Member-only story
The Correlation Between Religion and Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm syndrome is often defined as when a hostage develops an empathetic psychological connection with their captor. The reason this happens (as clearly, the hostage is the victim) is that the hostage subconsciously figures out, as seems reasonable, that if they are nice to their captors, they will receive better treatment in exchange. And that’s true.
An easy reference to this is the trope of the “Uncle Tom” in African American slave life during American slavery. During American slavery, certain slaves were mentally trained that if they accepted their slavery, and willingly worked with their master, they would receive better treatment in exchange. And said slaves bought into this, and cooperated in exchange for said better treatment. The African American community now refers to such slaves as “Uncle Toms”.
I propose that the process by which Stockholm syndrome sets in subconsciously, is a tool that ministers of faith use consciously to trick those in their congregation into becoming ardent followers of their own supposed volition.
I’ll explain. When a person enters a church community, they are usually doing it simply for the community at first. A community is a small society. And the smaller the society, the more socialist the society. This is why socialism works well in small countries. The…
