Amanda* remembers it was lunchtime when her biblical counselor fed her father lines to apologize for sexually abusing her, beginning when she was nine years old. They sat inside a church connected with her childhood church through its approach to counseling.
At 17, Amanda sat with her family, her counselor Lisa*, and her parents’ marriage counselor David* in front of a group of trainees taking a 2002 class at an Indiana church’s large counseling center. The church’s counseling program takes a particular Christian approach to counseling, which tends to be popular in conservative Reformed traditions—an approach that sees the Bible as the ultimate authority on problems and values theology over psychology.
The counseling trainees ate while observing the family’s session. “It was dinner and a show,” Amanda recalls, calling the dynamic “coercive.”
At this point, Amanda’s mother had known about the abuse for two years, but her father avoided criminal charges after hiring a lawyer and moving out. Amanda worried that her dad would abuse others; she couldn’t forgive him with this awareness.
Earlier that day, Lisa met with Amanda and her mother, separately, trying to prepare them to include her father at her grandma’s funeral—the extended family did not know her parents were separated. When she was done, Amanda waited in the car during her parents’ marriage counseling. “My mom came out and said we had another session with [David] and Dad that I needed to come to. [Lisa] met us at the side door and let us in and led us into a big room,” said Amanda. The adults held the extra session to elicit forgiveness from Amanda, which turned out to also be a training lesson.
She recalls that her father hemmed and hawed when David asked him to start the session. David said, “Don’t you mean…” and prompted her father to repeat lines after him to ask for forgiveness. Then, it was Amanda’s turn. She couldn’t bring herself to grant it, so David filled in the silence by asking if Amanda forgave him. She nodded and said nothing.
Then the counselors defined forgiveness as never speaking about the abuse again. To close the session, David prayed for restored trust to the point that Amanda would one day set her future daughters on her dad’s lap.
Not long after, when Amanda was in college, Lisa terminated counseling. “I did not agree with their definition for forgiveness,” Amanda says. “I don’t think we should use Christian words like that without defining what they mean.”
Can forgiveness be authentic if it feels forced? From a child forced to say “I’m sorry” by a parent to a survivor pressured to reconcile with their abuser, a coercive dynamic to forgive exists in many settings. But research and individual experiences show that people can still find and practice real forgiveness after being harmed by these dynamics, when handled with care. It requires understanding the contexts in which pressure to forgive exists and the patience to move slowly through the process.
What is genuine forgiveness?
Psychologist Loren Toussaint, a professor at Luther College, says an unequal power dynamic can pressure us to let people off the hook for the sake of social harmony. Aside from extreme cases like Amanda’s, “the two places you see that are in parent-child relationships and employee-employer relations,” says Toussaint. “There’s a certain sense of uneasiness. . . . If I don’t forgive, there’s going to be ramifications because I’m subordinate to this person. In that case, especially, it’s really hard to guarantee and know that someone is engaging in authentic forgiveness.”
Real forgiveness cannot be rushed. It can begin with a decision not to retaliate. Or it can be an early declaration to forgive or at minimum not to be unforgiving. Yet it may take years of processing the harm—feeling anger again and again, seeking justice or accountability, wrestling with whether any form of reconciliation is safe or healthy. Ultimately, you might arrive at a place of seeing an offender in their full humanity—thinking honestly about their capacities and limits—and wishing them genuine growth and wellness. Forgiveness is a process.
Toussaint recalls a promotion denied years ago and the offense he took from his dean’s decision. Yet after the slight, “the very first time I ran into him in person, I ran over with my hand extended,” says Toussaint. “The problem is that if you’ve been hurt by someone who is still in power over you, it’s really hard to know that you’re not forgiving out of perceived obligation to protect yourself.”
For Toussaint, who is Catholic, he also felt compelled to forgive because of his own faith’s teachings. “That’s probably true for a lot of people even if they might not claim a faith,” he says. “They have a spiritual view on life or a philosophical view on life where they feel this is important: Somewhere we should find the will to forgive.”
Realistically, though he intended to forgive his dean early on, he did not notice that he had released the resentment until years later.
Amanda’s case also contains unequal power dynamics—religious settings uniquely hold additional authority that at times can lead to serious harm.
