Color Me Thoroughly Disturbed

This video does not appear to be satire.

The lyrics are as follows:

Always submit to the church administration

For they were placed by Lord God to lead this nation

If we obey then we will receive salvation

Sing along with me

Yes, really. It’s basically just that on repeat, sung by kids.

I have never been more glad that I grew up with evangelical parents who were inherently wary of church authority. We attended a large evangelical megachurch where most of the people who came and went were never personally known by anyone on the pastoral staff. My dad disagreed with many of the things the church did, including the type of music used and the way services were run, and at one point he met with the elders about it to try to change things. He sometimes talked about leaving the church to form our own home church, but ultimately there was enough he liked about the church to keep us attending.

There was a smaller church nearby that had a membership made up largely of homeschool families, and we sometimes talked about attending there instead. From where I’m standing, church authority appears to have played a role in the fact that we never did. My mother, who talked about the importance of women submitting to their husbands, couldn’t stand the institutionalized feel female submission had in that church for her, and I suspect my father didn’t like the idea of a pastoral team and board of elders that keep closer tabs on people. He was just independent like that.

As I’ve become part of a larger community of homeschool graduates and spiritual abuse survivors, I’ve gotten to know many for whom things were very different—they attended churches that did exercise control over their members, that practiced church discipline and community shaming. It’s easy to see how open these practices are to abuse. I suspect that the above video would be a step beyond what even these individuals experienced, though.

*shivers*

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