Enjoy this excerpt from Becky Garrison’s book, “Gaslighting for God: A Satirical Guide to Save Yourself from Spiritual Narcissists,” and find out where you sit on the spiritual narcissism spectrum.
For those spiritual leaders who are questioning if they are indeed blessed or full of BS, here’s a survey that can help you determine the extent to which you might be a spiritual narcissist.
1. You’re a leader of a spiritual community with a public mission to manifest a new heaven here on earth. However, yet another cult documentary has been released detailing abuses within your midst. Do you ...
A. Close down the community and allow law enforcement to do a thorough investigation, as well as compensate the survivors of said abuses.
B. Discretely give those accused of abuse(s) enough money so they will simply fade away.
C. Hire a PR rep to go gonzo on any journalist who dares to ask questions.
2. During a hurricane in your city, your megachurch (formerly a basketball arena) is one of the few places that remained dry. You’ve been asked by the city if those flooded out of their homes can camp out in your church until the water subsides and they can return to their homes. How do you respond?
A. Welcome everyone in, no questions asked.
B. Allow people to stay at your church but then bill FEMA for the cost of cleaning up the place (even though the cleaning bill is less than what it costs to tidy up your mega mansion).
C. Refuse to allow anyone in on the grounds they will muddy up your sanctuary, thus making it too unclean for worship services. However, due to media scrutiny, you might relent and do a performative fundraising drive.
3. Back in your evangelical megachurch preaching days, you elevated an internationally known “family values” leader to elder status and accepted millions from them. Their donations were used in large part to launch your international bestselling author/speaker career whereby you market yourself as a kinder/gentler progressive evangelical religious rockstar who was affirming toward the LGBT community. When asked about these donations from an anti-LGBT rights icon, your response is ...
A. OMG, I am so, so, so sorry for my prior work with this person. I will donate any money they gave to my ministries to organizations that work to help LGBT kids damaged by their actions. Also, I will issue a full apology on my website and work with LGBT groups to do better in the future.
B. Oops. Didn’t mean to do that. My bad. Let me write about how to care for the gay and lesbian communities in my next book.
C. Are you a plant? I mean just who paid for you to come here and ruin my ministry?
4. You are penning a book about human sexuality from a hipster Christian perspective. Given how many books on the topic have been penned by both secular and religious scholars, your book publisher tells you to come up with a unique way to market your book to the missional masses. Do you ...
A. Research the living daylights out of the hordes of research on this topic until you have an actual body of work that builds on this prior research as well as shedding new light on this topic.
B. Write a book that dumps on the fundamental/evangelical church’s approach to S-E-X while ignoring your own mainline denomination’s failings on this hot-button topic.
C. Launch a campaign to promote your book whereby you have purity rings melted down into a vagina sculpture that you gift to feminist icon Gloria Steinem (like she needs any more presents) as part of a glitzy exclusive women’s conference.
5. You scored an invitation to the annual National Prayer Breakfast. What do you do?
A. Politely decline stating you cannot support organizations that do not support church/state separation.
B. Accept the invitation so that you can do “social good” by networking with the various international groups gathered there.
C. Use this invite as a PR marketing tool to promote yourself as one of the DC prayerful power players.
6. As the head of a seemingly liberal mainline denomination, you’ve been asked to address multiple charges of inappropriate behaviors by leaders under your charge. How do you respond?
A. Launch a full-scale investigation and let the chips fall where they may.
B. Apologize for any harm that may have been caused, and then allow any alleged abusers to resign with a full pension and other perks.
C. Scold those who make any claims of this nature to “be nice.” Then issue a statement declaring that at least your leaders didn’t engage in acts of extreme child sexual abuse like those Southern Baptist Church (SBC) perverts or sex-crazed Catholics.
7. At the start of your best-selling book tour, a major natural disaster such as a hurricane, a tornado, or a flood hits your home city that directly impacts some members of your congregation and the larger community in ways that will forever change their lives. Do you ...
A. Put people over promotion. If you can’t be there in person, you arrange for backup pastoral support to tend to your community’s needs while using your book tour as a fundraising vehicle to help those in need.
B. Open each book event with a moment of silence for those impacted by thedisasters and then proceed with your book event.
C. Stay calm and carry on while making no mention of this disaster lest you kill the mood and thus impact your book sales.
8. You’ve been invited to speak at a spiritual conference or festival that will feature an author/speaker with a very well-documented history of multiple abuses. After those impacted by this abuse and victim advocates confront you by presenting evidence of abuses committed by this author/speaker, how do you respond?
A. You apologize to those victimized and inform the conference organizers that you cannot participate in any event that gives a known abuser a platform to promote their products.
B. You tell those critiquing your participation in this event that you promise to be a prophetic witness against #churchtoo and other related abuses though in the end, you drink beer with the Theo bros instead.
C. You block all those who criticized your participation while posting praise-worthy pieces from the event.
9. A national LGBT organization creates a video profiling a caring minister welcoming a lesbian couple and their young child. When they ask to run this video as a paid advertisement on your seemingly progressive Christian media platform, what do you do?
A. Post the advertisement followed by multiple e-blasts throughout all your social media channels.
B. Accept the ad but then bury it by posting it late Friday afternoon right before a holiday weekend and just let it die a quiet death.
C. Reject the ad on the grounds that it will offend your conservative funders. Then block anyone on social media who dares to critique this “incident.”
10. You are a white straight cisgender male who is asked to speak on an issue impacting a demographic that doesn’t describe you. How do you respond?
A. Gently refuse the offer and recommend other voices who are part of this demographic, adding they are the most qualified to speak on this topic.
B. Accept the invite but be sure to point out how many ethnic minorities, women, gays, and lesbians (the B&T component of this equation somehow doesn’t count) are part of your network.
C. Go on the show and blast anyone who calls you racist or sexist by pointing out how many “friends” you have who are black or female. (Conveniently ignore any anti-LGBT comments because God told you not to associate with such degenerates.)
Score
Give yourself 1 point for every A answer, 2 points for every B answer, and 3 points for every C answer.
10-11 You’re a selfless saint. If there were more people like you in the world, there would be no need for religious satirists. Keep doing the work and I hope those with ears to ear can tune into your work and join in your song.
12-21 You’re like most faith-based folks, just trying to get by without being too big of a spiritual scumbag. Though the blandness in your work might explain why your numbers keep dwindling. Simply put, there’s no there, there. Been there. Done that. Next.
22-30 Yay! You win the prize for the spiritual narcissist of the year. But of course, you knew that already.
You can find “Gaslighting for God: A Satirical Guide to Save Yourself from Spiritual Narcissists,” by Becky Garrison at www.lakedrivebooks.com.
Featured photo by Bill Hamway from UNSPLASH.
As a religious satirist, Becky Garrison served as Senior Contributing Editor for The Wittenburg Door from 1994 to 2008, and has been on its board of directors since its relaunch in 2021. She’s the author of nine books, including Jesus Died for This? A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Christ and Distilled in Washington: A History. Also, she co-edited a book of love letters penned by partners of trans folks to their loved ones, as well as contributing chapters to about a dozen other books. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she covers the region’s craft culture, including cider, beer, wine, spirits, cannabis/CBD, psychedelics, and the regional festival scene. Follow Becky on Substack here.