How coerced forgiveness causes harm
Spiritual and moral authority in religious institutions can slip into coercive dynamics that perpetuate violence—including psychological, sexual, and even economic violence, posit attorney Renato Vera Osuna and Anahi Martinez Zuniga, in a 2025 paper for the International Journal for Research and Innovation in Social Science. They draw from sociologists who conceptualize structural and symbolic violence to describe how spiritual harm can manifest. Spiritual harm can become obscured, they write, since laws do not encompass it as a crime. They argue for legal recognition of spiritual abuse, “the creation of independent oversight bodies, and institutional reforms grounded in transparency, horizontal governance, and human rights principles.”
Osuna and Zuniga reviewed reports where coercion or cover-up occurred in Catholic, evangelical, and non-denominational contexts in North America, Latin America, and Europe. Then, they interviewed victims, legal practitioners, psychologists, and clergy in specific cases. Many cases silenced or re-victimized people who tried to report abuse or challenge authority. Osuna and Zuniga identified control mechanisms such as various ways of concealing perpetrators (including transferring leaders to new locations), threats of exclusion from the community, accusations of attacking the church, and theological reinterpretations.
Psychologists have also worked to define the unique contours of harm that might arise in these settings. Since 1994, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses, which helps mental health professionals accurately diagnose problems, has included “religious or spiritual problem.” Recently, in fall 2025, the manual added “moral problem” within the same category. People experiencing religious problems may develop post-traumatic stress or they might not—either way, they will benefit from counselors with specific clinical training on these kinds of circumstances.
“Sometimes clinical work has neglected the moral dimension . . . many world religions point to the moral dimension, and we cannot bring about full healing without addressing the moral dimension,” said Tyler VanderWeele, the director of the Human Flourishing Project at Harvard University, during a 2024 conference.
Religions provide a strong social identity for people and become the lens through which people understand the world. Religious leaders and institutions uniquely wield a particular kind of spiritual and moral authority.
VanderWeele and other psychologists are defining and measuring the newer concept of moral injury. Moral problems do not only arise in religious settings, but they can be a prominent part of a religious experience. However people perceive rightness and wrongness in the world, a transgression can violate their deeply held moral assumptions.
While originally conceptualized in the context of veterans, and then health care workers, and usually focused on perpetrating or witnessing wrongdoing—moral injury has expanded more recently to include the experiences of victims. When people question their own goodness, or the goodness of God or a higher power, or of their faith leaders or faith system, it can upend their mental health.
VanderWeele described a moral trauma spectrum of severity and persistence that could cause you to struggle with forgiveness, and lead to a number of other symptoms, such as guilt, shame, and powerlessness, experienced across a range of debilitation.
Harvard psychologist Heidi Ellis and her colleagues have also attempted to define and measure how religious abuse uniquely entangles people, but research is in the beginning stages of developing assessment tools. Prevalence may vary based on demographic factors—with relatively high rates within specific populations, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in Latter Day Saints communities and Native Americans who have experienced foster care. Their review of this small body of literature found three consistent factors at play: misuse of power, psychological harm, and spiritual harm.
In Amanda’s conservative evangelical context, the word “forgiveness” meant something theologically that protected her abusive father rather than holding him accountable. Her counselors wanted her to believe the best about him because forgiveness meant a relationship could be restored.
“I’ve heard many, many stories that abuse survivors were counseled” in similar ways, she says. Amanda stays in touch with other abuse survivors and continues to advocate for victims in the church when fresh stories surface. She believes forgiveness is possible, but if handled improperly, the intention to reconcile can actually cause harm.
How positivity and spiritual bypassing cause harm
One common error in Christian contexts is to move toward forgiveness too quickly or aggressively, without first addressing practical issues or abuse survivors’ concerns. “I have never had to tell a survivor who is a Christian, ‘Hey, it’s about time you have to talk about forgiveness.’ I usually have to hold them back a little bit,” said Justin Holcomb, a Florida bishop in the Episcopal Church, during a 2019 conference talk.
He explained that’s because they hear about forgiveness all the time. He also reprimanded those in survivors’ support systems, including pastors: “When they come to you with their story, the first word out of your mouth better not be to heap burden on them with the command to forgive.”
