Susan Huckle is a comedian and author of The Earth Is Flat?! And other things my mother told me. She grew up in an evangelical home, experienced peak purity culture. Later in life her parents began to believe conspiracy theories including a flat Earth. She tells her story with comedy, join and poignancy.
Susan Huckle is an actor in Los Angeles, but that wasn’t self-indulgent enough, so she wrote a memoir. She grew up in Santa Maria, CA, and earned her B.A. in Journalism and Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Master of Sustainable Tourism from Arizona State University. Her TV credits include Jane the Virgin, The Mindy Project, Nickelodeon shows, and hosting L.A. This Week for the city of L.A.
Matt Sanderson is the author of I Wonder: Notes on Spirituality without the Supernatural. My conversation with Matt is poignant and vulnerable touching on his loss of faith, the loss of his mother and his search for meaning without dogma and the supernatural.
Matt tells us his faith journey from an atheist upbringing into evangelical/charismatic Christianity, drawn by community and an intense prayer experience, then later unraveling beliefs after being challenged, doubling down, and gradually deconverting through wider reading (philosophy, neuroscience) without a dramatic exit. Matt explains the book began as an attempt to sort through accumulated ideas, intensified after his mother’s death and his reflections on grief without belief in an afterlife. He discusses religious experiences as common human phenomena (via William James), religion’s techniques for evoking awe, non-reductionism, meaning as created (influenced by Viktor Frankl), the value and challenges of secular community, and joy/comedy as truth-telling. He frames wonder as both questioning and awe.
Author Stella McCormick has written a powerful memoir, Deliver Us From Mother: Faith, Fear, and the Family Cult That Broke Me. The story she tells in the book and shares with us on the podcast is one of surviving a single family cult, purity culture, sexual assault and desconstruction.
Stella is more than a survivor. She has thrived. Today she is a sexual assault advocate for the Army where she helps other victims of sexual assault process their experience.
Growing up, Stella McCormick believed her family was different because they were more faithful than everyone else. Homeschooled in a deeply controlling religious environment, she was taught that unquestioning obedience was a virtue, suffering was sanctifying, and the outside world was something to fear. Every rule, punishment, and sacrifice was justified as God’s will.
What if women mattered, really mattered, to the authors that wrote our Bible? Not just the queens and concubines, harlots and handmaidens, and barren women in need of a son’s miraculous birth; not just the unnamed mothers, wives and daughters; but all women?
Clearly Written for Boys is a book about the Bible, and Christianity, and the problematic relationship both have had with women throughout their histories. Karis and David come from Christian backgrounds and are “cleaning up their own house.”
Join me in hearing from these two amazing authors and the critical message they have about women in Biblical history and for women of today.
Mark Anthony Diaz is the author of Reedkeeper’s Journey and one of my best friends. Mark and I grew up together. We had the same sarcastic friend group in high school. We did ministry together. Crucially, Mark stuck with me after my deconversion.
Mark is a person of deep conviction, and while he’s a talented EMT, author, and podcaster, it’s his personal journey that truly resonates. Growing up with severe asthma made for a challenging childhood, but Mark’s story is one of overcoming.
Mark is very much a believer and I respect Mark’s faith. Mark lives up to the honesty contest ethos of the podcast. I wanted to have him share his life’s story with us because I believe every human being’s story is powerful.
Search for his serial podcast “Readkeeper’s Journey” wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00 Graceful Atheist Podcast Intro 01:36 Welcome back Colin Ryan 03:50 Deconstruction Journey since 2020 15:27 Epic Tiny Victories and we were all 11 29:44 Impact of therapy on Colin’s Life 47:49 Mental Health takes work 52:36 The book process and how to get ETV 64:40 Final thoughts on the episode 66:43 Secular Grace thought of the Week
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NOTE: This transcript is AI produced and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
this is the graceful atheist podcast welcome welcome welcome to the graceful atheist podcast my name is david and i am trying to be the graceful atheist i'm incredibly excited about my guest today my guest is colin ryan i consider him a friend he is an author a comedian a public speaker and he has written a book called epic tiny victories epic tiny victories is this true story of colin ryan's unlikely journey from an anxious asthmatic kid with depression to a national speaker comedian and storyteller who has made more than 1 million people laugh learn and feel less alone all while managing bipolar 2 ocd and adhd in colin's book he talks about the power of the divine and the power of the divine and the power of the divine growing up in an evangelical world the experience of purity culture deconstructing and all the while managing his mental health i mentioned in the interview that colin said to me once that you can tell any story as long as people know that you're okay colin has come through all of this and although he continues to manage his mental health he is able to share with others how they too can have epic tiny victories here is colin ryan colin ryan welcome back to the graceful atheist podcast nice to be back that's amazing uh you're an author storyteller you've been a comedian you've done financial literacy uh how do you describe yourself you're doing great i'll just let you keep going yeah i mean i would say that yes i'm a professional communicator in the sense that i've done a lot of studying and testing and work in different mediums of communication so i've written two books um i've been a public speaker about 15 years i did about five years of stand-up comedy i've been doing storytelling a long time and so these different modalities if you will are all ways that i can communicate with people and i've been doing storytelling for a long time i've been doing storytelling for a long time i've been doing storytelling for a long time i've been doing storytelling for a long time i've been doing storytelling for a long time i've been doing storytelling for a long time express concepts but also ways that i interact with life like they're just how i like to play with how do you say this best or this is a painful experience what if it could be funny you know or i'm in a big room of people what if i could say the thing that everyone's thinking but no one feels like is safe to acknowledge you know and so i'm very fortunate to have had a career where i i go around i speak i speak a lot on personal finance on mental health but in the those topics, what I'm always really trying to do is bring a lot of humanity and vulnerability. And so I think that as a man, as an adult, I feel very lucky that I get to, for example, go to a college audience and talk openly about the emotional side of life or show them respect, even though our age isn't the same, you know? And so I feel like I get to kind of lift people up and just like try to figure out the best way to tell the story. And I think that's, it's very hard to articulate. Yes. I'm not sure I succeeded, but that's kind of the gist of it. I was looking back at, it was 2020. Uh, November, uh, that you did your deconversion anonymous episode. You've been on a couple of other episodes with the whole gang, uh, doing stuff, but man, uh, that's a lot. That's a few years ago. Uh, how are things? Things are great. Yeah. That's so interesting. That was five, six years ago. I mean, that's, that's, that's really, I think about where I was at, at that moment. And I had heard about you and I had heard about how you did these anonymous interviews with people who were like X Christian X religious, whatever. And I am that, but I also was like, I don't know how to tell that story or what it means if I say that. And I had a lot of, put a lot of weight around that, that I no longer do because I like myself just fine. And that was part of the process of growing up. Christian was trying to figure out, well, do I have to have a new label or a new identity? And I think it was a beautiful thing that I could have this chance with you and I could just be like totally anonymous and tell my story safely. And that was something I always told people about your podcast was it's really, he gives you this chance to tell your, like, you want to share your story, but you're also a little nervous about, will people just see the name graceful atheist and like make some sort of snap judgment. And I don't know, that just didn't feel that important this time around. Yeah. Yeah. They're bigger fish to fry in the world than what label I may or may not use. Right. