The Real Religious Terrorism

By Sarah Braasch

Sarah Braasch, FFRF's summer legal intern

When I was a very young girl, I was a little fanatical religious zealot. I had mystical and spiritual experiences on an intermittent basis. I thought I had an intense personal relationship with God. I prayed constantly, fervently, devotedly. I wished to be persecuted, in order to prove my ardor and righteousness. I imagined myself a martyr, and I secretly envied those who had had such opportunities of self-sacrifice.

I was arrogant and supercilious in my misery. I thought I had a truth that no one else had. Everyone else was a sinner. Everyone else was a reprobate. I even remonstrated against my own parents for their sinful ways. When my father tried to take me, along with my siblings, to see the movie “Splash,” I cried and screamed and refused to go, because Daryl Hannah appeared topless in the film. In fact, I made him turn the car around and take me home.

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. At eighteen, my mother was pregnant, alone, as her family had just moved away, and married to an abusive man. She turned to her new husband’s family’s religion for solace and support. Her own family had been fairly blasŽ about religion. My mother was observant, as a Jehovah’s Witness, but I would never have described her as devout. My father was a lapsed Witness, but that never served as any impediment to him citing the bible and Jehovah’s commands as justification for his misogyny and abuse. I, on the other hand, was a true believer, indoctrinated from infancy.

I lived in a constant state of terror as a child. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Satan the Devil and his demon hordes are real. They espouse a near hysterical fear of demons, even though this is not always as evident in their literature. According to Jehovah’s Witnesses, demons reside upon and rule over this world. They believe that demons may attack humans, psychologically, physically, and sexually.

They believe, for the most part, that one has to invite demons into his or her life by engaging in ungodly, worldly activities. This might include anything from the occult, such as astrology, sŽances, or divination, to more prosaic acts, such as attending birthday parties. Additionally, one could potentially invite demons into one’s life simply by harboring a demoniacal obsession, even an obsession with shunning and fending off demons.

They also believe that demons target virtuous Jehovah’s Witnesses, simply because they are such an affront to the demons’ aims of turning all of humanity away from Jehovah God. The only defense is living a blameless life and calling upon Jehovah in time of demoniac attack. Additionally, if one were to be so audacious as to purposely confront a demon on his or her own, this person should not expect Jehovah to come to his or her call. This is typical fare for one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall meetings, and no attempt is made to dilute the message for young ears.

As a result, I was wracked with guilt and beset by fears. I was tortured by horrific nightmares of demons trying to kill me. I thought I saw Satan the Devil in my room at night. I thought I was incessantly under demoniac attack. My parents never hesitated to take advantage of this threat as a means of punishment and disapprobation. I would cry to Jehovah in my prayers, begging him not to let demons hurt me, promising to be good. I would pray for hours on end. If, in the middle of a prayer, a swear word or pornographic image would pop into my head, then I would have to begin my prayer again, beseeching Jehovah to forgive me for my evil thoughts. Every time I thought a worldly thought or did something un-Jehovah’s Witness like, I thought a demon was going to assault or molest me. I would sort of chant to myself, over and over, something akin to, “Jehovah loves me. He isn’t going to let anything bad happen to me. I don’t want demons to come into my life. Jehovah isn’t going to let demons hurt me.” I would even sleep with my hands over my genitals, lest a demon rape me in the middle of the night.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses would chastise any one of their own for viewing an R-rated horror movie; however, they can’t get enough of their own horror stories. They race through the congregations like wildfire, like eschatological delusions. The JWs embrace these fantastic stories with the frenzied, perverted glee of penitent self- flagellation. When I was a child, the horror tale de jour making the rounds of the Kingdom Halls was about how the Smurfs were really little blue devils or imps controlled and/or possessed by Satan and his demons.

It was a cautionary tale against Smurfs themselves, as idolatrous pagan imagery, as well as obsessive behaviors, which might lure demons to one’s doorstep. The baby and toddler of a Jehovah’s Witness family were attacked in the middle of the night by the Smurfs, which had come to life from the Smurf drapes, wallpaper, toys, and bedding. The entire nursery had been outfitted with Smurf paraphernalia and effluvia, a surefire obsessive lure for any demon. Apparently, the toddler attempted to alert the parents at least a couple of times before they responded. Thus, Jehovah’s Witness parents should not dismiss the seeming delusions of their young children. My Smurfette beach towel was quickly relegated to the garage and then shuttled off to a worldly child. Months of nightmares ensued.

Similarly, tales of ouija boards, tarot cards, and mediums were common, as well as the subsequent demonic mayhem. I nearly fainted in elementary school, when we watched a horror movie on Halloween. I made myself physically ill. My regard for authority restrained me from asking permission to be excused, so I kept my eyes closed and my ears plugged during the entire film, except for an occasional irresistible peek, which provided enough guilt-ridden fodder for self hatred for weeks thereafter. I demanded my mother retrieve me from a party when a ouija board appeared as a plaything.

We deride and denigrate parents who forego medical treatment on behalf of their children, trusting instead in God’s mercy and grace, yet we laud parents who instill in their children a terror and dread of God’s judgment. We go so far as to honor their right to do so. We brazenly rear our girl children to believe that they are less human than their male counterparts and that their bodies are not their own. But, then, we watch Internet videos of Muslim children reciting hateful, Quranic, jihadist tirades or Iraqi boys training to kidnap hostages, and we feel pity for those children and loathing for their parents. Yet, is it to be preferred that we teach our own children to hate themselves?

