Cross-Examined

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Spiritual abuse, cults, people that try and take control over
your life in a in a way that.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Is illegitimate and immoral. Does that happen? Yeah? Does it
happen in the church? Unfortunately it does. What can we
do about it? How do you get out of it?
If you're being spiritually abused? How do you get out
of a cult? Well? I've spoken at the University of
Tennessee at Knoxville a couple of times, and the head

(00:38):
of the Rational Christie group there, her name is Ana Kitko,
does real dynamic work as the head of the Rational
Christie Group, but she's she does a lot more than that.
She holds two undergraduate degrees, one in philosophy from the
University of Florida. She also has two master's degrees, one

(01:00):
from RTS Reformed Theological Seminary, and she has a master's
in the psychology of Coercive Control from the University of
Salford in Manchester, UK. She's right now under supervision for
getting her license as a clinical pastoral therapist. It takes
three thousand hours of being under supervision before you get

(01:24):
your license. And check this out. Her expertise focuses on
spiritual abuse, cultic and coercive control, brainwashing, domestic violence, human trafficking, terrorism,
complex PTSD, narcissistic personality disorder, dissociation, and spiritual pathologies, and

(01:45):
also very practical theology and culturally taboo subjects. So she
really can't help us at all in this subject.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
No she can.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
And here she is the great Ana kidco ladies and
gentlemen all the way from Knoxville, Tennis. And we had
a great fun time at UT Knoxville about a month ago,
and I just wanted to have you on because I
learned so much just talking to you offline about the
work you're doing. Give our audience here kind of an

(02:14):
overview of the work you're doing with regard to cults
and getting people out of situations spiritual abuse situations. Tell
our listeners a little bit about that.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, well, first let me say it's really a privilege
to be here, so thank you for the invitation.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Absolutely, I love.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Talking about this stuff. As you know.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Yeah, there's a great deal of spiritual abuse going on
in our nation. I think it's coming to the fore
and we kind of see that with all of the
cult documentaries coming out on Amazon Prime and on Netflix.
I think this issue and how vast and how rampant
the problem of cult leaders and their abuses is really
coming to the four in as far as the cultural

(02:56):
mindset of Americans. So I'm thrilled to be able to
do this work. It's very sad how much work I
have on my plate, So there's a negative to this,
But treating spiritual abuse and treating what happens when you
abuse a spirit, it ends up being a much deeper
wound than your average trauma.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
And especially when somebody is wielding, say the.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Scriptures, the Christian scriptures in particular, speaking on behalf of
Christ and then doing so abusively, it ends up forcing
the individual to walk away from what they think is Christianity.
And in reality, all they were doing was walking away
from a narcissist to use Christ to gain credibility and
traction and celebrity and all those things. So I thoroughly

(03:38):
enjoy my work and I love talking about it. So
that's why I'm excited about today.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Now on our program, just like in the Bible, we're
fine with name and names, because Paul did he named
people who were false teachers. Do you want to name
anybody or you just want to give us an example
of what a false teacher is and what he or
she does.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I can say, as a blanket statement, what's going on
with the new Apostolic Reformation. I think it's really troubling,
really deceptive. I would be very careful with people who
claim to be a part of that movement or present
that way. We've seen that come out in the news
recently with Mike Bickel, for example, at the head of
the International House of Prayer.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Is this is a rampant problem.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
I really hope that our seminaries start teaching how to
identify it when it occurs, how to protect our flocks
from ourselves being really really critical about the fact that
our field, even apologetics, can call people to it because
of the amount of attention you get for answering questions

(04:38):
and the fact that you sound very intelligent and academic,
and you can get a lot of attention, and so
it's like lighting a beacon for folks who struggle with
the narciss personality disorder and am amongst other things. So yeah,
we can talk. I mean, obviously they're the really obvious
ones that we all study in school, like jonestown, right,
But then you get the smaller ones and these are

(04:58):
the ones that I find the most nefarious. These are
the little standalone guys that are Bible based, so like
the message with William Brandham and his followers. Those are
people that you see on the regular that you may
not realize are in a cult. You of course have
the governing body of the Jova's Witnesses. Those guys are
cult leaders and they know what they're doing. And of
course the largest cult in the US, as far as