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. But at the time it was really, it was really meaningful to be able to share with you. And I just love the way you listen and validate all of our stories. And I still believe that leaving any tradition. Or. Or framework that you are steeped in from a young age is a huge act of courage. And it's, it's a moment of self-honesty, whatever. It's kind of a come what may journey. I mean, it really is like, feels like the, the, the, the stakes are really high. Yeah. And it was certainly part of me figuring out who I am was just wanting to take what worked from my religious childhood. And what I love about my. Life now as an, a fully self-directed adult with my own principles and, and, and way of seeing things and just kind of smoosh those together and, and try to be the best me. I mean, I love what you just said that it's, it's about self-honesty. Yeah. I really feel like I connect to that a lot, that it was, it was self-honesty that led me out of, of Christianity. And regardless of what labels you put on things afterwards. It's being honest with yourself, no longer lying to yourself. That is the big deal. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and what comes with that or what that brings up for me is that you're motivated to lie to yourself. Like you don't, you don't want to acknowledge, Oh, I'm having big questions that throw this whole thing into, into doubt. You know? I was, I think from the very first moment I had a, a, a challenge or a question where I thought this could actually be a real big issue with my faith as I understand it within my religious upbringing, which was evangelical Christian, uh, reformed Presbyterian. So pretty, pretty for realsies. Okay. Yeah. Calvinist, you know, um, fairly fundamentalist, uh, very doctrinally, you know, aligned, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, I was just this color outside the lines kid, you know, I, it's almost like the way I interact with ideas that I love is I like to challenge them and poke at them and look at them from all angles. And there were people are very important to me in my young life who just saw that as, as rebellion. Right. And, and I couldn't really articulate, I was like, I think this is me interacting with the stories of the, of the Jewish people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bible and of church. Like I love stories and, you know, any, any Sunday when the pastor would tell a story, I would just like snap into focus, you know, cause I'm holding my children's Bible and inside of it, I have like a paperback book or something that I'm reading cause I'm totally bored. And then he would tell a story and I would be like, oh my gosh, I would just feel myself lean in to the storytelling, you know? And I just, I think that's the piece of faith that always really connected for me was like the, the stories of Jesus as this person wandering around, like giving speeches, people being like, not knowing what to do with him, you know, like, there was something about like the human side of all these characters that I was just so into and intrigued by. And I just didn't, I didn't feel like I needed to be super, um, what's the word like reverential or overly, you know what I mean? Like respectful where there's no messiness. I like the messiness. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you, Colin, the thing that, that struck me when I first met you in the first interview is, uh, you, I had quoted you, uh, as saying that your, your first and only religion is inclusion. And then one other way you described it. And I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, where the context was, but like, you know, if you're not in my circle, I'll make the circle bigger. And, and that has stayed with me, Colin, for all of those years, man, that is so beautiful. And I can see where that would not fit in to a fundamentalist way of thinking. Yeah. Wow. I don't even remember saying those things. And I, but I, I respond as though, Oh, I like that. Yeah. That does sound good. You know, that guy's, that guy's brilliant, man. I don't want, we'll go that far, but like the spirit of that, I do still really resonate with, and I did as a child. And so thank you for reflecting that back to me, because I think that even as a little kid, I had this very strange math that was going on in my head that wasn't validated by any of my, my sort of adult authorities in my life, which was like, I'm just for people. Like I'm for people. I tell me about you. I'm fascinated. I want to, how can I make you laugh? How can I learn from you? How can we like create something cool together? And it was not surprising, David, that when I noticed people being excluded or mistreated for any reason, I bristled. Like I, like my first reaction was I, it wasn't something I could name. I just was like, something about this. I do not like. And as I got older, I was able to say, Oh, well, you know, and I say in the context of the churches, I was in my experiences, I don't speak for any larger groups or anything. I wouldn't even presume to, but in my churches, I witnessed sexism. I witnessed homophobia. I witnessed, uh, shaming, uh, attitudes toward people. And it just didn't, it just didn't sit right. Like I wanted them to be in the circle too, you know? Right. And I didn't realize maybe at the time that that kind of made me on the very outside of the circle also. Cause I was like prepared to, it's weird to say it, but I was almost was like, well, I guess I'll be outside the circle then with you. Like if these are my options, even as a kid who wanted to fit in and wanted to belong, I still wanted to make sure that kid belonged to. And so it just created this tension, right. Of like, you know, every, I don't know, big group like that. They got to have their policies and their rules. And I just, those were not for me. You know, I was, I was people first. That's amazing. And you know, that is such a, an expression of, of secular grace, right. Without using the same terminology. And I just, I just think it's, it's very beautiful. I think when I, I think when I met you and started listening to the gracefully atheist podcast, what struck me was grace and this love and respect for people's stories. And so that's, that's why I'm back to support your work and to share my journey. And, you know, what's funny for me is a couple of years ago, I, found myself really needing community and I started going to a church and it was the weirdest possible experience after having worked so hard to honor my own values and, and paradigm and leave the churches that I had grown up in behind. And I didn't think I'd ever come back. And the truth is I came back because I wanted to be around people in a regular way. And I wanted to allow space for, you know, I wanted to be around people in a regular way. And I wanted to allow space for church to have evolved in ways that the ones I'd experienced hadn't. And wouldn't you know it, the church I went to, the pastor is a gay man. First, like he, I didn't know that he's standing there and starts preaching. And I'm just like, Oh, see, this isn't that hard. Just accept everybody. It's fine. We're all fine with it. We're all able to love and honor each other and not, you know, create all these very narrow, you know, um, disqualifying criteria. And so I think for me, I've always been a person who I love people more than anything else. And I think it's in that sense, it's kind of funny to be going back to a church. Like it doesn't, it doesn't really matter to me one way or another. I just want to be in spaces where people want to know how I'm doing and how I can listen to people and, and yeah. So I don't have like a, I'm definitely a misfit that way. I don't have an identity that goes with it, but I have a, interestingly enough, I have a relationship with church that has continued and is so different than anything I would have, I would have predicted, but I do, I've done it on my terms in a way that feels right to me. And I think there's, there's grace in there. And I think that's what I love about your work is us just taking the time to listen to each other's stories. And that, that leads us to, you know, what, what we're here today for, and that is your new book, Epic Tiny Victories. I, I wonder if I could limit you and ask for the elevator pitch first, and then we're going to delve into the deep end as we go. So, what would you describe the book as? Take a shot at it. Colin is an anxious religious kid with depression, and he's got divorced parents, and he grows up feeling very alone and sort of not sure of himself. And he finds his way into becoming a standup comedian, telling stories, standing on stage, like having a successful career. And he still has depression and anxiety. And there comes this point where he kind of realizes, if I don't figure out how to manage my mental health some way or another, it is going to manage me right into a place I don't want to be. Really a sense of really like a reckoning with the challenge of dealing with mental health, you know, when life is sad, but also when life is great and you're still struggling and don't know why. I could say maybe what you won't in that I think it's deeply funny. It's painfully honest. It is vulnerable in all the right ways. And I think one of the things that you taught me early on was that you can tell any story as long as the audience knows that you're okay. And we have the sense of... That, you know, you are the narrator of this story and that, you know, you are okay. But you go into very honest difficulties that you've been through, including some deep mental health problems. Yeah. Well, thank you for expressing it that way. It carries a lot of weight. And I appreciate you saying it. And I do think that that's kind of what I mean. I don't mean to say, oh, I'm so good at communicating. So I should write this book. I meant like, I'm kind of obsessed with humor in dark places and in finding vulnerability as a strength instead of as like a slip up or a