Where is the line between religious conformity and religious abuse?
This question haunts me since reading Tara Westover’s haunting memoir Educated. The author, who says her book is not about Mormonism, grew up in a survivalist, isolationist Mormon home in Idaho. She and her six siblings did not attend school, nor were they homeschooled. They worked for their father’s junkyard, using dangerous power equipment with no safety precautions, and shunning all medical or government institutions, even when seriously hurt. In the name of religion, they were abused and neglected.
Tara, along with two siblings, limps her way through college – with no high school diploma – and eventually earns her PhD. The other four siblings remain completely uneducated.
There’s more, but I couldn’t help contrasting this religious system to the one I’m familiar with – Orthodox Judaism. Some features are the same, of course. Strong father figure; strong church or synagogue influence; limits on societal influence and exposure; prayer; faith; community. Some are wildly different. Contrary to news reports, the vast majority of Orthodox Jews vaccinate and seek the highest standards of medical care. They participate and advocate in government. They send their kids to school.
But abuse and neglect can happen in any family – in every societal stratum. Tara is right. Her story is not about Mormonism. It’s about being victimized by religion. It’s about religious abuse. It’s about using religion as a tool or excuse to hurt your children. And where one crosses that line is the part that both fascinates and repels me. I want to think about it. I also don’t want to think about it.
I too raised my kids in a very structured system. I sent them to school, but to schools that were primarily about religion and secondarily about secular subjects. We raised them with the genders separated and stressed prayer, faith, modesty. We also stressed joy and fun and family. So aside from us being emotionally healthy, what religiously separates us from the Westovers?
I think a big part of the answer is this: what happens when your children chafe against the religion with which you raised them? There’s nothing wrong with raising your children in any religious system you choose, even if that system limits their education somewhat; even if they are not allowed to wear the clothing everyone else wears; even if you minimize their exposure to books, movies, and music that you deem inappropriate. As long as there is love, joy, opportunity, security and safety – you’re good.
But what if they begin to struggle? What if they push the boundaries? What if they divert from the path you so carefully laid out for them?
And this, I think, is the dividing line: if a religious system can give its youth space to feel their way, to tiptoe into the great unknown and find their own path, to discover for themselves what God means to them, what belonging feels like, what it might be like to step outside, then it is not guilty of religious abuse.
But if it uses faith to condemn, to confine, to divide, to hate – to exclude, to excoriate, even to excommunicate, as in Tara’s story, it is guilty of religious abuse. Abuse doesn’t always look like a black eye or a creep in a dark alley. Abuse takes many forms.
It’s not about Mormonism, or Islam, or Judaism. It never is. It’s about power and control. Religion is just the cloak of disguise.
Whenever I read a book about a different religious system – I’m halfway through Fatima Farheen Mirza’s luminous novel A Place For Us, about an Indian Muslim family dealing with the same stuff – it’s so easy to spot the religious abuse a mile away. Although I’m clearly neither Mormon nor Muslim (what was your first clue?) I can respect and appreciate the strictures of other religions. But it’s so obvious to me when a parental figure crosses the line.
In our own faith, in our own families, it’s much harder to spot. And this is exactly why I think it’s so important to read these perspectives . Because it is on the outside that we can come to understand what is going on on the inside – and it is this clarity, this harsh fluorescent light on our faith and every faith, that will help guide our path to being not just a light unto the nations, but a light within our very own homes.
Beautifully written, Ruchi!
I NEVER thought of things this way….fascinating
What saddened me about the book is that one abusive man was able to damage so many people without anyone – inside or outside the community – stepping in. The father’s right to control the women and children in his orbit trumped everything – their health, their safety, the safety of the women his sons dated and so on. If the religious system cannot intervene in THAT, then does it truly recognize any power higher than the male head of household? If the mother or the grown daughter can never reflect G-d’s power, if they cannot limit the power of the abusive man – what hope is there? And if we have inherited a religious tradition based on a father and husband with almost absolute power – what hope is there for us?
If this same family lived in mea shearim, what options would Tara or her mother have, if their rabbi refused to intervene? Their only option would be to use the power of the secular legal system and its laws (that recognize the legal independence of women as full citizens and the rights of children against their families) in order to leave the community and and their extended families behind. If Israel were a state under Halacha, what options would they have? Say what you wish about the secular world but women having the right to vote and run for office and to go to law school and to control a bank account is how we got laws that limit the control of abusive men.
Do you think that if Utah was truly independent of the United Stares that BYU could have rescued Tara? It has a more progressive and less harsh understanding of religion because it remains in dialogue with another system – the secular system of individual human rights. Within the Torah world, the most traditional communities have almost no dialogue with that system and their women and children have almost no options when they suffer abuse.
Nothing changes in a positive way unless it encounters something different from itself – the trick is to take the good while still remaining fundamentally oneself.
You’re asking tough questions. I wish I had good answers. But we have to call it out even – especially – in our own communities. There are individual rabbis advocating for abused women. Then there are many who aren’t.
Just re-read your post after starting to read Educated (I am a bit over halfway through) and WOW. I loved your post and I love the memoir. Tara’s journey is so powerful – unique yet universal, eloquent yet accessible. I had not heard of the book before reading your post – thank you for recommending it!
Isn’t it compelling?? As hard as it was to read, I couldn’t put it down.