(05:20):
the continental US is concerned, would be the Latter day Saints.
Any of those prophets, bishops. They know what's going down
and they know how deceptive they're being.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
No, when you say Latter day Saints, Mormons and other words,
a lot of people go, well, they're such nice people,
and they are in most cases, and they make great
neighbors and all that.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
But.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Why are they classified as a cult. Because when people
think of a cult, they think of coercive control from
the top. Does that happen in the Mormon Church?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Absolutely? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Anytime when you're looking at a framework or a church
quality that is top down or pyramid shaped, we're looking
at a level of deception just in that framework. Because
you answer to the person above, you and the person
at the top is one person.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
So in the case of the latterday Saints.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
You have the prophet who is in charge of receiving
new prophecy directly from God and then relaying it to
the rest of the congregants amongst the Latter day Saints.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
So, yes, really lovely, nice people.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
And usually when I'm talking about these things, i am
I'm being critical.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Of the leadership.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
The scriptures say that we hold people who claim to
be leaders to a double standard, especially teachers and.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
To Yes, yes, of course, So.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
I'm going to focus on the people who are doing
the deceiving as opposed to the people who are being deceived,
and I think that's only fair. The people who are
coercively deceptive have to know what they're doing in order
to wield the manipulation, so it's not like they're blind
to it. You can't accidentally coursively deceive. So yeah, I'm
going to all out all of the prophets in particular.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
What are some of their claims and techniques that they
use to keep people fearing that if they were to
disagree with church doctrine or the bishop's doctrine or the
head doctrine, that they would somehow be hurt. What do
they do to hurt people?

Speaker 4 (07:22):
Yeah, in the case of the Latter day Saints, for example,
that framework is an exclusive theology. And by exclusive theology,
I mean that they believe that they are not simply
an iteration of Christian thinking amongst the freedoms of the
rest of the denominations, but that they are the exclusive

(07:42):
and this is in secondary, in tertiary theology. So this
is like all of their personal preferences with theology are
in themselves salvi effic and that to disagree with the
prophet is tantamount to disagreeing with God directly, and to
do so would put you outside of the camp of Christ,
meaning you are definitely no longer saved. So leaving Mormonism

(08:03):
is tantamount to accepting an eternal state that's outside of salvation.
So not only will you not receive your own planet,
you will not be exalted to godhood under their theology,
but also you'll spend your days in what's called the
outer darkness. So that's a particularly brutal end for that

(08:24):
sort of To take issue with your leadership is tantamount
to taking issue with God. You can't question them and
that's a really, really horrible thing. Christianity, as far as
Orthodox Christianity is concerned, you can question anything. The Lord
himself invites questioning in Isaiah.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
We do this all the time.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
You and I as apologists, We are inviting questions, we're
inviting scrutiny. Truth doesn't flee from scrutiny. If we claim
to have the truth, then we should be able to
be scrutinized. But in these coercive environments, scrutiny is not permitted.
And that's one of the first signs and basically a
tell that you're dealing with a damaging cult.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
And if you leave the Mormon Church, not only are
you not going to be saved, Although they have a
different view of the afterlife, they have these I guess
three levels. Yes, right, but you're going to be disfellowshipped
from your community, are you not.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
That's correct. You will lose everything. It's not simply that
you have to go find another church to attend. You
will actually lose your entire identity, your community in if
you live and work in Utah or northern Arizona, you'll
lose your job, you lose different privileges in your community,
you're effectively ostracized, which again is another sign that you're

(09:40):
under force of control. Is that there's like an end
justify the means sort of.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
We're talking to Anna Kidco. She has some great insights
and great expertise on cults and spiritual abuse and how
to be treated for it and get out from under it.
You've got a lot more with Anna. She's also the
Rational Christine Director at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
She does a great job there. We're back right after
the break. Don't go anywhere.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
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(10:31):
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Speaker 6 (10:47):
Now, spiritual abuse, how do you identify it?

Speaker 2 (10:57):
How do you get out.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
From under it?

Speaker 2 (10:59):
What is it? Who does it? Did it actually exist
in Bible times? We're going to talk all about that
with my guest today, Anna Kiko, who is also the
ut University of Tennessee at Knoxville Rational Christie Director. She
has a ton of young people who she mentors right

(11:19):
on that college campus, in addition to counseling people individually
who are trying to get out from under spiritual abuse situations.
In fact, Anna, please tell our viewers and listeners if
they're in that situation, where can they go to get
some advice, get some counseling.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Sure, if you're here locally, you can head to Full
Circle Counseling and Wellness or Integrated Wellness to find me
and to book an appointment in order to get spiritual
abuse aftercare or to help her advice on how to
get out of a controlling environment. From there, you can
also go to be emboldens dot com, which is an

(11:57):
international mentoring service run by Naomi Right. I'm one of
the mentors there, so you can access me in that capacity.
And that's just for if you just need somebody to
speak with, to have someone who understands who's been in
that type of environment so that you don't feel like, gosh,
I'm just odd, this was too weird.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
I don't even know how to articulate what happened to me?
Is this even real?

Speaker 4 (12:18):
All of the very normal emotions that happen then in
a spiritually abusive environment, we have lots of availability for
those things, so please reach out.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
So people can actually get counseling remotely if they go
to be Emboldened dot com. Is that right?

