats are usually not alone in their experience. The victims may still have the opportunity to belong to their group.

My experience was personally traumatic, but your story may be much worse. If that is the case, I hope this book helps you to understand that you were not the cause of what happened to you. The system that scapegoated you wants you to disappear into the wilderness. Instead, I hope this book gives you the courage to speak truth to power, and to know that you are perfect in God’s sight.

The journey was never easy; it was always costly. Yet, there were transcendent moments I will never forget. Although I suffered from the wrath of the UMC’s authoritarian hierarchy, I would also discover hundreds of ordinary Methodists making huge contributions, spreading compassion and grace in their communities and around the world. Sometimes I succeeded beyond my wildest imagination, and other times I was crushed by my own failures. I survived the journey, but the person who survived is not the same person who began the journey.

This is my story. It begins with my basement flooding in 2003, which I took as a sign that I needed to submit to God’s call. Over the decade of submitting and resisting, a great power guided me. Yet, I was not always able to fully discern the nature of that power. My image of God expanded from John Wesley’s rational Triune God to an immense Benevolent Cosmic Creative Force. I may have started by following the Jesus described in the gospel stories, but I ended up simply being a speck of stardust in the Cosmic Christ. God is so much bigger than the denominational or doctrinal boxes people create to contain God. The world would be a much kinder place if people would stop hating other people and blaming their hatred on their God. God is love. Hating other people is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.

At this point in my life, I proudly proclaim that I am anti-authoritarian. Someone might have warned me that anti-authoritarians don’t belong in the UMC. It would have prevented a lot of frustration on the part of a number of Bishops and District Superintendents.

My story ends with peace, serenity, and grace. With endings come new beginnings. I am still willing to submit to a greater power. I cringe when people submit to a higher power, because I interpret higher as hierarchy. I am still willing to follow the example of Jesus; to continue to take up my cross and risk my life to proclaim the good news.

God is love. We are one in God. Our notions that we are separate, our notions of us versus them are illusions. What is real is the web of life.

Being a follower of Christ takes courage and perseverance. Jesus still calls me to speak truth to power.

Part One – Letting Go

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Mark 8: 31-38

The Flood

I COMPLETED MY FIRST Walk to Emmaus in 1993. It changed my relationship with God. The three-day Christian leadership formation retreat includes many personal testimonies. More than half of the talks are given by laypeople. Ordained clergy give talks about God's grace. The first grace talk was given on Friday morning by Brenda McClellan, an Episcopal Priest. The title of the talk was Prevenient Grace, a very Wesleyan term that refers to the grace of God that goes before us.

Brenda used a children's book that I had never read before called Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. Towards the beginning of the story, my eyes began to water, and by the end, I was bawling. Raised in a Presbyterian home, I never felt I was good enough to be loved by God. My mother did not love me unconditionally, and I had spent over thirty years trying to earn my father's love. I loved God, and I loved Jesus, but I thought I needed to earn God's love.

Prevenient Grace washed over me like rain, washing away years of guilt and grief. The children's book moved me so powerfully because I was deeply wounded by my losses connected to a custody battle over my daughters.

I divorced their father in 1989. He was a small-town attorney. I had to drive to a city in a neighboring county a hundred miles away because no local attorneys wanted to represent me against one of their own that they viewed would be a formidable adversary. I had secretly saved $5,000 from my business income. Still, my attorney called me within less than a month and said he was being harassed constantly by my husband. The amount of time he spent just responding to my husband had used up most of my retainer. My attorney suggested that we meet with my husband in his conference room and negotiate a settlement. We were not going to leave that meeting without an agreement.

Needless to say, I had very little negotiating power. I did have one non-negotiable issue. I wanted primary custody of my daughters. I had a great job with benefits lined up in Helena, and I wanted my daughters to move to Helena with me. The emotional and hard-fought negotiations ended with my husband keeping our family home, no alimony, and only 75% of what the child support guidelines proscribed as the amount he was legally required to pay me in monthly child support. Since there was only a month left in the school year, my husband also insisted that our daughters would stay with him until the end of the summer. They would move to Helena in time to start school. I was exhausted and defeated, but I felt I had no other choice but to accept the deal. 

I should have known my ex-husband would not honor his word. As soon as I moved to Helena, he started manipulating our daughters. He told them they only had to move to Helena and live with me if they were happy with that choice. They did start school in Helena that year, and I did everything I could to help them adjust to new schools, new friends, and a much more modest home. It was a rocky year.

According to our divorce agreement, the girls still had to spend the summer with their dad. In August, on the day before my birthday, I received a phone call. My oldest daughter was on the phone.  I could hear her father speaking to her in the background. She said, Mom, dad says I get to choose where I live. I am not moving back to Helena. I want to live with my dad.

The bottom dropped out of my world. I was overcome with rage. I was speechless. My ex-husband took the phone and explained that Montana law allows Judges to consider a 14-year-old child's custody preferences. My daughter would turn 14 in less than two months. I could not enforce the custody agreement we signed just 18 months earlier.

I got off the phone and called my father, also an attorney. Sometimes it was infuriating how logical and unemotional he could be. He confirmed what my ex had told me. He also warned me that custody battles could be damaging for children. Your daughter is very bright and articulate for her age. Almost any Judge would listen to her request. Then the final straw that broke my spirit, "If you were in your daughter's place,