confession. And I just was like, well, then that's how you write the book. Like, be unafraid to tell like the really some of the really hard moments that a person can have in their life. And then right in the worst part. Like, that's where the joke goes. Yes. That's awesome. And that's okay. And trust people to relate to it in their own way. And I am gratified to say that's what people have said is they see themselves in the story. And that's why I did it. You know, I'm not remarkable. I'm remarkable in the sense that I'm a human. And that is its own incredible, magical event. That... How do you... Explain, you know? Like, we all are that. We're all magic. But in terms of like, I'm not different. I just grew up in a certain way where I wrestled with depression and anxiety. And I could not figure out why. And no matter how dark things got, I would not give up. I just refused. I just... I was a fighter. And then in my adult life, no matter how good things got... There were still this like heaviness around the edges. And sometimes would just show up in the most unexpected moments. And I just felt like, what an honor to get to tell that story. To tell that very human story of the journey to just be okay. And to just like, hold your own hand. And love yourself. And believe in yourself. And fight for yourself. And... And... And... And... And... I mean, that's kind of an inspiration of the idea of an epic, tiny victory. I think the everyday stuff is epic. Yes. Absolutely. You know? Like, every person you've had on your podcast. I've listened to so many of these stories where it's like, it's remarkable. What they have navigated. What they've come through. You know? All of us are underdogs in certain ways. And I think I just love hearing... I think I just love hearing about how people kind of climb out of the valley. You know? Yeah. One of the stories that you return to, kind of in multiple points in the book, is a story when you were 11 years old. And you had kind of an embarrassing moment in a classroom. And a young girl stood up for you. Yeah. I'd like you to maybe tell that story. And then we'll unpack a little bit about why you came to this. And then we'll come back to that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I was this kind of quirky, bold, dorky kid. And then I went to middle school. And it was like, the second that I got there, it's like, oh no. Hide. You know? Be invisible. Yeah. And that was such a powerful instinct for me. But I had no idea how to do that. And I tried very hard to be... I tried to be invisible. And I made it about three periods. And then the teacher gave us a questionnaire and said, I want everyone to fill out this questionnaire. I want to get to know you. And then I'm... And so I still trust adults. I trust adults at this point. And I am not apparently someone who listens to directions. So I just answer it with complete honesty. And we hand them in. And then she shuffles up the questionnaires. And she hands them back out to the class. And... And we go around and read, like, three answers from each kid's questionnaire. And I am just like, oh no. Oh no. Like, this is so bad. And this kid gets my answers. And I can't remember his name or even his face. But I remember he was really mean and popular. And, like, kind of an intimidating, you know, sixth grader. But, of course, you know, like, he was probably, like, a little taller than me and had, like, peach fuzz. Right. He seemed like a man, you know, to me. And he's reading my answers. And it's just... It's so bad. It was like, where would you go on a Friday night? And, you know, these kids had said, like, to the mall. And, you know, I'll smoke in and whatever they were saying. And then... And I had said... I was at rehearsals with my... With my local church's clown troupe, Clowns for Christ. You know, as you do. As you do. And it was just a moment where, like, when I wrote that on the questionnaire. And when they got shuffled back out, I thought, I'm on a train headed to disaster. Like, it's going to get said. And it gets said. And it, like, my whole body, I just shrink. I'm just crushed. I'm so embarrassed. I mean, everyone is howling, laughing. I mean, this is, like, the end of any social status. Day one. Like, it's... I'm starting at a major deficit here. And I want to stand up and yell out, I get it. Like, I will do whatever you think is cool. I will be whatever you think I should be. I will quit clowns. I will watch all the R-rated movies that you guys are watching. I will... I will, like, whatever. Just, I don't want to be special. I don't want to be different. I just want to be liked by you. And I didn't say that. And I just felt ashamed. And sat there silently. And that's when this voice from the back of the room rang out. Belonged to a student. Her name is Michelle Beaver. She was, like, two rows behind me. And I didn't know her well. She wasn't... She wasn't necessarily, like, the coolest kid in class. So she took a risk. But she stood up for me. And she said, These are his opinions, guys. Like, why are we doing this if we're just going to laugh at each other? And it just put a dent in the, like, humor of the moment. Like, it was, like, a bit of a gut check for people. And I'm not going to say, like, it changed everything. But people definitely backed off. And we went on to the next person. And I never forgot that moment. And I never forgot that Michelle, like, put herself on the line for me. And she stood up for me in a moment when I really, really was the outsider. Yeah. And I say in the story that, you know, this is the deal. Like, you can stand up for somebody when they need you. When they need you. And they will remember you as their hero for the rest of their life. And I was struck in my adult life by how that memory was still with me. And I ended up telling that story at a moth event in Burlington, Vermont, in front of about 1,000 people. And it was, like, there's a scoring component. It's called a Grand Slam. And so at the end, they pick a winner. And I didn't really care about that. To me, it was just brave enough to tell 1,000 people that I had been, in Clowns for Christ. Seriously. You know, even all these years later, still kind of painful to say out loud. Yeah. And it just really, people really resonated with the story. It ended up winning. And it ended up getting played on the Moth Radio Hour, which plays on National Public Radio. It got featured in a Reader's Digest Best Stories in America collection. I mean, it really, like, took off in this really, you know, surprising way for me at first, because it was like, oh, no. You know, now a million people know that I was in Christian Clowns. But what came next was also really special, which is that, you know, I got to see people resonate with this story. And at one point, I was doing a show, and I had told that story and went well. And I think afterwards, I became, I bumped into this woman and she said, I loved your story about Michelle and being a clown and all that. And I kind of said, you know, despite myself, like, I'm surprised people connect with that story. It's so specific to be a Christian clown. And, you know, and she said, Colin, we were all 11. Yes, we were. Yeah. And I was like, it was a really a paradigm shifting moment for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In a weird way, the more specific you are about your example of whatever happened to you, it's actually more relatable because people, they don't care about the specifics. They care about the emotions and the themes. And so you tell a story like that. You could, you could frame that a million different ways. It's just a story about a child who feels alone. Yeah. Yeah. And another person who is not special, is not a Marvel character, does not have like healing powers, right? Like Wolverine. And yet she was willing to stand up next to me and, and fight for me. And I think that that's just something very important. I think that I try to remember as a person is just to be honest about what's happening to you, because people are going to get it from their own lens. And they're going to appreciate that you were real. Absolutely. And they're going to appreciate that you like gave us the juicy details in my case. The other thing I'll add is that I, I've reached out to Michelle a couple of years ago and we reconnected and I got to send her the video of me telling this story and everybody cheering for this, this girl, Michelle, who stood up for this, you know, dorky little boy who needed it. And I think it just, it just really meant a lot to her. And, you know, it turned out she had been having a really hard growing up experience at that moment too, in ways I had no idea. And so for her to kind of be able to like look back and go, wow, I did this thing that like really mattered to somebody. And then other people really connected with that. And I just, that to me felt like maybe the coolest part of the whole thing was I get to go see, you didn't even remember that you did that, but that, that has moved a lot of people. Absolutely. I, I think that's why I wanted you to tell the story is like, you know, getting the opportunity to come back and connect with her. It's just amazing. And while all of us have been 11, Colin, not all of us have told the embarrassing stories about being 11, when the moth grand slam and be able to reconnect with our childhood friends. So well done there, sir. Thank you. