Leah MarieAnn Klett Assistant Editor
The Christian Post
February 18, 2024
Growing up, Carrie Sheffield witnessed firsthand how religion can be used to justify evil.
Her father, a Mormon cult leader, believed he was a prophet destined to become president, and, after being excommunicated from the LDS church, continuously moved his wife and eight children around the country to avoid both religious and state authorities.
Sheffield’s early life was spent on the move, living in various motorhomes, sheds and tents with her large family, attending 17 public schools and being homeschooled at times.
It was, according to Sheffield, a childhood marked by extreme instability, abuse and spiritual manipulation.
“There was constant abuse by my father, telling us we're not worthy, telling us that we're evil, telling us also that he's a prophet and he's basically bringing salvation to America and saving our country from destruction,” she told The Christian Post.
“We were on welfare. At one point, we actually had no food and were boiling water with grass from the city park and eating this grass broth. It was all done in the name of God, is what my father said. Eventually, two of my older brothers developed schizophrenia. When I was 17, the older of those two tried to rape me, he groped me, and it was just incredibly scary and psychologically damaging to me. And at that point, I knew I had to make a decision.”
After making the difficult decision to walk away from her past, Sheffield embarked on an exploration of personal growth. She threw off all notions of religion — “the heart position for me was hostile; I didn’t know if there was a God, but if there was, He probably hated me and I felt the same way,” she said — and threw herself into work and schooling. She earned a full tuition scholarship to Harvard University for a master's degree in public policy and worked as an analyst for major Wall Street firms.
“I was making a ton of money compared to the nothing I had living in a motorhome,” she said.
Eventually, Sheffield launched a successful career in political journalism at outlets like Politico and The Hill, where she advocated for conservative values. Yet, despite her success, she was deeply unhappy and unfulfilled, struggling with suicide ideation, episodic depression and health issues that left her hospitalized on several occasions.
And then, in 2016, the entire trajectory of Sheffield’s life shifted due to two unlikely forces: Donald Trump and science. A dedicated conservative, she found herself reevaluating her beliefs amid the political upheaval surrounding Trump's rise to presidency.
"I just could not process that because, I said, I'm not worshiping this guy. I cannot. I can't worship somebody who says terrible things about women, who donated to his Democratic opponent, who has no track record of conservative policy," Sheffield recalled. “I cannot have that be the ultimate purpose in my life. I can't have that be my reason for living.”
This political dissonance catalyzed her quest for something more enduring, steering her toward a church — specifically, Redeemer Church in New York City, led by Tim Keller — and ultimately igniting her interest in Christianity.
It was Keller's work, particularly his book Counterfeit Gods, that provided Sheffield with a framework to understand the emptiness of idolizing temporal aspects of life — in her case, money, power and political ideologies.
"The reason why we worship them is because they're good. … But once you move into that posture where it becomes your God and your religion, then it becomes toxic," she said.
The pursuit of a deeper understanding of the world and her place within it led Sheffield to explore the scientific underpinnings of creation, marking the second major influence on her conversion. Studying metaphysics and the improbability of Earth's existence by chance alone, she said, prompted a profound sense of wonder in her, challenging her previously held beliefs anchored in human intellect alone.
“I had also worshiped at the altar of the human intellect, going to Harvard where I'm surrounded by agnostics and atheists, people who had never actually really grappled with faith just completely dismissed it outright, she said. “And that's where I was. I just dismissed it outright. But when I was just stopped in my tracks … it was almost like an investigative journalism project, and I love the book The Case for Christ, where [author Lee Strobel] does just that.”
Sheffield, who documents her transformative story in her book, Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness, shared how her conversion to Christianity marked a turning point in her relationship with her father and her outlook on life.
"It started with my Christian walk," Sheffield said, detailing how her faith journey led her to reconsider her stance on forgiveness.
Inspired by the teachings of Billy Graham on honoring one's parents without necessarily obeying them when it contradicts God's will, Sheffield embarked on a process of reconciliation and forgiveness, despite the deep wounds of the past.
“I knew that to be angry at him ... that was not something that was bringing him honor," she said.
A significant influence on Sheffield's journey was Anthony Thompson, a pastor who experienced unimaginable loss when his wife was murdered in the 2015 Charleston church shooting.
Thompson's story of forgiveness toward the shooter and his book, Called to Forgive, she said, helped her understand forgiveness on a deeper level.
"He helped me to go through that process," she said, emphasizing the impact of Thompson's forgiveness on her own path to healing.
Still, Sheffield is the first to admit the journey to healing hasn’t always been easy; even after getting baptized, she struggled with feelings of unworthiness and PTSD stemming from her childhood trauma.
And though in a place of “peace” today, she continues the work of changing negative patterns of thought and behavior through a “combination of prayer and therapy.” She attends a Bible-believing, nondenominational church in the Washington, D.C., area, where she said she’s found a supportive community that shares her values and beliefs and continues to work as a policy analyst.
“It’s like a family here; I have a very full life,” she said. “I love what I do. I love being able to advocate for policies that I believe in. I love my church. Life's not perfect and it's a journey. But I would say overall, being able to share the love of God and letting people know that even if you've gone through hell, you can come through and be with God and He loves you.”
She voiced her concern over the growing secularization in society, particularly among younger generations, noting increasing suicide rates and mental health issues among young people. By sharing her story, Sheffield said, she wants to encourage the next generation that healing is possible — and faith is transformative.
“The science is there, that people who go to church and regularly engage in religious practice … there are fewer suicides, fewer alcoholic deaths, fewer drug overdoses for those who are engaged in these spiritual practices,” she said. “God saves, and my life is a testament to that.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
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The founder of Auntie Anne's Pretzel company says the principles of leadership that catapulted her business from a single pretzel stand in Pennsylvania in 1988 to an iconic franchise located in malls and airports nationwide emerged from faith and suffering.
