Unlearning Fear and Shame

A Conversation with Quaker Author Philip Gulley

For three years, I regularly worked with bright but struggling ninth graders at a small private school in Hartford, Connecticut, helping them manage their attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and executive functioning challenges. Perhaps the most transformative of all the strategies we employed was teaching them how to understand and unlearn their fears.

Fear profoundly affects our brains, impairing our memory, critical thinking, and decision making.

While fear triggers our primal fight-or-flight instinct, we often seek external sources to soothe that internal alarm. Quaker author Philip Gulley, describing his own spiritual journey from Catholicism through Evangelicalism and eventually to Universalism, illustrates how many of us initially trusted God to alleviate our fears:

One of the first things we learn is that God loves us, that God’s in control, is a product of our deepest need, which is to live life without being crippled by fear or a sense of hopelessness. And so we posit all these powers into a divine being so that we don’t have to go through life worrying that no one’s in control and that this will somehow end up okay.

Gulley spoke with my cohost Sweet Miche and me about his 2018 book Unlearning God: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe. You can listen to the conversation in the April 2025 episode of the Quakers Today podcast.

Chatting with Gulley about his spiritual journey got me reflecting on when I was a teen struggling with my identity. Fears about my existence in this life and the next plagued me, but then I encountered God. It was also a time in my life when I felt an increasing desire for growth and new life.

When my parents offered to repaint my room, I chose mint green—a cool, restful shade. Beneath a Spanish chestnut tree and beside a lake, my quiet bedroom shimmered with reflections and gentle breezes. It was there that I first sensed God inviting me into a partnership.

Soon after that experience, I joined a Bible church where Pastor Nick regularly warned us about hidden spiritual dangers. Among the first verses I memorized was 1 Peter 5:8, a scripture verse steeped in fear: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Though perhaps well-meaning, the elders introduced many new anxieties into my life.

According to Gulley, an emphasis on fear is nothing new. It goes all the way back to the book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden. Gulley loves the story of Adam and Eve, yet he remains puzzled by the conflicting messages within it. God provided the couple with an abundant garden filled with fresh produce, yet forbade them from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Reflecting on this narrative, Gulley observes:

We know now that four different authors wrote the first five books of the Bible. And some of those sources were very poetic, exploratory, had all kinds of questions and just wrote very movingly. Others of them were priestly and really liked nailing things down. And I suspect the person who came up with that story was somebody who worshiped every day at the altar of fear. This is the problem. The problem is not letting God discern good and evil, but you attempting to discern what is right and what is wrong. And here’s where that will get you—it will get you thrown out of the garden and subject to work and be miserable. And it’s just such a depressing story.

For centuries, religious leaders have kept people like me confined to a narrow path. For a long time, I preferred this safety, outsourcing the hard work of discernment rather than trusting my direct experience of the Spirit.

How unlike the early Quakers, who boldly rejected the authority of established church leaders and the educated clergy! Those Quakers dared to question accepted teachings, breaking free from spiritual hierarchies to seek guidance directly from God and live by the leading of the Spirit.

Centuries later, in the United States, we are experiencing the repercussions of religious authorities’ overreach—a phenomenon Gulley says carries profound political consequences:

Well, it’s clear that fear is probably the driving motivation in our culture. I think that’s especially obvious now with the rise of Donald Trump and his supporters, which, in a way, was a masterfully evil manipulation of human fears. It identified and targeted the other, painted a dystopian worldview of what might happen if we didn’t fix this and get rid of these people—you know, the other. And I think the reason 82 percent of American evangelicals voted for him is that is the language they understand. They have been steeped in a culture of fear, in judgment, and so when he talks, he’s speaking their language.

In my teens and 20s, I willingly submitted myself to Evangelical and Pentecostal ministers who spoke endlessly about love but consistently preached a fear that kept us firmly seated in the pews. This fear also energized us to support politicians who promoted Christian nationalism.

Gulley, who has had to unlearn this fear himself, offers straightforward advice for those currently ensnared by fear in our political moment: “I encourage as many of them as I meet and encounter to get therapy because I believe it’s indicative of a mental neurosis that needs to be healed.”

While my instinctual response to fear is fight or flight, I nonetheless allowed myself to marinate in church-induced fear for nearly two decades. I asked Gulley why fear is so compelling and his response startled me: “The thing is, on one level, it works for them emotionally. They find it emotionally satisfying.”

How could this constant fear have been emotionally satisfying—the terror that if I strayed from the path outlined by pastors, I would lose everything, even God’s love? Why hadn’t I fled or fought back against the ministers? I had fought—alongside ministers—against invisible forces we believed ruled society. By supporting politicians who opposed reproductive rights and LGBTQ liberation, we aimed to transform America into a Christian nation.

Fear immobilized my critical thinking, allowing church leaders to shape my beliefs. Fighting against “the enemy” felt powerful, valuable, and emotionally satisfying.

The work of questioning everything I believed was far less emotionally satisfying but essential for my spiritual growth and mental well-being. Coming out as gay was easy compared to the painful process of examining and unlearning the fearful lessons that had ruled my life.

For nearly 20 years, I had strived to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit outlined in Galatians 5:22–23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” With therapy and deep reflection, I saw that instead, I had harvested a bitter crop of self-hatred, cruelty, depression, intolerance, shame, and fear. How far I had drifted from that sweet early encounter with God in my mint-green bedroom!

Gulley suggests we examine every belief, asking whether it diminishes or enriches our lives. If a belief makes us smaller, less loving, or causes us to diminish others, Gulley says he feels “very comfortable jettisoning it and letting it go and saying, ‘I’m not going to let that belief inform my life any longer.’” On the other hand, if a belief helps us move forward, fosters growth, or makes us more loving, he insists on retaining it—regardless of its origin. “I don’t care who taught it to me,” Gulley explains. “It doesn’t matter if I learned that from a Catholic nun at the age of six. If it still works, I’m going to keep it.”