Though many religious groups promote human flourishing, spiritual abuse is a subtle form of harm in religious settings that is difficult to address without objective assessment methods. We introduce spiritual safety, the ability to practice one’s spirituality without coercion, manipulation, or emotional abuse, as an indicator for risk of spiritual abuse. We developed 60 items based on literature and survivor experiences and refined the items across two studies. In Study 1 (n = 331), exploratory factor analysis identified three factors: psychological safety, leadership, and culture. Study 2 (n = 491) confirmed this structure using confirmatory factor analysis and validated a final 20-item scale, the Spiritual Safety Index (SSI). The SSI demonstrated excellent reliability, a strong correlation with individual psychological safety, and moderate negative correlations with PTSD symptomatology and negative religious coping. ANOVA supported scoring groups for healthy, unhealthy, and unsafe categories, offering a tool for assessing safety in religious communities.