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, we are going to skip over a lot of parts. The book is amazing. You are a world traveler. You lived in Scotland for awhile. You almost ran with the bulls in Pamplona. Yeah. Uh, you were a VBS star on as an actor, you did all kinds of things, but I want to get to the heart of the book, which is your mental health journey. Yeah. And maybe talk a little bit about the first time you connected with a therapist and what that did for you. Yeah. When I was in my late 20s, I found myself in a real bad spot. I had probably since around college and into my 20s, I'd started to experience really pronounced, profound depression, you know, and I could usually manage it. And I've always been a very silly, goofy person. I love to make jokes. I love to make people laugh. I light up around people. So I can always kind of hide it. Some people have said to me, like, I wouldn't have thought that you like you don't seem like the type of person who who can be struggle with that. And I think that, well, that's its own conversation. But I think it's like we're kidding ourselves if we think that everyone isn't doing their best, whatever that looks like. Right. Just struggling through, like just doing their best. Everybody's winging it. Right. Exactly. We're all fighting our battles and there is no one who has it easy. And I really think that for me, this was the stone on my back. I just it was really weighing me down. And it was creating a very small life. I became a person who I wanted to be creative. But I was terrified of rejection. I wanted to be brave. But I I was afraid of failing, of choosing the wrong thing, of of embarrassment. And I was just stuck. And I was working a job as a journalist and I started to experience really severe social anxiety. And so my job is I would call people and do phone interviews or do in-person interviews for articles. And I started trying to come up with ways to do it all via email. And I would be making. I would be making up excuses, you know, covering in all kinds of different ways for the fact that I was actually just so sad I couldn't leave the house and I couldn't imagine having a phone call. It was kind of like, you know, if you ever wanted to call a crush, like maybe in high school or middle school or something. And this happened to me. I remember dialing this girl's phone number. And then on the very last number, I would just hang up. I just, you know, over and over. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. And it felt that way with like every conversation I needed to have. Like I would be gaming it out ahead to try to figure out how I wouldn't mess it up. And I would just I was so overwhelmed. And I started falling behind on my work. And of all people, one of the head staff people at the newspaper I worked for called me into his office and he he kind of took a look at me and said, are you are you depressed? And I was like, I didn't I don't think I was like didn't even make eye contact. I was really in a low spot. And he reached into his drawer and he pulled something out and he hands it to me. And it's a business card. It had a man's name on it, Sam. And it's a therapist. And the only reason that that. Being my first encounter with therapy. The only reason that's significant, unfortunately, really is because of the way I was raised internally. In terms of religion and also growing up in the late 80s and the 90s. And it's just like there was a lot of messaging around. You don't go to therapy because that means something's wrong with you. You're falling apart. You can't manage it. You can't stuff it down, you know. And, you know, some of that, I think, is is very. Maybe funny, like you think about the like Irish Catholic thing of just like. I'm just going to hold my emotions in. And then that's just, you know, and then and then you're just OK. So you just got this guy in the corner who's like. How's that working out for you? How's that working out? Exactly. But I think that with my Protestant tradition on my my mother's side, there was more of a explicit warning away from mental health and away from secular therapy. And. I just got to a point where. I had no other option. And I went and saw this guy, Sam, and I can I'll never forget. And I write this in the book probably better than I can say it here. But I will just say I'll never forget sitting in this tiny room. With a complete stranger and finally saying out loud. To someone else, things that I'd been thinking for years and being able to. Actually hear them in detail. And deal with them just a little bit. And so like saying things out loud, like I think I'm really messed up and something's wrong with me and I don't think I can keep going like this. And and to just have this man go. OK. What else? OK. Huh. Why? Why? Tell me more. Just. And the thing that I remember, Dave, is I was like, I can't phase this guy. Yeah. Like I'm I'm laying out some darkness here. Yeah. I just like. All right. Like he seemed a little bit. Misaligned with the drama of the weight of what I was going through. And it took me a long time to realize that. He was already teaching me. He was showing me that when you have those thoughts. You don't have to match their energy. They can just be thoughts. And. It's. Wild when you realize that you can say to yourself. And mental health is is an arena where this happens or we we have these thoughts that we tell ourselves like I'm really messed up. No one will ever. Accept me. I'm always going to be this way. And. You can notice it and you can go. OK. It's all right. Let's take a walk. You know, you can you can be that Sam, if you will. For yourself. And. I remember sitting with Sam and within like. The first hour. I thought this is going to save my life. Amazing. And it did. And and I. You know, I said, I know I need to learn how to do this. OK. Thing to myself. So like just be even and safe and loving strong for myself. And. And I did. And it only took. 15 years and thousands of dollars in therapy and. Several medications and. A lot of life lessons. It's easy really is what I'm getting at. Yeah. But but at the end of that process and probably even from the beginning of that process, what I was becoming is what I like to call a successful depressive. Just for lack of a better way of explaining it. I am not successful. I am not somebody who. Has it all together. I'm not somebody who doesn't. Have. Low low moments. But. I have learned how to manage them. I've learned how to be my own friend. In those moments. And I've learned what works for me to help me. Get out of those. Those valleys. And so I look at my relationship to depression as. Not. Do I never have it? I don't look at that. I don't look at that way at all. I see success as. Am I able to go into it and then come out of it. In a relatively. Brief amount of time. And so that's actually how I look at it. I look at it now is like I can get really, really down. For about three, four days. Okay. Like that's it. I can't. I can't sustain it beyond that because I have these other habits. In place and I just know how to love myself out of that. Out of that life. Out of that low spot. And. That's why I kind of wanted to write the book was like. You know, encouraging people to figure out what are your things? What are your. Your foundation. That you can put together. I really think a big part of this is having friends. Relationships where you can be just genuine and vulnerable. Yeah. And so who is the person you can text when you really. Really are being like. Hard on yourself. That's. That's a good number to have. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. And so it's like, that's a tool. That's part of how you do it is you've got. You've got somebody in your life where you can say, Hey. I don't even feel comfortable doing a phone call right now. Can I just text you for a minute? And what I've come to believe. I think you would agree is like. I want to be that other person. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. I want to be that other person that somebody would text in that lowest moment. Yes. So I kind of just have, have taught myself that that is true of. Most people, unless they prove otherwise, is that they actually would love to help. And be leaned on if I'm willing to ask for it. Wow. So many things I want to, I want to respond to there. Number one. Yeah. I've talked a lot in the, the deconversion. Context of needing that one person. Yeah. Who you can just go and, and, and talk to them and be truly yourself and not have to worry about them trying to protect your faith or your lack of faith or what have you. Right? Like having that one person is so, so important. And then the other thing that I think is so beautiful about the book, Epic Tiny Victories is you, you know, go through your life where you've learned. Yeah. So about 10 songs. Yeah. Right. That are, that are pre-ography, so they've started those episodes more widely throughout the world. And not, it's very clear balanced lifespan and the way that they're built. But in 150 years or so. It's also, and, and we're, we're sitting here, putting it in some science. Cr meetings, you know, with the audience, brings your power and Então, you know, even more directly to the family, right. And that's in the first half. Of Cam än Ngân. there's kind of a funny layer to that when i was a kid i watched the movie braveheart i was probably like way too young it's like very like people get their heads chopped off and everything but but what i really took from that movie was the epic soundtrack and the the heroism and the honor and the nobility you know and i wanted to be brave like that i wanted to be heroic even in a normal way you know i just wanted to be courageous and i think as a person who was afraid