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by Rev. CJ Conner (*)
Dr. Martha Stout ponders the question: "Could it be that all of the world’s greatest human tragedies are attributable to only 4% of the human population?" I think about the fact that most of the destructive socio-political movements in the American Church are pushed by a miniscule minority of voices who are well organized into national voting blocks. They in no way represent the faith and belief of the majority of Christians, but have found their way into the halls of power. Here are some characteristics of the sociopathic personality that Stout outlines in her book, "The Sociopath Next Door."
1) Despite their ability to know and distinguish good from evil, they suffer from a total lack of conscience and can do anything at anytime to hurt and harm another. In the church, this is usually manifested in destroying the ministries of people they disagree with. Black-listing pastoral candidates and pastors, for example, that don’t agree with the top leadership’s social agendas in the Mainline Church, is common. There are stories of Bishops and pastors that have undermined ministries, broken up marriages, leveled serious false charges against those that disagree with them, and taken and sold off congregational property to "win" their agendas with no remorse for the hurt, carnage, and damage they cause to others.
2) The Sociopath is unable to develop any kind of true, loyal attachments to people. This inability to be genuinely connected to others renders their experience of life bland, colorless, boring, and tedious. Consequently, they turn to power, not love and relationship, as the primary motivational factor for their lives. The sociopath seeks to gain power through which she can find some sense of connection to humanity by causing the suffering of others. The more she is able to make another suffer or hurt, the greater her sense of personal power, and the more exciting and invigorating life becomes. Stout says that the motivation for self aggrandized power is so strong in the sociopath that many of them work hard to place themselves in leadership positions because the authority of an office or position gives the sociopath the tools and avenues she needs to both feed and fuel her mental illness.
3) You can not judge or pick out a sociopath by their appearance. They look well put together, often charming, and are consummate actors. This is why they are masters at getting regular, normal, healthy people to provide aid and support to their mischief and abuses.
Stout writes, "In a confusing irony, conscience can be rendered partially blind because people without conscience use, as weapons against us, many of the fundamentally positive tools we need to hold society together- empathic emotions, sexual bonds, social and professional roles, regard for the compassionate and the creative, our desire to make the world a better place, and the organizing rule of authority. And people who do hideous things do not look like people who do hideous things. There is no "face of evil."…
We try, consciously or tacitly, to judge a person’s character by his or her appearance, but this book-by-its-cover strategy is ineffective in nearly all cases. In the real world, the bad guys do not look the way they are supposed to." In the American Church, for example, the Mainline denominations generally appeal to all of the things listed above, and in fact we see the Mainline church working very hard to keep the focus on things like "sexual bonds" and "healing the world"- causes that draw people in while their leaders are busy working on a whole agenda of evil things.
4) Sociopaths tend to be inordinately focused on sexuality and are often hypersexual. The more taboo the expression of sexuality, the better for the sociopath. Anybody following the news coming out of the Mainline denominations knows that the religious leaders have put most of their energy the last few years talking about all manner and form of sex. This obsessive preoccupation with sex, and with normalizing socially unacceptable sexuality, is the mark of a sociopath.
5) Sociopaths have no intervening sense of obligation to other people. They will betray whoever is convenient at the moment. They can’t maintain healthy and stable relationships primarily because sociopaths view people as disposable when their usefulness to their needs or agendas runs out, particularly if those people won’t help them with their mischief and abuse anymore. The people who were their "best friends" yesterday become their latest project of abuse, harassment, and emotional torture the next.
6) Sociopaths are not the most conscientious of workers, but they know how to make a splashy entrance from time to time, or initiate some new project, to maintain the appearance of normalcy- to keep people from finding out about their sociopathy.
One Bishop I read about is up for re-election after nearly six years in office. He worked a ruthlessly destructive and hurtful agenda during his tenure in office. Six months before the denomination was due to elect a new presiding Bishop, all of his divisive projects and agendas became suddenly quiet and he made a splashy show by introducing an initiative to get the denomination to read their Bibles and learn about evangelism. For 5 1/2 years these two things were not anywhere on his priority list, but conveniently just before an election, they became important. Sociopaths know that most people will be none the wiser, and after the election, this man will most certainly promptly go back to socially engineering the Church in his image.
