Evangelical Christianity & Estrangement with Krispin Mayfield

"It's like there's a playbook."

Hi.

Today I’m sharing an interview with Krispin Mayfield. Krispin Mayfield, LPC, is a therapist in Portland, Oregon, who specializes in working in religious trauma recovery and supporting neurodivergent clients. He wrote a book on attachment theory and Christianity in 2022 (and has since left the faith). He loves photography, music, and most anything creative. Below is Part 1. In a future newsletter, I’ll share Part 2, which details his and his partner’s Substack, Strongwilled. I’ve mentioned Strongwilled here previously; Krispin and D.L. are making important connections between authoritarian parenting and our current political morass.

Interviewing Krispin was a pleasure, not just because he is thoughtful and knowledgeable, but also because our conversation reminded me that no two estrangement stories are exactly alike. It can sound kind of obvious or cliche to say that. But I actually think it’s very important.

We are living (slogging?) through a cultural moment that stokes a fear of diversity. But diversity—of stories, of ideas, of thought, of identities—gives life to life. To know that even within a group of people who are all estranged, there is incredible diversity of identities and experiences… I find that comforting. And life-affirming.

Here’s Part 1:

Maggie: Tell me about your estrangement.

Krispin: The reason that I became estranged from my family is because of sexual abuse. I was sexually abused, then later, when I wanted to hold the abuser accountable, my parents couldn’t understand. They kept asking, “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Why won't you just let it go?”

How long have you been estranged?

I went no-contact in 2016. So, and even if I hadn’t gone no-contact because of the abuse, I might have gone no-contact anyway because that was right before the 2016 election. My story is connected to white evangelicalism, even though I didn’t go no-contact strictly for religious reasons.

Tell me about your religious background.

I grew up in a small town in Southern Oregon. My dad was a teacher. Then, he became a pastor, and then when I was 12, we moved to China to be missionaries. My uncle and some cousins were already living there, so we had a pretty insular family dynamic. After that I went to Bible college, and I went into ministry afterward. This was before I became a therapist. So, white evangelical Christians, the folks we're seeing in the news currently, are the sort of people that populated and influenced my childhood.

So, cutoff happened in 2016. How exactly did it go down?

I had been trying to speak up about sexual abuse that happened to me and others, to try to prevent it from happening again. My dad in particular had been… just sort of like, Why do you keep bringing this up?

But whenever I would pull away from my parents, they also couldn’t accept that. If they didn’t hear from me for a while, my dad would reach out.”

He actually said things like, “Let’s talk through this. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what I need to do differently.”

So then I would respond, “This abuse happened to me and it feels like you’re trying to protect the status quo instead of care for me. Here's what I need you to do differently that would make me feel supported.”

And he would be like, “You’re just seeing it wrong,” or “That's the wrong thing to want.”

That cycle played out over and over again. Then it became more fraught because I ended up deciding to report the abuser to CPS. So I made this call and then there was retaliation against me. My dad’s response was, “Well, this retaliation wouldn't have happened if you had just let it go.”

That was sort of it for me. That was one of the last conversations I had with him.

You made a number of attempts to reach some kind of understanding before cutoff. How did you relationship to Christianity change throughout all of this?

Throughout my religious upbringing, I really resonated with the idea of unconditional love. I was in very progressive Christian spaces by 2016, which in some ways didn’t help me because they advocated for peace. They preached that no matter what, you can work through disagreement. “Be a peacemaker.” That sort of thing.

I even remember during that time, reading Dr. King, and getting hung up on something he wrote. I remember it being something like… you can’t forgive someone if you won't also continue in a relationship with them.

“True Christians work through their conflicts.”

Well, Jesus himself is pretty famous for saying, “Turn the other cheek.”

What I understood was that the “real” Christian thing to do was to give unconditional love, and the definition of unconditional love that I understood from Christianity was love without setting any boundaries.

At the same time, I would have other family members reach out—they were all still in the evangelical ministry. And they exerted a lot of pressure on me to get back into contact with my parents. “Don't you want to be a good Christian? Good Christians give people another chance. True Christians work through their conflicts.”

Often when they would have these talks with me, they made it clear that they actually believed my father was the one setting good, clear boundaries. When I would say to him, “I’m not going to be around you if you’re not supportive,” they believed he was in the right when he would answer, “But I am being supportive. You just can’t accept it.”

Did you leave the church after the estrangement, or before?

I left the church six years later, in 2022. The two things were pretty unrelated. But at the same time, the cutoff laid the groundwork, because I started asking myself, “What does it mean to be a good Christian?” I went through some OCD-ish sorts of thought loops, like, “What is the Christian thing to do?” But also, “I don’t feel safe. I can’t continue this relationship.” But I felt my faith was calling me to sacrifice my own needs for the sake of reconciliation. So I kept going around and around. I started to wonder if I was risking eternal damnation by setting these boundaries with my parents. That was like really alive in my head.

