Dr. Laura Anderson will give the University of Lynchburg’s 2024 Zaidee Creel Williams Memorial Lecture, “When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High Control Religion,” at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 8.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Schewel Hall’s Sydnor Performance Hall.

Anderson, a licensed psychotherapist, is the author of “When Religion Hurts You” and co-host of two podcasts, “Sunday School Dropouts” and “The Wise Jezebels.” She co-founded the Religious Trauma Institute and is a practitioner with the online Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.

She’s also been featured in Publisher’s Weekly, Sojourners Magazine, and other publications.

During her lecture, Anderson will talk about her experiences as a self-described “evangelical camp kid … turned youth director” who now helps people overcome the adverse effects of what she calls “high-demand/high-control religion.”

According to Dr. Steve Dawson, who serves on the Zaidee Creel Williams Memorial Lecture committee with religious studies professor Dr. Amy Merrill-Willis, bringing Anderson to campus was prompted by two events.

In 2023, he said, a small group of faculty and staff used a grant from the Council of Independent Colleges to create several events promoting religious diversity on campus. They included three lunch forums, where attendees suggested topics they’d like to see addressed at future events. One of the topics was religious trauma.

“Three individuals shared their experiences of being exiled, as it were,” from another university “because of their gender, their sexuality, and/or their religious beliefs,” said Dawson, an associate professor of religious studies and chair of the philosophy department.

“That particular luncheon put religious trauma on my mind.”

Those thoughts were cemented when Merrill-Willis forwarded Dawson a positive review of Anderson’s book, written by Lynchburg religious studies graduate Morganne Talley ’21.

“I emailed Amy and asked what she thought about contacting Laura for the Zaidee Creel Williams lecture,” Dawson said. “It turned out that Amy had a similar idea. I contacted Laura through her website and about a week later, Amy and I talked with her via Google Meet.

“We were very impressed with her and thought she would be a magnificent speaker.”

During her visit, Anderson also will have lunch with members of the campus community.

“[We] have members of our community who have suffered religious trauma, and we might also know persons who have suffered adversely from religious communities,” Dawson said. “Exposing sources of trauma — being able to name experiences of trauma — is the first step in healing or being the ally of someone on a healing journey.”

For more information, email [email protected].

Zaidee Creel Williams, a member of the Class of 1924, was a lifelong educator. Following her death in 1987, her nephew, Austin B. Creel, and other family members decided to honor her memory by endowing a lectureship in the area of religious studies. Since the inaugural lecture in 1989, the Zaidee Creel Williams Lectureship has enabled the Department of Religious Studies to bring exciting, dynamic scholars in the field of religious studies to the University, enriching the intellectual life not only of the campus but the community at large.