Jesus Freak Culture Impacted your Dating Life

I started “funeral” youth group in the summer before 7th grade. I can’t even call it a “church youth group” because it met in a funeral home. While my childhood Southern Baptist church was undergoing a sanctuary expansion, it began meeting in a nearby funeral home for services. The church’s teenagers met in the hearse garage even in winter that dipped well below zero degrees Celsius.

Meeting in a funeral home didn’t deter the church’s growth. Instead, it only seemed to develop a kind of local notoriety. In a local culture that feared
Death, the Southern Baptists bringing Southern Gothic to the North fascinated people. Bible teaching would be delivered with coffins in corners, white lilies near the piano, the scent of powdered perfume wafting through the rows of seating, and fingers still sticky from grocery store donuts left in the foyer.

Photo by Jacob Amson on Unsplash of a cemetery on a hillside

My first youth pastor in the hearse garage was a military man. He made sure to let us know how hot he thought his wife was. They met each other when she was a child, and he was her adult, youth leader. Then one day, he disappeared as the funeral home’s youth pastor.

Pastoral “shuffling” was very common in the Southern Baptists. If someone in leadership was not performing in a way that upheld the Southern Baptist image of chastity, they would disappear. Eventually, they would appear far away in another place entirely that was 2 to 30 hours away, saying, “God called me somewhere else, and I went immediately as He called me.”

That’s why my first youth pastor claimed.

Sure, Jan.

It was conspicuous.

My second youth pastor was worse than the first. He was a terror. He had a black belt in martial arts and would use teenagers as violent “object lessons” in his Bible teaching. If he would notice that one of us was tired, he would sneak up from behind and laugh like the Joker or scream. Sometimes he would force us to hold wooden planks for him to chop with one of his bare hands, but his favorite move was to kick his leg high in the air, missing our face by two centimeters.

His intensity didn’t stop at his Bible lessons. It was texts sent to teenagers, who tried to leave youth group. He would say that they were “abandoning Jesus,” and their absence from the youth group would send their loved ones and schoolmates to hell.

My second youth pastor began encouraging teenagers to read, TheVoice of the Martyrs magazines, DC Talk’s Jesus Freaks, Firestarter, and Venti Jesus, Please. All of literature he offered shared a common theme: If you didn’t evangelize, people would suffer because of you.

His mission was clear; my second youth pastor wanted to radicalize vulnerable youth.

My second youth pastor was a product of the 1990s’ Evangelical Legacy of the Jesus Freaks. The proudly called themselves this and even had merchandise with this title. Many of these Jesus Freaks were children of the 1960s to 1970s Jesus Movement. During this era, hippies were converted to Evangelicalism by experiencing the Satanic Panic.

There was a common thread for hippies, who converted to Evangelicalism. A lot of times, they came from cults that were held together by superstitions and moral absolutism. And with their friends, they witnessed overdoses, which made them terribly afraid for their own lives so they bought into the Satanic Panic and pivoted to Evangelicalism’s messaging about Saviorism.

For each generation, Evangelicalism rebrands. The Jesus Movement had Keith Green, and the Jesus Freaks had DC Talk. It was similar messaging but with a different melody and rhythm.

Photo by Annie Spratt for Unplash+

Being “weird” was part of their brand. In a way, it worked. It drew people into these Evangelical groups, who felt like outsiders. Their loneliness took low effort to manipulate them. Evangelicalism shaped vulnerable individuals to serve their purposes. What happened under the radar, occurred in plain sight. The strangeness of it all was widely ignored by people with secure attachment styles.

While the story of my former youth group might seem shocking, this is what the self-proclaimed, Jesus Freaks have been doing for decades.

Even after walking away from an Evangelical group with Jesus Freaks, it can take years to psychologically deprogram their militant-like tactics of control.

The number one pattern that I see of Jesus Freak Culture’s victims is relationships where love-bombing exists. Some stay in the relationship indefinitely while others keep finding themselves with partners, who love-bombed,and they wonder, “why didn’t I notice it this time?”

how Jesus Freak Culture Primes People for Love-bombing

First, let’s address what love-bombing is. A person is flooded with positive regard that seems unconditional in the beginning. It’s used to win persistent affection for the abuser, and an exit strategy for accountability of the abuser. “Look at how good I’ve been to you! You’ll never find another like me,” someone who love-bombs will say once trying to set boundaries with them.

Signs of love-bombing include:

• Over-the-top praise

• Demanding constant attention

• Giving gifts that seems disproportionate in frequency and/or value to the nature of the relationship

• Getting upset when asking for space

• Rushing for a commitment to titles, labels, and/or plans

The exact things that happen in an abusive relationship, occur in youth groups that subscribe to Jesus Freak Culture. When teenagers don’t set boundaries, there’s verbal praise or even awards that given, but asking for boundaries? Hell is unleashed. Commitment without questioning is demanded in Jesus Freak Culture and other abusive relationships.

A person may lower their defenses when being praised. The rush of dopamine from praise can start premature trust. Everyone shares the desire to be wanted. And when you have experienced the pain of exclusion or separation, a sense of belonging holds significant value. And those in Jesus Freak Culture know this. The bait-and-switch is activated.

Interrupting the Pattern of Love-bombing Relationships

Survivors of love-bombing may put up a wall between them and the rest of the world, plunging into self-isolation for protection. They’re trying to stop the pattern of love-bombing, but isolation causes increased vulnerability to love-bombing. What they thought was a protective measure, only opens them up to greater risk.

Building local friendships is essential to interrupting the pattern of being in love-bombing relationships. Selecting friends who don’t know each other and spending time with the friends separately, together, and with other groups helps to diversify social experiences, reducing risk of groupthink.

If you’ve only been going on a handful of in-person dates for one to two months with someone you didn't know prior, they’re still a stranger to you. You can know about them in having back-and-forth dialogue for the first couple months after meeting, but you can’t know a person well until repeated, shared experiences. It’s a risk to make a serious commitment to stranger, whether that be taking a trip into the wilderness with them, an international vacation, or inviting them to live with you. And yet, sometimes those risks may seem worth taking at the time. But it’s important to acknowledge the presence of risk.

Slowing down in dating may not mean refraining from sexual activity itself. Rather, it can be pacing the risks you take.

In Jesus Freak Culture, every risk is worth taking if it’s for Jesus. That’s the voice of love-bombing. For healthy relationships, not every risk is worth taking. And a partner who is good to you, will accept that reality.