How did you get out of that?

I had this mentor in my life, this Christian guy who was my dad's age. He was very reassuring and supportive. So that helped. Finally, how I settled it in my own brain was I just said to myself, “This cutoff might not be forever. We haven’t worked it out, and every time I try, it has a big negative impact on me. But maybe later on in my life, something will change.” That helped me to calm the obsessive thinking.

Why do you think that was that particularly reassuring to you?

Well, I run into this all the time as a therapist. When clients are considering going no-contact, they want to be able to say, “This wasn't my choice. This was my parents' choice.” I think it’s true of a lot of people, but I think it especially is reflective of Christian guilt. So if their parents chose no-contact, that would help the adult child feel less guilty.

But it's usually not that clear. The parents are violating boundaries, but they also keep reaching out and saying they want to reconcile.

So instead, it requires us to assume some agency and say, “I’ve tried over and over. Now, I'm making the choice to pull away for my own well-being.” For me, in the beginning, it helped to frame the choice as something I’m doing right now, but not necessarily something I’m committed to forever. I think that choice is very difficult to make, especially if you grew up in a religious tradition that prioritized you putting others' well-being before your own.

That’s so interesting. I was raised Catholic but I left the church at 18, so just about 25 years ago. I lived my whole adult life religion-free, and I’d say I have a very secular worldview. So, for example, when I feel the pressure to “put others’ well-being before my own,” I ascribe that pressure to a patriarchal society that socializes women as caretakers, but not to religion, specifically.

Because even if you’re totally secular, there is a default expectation placed on adult daughters to tend to family ties, to keep them strong. But since I went to Church every Sunday as a child, and to Catholic school, now I’m wondering… do I feel that expectation because I’m a woman? Or am I feeling Catholic guilt? I don’t know!

I work with clients from an evangelical background, but I also work with many who are not religious. I think guilt and ambivalence show up in different ways. It’s further complicated, because just from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s also anxiety-provoking to cut contact. Humans are wired to stick together for survival. So, cutting off that connection can trigger a really old almost instinctual idea. “If I leave the herd, I'm going to be vulnerable. If I leave the herd, I'm going to be killed!”

And if we go back to Jesus’ teaching to “turn the other cheek,” the other one that stuck with me from the Sunday Gospel readings is Jesus’ directive to forgive “70 times 7 times.” I've thought so much about forgiveness. Where I’ve landed is that it's just really hard to forgive somebody when they're not sorry. Accountability is about more than just saying “sorry,” but at least “sorry” is recognition that something actually happened. If you don’t get that from someone who has hurt you…

For a lot of folks, it’s not even an issue of forgiving the past. It’s a matter of what is going on in the present. With my parents, some of their narrative had been, “You were sexually abused as a kid, but why can’t you just forgive?” What that taught me is that they will protect the status quo over protecting me. And by continuing to ask me to “forgive and forget,” it indicated that that was still true in the present. They will protect the status quo over protecting me. It’s this ongoing experience when I spent time with them. It feels like I don’t matter that much. It’s not about what happened in the past but about a dynamic that continues to exist.

For a lot of folks, it’s not even an issue of forgiving the past. It’s a matter of what is going on in the present.

“Forgiveness,” “boundaries,” these terms mean something different to them than they do to you, don’t you think?

In general, it's a lack of emotional intelligence. It takes a certain level of emotional maturity to be able to hear from someone in your life that you hurt them, or that they want things to be different, and take that as an opportunity to look at your own behavior and understand what you could do to grow.

But also, in particular with white evangelicalism, it’s discouraged to figure out how to discuss conflict from the perspective of one’s own feelings. Instead, it’s like there’s a playbook. As long as you stick to the playbook, then you are right. If you are right, then things are bound to work out. So, they judge the job they did as a parent by judging whether or not they did what they were told to do. If they followed the playbook, they were a good parent.

What’s your relationship like now with other family members?

In my family of origin—let me think about how to say this. Because my family was dysfunctional, I would say there weren’t strong relationships from the start. So I've fallen out of contact with a couple of my siblings. And then I have another sibling that I've kept in close contact with. But relationships with cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, that's all been hard to manage. I wanted to keep the estrangement limited to the relationship with my parents. But then I also recognized that I got blamed as the person who was causing problems. I realized I had to set boundaries with them as well.

Part 2 coming soon! If you enjoyed this interview, please like, comment, share, and check out Strongwilled.