Speaker 4 (12:34):
That's correct, not only in group sessions if you'd like
to just be in groups of other folks just like you,
but also one on one. You just have to pick
your mentor and go from there.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Please cover some of the features that are regularly present
in the spiritual abuse environments. You mentioned a few with LDS,
but give us give us a complete list, or at
least a bigger list, and if you could.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
Sure spiritual abuse is marked by an environment in which
you start to realize that the person who's claiming to
be an authority or speaking on behalf of God or
running the ministry or whatever they're claiming to be is
treating themselves as an authority or as a mouthpiece for God,
but then neglecting every single one of the frameworks that

(13:20):
would identify them as authentic, So things like actual care
of hurting people? Are they more interested in advancing themselves
as a celebrity? Are they using you? Are you becoming
more of a slave and turning into less of a person?
That matters as your acceptance contingent upon your performance? How

(13:41):
much are you being served by your leadership? Are they
kind of treating themselves like a God in and of
themselves like a mini g God? Our ends justifying the
means like are you being asked to lie or misrepresent
theology in order to advance a certain goal or to
garner traction or to recruit people?

Speaker 3 (14:01):
For example?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
Are you manifesting emotional and psychological distress? Things physically like
are do you look haggard? Does anybody care? Are you exhausted?
Are you sleep deprived? Are you food deprived?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
All those things like what actually is your existence?

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Like? Many times, these guys will prey upon the fact
that Christians are very grace oriented. They understand mistakes, they
understand the reality of sin, They wish to work hard
on behalf of the kingdom, and so they'll utilize all
of those beautiful virtues in order to advance advance themselves.
And you know, are they bullies in the background. Are

(14:39):
you expected to do things like sign n DA's that's
really strange. Why why that is there a brand? You know,
that's not automatically a problem, but it is a problem
if the brand comes against Christ. And in Bible based
cult groups, which are the vast majority of the ones
here in the US, very often the person who is
coursive or was course in their intention is trying to

(15:02):
advance themselves as opposed to Christ.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
A lot of meology rather than theology. Ladies and gentlemen,
it's all about me, follow me, pay no attention to
a man behind the curtain.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
That's right. No double checking, no googling. Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, well, that's certainly true of Jehovah's witnesses. When they
come to my door and I talk to them and
I say, if I give you a book, will you
read it? They won't. They won't even take it, that's correct.
They can't get any information outside of what the watchtower
will tell them.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
And they're treated as though they don't have enough faith
if they do go and test for you know, being
a Brillian for example, that's considered a lack of faith,
and they're taught that they're inauthentic as a believer if
they don't just blindly trust.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
And Christ has never asked for blind trust.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
You know, if you're ever in a church, ladies and gentlemen,
and you hear the pastor or somebody defending the pastor
say something like don't touch the Lord's anointed, you might
be in a spiritually abusive situation because that phrase actually
comes from the Old Testament, I think, having to do
with Saul. It has nothing to do with pastors today.

(16:11):
That's correct, And obviously you do want to give honor
where honors do. But that doesn't mean the pastor can't
be criticized, especially if they're going against the scriptures, and
they should be called out if they are. But this
don't touch the noise Lord's annoying. It seems to be
the catch all phrase for these kind of folks to
prevent them from any kind of correction or any kind

(16:34):
of sin. Hey man, I'm doing the Lord's work. Get
out of my way. You can't. You can't, you can't
anyway criticize me. I mean, how prevalent is that in
the situations you've seen Anna.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Oh tons all over the place. I would say nearly constant.
And there is a lack of accountability in a lot
of these environments where the individual sought their own individual
celebrity and control over an area or of people, and
so there's nobody over him to which or her, to
which they can the people can go.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
To say hey, this is happening.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
Hey, I actually was abused by this person physically, you know,
they hit me, and this is a problem. They have
a temper issue. They're behaving in a way in private
that is not even remotely Christian, and I'm expected to
hold all those secrets for them. That's completely inappropriate, completely
inappropriate from any type of leader. Yeah, they're more concerned

(17:30):
with building up themselves, holding up the kingdom, and they
expect you to continue to work for them as opposed
to the kingdom. So you cease to kind of be
a person, you cease to be someone sacred and treated
that way in these environments, and the huge red flag
when that happens.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
That's one of the problems with these non denominational churches
that have no sort of accountability to anyone. Sometimes the
pastor is the pope, right, and you can't there's nothing.
There's no elder board, there's no you know, there's no

