The Dangers of a Belief System that Promotes Abuse

Julia McCoy
6 min readFeb 17, 2020
Jerrell Trulove Photography

I grew up in a “Christian church,” led by a “Christian pastor.”

He was up at 4 a.m. every day to study, absorb, and then preach a specific version of Christianity rooted in Calvinistic Christianity, Fundamentalism (the same strain of Fundamentalism in Handmaid’s Tale), and Puritanism.

(I just finished spending 2.5 years sharing my story in a new book that recently shot to #1 in new releases on Amazon, Woman Rising: A True Story.)

Back when I was writing the book, I spent a few weeks researching my father’s belief system for my fourth chapter, Roots.

I’d grown up in his house, a victim of his abuse-promoting belief system for 21 years of my life. I’m now 29.

As a teen, I was ordered to write research papers on it, and had even written content for the site he made me build for his church.

So, I knew quite a bit.

But it was all from a kid’s perspective. Sad to say mine was the POV of not just a kid, but a victim, too.

So, as an adult researching the belief system I’d grown up in was eye-opening. I correlated my research with the perspective of other survivors from my grandfather’s cult, who had escaped over a decade ago.

--

--

Julia McCoy
Julia McCoy

Written by Julia McCoy

Julia is a keynote speaker, 9x author, CEO of FirstMovers.ai, and hosts Leaders of AI Podcast w/ Dave Shapiro. She lives, breathes, eats and sleeps AI adaption.

Responses (1)