Coercive Control Isn't Just Intimate Partner Violence: How Churches Do It Too

When we talk about coercive control, we usually mean one thing: intimate partner violence. A man isolating his partner from friends and family. Monitoring her phone. Controlling her money. Degrading her until she doesn't recognise herself anymore. We have language for that now. We have laws for it in some places. We're finally calling it what it is: a pattern of behaviour designed to dominate, trap, and terrorise.

But here's what we're not talking about: institutions do the same thing.

Churches, particularly high-control evangelical and fundamentalist churches, use the exact same tactics. Isolation. Monitoring. Regulation of daily life. Degradation disguised as discipleship. Economic control packaged as stewardship. And they do it to entire congregations, not just one person at a time.

The framework is the same. The impact is the same. The power imbalance is the same. But because it's happening in a church instead of a home, we call it leadership. We call it biblical authority. We call it accountability. We call it anything except what it is: coercive control.

Let's apply Evan Stark's coercive control framework to congregational settings and see what shows up.

What Is Coercive Control?

Evan Stark, a sociologist and researcher, defined coercive control as a pattern of behaviour that seeks to dominate another person by depriving them of the resources needed for independence, regulating their everyday lives, and creating a climate of fear through intimidation, degradation, and punishment.

Coercive control isn't about isolated incidents of violence. It's about the cumulative effect of control tactics that work together to strip someone of autonomy, identity, and freedom. It's about making someone believe they can't survive without you. That they're fundamentally incapable. That the world outside is dangerous and they're only safe if they comply.

Sound familiar?

Stark identified four core tactics of coercive control: isolation, regulation, resource control, and degradation. These tactics don't just appear in abusive intimate relationships. They appear everywhere power is concentrated and accountability is absent. Including churches.

Let's break it down.

Isolation: Cutting Off the Outside World

In intimate partner violence, isolation looks like cutting off contact with friends and family, monitoring phone calls, limiting access to the outside world. The goal is to make the victim dependent on the abuser for all social and emotional connection.

In churches, isolation operates the same way, just with a spiritual veneer.

You're warned about the dangers of the outside world. The world is corrupt. Secular culture is toxic. Non-believers are a bad influence. Friendships with people outside the church are spiritually risky. You're told that "bad company corrupts good character," that you need to "guard your heart," that the safest place for you is within the community of believers.

The message is clear: outside is dangerous. Inside is safe. And if you want to stay safe, you stay inside.

You're discouraged from consuming media or ideas that challenge the church's teaching. Certain books are off-limits. Certain websites are spiritually dangerous. Therapy with a secular counsellor is a threat to your faith. You're taught to filter everything through the lens of the church's doctrine, and anything that doesn't align is labelled as worldly, deceptive, or demonic.

This isn't framed as control. It's framed as discernment. But the effect is the same: your access to alternative perspectives is systematically restricted.

Your social world becomes entirely church-based. Your friends are from church. Your small group is your primary community. Your calendar is full of church events. Your kids go to church school or are homeschooled within the church network. You work for a church-affiliated organisation. Your romantic prospects are vetted by church leadership.

At first, this feels like belonging. But over time, it becomes dependence. Because if you leave, you lose everyone. Your entire social infrastructure collapses. And the church knows that. They've built it that way.

Regulation: Controlling the Details of Daily Life

In intimate partner violence, regulation looks like dictating what the victim wears, where they go, who they see, what they eat, how they spend their time. The abuser inserts themselves into every decision, every choice, every moment of autonomy.

In churches, regulation looks like this:

Your personal life is subject to leadership oversight. Leaders have access to details about your marriage, your parenting, your finances, your struggles, your doubts. You're encouraged (or required) to confess sins to leadership, to bring major life decisions to them for approval, to submit your choices to their authority.

This is sold as accountability. But accountability is mutual. This is surveillance.

Your behaviour is policed according to the church's standards. What you wear matters. How you spend your money matters. Who you date matters. Whether you drink alcohol, listen to secular music, watch certain films, use certain language, all of it is subject to judgment. And deviation isn't just a personal choice. It's sin. It's compromise. It's evidence of spiritual weakness.

Your access to certain roles or opportunities is contingent on compliance. You can't serve in leadership if you're not tithing. You can't volunteer in certain capacities if your lifestyle doesn't meet the church's standards. Your reputation within the community depends on your willingness to conform.

Again, this is framed as righteousness. But it's regulation. It's the church determining the terms of your daily existence and punishing you if you don't comply.

Resource Control: Making You Dependent

In intimate partner violence, resource control looks like controlling the bank account, denying access to money, preventing the victim from working, creating financial dependence so they can't leave.

In churches, resource control is subtler but just as effective.

Tithing is mandatory. Not legally, but socially. You're taught that tithing is a non-negotiable expression of faith, that withholding your tithe is robbing God, that financial blessing is contingent on your giving. If you're not tithing, you're not really committed. You're not fully submitted. You're holding back from God.

For people in financial precarity, this is devastating. Tithing 10% when you're barely making rent isn't stewardship. It's exploitation. But the church frames it as a test of faith, and if you fail the test, you're spiritually suspect.

Your time is the church's resource. You're expected to serve. To volunteer. To attend multiple services and events per week. To participate in small groups, outreach programmes, ministry teams. If you're not giving your time, you're not really part of the community. You're peripheral. Lukewarm. Not sold out for Jesus.