That resonated with Amanda, who referenced his talk as supportive of her experience. Survivors first need time to process what happened to them, she says. “We can’t forgive until we understand what’s happened . . . . Thinking about forgiveness can’t be the first thing that we do because it minimizes the sin.”
We wouldn’t put a Band-Aid on a nine-inch gash on our kid’s leg, she pointed out. “We have to be able to understand that weight.”
Focusing on healing problems at the spiritual level while ignoring the practical solutions—called spiritual bypassing—can stymie efforts to look honestly at what is needed when an offense takes place.
Whether in religious settings or not, Ellen Sinclair writes how forgiveness interventions can frame difficult events with positive thinking but miss treating the actual problem of relational harm. An artificially positive outlook can blind people from taking the realistic view of an abusive situation. In a review, Sinclair found that domestic abuse victims who were optimistic were more likely to miscalculate their risk, and spouses who forgave an unremorseful partner were also likely to experience continued abuse. Misapplied, a positive approach might have the impact of blaming the victim for not being able to cope in the face of injustice.
Toussaint says forgiveness within faith communities can be difficult because teachings can be inadequate. “There is a tendency especially in a religious setting to be prescriptive about forgiveness,” he says. Sacred text in Christian traditions and others suggests that forgiveness is not optional.
“But the second reason is that most people are being told what to do and they’re confused about what they are being asked to do,” says Toussaint. “Most people believe they are being asked to, number one, forgo any simultaneous requirement of justice and that they are to reconcile and even . . . to immediately reconcile.”
Growing and finding meaning after forced forgiveness
Amanda actually stayed at the same church and found growth through a full understanding of who Jesus is to her. She is among those who find strength and resilience within their faith community. People can have seemingly opposite responses to religious abuse, found psychologist Paula Swindle, who wrote her dissertation on the subject. Some, like Amanda, make their faith even more central to their identity but others leave their faith group—either disaffiliating altogether or changing to a new church or denomination.
Here’s how Amanda stayed: A new pastor took leadership of her childhood church, knowing that many people had been harmed by the church culture. So, he sought out Amanda, got to know her, and waited patiently for her to share her story. When Amanda was 23, her youngest sister revealed that she’d also been abused by their father and came to live with Amanda, bringing the family’s whole history to light.
Her pastor began talking with Amanda about the real meaning of forgiveness. “One of the things we talked about: that David’s view of forgiveness actually makes the offended party have to be the savior,” says Amanda. “When you forgive someone, you take the relational weight upon yourself rather than putting it on the offender. I was expected to carry the uncomfortableness and not make my dad carry it.”
Amanda explained that she’s come to believe the Christian scripture’s understanding of forgiveness, but that actually means not standing in the way of who can carry that relational weight. Her father needs Jesus’s forgiveness, she says, but we can’t offer a watered-down version. Jesus does offer forgiveness, but “he doesn’t take away the consequences for sin here in this world,” says Amanda. “Relational consequences stay.” She referenced the biblical story of David murdering Bathsheba’s husband to cover up his predatory relationship and adultery, which resulted in losing his son and his kingdom’s unity.
When her father repented, Amanda’s counselors wanted her to believe the best about him. Her response: “I say we should believe the truth about others. I need to believe that my dad has abused multiple children, and there’s no reason to believe that he will stop if given access to children. It’s having a realistic view of what is best for him. I think that does mean making sure he doesn’t have access to children again. I don’t think that’s in his best interest,” she says.
Since Amanda began sharing her story almost seven years ago, she receives requests from churches to consult on behalf of victims. As a victim, “you don’t even know what you need. But you need someone else to be able to say it for you,” she says.
First, she cautions churches about the power dynamics unique to religion and faith leaders that law scholars and psychologists are working to describe.
In addition, she points out how abusers can manipulate communities. Many churches love to help people who admit they are sinners, says Amanda. When an abuser acts repentant—in a conservative Christian context “repentant” means not only feeling sorry but also intending to do no wrong again—this almost invites wrongdoers to manipulate that good faith.
Lastly, she advises clear definitions of forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness is more like a seed, says Amanda. It lodged in her years ago, but decades later “it’s something that continues to grow, and I continue to deepen that understanding.”
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