of failure afraid of rejection or afraid of embarrassment like i got to know intimately this moment when i would almost take a risk and then i wouldn't and like i said in my late 20s around the time that my depression was really taking over my life i was also living a very small fearful life you know i i was trying to write a book and i couldn't share it with anybody because i was terrified what that it wouldn't be good enough and so i mean to me that actually that's kind of a perfect picture i'm spending i'm working in office and i'm spending every minute i'm not at work writing something that i don't have the guts to even let my friends read let alone submit so i'm i'm not going anywhere like just objectively and so i assessed myself with a courage problem and i was lucky lucky i cannot believe how significant this was by accident i was in uh i was going to a small church community and like around this time and after the service i remember i overheard a guy who's telling somebody else he said yeah i signed up for this comedy class at the flynn center uh flynn theater in burlington vermont and uh teen nerd at the flynn meet my mom she'd stick a finger in my eye on my eye like your thick can't see my face he would keep ignoring whining and pansing and i'm like because i'm sense of need and getting out of the park i was learned how important my parents love comedy so i wanted to um get an equipment for some of my friends i was super nervous and i think i was a bit so sad that day and even i was peppered it was devil's day i alive a little he was like hey god how many of you know thoseics have today but i don't know what they do and i couldn't hire people over those last several months that i had to find the parts out of that room i've only two or three ways to do something, but it was very clear. I was like, if you don't do this now, you're never going to do this. There's something about this that is intriguing to you. And it's not, if not now it's never. And so I signed up for that class and I walked into that room. Like I was walking to my death. I could not believe that I had chosen to be in this extremely vulnerable environment of standing in front of people. And there's something so like full body cringe about turning to an audience and pretending you're like being a comedian and then saying a joke. And then they don't laugh. It's like, it's, I mean, right. It's like, yeah, it's a nightmare to describe. And this was dawning on me, you know, more and more vividly. And then they called my name and they said, everyone had to get up. And do a couple minutes of jokes. And I got up there and I wasn't very good, but at some point I got a laugh and it was like tectonic plates rearranging themselves. I mean, it was just a moment where I thought, Whoa, wait, wait, I could, I could actually, I could figure this out potentially. But even as I went, sat in my seat, what struck me even more was like, I just did the thing that scared me possibly the most. And I walked all the way from my car to my seat, from my seat to the stage. I did the minutes. I sat down, like I made myself do all that. And in a weird way, I felt like this is kind of heroic, like in a normal way, you know, I didn't fight a war. I didn't slay a dragon. I didn't save a kingdom, you know? But I picked the thing that scared me and I leaned into it instead of ran away from it. And honestly, I've tried to live my life that way ever since, because there was something very clarifying about that. And so I like to give people advice. I think that confidence is something you can earn for yourself. And it is, there's, there's math to it and you're not going to like the math. Cause it's pretty simple, right? It's like, if a thing scares you, go do it. And, and I know that doesn't make it easier and it doesn't. And that's the, that's the important part is the only thing that makes it easier is you actually doing it. And so I like to tell people, if you need a hack or a trick to make it make sense in your mind, just do it for a minute. Just do like one horrifyingly scary minute, right? Walk across the room and, and ask out your crush, right? Or go to a job interview or write a book and, or write an essay and put it online or whatever to go to a standup comedy open mic. And that's really scary and can be really rewarding. And for me, that just kind of became the deal is every minute that I would do standup comedy, I became a minute. Less afraid. It was like, I was like reducing that, that, that monster of fear in my life. And then at a certain point, you kind of get your momentum going. It starts to become fun. And so for me, I did open mics. I started doing comedy shows. I recorded like enough content for an album. And then I got a opportunity to apply for a job as a public speaker. And I had just enough confidence stored away from this little comedy adventure to say yes to that. And so that's kind of become the formula for me now is like, if something is scary, you know, if you can lean in. One of the things that struck me reading it is, you know, you talk very vulnerably about the internal monologue, the internal heckler, the internal critic, and these epic tiny victories, these little almost hacks that you have of talking a positive talk to yourself are, are things that helped you deal with and, and learn to live with the depression and various other mental health. So one minute less fearful was one of them. And there were others that, you know, you were able to just love yourself, right? Like to talk to yourself, your way out of some of these, some of these things. Yeah. And I do want to say too, that mental health is very different for each of us. And so for me, you know, I also recommend therapy. I also recommend medication. I recommend you figure out, treat it as a science experiment and really try to figure out what it is that you need. So I, this is not me saying be brave and that's it. Sure. Thank you for saying that. I mean, that's, that's basically the seventies. I like to think we've come somewhere forward from that period. And so I just, you know, for me and, and my therapy journey helped me understand that I actually have a OCD and bipolar two. And so these things express themselves as depression and anxiety. A lot of these things kind of show up in that overthinking or that very heavy, low depressive experience. These are very common. And so that's why I chose to write about them in the book is that we all either know these experiences for himself, or we know someone who, who wrestles. Yeah. And I wanted to name those things in a very human normalizing way. You know, I think one of the big discoveries for me is that depression is normal. It's like, this is something I have to catch up with. I have to catch myself, David is, is, you know, cause in my relationship with my wife, you know, this is still a thing that happens. And when I do get depressed, I have to catch myself from being like, it's okay. It's okay. It's just a little, it's low, low level. Everything's fine. Like I'm apologizing for it. Right. When my partner loves me and just wants to be present for me is perfectly fine with me saying, you know what? I am depressed right now. I'm working on it. Okay. You know? And I think that's, that's kind of the big epiphany of it all is that, well, look, I say this in the opening of the book to, to be very clear about this. If you are feeling challenged around your mental health, uh, you are not broken. You are not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with you. And I like to think that you will find your way to a better mix that feels a little more manageable, where you can be a little more transparent, a little more functional and that's it. And so I, you know, I'm, I became a person who I've done speeches for huge audiences and I've had my face on the big screen while I give a talk and I've signed books, you know, I've had these moments that, that seem quite, like, Oh, that must be a nice life. And I have all the other moments too. And so I think that that to me is maybe where I want to kind of offer something to really to anybody, to the world, to the, to the listeners of this, you know, to, to the readers of the book is like, you're not broken. You're not alone. We need you. Like, how, how can you help yourself? How can we help? Each other to like, get ourselves into a place where we can share our story and speak our truth and fight for the person in our life who is down and needs somebody to stand next to them, you know, be, be a hero for someone else. I think that's, that's, that's kind of what I have landed on is like, we're already there. We're already like where we need to be. We're closer than we think. We just got to lean into, to this moment and lean on people around us. I want to talk just briefly about the writing of the book, the process itself. My biggest compliment to you is that you were showing and not telling. I was literally yelling at the book, like, this is bipolar. This is bipolar. And you reveal that near the end. I hope I haven't given away too many secrets. No. So well done. In showing, you know, your experience through the storytelling. I thought that was, that was really well, really well done. Thank you. It, it's a, so I'm obsessed with storytelling as an art form, but also as like a kind of a practice for knowing yourself better. And the, the basic formula for it is what's a moment that really stands out in your memory. And I think that's what's so important. So I'm going to go ahead and start with the story as being significant. Okay. Got it. Great. Now, instead of just focusing on. Why