‘That is a cult’ | West Michigan man and siblings share religious trauma and experiences in new 13 ON YOUR SIDE documentary ‘Losing Faith’
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CARSON CITY, Mich. — Growing up in Carson City, Peter Michelsen said he loved his childhood.
“Good memories from my childhood, like the park that we’re sitting in, we came down here a lot to play in it. We grew up on Elizabeth Street, right by a creek, and my sister and I would go down there a lot to play in the creek. It was, it was a simple country town life, but we really had a lot of fun,” said Michelsen.
His family joined the Church of Carson City before he was born. He said when he was young, his life seemed normal. But as he got older, his ideas around his community began to change.
“I knew we were in a religion, but that was all I had known as a kid. Eventually, when we moved out to the country and I got a little older, things just didn’t seem right in the community that I grew up in,” said Michelsen.
He said the church followed the teaching from the King James bible, and required certain practices like women and men dressing modestly, no use of internet, TVs or smart phones, and only following directions from leaders.
Michelsen also says people inside the community owned businesses in the area, and if someone needed a job, they were only allowed to work at business owned by people in that community.
He says as a teenager, he began to question some of the things he was taught in his community. For example, he said he was told everyone who lived outside of their community was unhappy. But in a memory he shared with 13 ON YOUR SIDE, he said that didn’t make sense to him.
“I’d go to the grocery store with my mom, and the cashier was so friendly and bubbly, and I’m thinking, ‘So she lives a miserable life. She’s unhappy.’ It just didn’t add up to me. I started to question things. Something seemed off early on for me, because we weren’t involved in town. I couldn’t just go to the store by myself or go hang out with someone outside the community,” said Michelsen.
But even though he felt this way, he said he couldn’t share his feelings with others.
“We weren’t taught to express or share with our parents how we felt. We just we were silenced. We learned in obedience and had to be quiet. You didn’t question that, because then if you question that, they would question you,” said Michelsen.
Content retrieved from: https://www.womenspress.com/violence-prevention-the-nature-of-coercive-control/.
