Raised to Be Still: Growing Up Inside the Church of the Firstborn

I was raised inside the Church of the Firstborn in southwest Oklahoma. Rocky. Fay. Small communities where the church was not just a place you went, but a way the world was explained to you. It shaped how you spoke, how you sat, how you listened, how you trusted. It shaped what questions were allowed and which ones were quietly discouraged. It shaped what obedience looked like — and what happened when you felt something was wrong but didn’t yet have the language to say so.

From the outside, the Church of the Firstborn presents itself as humble and unassuming. No flashy buildings. No elaborate programs. No Sunday school or children’s church. Children sit among adults. Services are unprogrammed. There is an emphasis on quiet reverence, spiritual gifts, obedience to divine calling, and submission to authority that is believed to be ordained by God rather than chosen by people. On paper, it looks simple. On the inside, it is absolute.

Men are “called.” Authority is spiritual, not institutional. Questioning leadership is not framed as curiosity or discernment — it is framed as rebellion, pride, or a lack of faith. Silence is not merely expected; it is spiritualized. Endurance is praised. Submission is holiness. Suffering is reframed as refinement.

As a child, you don’t experience this as doctrine. You experience it as atmosphere.

You learn early how to sit still. How to be quiet. How not to draw attention to yourself. You learn that adults know best — not because they’ve earned your trust, but because their authority is assumed to come from God. You learn that obedience keeps you safe, even when your body tells you otherwise. Especially when your body tells you otherwise.

Children in the Church of the Firstborn are not taught to question adults. They are taught to respect them. They are not taught to listen to discomfort. They are taught to pray through it. Harm, when it happens, is rarely named as harm. It is called a trial. A test. A burden to carry quietly.

I didn’t know any other way to be.

It’s important to say this clearly: many people in the Church of the Firstborn are sincere, loving, and deeply committed to what they believe is righteousness. This is not a story about villains. It is a story about systems — about what happens when belief structures prioritize obedience over inquiry, authority over accountability, and silence over truth.

Because those systems don’t need malicious intent to cause harm. They just need consistency.

In communities like this, danger doesn’t announce itself loudly. It doesn’t look like rebellion or chaos. It often looks like respectability. Familiarity. A man who says he knows your father. A leader who says God told him something. A belief that questioning is more dangerous than trusting.

When you grow up in that environment, you are trained — gently but thoroughly — to override your own instincts. To doubt your fear before you doubt authority. To believe that safety comes from submission rather than discernment.

That training doesn’t stay in childhood. It follows you.

For years, I carried the effects of that conditioning without fully understanding it. I thought my hypervigilance was anxiety. I thought my discomfort around unquestioned authority was a personality flaw. I thought my instinct to speak up — even when it made people uncomfortable — was a lack of humility.

It took time to understand that what I had learned was not just faith. It was compliance.

The Church of the Firstborn has a long and complicated history, rooted in early Mormon fundamentalism and shaped by isolation, oral tradition, and an emphasis on prophetic authority. The theology matters, but not as much as the culture it produces. A culture where leaders are rarely challenged. Where records are informal or nonexistent. Where accountability is internal rather than transparent. Where harm can be absorbed and reinterpreted rather than confronted.

That kind of environment doesn’t cause abuse — but it makes abuse easier to hide.

It makes silence feel holy. It makes endurance feel virtuous. It makes survival feel like righteousness rather than resilience.

When people ask why stories don’t surface sooner, why warnings are missed, why communities don’t “see it,” I think about how I was raised. I think about how danger was framed — not as something external to be guarded against, but as something internal to be prayed through. I think about how authority was taught — not as a responsibility to protect, but as a right to be obeyed.

Leaving that mindset doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in pieces. In moments where your body remembers what your theology taught you to ignore. In moments where silence starts to feel heavier than speaking. In moments where faith, if it is to survive at all, has to be separated from fear.

I don’t write this to condemn. I write it to tell the truth.

Belief systems shape behavior. They shape what we tolerate. They shape what we question. They shape what we excuse. And when those systems are closed, insular, and resistant to scrutiny, the cost is almost always paid by the most vulnerable.

I was raised to be still. To be quiet. To trust authority.
I am no longer willing to confuse silence with righteousness.