We should also think about the fact that the Mainline denominations have so dumbed down their theological curriculum and requirements for pastors in seminary that they have become an easy place for the typical sociopath to sneak into influential positions of power and authority. The Mainline Seminaries of today have become the perfect sanctuaries for sociopaths who are looking for an easy ride to power.
7) Sociopaths lack remorse. They have absolutely no sorrow or shame for the things they do wrong and the ways they hurt other people. In fact, more than lacking in remorse, they often justify what they do- if not externally, at least internally. Their efforts at self-justification usually involve whole other layers of hurting others as they lie and falsely report about them to justify their sociopathic behavior.
Sociopathy is incurable. Even if it were curable, sociopaths almost never want to be cured. They look at people who allow an overriding sense of obligation mitigate their responses to situations and consider them total fools. Sociopaths can oftentimes be heard as describing the conscience that others possess as a weakness and an impediment to personal power and progress. All of the Mainline denominations have adopted these ideas amongst their leadership in their "church-based organizing" models, and have sent people to week long brain washing sessions to inculcate them with the cut throat, self-interest focused world of sociopathy. The skills people "learn" there have become the new virtues of the Mainline, and the behavior that sociopaths routinely engage has in many parts of the country become highly regarded and honored by church folks.
9) Sociopaths want you to pity them. In some strange and perverted twist, lacking the capacity to pity or empathize themselves, they know that pity is one of humanity’s greatest vulnerabilities and most of us believe the ability to pity is a part of what’s wonderful about people. We become totally vulnerable in the face of somebody that we pity. The sociopath knows that once he has your pity, he has you in his power and control, able to trick or convince you of virtually anything.
Stout says, "The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy." Consider ALL of the arguments you hear about maintaining and codifying the newly revised position and teaching of the Mainline churches on sexuality. The crux of the discussion about gay marriage, and practicing homosexual pastors, for example, always seeks to win your pity.
Another church leader I know fashions herself as the eternal underdog that the whole world is against, invoking the pity factor and drawing people in to assist her in constructing her scaffold of sociopathy through which she exercises her authority in destructive and egregious ways, leaving a writhing path of pain and desolation in her wake. Expelled from her denomination because they caught on to her, she has no problem quickly moving on and drawing others right into a new sociopathic scheme.
Another national leader is the master at putting on the pitiful face and drawing sympathy from the crowds as he refers to those who disagree with his radical socio-political agendas as persecutors. He tops it off by comparing his "persecution" to the suffering of Christ. When talking about those who disagree with his support of a whole number of social justice agendas, he reminds his listeners that "We are sharing in Christ’s persecutions."
When the shoe is on the other foot, however, Sociopaths have no regard or empathy for the other, and will ruthlessly attack those who once pitied them or were loyal to them, often in subterfuge so they can maintain their cover. There are some good Church leaders out there, I can’t deny that. But if 20% of your top religious leaders are sociopathic, what does that mean for the identity of your denomination? What can we do when the vast majority of the 80% of the leaders who aren’t sociopathic have been totally and completely bamboozled and conscripted into the army of the sociopaths? What happens when the ELCA, the ECUSA, or the PCUSA organically take on the characteristics and identity of the sociopaths that lead them? If the sociopathic identity is pure clinical evil, then how can we remain Christian in these denominations without a "purging of the temple" so to speak?
And so, finally, young people who thirst for a genuine, real relationship with God are fleeing the Church for other options- because a denomination that has taken on the identity of its sociopathic leaders has along with them lost its ability to be genuinely, really, in relationship with God. Others still within the Church, who also thirst and hunger after righteousness, are dying on the vine of the superficial spirituality that sociopathic religious leaders can fashion at best. They are moving towards schism and rebirth to reclaim the true humanity that their denominations have lost.
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(*) - Rev. CJ Conner, Author of “Jesus and the Culture Wars,”
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Note from TPO: I came across the above quite some time back at "http://revcjconner.com/?cat=27". I believe the writing is very instructional. It is particularly apropos in light of all the false prophets, and other crooks who are out there preying on the innocent and the gullible.