(18:07):
church governance that can you can appeal to. It's just
your word against the pastor, right.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
You can't even half the time, you can't even there's
no one to go too for to look at their
ordination oversight. What exactly who are these people who said
that this person is good to represent us? Or did
they self elect to do that? That's already a problem.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, it certainly is. What are the different kinds of cults? Anna,
I mean, I know there are, there's probably a number
of different kinds. Why don't you give us a few
of them.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
We tend to differentiate, so there could be anything from say,
like from in my field psychology cults. So this is
kind of some of the stuff that you can see
on TikTok come out theerotically. There are multi level marketing cults,
very very common, political cults, cults of personality. We tend
to differentiate between damaging cults and cults of personality, just

(19:03):
to you know, there's a cult around Donald Trump, for eye.
That doesn't always mean it's damaging.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Sometimes it can.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
There are damaging cults though, that are actively lying and
deceiving people. The Hari Krishna's right, come to come to
our yoga class. In a yoga class, right, they're about
to present you with something you did not consent to.
These these things matter in our differentiations, but for the
most part, we have to remember that cults usually just means,

(19:31):
at least historically means a spin off of an existing religion.
So one time even Christianity was considered a cult of Judaism.
Once you get into the cult environment, you can have
cults that are positive, you have cults that are negative.
You can have cults of different iterations, and it depends
mostly on the coercive deceptive element to their success, as

(19:52):
opposed to the open element and the informed consent element
of say, true Christianity. You never have to be deceived,
you don't need to be lied to. Everything's accessible, you
don't have to have some secret knowledge.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
You don't have to be a.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
Christian for a certain duration of time before you get
the secret knowledge, like in scientology for example, where you
have to be kind of eased into it. Over time,
and with a certain amount of money. You don't have
to invest money in order to know Christ in authentic Christianity.
All these things really matter, and it's really the informed
can sent element to what you're being offered by way

(20:27):
of theology is a distinctly important thing to keep in
mind as you're considering what church to go to. Are
they opening upfront or do you have to figure it
out over time.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Give us a obviously, since you're a professional, you won't
use a name, but give us a situation that you've
counseled somebody through that might be a common situation.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
Certainly, Okay, I'll use one. An individual who considered himself
particularly capable. He had an edge that he could talk
to God in a way that he believed was profound
dare I say prophetic, And so he was counseling marriages,
and so the marriages that he was counseling, if they

(21:12):
ended up deriving any benefit from his care, he would
invite them to join his church, where he would continue
to give new prophecies that he was coming to terms
with with the end of the world, how things were going,
and the more that you were kind of sucked into
the group the more he would separate you from your household. So, hey,

(21:33):
these people don't like that you're coming to this exclusive group.
It's probably because they're demonic, and so you need to
separate from them, because the demons are not something that
holy people tolerate the presence of. And so further and
further and further exclusivizing them until he bought a compound
in which everybody could move onto the compound, and Covid

(21:55):
lockdown that compound. Pretty well, they were all stuck there.
He controlled everything from what they ate all the way
to how they prayed. And then he dropped the bomb
that he was the manifestation of I think it was
Elijah on earth, and that he was going to reign
in the Escaton and they were there to help him
as the exclusive remnant the witnesses to the end, and

(22:20):
the by God's mercy, Covid killed the man in his compound.
And the only reason why these people got out was
because they had to go in his room to figure
out how to unlock the bars.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
On their windows.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yes, so talking about a great mercy in Covid. Where
was this Sorry, this was in southern California. I know
about the case because the main the survivor, the one
who was the most high up in the eldership of
that compound, got in a car and drove until the
gas money ran out and the car lost its gas

(22:56):
in my city, and the people heard her story was
looking for food and said, you need to talk to
Anna Kitko, and the.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Rest is history.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Wow, she got all the way to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
She did, Yep, she had just enough.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
She just kind of drove until she felt like she
needed to stop driving and the car ran out of gas.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Here. Well, that's one way God does equalize things. Everyone
dies at some point, right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Well, there was an easing in with it. Right.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
He came in as a counselor and then continued to
consume each family right to work for him and to
do his beating. Wow.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
A lot more with Anna Kiko, who has several degrees
and counsels people all the time on spiritual abuse. She's
also the Ratio Christie director at the University of Tennessee
at Knoxville. We'll give her website again right after the break,
So don't go anywhere. We're back with a lot more.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
If God is real, why is there so much evil
in the world. Could you answer this question? Or how
about questions like isn't Christianity just another made up religion?
And how do you respond when someone says you have
your truth and I have mine? These are the real
questions doctor Frank Turre faces from students at college campuses

(24:22):
across the nation, and now you can watch Frank answer
them anytime anywhere, live on tour with clear, powerful, evidence
based responses. Head over to the Cross Examined YouTube channel
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(24:44):
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(25:05):
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(25:28):
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