was it the war like so hard? Why was it such a overwhelming, painful experience? If it's that kind of experience, maybe the question is how was I growing and changing during that moment? Right? So that's now that's a story. It's not just you're slogging along and life sucks. It's like, no, yeah, life sucks, but look how determined this character is to not give up as things get worse and worse and, and look what they leaned on in themselves to grow and to change. Right. And so I say that because I think each one of us is a character in our own story. And it's actually kind of fun when you think of yourself as a character in a story. And one of the things that was important to me with this book was that I wanted to, to stay true to, well, how does the character experience it in the moment? Like, I know, I know a lot more now, but you know, there's a chapter in the book where I'm in fourth grade and I'm at a spelling bee and the day doesn't go the way I hoped. And I cannot tell you how delightful it was to really lock into, okay, I'm nine years old, 10 years old, whatever. Like I only know nine years. Yeah. Yes. You know, and that was really, really fun. And to your point about my realization that I have bipolar two, that is something that is revealed later in the book, but it's also on the back of the book. So it's not meant to be like a spoiler. Really the only spoiler is I wrote a book about mental health. You don't have to worry like it, you know, it's going to get bad, but it worked out for this guy. And so I know what you're referring to. There was a moment in my twenties where I experienced unbelievable insomnia. I just swung from depression to insomnia and I was awake for like a couple of weeks. And, um, and so I put that in the book as like a wink, wink, like that'll make sense later. Yeah. But at the time it didn't, you know, at the time I just thought, man, I don't know. I don't know what's going on here. So, you know, that's bipolar two, by the way, is the kind of less well-known version of bipolar disorder. It's much less severe, but it does also involve mood, uh, mood swings where you go from you really sleep is really the whole deal with bipolar twos, learning how to manage your sleep. And yeah, so there were moments in throughout my life where I just wanted to, as you say, show it, not tell it like, just, just come with me on this journey and it'll, it'll start to snap into focus as we get further along. And that's quite lovely to inhabit the moment in time in your life and, you know, not be the, the adult that you are now, uh, you know, retrofitting, uh, information, uh, into that, that moment. So yeah, that's, that's beautiful. The other thing that I just really related to is you talked about, uh, completing the book and, you know, that maybe that was a dangerous moment for, for mental health as well. And having kind of a sudden realization that, you know, I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to It's not that people were ignoring it. It was that people didn't know it existed at all. And man, can I relate from being a podcast person? I think anybody who's ever created anything ever can really, really relate to that. You, you pour your heart and soul into something. And it's not that people see it or hear it and reject it. It's that they don't even know it exists, you know? So talk, maybe it's just a little bit about the process of getting the book out there and getting people to know about it. Well, yeah. And that's, you know, I'm glad you, I'm glad you pointed that out because the central idea from the book is what I call reframing. And so it's looking at a moment and saying, okay, here's my default. I'm suffering. This didn't go the way I wanted. I put all this work out into the world and no one cares. That's the default story, storyteller narrative. But what's more interesting is to go, well, is that how I really, want to see this moment? Is that really what I believe? Or is that just kind of my insecurity talking or my, you know, despair? I wrote all this and no one, no one cares. That was the thought I had after I finished my first book. And I was like, you know what? I think the more honest, more obviously true interpretation is no one knows. And so that even that just changed the energy. Hmm. It's that they don't know and everyone's busy and it is hard to find your audience and it is hard for your work to like reach the people you want it to reach. And it just is. And maybe that's okay. And I cannot tell you how that has served me this time around because, you know, this time around I finished, this is my second book and I went into it very open-eyed about this next part is going to be hard. Yeah. Because you haven't quantified what you expect. So whatever book sales you get, you're going to wish it was more. Right. And you, you've never decided how many Amazon reviews you want or, you know, bookshop.org reviews, but you're going to want more than you get. And what I've had to really do is slow down and go, what's in my control? Like, what do I actually want to declare? How do I declare victory instead of this was pointless? And look, I'm talking to myself right now because this is, this is the work. Like I put this book out there and you know, everybody's like, I wish I want the whole, I want people to be walking around, like walk by me reading my book. Like, of course, like I put all this work and I want to share it. And what I have landed. On is when somebody writes to you and says that mattered to me, that really spoke to me. I, I, I really loved it. And you gotta be like, that's enough. And Hey, let's, let's play the game a little further. Maybe you don't even get that because not because they don't feel that way. Cause if you didn't ask or they didn't tell you, it just, it just lost in translation. How about this? You got to make a thing. You got to spend time making a thing that just like you loved making it. And that, that's the piece I've really like leaned on this second time through with a book is like, no matter what happens, I got to spend almost, I think a little bit over two years writing a book where I was like proud of every word. And. I thought a lot about some of the stories were like these. Dragons I had to fight, you know, some of them just poured out onto the page and they were perfect. And then other chapters were like, I defy you, Colin, you know, I'm twice as long as I need to be deal with that, you know, and, and all of these challenges and, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the, the, the project. And so that's what I would say is. This idea, it's in the subtitle of the book, you know, it's a hopeful memoir about depression, anxiety, and reframing your life. And I would say we are all capable of reframing our life and saying, I know how I feel about this. I know what I'm telling myself, but is there another version that might also be true that I could focus on a little more? And I think that's where you start to really like listen to your own voice and start to hear yourself. Say things like, you know what? I got to do that. And my sister read it and she loved it. You know, I got a chapter about my early on about our grandmother, who is this iconic five foot tall British woman who would show up on our lives. I kind of like a Mary Poppins character, but like, but she swore more, you know? Yeah. I love her already. I know. She was one of the greats. And she, you know, writing about her is so meaningful to me. But then my sister called me. She left me like a voice message of how beautiful it was and how it reminded her memories of our gran and her connection and reliving that. And so I think it's that. It's realizing that what you do is going to have an impact on somebody else. That's epic. Absolutely. I think that's maybe the best advice to any artist ever is make art. That you want to consume. You may have even said it, that you were writing the book that you would have wanted to read that kind of thing. Yeah. Colin, I want to give you a chance to plug the book. How can people find it? Let's make sure that they get access to it. So where is it available? Yeah. So my book is available. Basically type in Colin Ryan, epic, tiny victories. You'll find it on lots of different sites. You'll find it on lots of different platforms. If you go to epic, tiny victories.com, I have pictures from the book. You can read the first chapter for free. And then it's available on all the different platforms that you might. If there are any platforms you don't want to support right now, I get it. I've got other platforms you can feel good about. And so, you know, it's my honor to share the book that way. And I've got some funny photos from along my journey. You did mention. I was a vacation Bible school star movie star for a week. And those photos alone are worth the price of admission. Can confirm. Yeah. Can confirm. It's just, I'm very proud to say like, there's some stories in there that are going to really make you just laugh. And there are going to be stories in there that are going to make you really feel big things and feel connected. And that's why I wrote it. Colin Ryan. