Cult Without Walls

Naming What I Couldn’t Before

I wish I could say I was clever enough to come up with the phrase “Cult Without Walls” myself—but alas, I am not. At the time of this writing, the Sons of Patriarchy podcast is wrapping up its first season, and this past week featured Tia Levings, author of The Well-Trained Wife. It was in that conversation that she used the phrase, and as soon as I heard it, something inside me clicked.

It’s so beautifully said.

Tia pointed out something I’ve struggled to articulate for years—how much harder it is to deconstruct when you didn’t grow up in an official “system” or cult. Many of us never formally joined a movement with clear-cut teachings and structured hierarchies. Yet somehow, we absorbed its beliefs from the air around us—from books, sermons, radio programs, and the unspoken rules of the communities we were raised in.

We weren’t handed membership cards, but we were handed dogma dressed up as biblical truth.

We read books like The Excellent Wife. We listened, over and over, to teachings influenced by Bill Gothard, Doug Phillips, and Doug Wilson—messages that shaped our views of marriage, gender roles, and authority without us ever realizing where they originated.

For me, I can trace so much of it back to my childhood. To my mom reading Moody Monthly magazine. To James Dobson’s voice on the radio. To books by Mary Pride that quietly, yet powerfully, reinforced the idea that biblical womanhood meant submission, silence, and sacrifice.

I know I’ll unpack more of my upbringing as I continue writing, but for now, just having a name for it brings a deep sense of validation.

Cult Without Walls.

It perfectly captures the reality so many of us have faced. There was no compound, no single leader, no initiation process. But the ideology was there—woven into our churches, our families, our friendships, our worldviews. And for those of us untangling it, the process is slow, painful, and often invisible to those who never questioned it in the first place.

But naming it? That’s a step toward freedom.