By spiritual abuse I mean:
The malevolent, ungracious use of the authority or processes of the church to lord it over the laity or other officers in the church for personal gain, emotional or psychological manipulation, or for the exercise of ungodly or undue control over others, which infringes upon Christian liberty and that violates the second table of the moral law of God.
Let me say what I do and do not intend by this definition. The reader will notice that I did not include, in the definition, any mention of the feelings or subjective experience of the person affected. This is intentional and it is not because our feelings our experiences are unimportant. They are but they cannot be defining of spiritual abuse because feelings of hurt may or may not be an indicator of spiritual abuse.