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you, David. Final thoughts on the episode. I love it. When someone independently comes up with ideas that are very similar to secular grace. And I think Collins, his first religion is inclusion and opening the circle. To include everyone around him really encapsulates that it's a beautiful expression of secular grace without using those terms. I loved reading the stories that Colin wrote about and then getting to talk to him about it. They are hysterical. They are vulnerable and honest in a way that is very rare. And that is my cup of tea. That is what I love about Colin the most. I also want to point out that as I did the edit. I could hear that maybe I was minimizing and I want to just reemphasize that Colin points out how much work, how much time, how much effort it took to live with the mental health experience that he had. So I don't want to minimize in any way that was difficult. It took therapy. It took medication. It took a lot of work on Colin's part. So let's learn from Colin on how we can work through our mental health experience as well. Another thing that I wanted to talk about is the fact that I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian. I'm not like everyone else. It's a really complex and complex thing. It's a really complex issue that is common, but different from the rest of the rest of the world. And I think one of the things that I loved about what Colin was saying was that you're basically a science experiment of one figuring out what works for you will be unique and different from everyone else. So you won't be exactly like Colin, nor will you be like your neighbor or roommate. Although you are not alone in your mental health journey, you are a science experiment of one. There will be links in the show notes for purchasing. I think, I'm sure it's something that you can find out about yourself. Epic Tiny Victories. Obviously, you can get that wherever books are sold. I encourage you to get the book itself. It is hysterical and wonderful. Thank you, Colin, for sharing and being vulnerable and honest and giving us a chance to have epic tiny victories. The secular grace thought of the week is you're not broken, you're human. That has been an ongoing theme of the podcast from the get-go, but this is a great opportunity to say that mental health is a part of that. There are some faith traditions that look down upon therapy or acknowledging mental health. That has been destructive for people for years. Allowing yourself to recognize your mental health challenges is the first step in living with those mental health challenges in a healthy human way. You are not broken. You are just human. Grab someone you love and tell them how much you love them. Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the Graceful Atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show,
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11 This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheists podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Remember, we have a merchandise store on T public, you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items there, the link will be in the show notes. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion I want to take a moment to celebrate this is the 200th episode of the graceful atheist podcast. A huge shout out to Mike t for all the editing work over the years. And a huge shout out to Arline who's single handedly carried the podcast over the last couple of months. I'll talk a little bit more in the final thoughts section about where the podcast goes from here. But celebrate with me that we have gotten to this huge mile marker. onto today's show. My returning guest today is Matthew Taylor. Matthew was on the show in 2019. Matthew is the co host of the steal unbelievable podcast. He and his colleagues, Andrew and David originally wrote a book in response to Justin Brierley. He's unbelievable book. And both the book and the podcast are kind of a response to that. Matthew has been a good friend over the years, and I was really glad to have him back here for the 200th episode. And today we discuss why we podcast what it is that drives us to do what we do and what we hope that the community gets out of it. Here's my conversation with Matthew Taylor.
Matthew Taylor, welcome back to the graceful atheist podcast.
Matthew Taylor 2:22 Hello, David. Fabulous to chat again with you who really is it's been a while we've just been talking Off mic about that. It's it's great to actually to see each other again as well and not just hear the voice.
David Ames 2:33 Yeah, absolutely. Just to set some context for everyone else. You are the co host of still unbelievable podcast that is in many ways a response to Justin Brierley is unbelievable podcast. You've written a book on that same subject, you've done a bunch of things I'd like to hear just from your words. You know, some of the projects that you've been involved in? Yes,
Matthew Taylor 2:54 quite few. So the whole thing all started with still unbelievable the book which came out a year after Justin brollies, unbelievable book came out. And we that's not where my story starts. But that's where this story starts. And so that came in, I jumped on board with that project made some great friends as part of that project. And out of that project was born the podcast still unbelievable, which I know most of we've, in the last few months passed through 100 episodes, which is great, but such episodes about for almost five years. So we're not as regular as other podcasts which we could mention David. And but so that came out. And we we did try a couple of podcasts. Actually, I did also do the asking at centers podcast for a while. And we we merged into that, but It rapidly became very obvious that we're trying to juggle similar content on two different feeds. And it made no sense whatsoever. And so asking atheist, anything in the proscenium feed, which it merged into, just quietly got dropped, because it just made no sense to carry on with that. I'm very happy with the decision that we made. We weren't going to get there. Like we weren't going to let go of the still unbelievable name because we like we like the brand still unbelievable. We like that it's a throwback to just embroideries, unbelievable podcasts, which anybody who talks in this space knows about so we feel that it was a good thing to keep on to that brand. And that brand has got us onto the radar of a couple of publishing houses. So it means that we do occasionally get an email from a publishing house saying, here is a book that we think you guys might like, which is a wonderful place to be we've had this past year 2023, enter and I have featured three authors on still unbelievable. Each one of those was a fabulous conversation, that conversation which I appreciated. I learned lots from each of those conversations. I'm really glad to be able to feature those kinds of people. And I don't pay for a book which for me is a double When. So I'm putting a lot of effort into still unbelievable. But we're we're not really a network, but we're part of a community of podcasts. You obviously one of them. David, who was part of the still unbelievable book project everyone's skeptics and seekers, we feature him and we're very tightly involved with him because Andrew and David Andrew, my co host, still unbelievable for those who don't know. So we're all we we are talking regularly and featuring each other regularly. Then there's Clint Haycock and ex American pastor here in the UK. On the mind shift podcast, I really like, Clint, I really like the way he thinks I really like the way he produces his podcast. So I've been on that for a while. But you know, yours and his podcasts were both right at the early days when I was featured on them. Early Days of lockdown. In fact, when I was, we didn't even know what COVID was when I was on your podcast. So the world has changed, and it's changed. Yeah. And what I've liked about that interim period is there's been an explosion of really good community groups, lots of Facebook groups, all around the kinds of space that that we talk in, people helping each other some UK centric ones, which is beautiful to see, as well. Because if no one can tell from my accent, I am based in the UK. And it's really good to see those. So I've joined quite a few of those. I'm not very active on them, because I am literally so busy. But it is really nice to see the communities building there and people helping people. And it's great, great to see that. And I like to think that these voices, though to verbal on all these podcasts are helping to facilitate that. Because when I was deconstructing podcasts weren't a thing. It was blogs. And I found a small blogging community when I was doing my deconstruction. And those guys really helped me being able to blog through some of my thoughts, and to be able to read other people's thoughts and us comment on each other's posts and help each other and support each other. I love that community. And those people I know I've moved out of that community, I'm now into podcasting. But I still look back fondly on those time because I needed people I needed people who understood me, I needed people who understood my fears in a visceral way, which nobody I knew we skin could comprehend. And those people at the other end of that keyboard, those people at the other end of those monitor screens, I never, I didn't need to hear their voice, I didn't need to see their faces, I just needed to read their words and their words were full of compassion, their words are full of love, their words are full of understanding. And I needed those people while I was going through that process. And technology is allowed much more dynamic ways of providing that. And I love the podcasting community that is doing that, or the various podcasts that have sprung up talking about that. And I love all the various Facebook groups, which provides some really, really good support to people. And it's wonderful to see that happen.
