Here is a questionnaire to determine just how healthy your local church is. To find out how well your church ranks, answer "yes" or "no" to the following 12 questions:

• Does your church tightly control the flow of information within its ranks?

• Does your spiritual leader use public shaming as a method to gain the compliance of followers?

• Is your spiritual leader intolerant of questions or critical inquiry?

• Is your spiritual leader the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation?

• Does your spiritual leader have unreasonable fears about the outside world such as evil conspiracies or persecutions?

• Are you discouraged to associate with former members, being warned that they are "evil" or "defiling"?

• Is leaving your group to join another church equal to leaving God?

• Does the surrounding community view your church as a cult?

• Does your spiritual leader consider it evil persecution when criticized or questioned?

• Do the goals of your spiritual leader seem to supersede any personal goals or individual interests?

• Do you fear being rebuked, shunned, or ignored for expressing a different opinion?

• Do former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances?

If you answered "no" to all of the above 12 questions, your church is very healthy. If you answered "yes" to three or more, your church is showing signs of being unhealthy. If you answered "yes" to six or more, your church is very unhealthy. If you answered "yes" to eight or more, your church is more than likely a full-blown authoritarian cult.