{"id":7283,"date":"2023-07-20T11:06:41","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T15:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=7283"},"modified":"2023-07-20T11:06:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T15:06:41","slug":"one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;One Tree Hill&#8217; Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_7289\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7289\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7289\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"bethany joy lenz\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7289\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kathy Hutchins\/Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;One Tree Hill&#8221; star Bethany Joy Lenz recently shared that &#8220;there&#8217;s a lot to tell&#8221; after being in a cult for 10 years. Lenz, who played Haley James on the drama series, told her former co-stars Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan on their <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/even-more-ep509-with-michaela-mcmanus\/id1571792783?i=1000620426695\">&#8220;Drama Queens&#8221; podcast<\/a>, &#8220;I was in a cult for 10 years. That would be a really valuable experience to write about. And the recovery, 10 years of recovery after that. So there&#8217;s a lot to tell.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, Lenz said she felt pressure to &#8220;get it right&#8221; if she were to write about her experience. She added of the unnamed cult, &#8220;And also, I don&#8217;t know how much I can say because there are still people and legal things in place that make it more complicated for the timing of that.&#8221; She added that she writes constantly, including songs and has &#8220;some projects coming out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She didn&#8217;t go into much more detail on the podcast, but Lenz shared an Instagram post in May, sharing how preacher and theologian Tim Keller helped her through a dark time. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/CsaI6sAu9Sz\/?img_index=1\">She wrote after his May 19 death<\/a>, &#8220;This man changed my life. The only reason I&#8217;m still a Christian today is because, 10 years ago, after many years of faith being used against me as a tool of manipulation, Tim Keller taught me how to\u00a0rebuild my faith\u00a0using reason and logic. A belief system that fully engages my mind while still leaving room for wonder and mystery.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aswSomibOKw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>She said because of Keller, she is more &#8220;confident and secure&#8221; in her faith than she ever was and was able to &#8220;trust again and fall in love with a Jesus I never knew.&#8221; She shared, &#8220;His is a trustworthy, humble, researched, rational and compassionate voice that God once used to bring me out of a pit of despair, walk me through intense healing and into the glorious freedom of the real Christ. I will forever be grateful for the day I walked into Redeemer Presbyterian church on the Upper East Side in 1999.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lenz has spoken out about other cult-like organizations in the past. In 2021, she called out Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, which she attended on and off for two years. She wrote on Instagram, &#8220;The level of control displayed, particularly by leader Erwin McManus was disturbing to me and to many other people who have left Mosaic for that very reason.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She added, &#8220;The hierarchy in this &#8216;church,&#8217; the level of abuse that I&#8217;ve consistently heard goes on behind the scenes, and how everything centers around the Leader is textbook 101 of cults. And usually, unless you&#8217;re in the inner circle, it&#8217;s much harder to spot.&#8221; Although Mosaic Church does not appear to be the cult Lenz was part of for a decade, it sounds like another experience to write about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;One Tree Hill&#8221; star Bethany Joy Lenz recently shared that &#8220;there&#8217;s a lot to tell&#8221; after being in a cult for 10 years. Lenz, who played Haley James on the drama series, told her former co-stars Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan on their &#8220;Drama Queens&#8221; podcast, &#8220;I was in a cult for 10 years.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":7289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[1664,1667],"class_list":["post-7283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","tag-bethany-joy-lenz","tag-cult"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;One Tree Hill&#039; Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"During a recent &quot;Drama Queens&quot; podcast episode, &#039;One Tree Hill&#039; star Bethany Joy Lenz shared that she was in a cult for a decade.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&#039;One Tree Hill&#039; Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During a recent &quot;Drama Queens&quot; podcast episode, &#039;One Tree Hill&#039; star Bethany Joy Lenz shared that she was in a cult for a decade.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christ News Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-07-20T15:06:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lauren McKeithen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"'One Tree Hill' Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years","description":"During a recent \"Drama Queens\" podcast episode, 'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz shared that she was in a cult for a decade.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"'One Tree Hill' Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years","og_description":"During a recent \"Drama Queens\" podcast episode, 'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz shared that she was in a cult for a decade.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html","og_site_name":"Christ News Today","article_published_time":"2023-07-20T15:06:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Lauren McKeithen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html","name":"'One Tree Hill' Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2023-07-20T15:06:41+00:00","dateModified":"2023-07-20T15:06:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#\/schema\/person\/67183b7ec4ffc995620174c78f9cc68a"},"description":"During a recent \"Drama Queens\" podcast episode, 'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz shared that she was in a cult for a decade.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2023\/07\/bethany-joy-lenz-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"caption":"Kathy Hutchins\/Shutterstock.com"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2023\/07\/one-tree-hill-star-bethany-joy-lenz-says-she-was-in-a-cult-for-10-years.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"&#8216;One Tree Hill&#8217; Star Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Was in a Cult For 10 Years"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/","name":"Christ News Today","description":"Christian News From Around the Globe","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#\/schema\/person\/67183b7ec4ffc995620174c78f9cc68a","name":"lmckeithen","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/author\/lmckeithen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7292,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283\/revisions\/7292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}