Anne Beiler published an op-ed last week in The Christian Post laying out her principles of leadership from her 2021 book Overcome and Lead, which she said came in part from her faith-based upbringing on a farm with seven siblings in the Amish-Mennonite community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
"My mom and dad were great parents," she told CP in a recent interview, noting that they provided her a "safe and secure lifestyle."
"They taught us about God, and going to church and sitting around the table three times a day for meals was just our culture," she said. "And so, in that setting, I felt like they gave me a really good foundation to weather the storms of life."
Even so, Beiler said she couldn't have anticipated the storms that would come her way, which she recounted in her 2019 book The Secret Lies Within.
Tragedy struck Beiler's family in 1975 when her 19-month-old daughter, Angela, was killed in a farming accident, an event she said would lead her through a dark spiritual valley that would ultimately transform her view of God's grace.
"As Angie made her ascent into Heaven that day, I began my slow and gradual descent into a world of emotional pain and spiritual confusion," Beiler said. "Because I'd been a good girl, the question became, 'Why?'"
Beiler said her pain compounded when a pastor she went to for counseling took advantage of her physically and pulled her into a secretive, abusive relationship that lingered for nearly seven years.
"That became worse than losing our daughter," she said. "Because as I left his office, I didn't understand anything about abuse, abuse of spiritual power, sexual abuse. I was not familiar with that world at all."
"But when I left his office, I made a choice," she continued. "And I decided I would never tell anyone what he did to me. But that one choice I made kept me in a life of secrets for almost seven years; a life of secrets and abuse during that whole time, without me telling anyone or anyone knowing anything about it."
Beiler said keeping the abusive relationship a secret led her to feel like she was "dying inside." It dragged her into a deep spiritual depression and to the brink of suicide.
"I went from being kind of the life of the party and always having something to do or say, enjoying life, to isolation and despair," she said. "At one point, I thought I had only one option: that would be to take my life because I knew and I believed for sure I'd gone from being a good girl to a very bad girl."
Amid the abuse and shame, she came to believe that she was irreparably broken.
"I didn't understand that it really wasn't my fault," she said. "I know a whole lot more about it today than I did back then and I understand it better. But at that time, it just felt like life was over. I knew that I was unlovable, I knew I was unforgivable, and I knew I was unchangeable, and there was really no hope for me."
Beiler said she believed during her Amish-Mennonite upbringing she could maintain God's favor as long as she was a good person, and that "life is good, and God is harsh." God used the darkest experiences of her life to bring her to an understanding that the inverse is true.
"And what I know today, through over seven decades of life's experiences, is that life is hard, and God is good," she said. "And I'm not confused about that anymore."
Beiler said she began to find healing after applying a principle in James 5:16, which exhorts believers to "confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed."
"I know it's so compact. It seems so simple," Beiler said of the biblical command. "But I can tell you, it's the most difficult thing anyone does if they've been caught in the dark world and they can hardly find their way out. But it's really the only way out."
At first, she finally confessed her yearslong situation to her husband Jonas, and the two began their journey toward reconciliation. When she later sought counseling with Emerge Counseling Ministries, founded by the Rev. Richard Dobbins, she said she was urged to probe the anger she might be harboring.
When she told Dobbins her story, she said he told her that what she suffered was not her fault.
"Nobody had said that to me, and that was almost 15 years after the fact," she said. "And I carried the belief that it was all my fault — the guilt and the shame of it were all my fault."
Such a revelation caused something inside of her to "come to life," and she ultimately realized it was true. At first, she did not believe she was angry, but as she explored her feelings, she understood she was suffering from anger toward her abuser, her husband, God and ultimately herself.
"As long as you blame, there's no healing for you," she said. "And so the anger that I felt inside, I honestly had it buried so deep that I didn't even understand that I was angry."
She eventually realized that neither God nor her husband was worthy of anger, but she still struggled with forgiving herself.
"I turned, I still turn, the anger inward toward myself," she said. "I still carried the guilt and the shame of what I had done to my husband, what I'd done to my family, my two beautiful daughters. And even after all of that, I still felt the burden of that."
Overcoming such deep and painful emotions was a complex process, she said. But as she began telling her story at first to friends and later to the public, her "anger began to subside."
In 2003, as she felt herself begin to slip again into depression, she said she cried out to God, whose grace she came to realize was sufficient.
"He spoke to me in that moment," she said. "It was not an audible voice, but it was directly from Heaven. It was a huge interruption. And he said to me, 'Anne, I have done everything there is to do for you.'"
Overcome with the power of Jesus Christ's life, death and resurrection, Beiler said she felt that God was calling her to forgive herself.
"I had never heard of self-forgiveness," she said. "I didn't even know I needed to forgive myself. But it was so powerful and so strong that all I could do was respond and say yes."
Even though she still struggles with lingering memories of her past and her shortcomings, she said she no longer feels the guilt or shame she did because she came to realize Jesus took it on Himself.
"I was carrying the shame because I could not forgive myself," she said. "Somebody had to pay, and I was paying through carrying shame."
Although she once felt "dead on the inside" because of her shame, she says, "Today I'm alive."
"I love my life," she said. "I love my Savior. I love the redemption. I love my family. I'm walking in the light. Is life easy? No, you still live life, but you're in a whole other world. And it's amazing to me how Jesus has redeemed every part of me."
Beiler has written three books about her spiritual journey and founded Broken Silence in 2018 to teach and equip women about living a lifestyle of confession.
https://www.christianpost.com/books/author-shares-journey-of-escaping-cult-leaders-grip-to-faith.html
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