And here's the thing: all of that unpaid labour keeps the church running. It's free labour dressed up as spiritual service. And if you say no, if you set boundaries, if you prioritise your own rest or family or mental health, you're selfish. You're not committed. You're not taking up your cross.

The church becomes your employer, your social safety net, your source of identity. If your job is tied to the church, if your housing is provided by the church, if your entire social and financial stability is wrapped up in your standing within the community, you're trapped. Leaving doesn't just mean losing your faith community. It means losing your income, your home, your entire life structure.

That's not coincidence. That's design.

Degradation: Breaking Down Your Sense of Self

In intimate partner violence, degradation looks like name-calling, humiliation, constant criticism, making the victim feel worthless, stupid, incapable.

In churches, degradation is baptised as theology.

You're taught that you're fundamentally broken. Total depravity. Wretched sinner. Nothing good in you apart from Christ. Your desires are deceitful. Your heart is wicked. You can't trust yourself. You need constant correction, constant submission, constant surrender because left to your own devices, you'll destroy yourself.

This isn't framed as abuse. It's framed as truth. But the psychological impact is the same: you internalise the message that you're defective, that your instincts are dangerous, that you need someone else to tell you how to live because you can't be trusted with your own life.

Your questions are evidence of spiritual failure. If you doubt, if you struggle, if you ask questions that challenge the system, you're not engaging in healthy inquiry. You're displaying pride. A hard heart. A rebellious spirit. Your doubt isn't valid. It's sin. And the solution isn't engagement or dialogue. It's repentance.

Public shaming is normalised. Sins are confessed publicly. Discipline is carried out in front of the congregation. People who step out of line are made examples of. This isn't framed as humiliation. It's framed as restoration. But the message is unmistakable: comply, or this will be you.

Spiritual Authority as Undue Influence

Here's where the church context adds a layer that intimate partner violence doesn't always have: the invocation of divine authority. When a church leader tells you to submit, they're not just asserting their own authority. They're asserting God's authority. When they tell you that questioning them is questioning God, that rejecting their counsel is rejecting divine wisdom, that leaving the church is leaving God's will, they're not just exerting control. They're weaponising the sacred. This is undue influence. It's the exploitation of a power imbalance (spiritual authority over a congregant) to coerce compliance. And it's profoundly effective because the stakes aren't just relational or social. They're eternal.

If you leave an abusive partner, the worst case scenario is relational loss, social stigma, maybe financial hardship. If you leave an abusive church, the worst case scenario (according to the church) is hell. Eternal damnation. The loss of your soul.

That's not leadership. That's spiritual terrorism.

It's Not Just "Cults." It's Mainstream Evangelicalism.

Here's the part that makes people uncomfortable: you don't have to be in a fringe cult for this to apply. Coercive control operates in mainstream evangelical churches. In respectable, well-attended, influential churches with celebrity pastors and multi-site campuses and polished branding. The tactics are the same. The isolation is the same. The regulation is the same. The resource control is the same. The degradation is the same. The only difference is that mainstream churches have better PR.

We've created a false binary: abusive cults over here, healthy churches over there. But coercive control doesn't respect that binary. It operates on a continuum. And plenty of churches that would never identify as cults are using the exact same tactics to dominate, control, and exploit their congregants.

Recognising the Patterns

If you're reading this and something is clicking, if you're recognising your church in these descriptions, you're not imagining it. You're not being oversensitive. You're not misinterpreting biblical authority or healthy accountability.

Coercive control is coercive control, whether it happens in a home or a sanctuary.

Here are the questions to ask:

Can you leave without losing everything? If leaving the church means losing your entire social network, your job, your financial stability, your sense of identity, that's not a community. That's captivity.

Can you question without being punished? If asking questions gets you labelled as rebellious, divisive, or spiritually immature, that's not healthy leadership. That's authoritarianism.

Can you make decisions about your own life without leadership approval? If major life decisions require pastoral sign-off, if your autonomy is contingent on submission to authority, that's not discipleship. That's control.

Can you access information and perspectives outside the church's approved sources? If outside voices are automatically suspect, if consuming unapproved content is spiritually dangerous, that's not discernment. That's isolation.

Are you constantly told you're broken, incapable, untrustworthy? If the messaging is relentlessly focused on your depravity, your weakness, your need for correction, that's not theology. That's degradation.

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you're not in a safe system. You're in a coercive one.

Breaking the Silence

The reason we don't talk about institutional coercive control is the same reason we didn't talk about intimate partner coercive control for so long: it's normalised. It's invisible. It's just how things are done.

But naming it changes everything. Once you see coercive control for what it is, you can't unsee it. Once you understand the framework, you can map it onto your own experience. And once you map it, you can start to dismantle it. Churches rely on the fact that you won't make the connection. That you'll keep calling it leadership, calling it accountability, calling it biblical authority. That you'll blame yourself for feeling trapped instead of recognising the system that's trapping you. But coercive control in a church is still coercive control. Abuse under the banner of Jesus is still abuse. And you don't have to call it something softer just because it's happening in a place that's supposed to be sacred.

You're allowed to name it. You're allowed to call it what it is. You're allowed to recognise that what's happening to you isn't discipleship. It's domination.

If you're recognising coercive control patterns in your church or religious community and you're trying to figure out what to do next, you don't have to navigate this alone. I work with survivors and practitioners to identify and unpack institutional coercive control, understand the dynamics at play, and find pathways toward safety and autonomy. Whether you're still in and questioning, recently out and processing, or years down the road and finally naming what happened, book a free 15-minute consultation and let's talk about what comes next.