I was eleven when my youngest brother Jacob was born. I had been furious with my mother when she revealed her pregnancy, and I refused to speak to her for almost a month. When she told us children, I was aghast and appalled. I couldn’t believe she would want to bring another child into our despicable family. What was she thinking? I knew then that she would never leave my father.

Jacob required a blood transfusion at birth, which is the gravest of sins for a Jehovah’s Witness. Blood is sacred and inviolable. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse all blood products, in any form, including transfusions.

Jacob’s blood was full of poison. He was bloated and jaundiced and barely clinging to life. His positive blood was incompatible with my mother’s negative blood. My mother’s body had been producing antibodies, which had been attacking Jacob in utero. Someone at the hospital called a judge in the middle of the night after an emergency cesarean, and Jacob became a ward of the state, immediately receiving a life saving blood transfusion. I was assured that Jehovah would see fit to forgive Jacob for his inadvertent transgression. Jacob remained in the ICU for the first three months of his life. I had been expected to assume all of my mother’s household duties. I cleaned, cooked, and cared for the family home like any good Jehovah’s Witness wife. At first, I reveled in it. I was holding everything together; I was in control; I was the responsible one. I felt certain that Jehovah would look favorably upon my behavior.

And, one day, I snapped. I blamed my mother for having chosen to have another child. I blamed my mother for having allowed Jacob to get so sick that he required a blood transfusion. My father didn’t acknowledge any of my hard work. He made it clear that he expected to be waited upon by a woman, as ordained in the Holy Scriptures, and if his wife happened not to be available, having given birth to his son, then his preteen daughters would have to suffice.

I began to question everything I had been led to believe. It wasn’t easy to sever myself from a belief system, in which I had been so completely inculcated. But, I knew that the last thing I wanted was a life like my mother’s. She refused to leave a monster of a man. She refused to protect her children from his abuse. Jehovah abhors divorce. The Jehovah’s Witnesses discourage women from leaving abusive husbands and fathers on these grounds.

I knew that I wanted to go to college. I knew that I wanted a career. I excelled in school, and I knew that a college education was a path to independence, especially, and, most importantly, financial independence.

I would try to convince my mother to leave my father, but she claimed not to be able to support four children by herself. The Jehovah’s Witnesses strongly encourage their adherents to sacrifice college for the sake of the ministry in light of the ever incipient Armageddon.

On the eve of my sixteenth birthday, I called the police. After obtaining a six-month restraining order against my father, I sat in the car, in front of the courthouse, with my maternal grandmother, while my mother attempted to console my father. When my mother returned to the car, she cried to my grandmother, “He wants to kill himself. He wants his guns.” From the backseat, I said, “Give them to him.” My grandmother whipped her head around, her mouth agape, completely incredulous. My mother never even looked at me. She told my grandmother, “Just ignore her. She’s just angry.” Six months later, after six months of peace and quiet and tranquility, I got down on my hands and knees in front of my mother and pleaded and begged her not to let my father back into the house. She said no. She chose him, because she thought that’s what Jehovah wanted her to do. It is shocking to me how difficult it is to reject a detestable religion. It becomes a part of your identity. Even years later, during an emergency room visit upon breaking my hand, I indicated to the nurse that I was a Jehovah’s Witness. I feared a blood transfusion. It was a wholly irrational fear. And I hadn’t been inside a Kingdom Hall in years. I was ashamed afterwards, ashamed that I couldn’t rid myself of this religion’s idiocies. It had been so completely ingrained in my psyche that a blood transfusion was the most unforgivable, reprehensible of sins.

I left for college, armed with federal student loans and scholarships, and I never looked back. I haven’t spoken to either of my parents since I was a teenager. The very last thing my father told me was that I would never amount to anything without him. But, I knew I was capable of standing on my own two feet. I knew that I was the equal of any man, despite being taught the contrary by the bible. I obtained two engineering degrees, and I’ve made a great life for myself, but it hasn’t been easy. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve read the great philosophers, and I’m in law school studying international human rights and constitutional law, and, sometimes, I still get afraid of demons in the middle of the night. And, I’m still afraid of the dark.

Religion is the sexual slavery of women and the psychological torture of children. I am horrified by how willingly we succumb to the ideologies of cultural relativism. This is true on both a national and an international scale. Gender genocide and other egregious human rights violations against women are tolerated in the name of religion. We claim the right to interfere in the personal lives of others for the sake of protecting children who cannot protect themselves, but we allow girl children to have the idea that they are somehow less than human, that they are merely the property of men, pummeled into their brains from birth. We don’t want to say that others cannot subjugate their women, because we still want to subjugate our own.

Human rights are for everyone or no one. They are not only for the powerful, the rich, and for men. The next great challenge for both our national and global community is how to protect children from being indoctrinated into divisive, delusional, abusive belief systems. I have decided to devote the rest of my life to this challenge.

Sarah Braasch is the Freedom From Religion Foundation's first legal intern and is working with the Foundation this summer. She grew up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. She attended the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, where she obtained two engineering degrees, summa cum laude, in aerospace engineering and mechanics and mechanical engineering.

She worked in the boutique hotel industry for several years, in both Los Angeles and Miami. Sarah is currently a law student at Fordham University in New York City. She spent a summer in Morocco working for a human rights organization, she recently participated in a human rights clinic in Ethiopia, and she will be studying at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, this fall..