A survivor-built resource for people leaving Straitway Truth Ministry. The truth will set you free - and so will the people who have walked this road before you.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32Maybe you're still inside. Maybe you just left. Maybe you're helping someone you love find their way out. Wherever you are, this page was built for you - by people who have been there.
Contact the Recovering from Religion Hotline: 1-844-368-2848
text HOME to 741741 Crisis Text Line.
If you feel physically unsafe, call 911. You have a right to leave. You always have.
Straitway Truth Ministry has used scripture, communal pressure, isolation, and fear to bind sincere believers. Leaving is not apostasy - it is obedience to the God who calls His people to freedom. Many have left before you. Many more will come after. You are part of a growing cloud of witnesses walking out into the light.
Controlling groups rarely announce themselves. These patterns - drawn from cult recovery research and survivor testimony - are commonly reported by those who experienced Straitway.
Special vocabulary used to separate insiders from outsiders. Words carry new meanings that only members understand.
Leaving or questioning results in being cut off from family and community - a tool of social control, not scripture.
Only the leader correctly understands the Bible. Outside scholarship, commentaries, or pastors are dismissed or forbidden.
Members pressured toward communal finances, tithing beyond means, or dependence on the group for basic needs.
Relationships outside the group are discouraged or labeled spiritually dangerous. Outside family is treated as "worldly."
Questioning leadership is equated with sinning against God. Obedience is demanded rather than freely given.
The leader claims exclusive revelation, visions, or divine authority that supersedes normal accountability.
Your identity, worth, and salvation feel inseparable from membership. Who you are outside the group feels frightening or unreal.
These titles have helped thousands of survivors understand what happened to them and begin rebuilding faith on a solid foundation.
The definitive guide to understanding BITE model control (Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotion). Essential reading for survivors and families alike.
View & Purchase →Drawing on three decades and roughly 500 cult interventions, veteran deprogrammer Rick Alan Ross breaks down the recruitment and control tactics cults use, then lays out the methods he and other experts use to help people get out and recover.
Search on Amazon →Explores how high-demand religious groups fracture identity and how to rebuild a grounded self after leaving.
Find on Amazon →interviews with people who were raised in religious and political cults, focusing on their childhood experiences of extreme abuse and neglect, and their efforts to escape and recover.
Find on Amazon →Margaret Thaler Singer's landmark study draws on her interviews with thousands of current and former cult members to explain how cults use coercive persuasion and thought-reform tactics to control people.
Find on Amazon →Written for Christian survivors, this book names and dismantles the patterns of control dressed in religious language.
Find on Amazon →This 1997 special issue of the Cultic Studies Journal, guest-edited by Janja Lalich, is a collection of essays examining how women experience, internalize, and resist totalist group control, offering a gendered look at recruitment, leadership dynamics, and recovery.
Online Publication →"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
- 2 Corinthians 3:17 & Galatians 5:1Sometimes you need to hear another voice tell your story before you can tell it yourself. These documented accounts and discussions are survivors speaking freely.
Encouragement for Christians healing from spiritual abuse and harmful teaching. (NAR, WoF, Prosperity Gospel, Hyper-charismatic, Deliverance, Dominionism etc.) From Performance-based faith ➜ Scripture in context.
Watch on YouTube →Netflix documentary covering the FLDS - different group, same mechanisms of control, isolation, and prophecy-as-power. Powerful for understanding the patterns.
Watch on Netflix →Elizabeth Vargas, alongside former members of controversial organizations, goes on a search to uncover how these sects use their influence to prey upon people's desperation to create powerful and often destructive belief systems. Each episode will take an immersive look at one currently active group through the eyes of past devotees and get perspective from believers and leaders that are still inside.
Watch on Streaming platforms →Leah Remini, along with high level former Scientology executives and Church members, explores individual accounts from ex-Church members and their families through meetings and interviews with Leah. Each episode features stories from former members whose lives have been affected by the Church's harmful practices, even well after they left the organization.
Watch on Streaming platforms →Think you might be in a cult? Want to know the signs? Join Sarah Edmondson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames to talk about things that are..a little bit culty. Or in their case: a whole bunch of culty.
Visit Site →A podcast about cults, extreme belief, and the abuse of power. Hosted by Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth
Visit Site →The Cult Education Institute maintains a searchable archive of reports on specific groups including Straitway. Documented facts, exit reports, and news coverage.
View Archive →Steven Hassan's full site with the BITE Model assessment tool - free, online, and specifically designed to evaluate the level of control in any group.
Take the BITE Assessment →he Lalich Center is committed to assisting survivors of cults, coercion, high-demand groups, the Troubled Teen industry, and friends, families, and professionals through providing learning resources, workshops, courses, and discussion groups.
Visit Site →Leaving is a process, not a single event. Here is a practical, compassionate sequence drawn from cult recovery experts and the testimonies of Straitway survivors.
The doubt, the unease, the questions you've been told to suppress - those feelings are data, not sin. Give yourself permission to take them seriously without immediately confessing them to group leaders.
A family member, a former member, a counselor, or a pastor from a different congregation. You need at least one voice in your life that the group does not control.
Use this page. Use the resources listed. The information is not dangerous - it is what the group wants you to believe is forbidden. Truth holds up under scrutiny; control does not.
Make sure you have access to your own ID, birth certificate, Social Security card, and bank accounts. If these are held or managed communally, take quiet steps to regain access before announcing your departure.
You do not owe the group an announcement, a debate, or a confrontation. Many survivors find a quiet exit safer than a declared departure. Inform people you trust; protect yourself first.
Not all therapists understand religious trauma. Look for professionals affiliated with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) or trained in spiritual abuse recovery specifically.
Many survivors fear that leaving the group means losing God. It does not. Your relationship with God does not depend on your membership in any organization. Many who leave find a deeper, freer faith on the other side.
"I thought if I left, I would lose everything - my friends, my family, my salvation. What I found instead was a God who never required a gatekeeper, and a life I didn't know was possible. The hardest step was believing I was allowed to take it."
- Former Straitway member, shared with permissionResearch-based nonprofit dedicated to cult education and recovery. Directory of cult-informed therapists and peer support groups nationwide.
Visit ICSA →Free information, documented reports on specific groups, and a community forum where survivors of high-control groups share and support each other.
Visit CEI →Support groups (online and in-person), crisis line, and resources for navigating loss of community, identity, and belief after leaving a controlling group.
Visit RfR →Steven Hassan's free online assessment tool to evaluate whether your group meets the criteria for undue influence. Anonymous and immediate.
Take Assessment →Free, 24/7 crisis support via text message. If you're overwhelmed by the decision to leave or its aftermath, text HOME to 741741.
Text HOME to 741741Connects survivors with legal aid, pastoral support, and theological resources for processing what happened through a biblical lens.
Visit SARN →These are real words from real people who left Straitway. Every testimony is submitted voluntarily and reviewed before publication. Names are withheld or changed at the submitter's request.
Your words could be the thing someone else needs to take the first step. Submissions are reviewed before appearing here - you control what name (or no name) is shown.
🔒 Submissions are sent directly to the site administrator for review. Nothing is published without approval. You may submit anonymously.
There are saints who have come through this exact valley. Reach out. Read. Rest in knowing that the God who called you into truth has not abandoned you in the process of finding it.
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