Pentecostal abuse of neurodivergent and disabled people
How one pentecostal church inflicted pain and damage and I could not fight back
I have just been medicated. It really just takes the edge off the pain and extreme anxiety caused by the loud, bass-rich, electronic sound played by this church (“Cielos Nuevos Ministries”/ “The Cross of Calvary”). My desk is rattling from the power of that sound. My kitchen cabinets are rattling, and I can hear the sound of wood on metal, the sound of the cups against each other, and everything moving at the porch.
I am on the next street from them, a good 900ft, and they have invaded my home, violated my damaged left ear drum, cochlea and inner ear. I feel pressure inside my skull, throbbing at the beat of the garbage the Pentecostals are using to invade all homes. They don’t ask permission: they force your door open.
I have hyperacusis, a condition shared by many people who suffered auditory damage or stress. Sensory hypersensitivity is also shared by thousands of neurodivergent people, in general, and autistic people, in particular.
Pentecostals don’t care. Why would they? They are hyper-conservative fundamentalists, aka the “Christian right”. They follow a policy of zero tolerance towards the atypical, the divergent, the different and the deviant. They are the ones supporting pseudo-treatments that are actually forms of extreme torture, such as the “gay cure” and ABA, the behaviorist violence towards autistic people. They condemn all of us - atypicals, gay folks, people of different faiths - to their imaginary but symbolically powerful hell. Their “hellfire and brimstone” threats intimidate thousands of people.
Their material, very physical form of violence, has a large and largely unknown number of victims. I called the police a little more than an hour ago. The helpful and caring Sargent called me back. She checked on them, verified that, indeed, there was extremely loud music playing. The Pentecostals didn’t care: they told her they have a permit from the City to hold those types of outdoor events. I asked the Sargent whether there weren’t regulations in place concerning damaging decibel levels. There are plenty of such regulatory pieces of legislation and international health organization recommendations. Pentecostals follow none and confront the police with the certainty that in Bible Belt Oklahoma, they are basically untouchable. The caring Sargent explained to me that there weren’t such regulations once a permit is given, although they (the police) observe such legal limits. Apparently the City bureaucracy overrules those laws. She explained to me that I had to fight them at the City division for such permits. The Sargent didn’t say it in so many words, but I got the sub textual message that it would be a waste of time: fundamentalist Christian organizations enjoy immunity here.
I recalled a recent public appeal by a spiritual leader from Brazil defending the African matrix religion she is responsible for. She was recording in real time as a local neopentecostal narco-militia attacked their place of worship, destroyed their sacred symbols, and threatened her. In the cell phone video, I could hear and see the Pentecostals in the background. Sometimes they yelled: “we represent the Lord, the one God, and we won’t have devil worshippers here”. Neopentecostal narco-militias have been responsible for terrorist attacks against all minority religions, but with special sadism and genocidal effort against black folks and African matrix faiths.
These fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian organizations have been exported from the United States into Latin America and Africa, with important efforts - institutional and financial - from government associated organizations. In Brazil, their astronomic growth during the past 30 years ran parallel to the civil rights advances made possible with the end of the fascist dictatorship in the country. A weak amnesty agreement let of the hook both torturers and high ranking military officials responsible for the hunt and assassination of people opposed to the regime. We were ready to move on after all those dark years. We made so many mistakes. Not monitoring and devising strategies to control the subsidized growth of the “prosperity ideology / theology of prosperity”, a dangerous doctrine that opposed our traditional Theology of Liberation, and dislocated the public perception of the problems from the public/political sphere to the private one. They teach that it is all about individual choices and behavior. The church filled the void of extremist political organizations and parties for the 30% of the Brazilian population resentful with the social justice policies that took place under Labor (Workers’) Party rule in the country.
I call them the “fascist reserve”. For reasons we don’t entirely know yet, about 30% of any industrial society is aligned with right-wing authoritarian thought. They exist under any government. During periods of social justice progress, they keep a lower profile and are less visible or loud. They are waiting. Given the right circumstances - a charismatic, violent leader, economic redistributive and predistributive policies, the growth of minorities’ civil rights - they will readily answer the call to action for collective fascist action. They take to the streets, they vote, they attack teachers, scientists, but most of all, they attack black people following African matrix religions.
When I share these stories with my American friends, they tell me it has always existed here, and worse things were done. Indeed, the US exported the package containing an ideology, a movement organizing strategy, a theology, and churches, to Latin America and Africa. It’s the ultimate neocolonial aggression: to recruit the fascist reserve into a robust fascist movement and action, to topple democratically elected governments, and persecute the opposition.
What about the US, then? After all, isn’t this a celebrated stable democracy, albeit an “exceptional” one? No, it isn’t, and it’s time to put to rest the damaging “American exceptionalism” discourse and approach. One example would suffice: the classification of a regime as democratic excludes the existence of “exceptional acts” that subtract individual rights granted by whatever the Constitution is. The Patriot Act is just that.
The existence of paramilitary extremist organizations is another symptom of a non-democratic society. American militias are not, and have never been, the “well organized militias” from the Constitution. These would be what today is the National Guard.
Coming full circle back to our violent, authoritarian Pentecostal neighborhood churches, the average American was born in a society where this type of aggression and violation of one’s privacy had already been normalized. Especially in the South, there is no secularism: this is a Christian country.
They enjoy the privilege of not being subject to the same laws and the same treatment of the rest of society. They are never held accountable. They are a permanent reminder to us that they can do anything they well please, and there will be no consequences.
What about us, neurodivergent folks (autistics, people with hearing damage, PTSD victims and others)? Pentecostals don’t recognize our right to exist. They support any intervention that silences or “converts” us. The fact that sensory hypersensitivity can’t be changed or “cured” is irrelevant to them. After all, they don’t approve of our existence.
There are noise cancelling headphones in the market today. I tested a few. None of them actually cancels the sound. Others may cancel what falls into the narrow audible range - the rest is felt as pressure and throbbing inside the skull.
But I invite you, my reader, to ponder on the absurdity of this: there is abundant ambient sound that violates any recommendation by health organizations. We know, for a fact, that they are pathogenic. Yet, the victims have to make a significant investment to defend themselves from this aggression. I challenge anyone to find some logic or rationality for an argument in defense of this state of affairs.
I am medicated. I don’t like to be under the combined influence of diazepam and hydrocodone. These are drugs prescribed to me to be used “when necessary”. Between one aggression and the next (and external aggressions abound for those of us not rich, not powerful, and neurodivergent), I can spend 10 days, 3 weeks or even a month without taking them. In this case, I won the genetic toxicological lottery: I don’t develop tolerance or addiction.
Being medicated to avoid more extensive pathogenic damage from external aggressions tells you much more about society than about the patient. Think about it: we’re medicating individuals under extreme suffering against the pathogenic oppressors. That’s a pathogenic society.
Wouldn’t either regulating or getting rid of oppressive institutional forces or individuals the logical solution?