David Ames 8:11 So both of us have gone back and listened to your, your first episode on this podcast. That was in 2019. And a couple things that that just struck me about it. One is, you know, you can hear, I think both of us, but me in particular, you know, trying to figure out what is it that we do here? And the other is just what you just said that, you know, we weren't interested in bashing Christians. What we were interested in is finding community for people who were having doubts, deconstructing de converting what have you, and you in particular, were expressing that compassion for people going through that process? Yes,
Matthew Taylor 8:50 I was quite surprised that see how much that came across in the episode that recorded because I do need to give a health warning still unbelievable, can be a difficult place to be for people who are still sympathetic towards Christianity. I make no excuses for that I self described as spiky. Yes, graceful doesn't apply to me. And I'm glad that you do what you do, because I couldn't right. And so we are very different in that way. But our end goal and our desires for those who are in the place that we were both in however many years ago, it was, is necessary. And I do occasionally get emails from people saying that still unbelievable has helped them because it's helped them to frame their thinking. And that's what I tried to offer we still unbelievable. I critique Christianity in very particular ways in some of our episodes. And I think that's helped to frame some people in terms of how they think about Christianity and how they think about their experiences and how to frame the doubts that they are experiencing. and how to put words and logic and even science to some of those doubts. So just to put a little bit of a caveat Yes, I am for supporting the Deconstructor but there will be some spiking us on still unbelievable. So be aware of that I don't try to be a friendly place for Christians
David Ames 10:22 understand, and I think I think you also expressed the support for truth. And I think you said it by saying you wanted to stand up against inaccuracy. Yes, wherever that was. So I think both of those themes came across in your your earlier. Yes.
Matthew Taylor 10:37 Although having said that, I do try to treat my Christian guests as well as I possibly can. And some of the authors that we featured are Christian guests. And I don't know when this episode is going to go live, David, but and I spoil it for you. And in case this comes out before January next year, I have gotten the ken an episode that which I'm partway through recording where Andrew and I have interviewed the pastor in the US who's written a book on help. And the book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. And the pastor who's written this book is a Universalist. And he gives a very strong case for universalism, and for a loving God, not being a god of eternal damnation, a loving God not being a god of eternal torment, loving God's being a god where everybody is brought to himself. And he produces a very what I think is a very powerful case for that, and we have a delightful conversation. For the first time in my life, I've uttered the words, I enjoyed reading a book about how, and I never thought I would ever, ever say that. But that is how I feel about this book. And I do know from what I've read in some of the various forums, hell is a problem. Hell is a problem for people in our position, how creates significant issues for people who are deconstructing, and I genuinely recommend this book, I don't care where you are on the deconversion spectrum, whether you intend to D convert or not. Whether you just want to deconstruct something and retain a faith, faith, or whether you are completely anti Christianity completely. If you're at all interested in the subject of how like genuinely recommend this book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. It will be coming out in February next year 2024 hour episode with the author will come out at some point in January, the tail end of January next year, highly recommend it. It's going to be a beautiful episode, we enjoyed the conversation. And there are Christians out there who are fighting for us. No fighting for a loving experience of that kind of conversation.
David Ames 12:56 I actually want to ask you about your experience going on to Justin Brierley, these podcasts so and all of those work that you've done, that was a bit of a response to his work. And then you were on his podcast, which for anybody who might not know, for the three people who don't, you know, this is probably the one of the biggest, definitely focused on apologetics Christian podcasts in the world. And and so this was kind of a big deal. Absolutely.
Matthew Taylor 13:24 If somebody like me is going to be on any Christian podcast, unbelievable is one again going to be although, I should point out that within a few weeks of Justin then being on my show, because he was on my show immediately after me being on his. He then announced that he was leaving unbelievable. I mean, maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm definitely gonna milk that as much as I possibly can. And so, but yes, so Justin been doing that over 17 years, he'd be doing that. So I've now got a target for still unbelievable. They that's, that's the target that I'm aiming for. For still unbelievable. Actually, I am not going anywhere. So hang around. So I genuinely didn't think I would ever get on to unbelievable. I had been a regular listener for a very long time. And I had written just in on numerous times. And then out of the blue, I got an email with a book, LinkedIn into it. And I was copied in with a couple of other people. And Justin said to these people, I've got an author here. Here's a book. We need the layperson to have a conversation with him. Is anybody up for it? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, so I had to chat with Mike De Virgilio and his book. What was it called an invented his hypothesis is the stories in the Bible read in such a way that they couldn't possibly be invented. I don't know how to describe that premise without breaking any kind of swear filters.
David Ames 14:54 You're fine. You can express yourself. It's bullshit.
Matthew Taylor 14:57 Frankly, it really is. It's It's utter utter bullshit. And to, to quote David from skeptics and seekers who is an ex pastor, and he is a philosopher as reader, he said to me offline, afterwards, he says, is read a lot of Christian books. And that one was, by a long way, the worst one that he'd ever read. So that was quite something coming from David. So I read this book on. And I think chapter two, he talks about something in the Dead Sea Scrolls, he makes a very specific claim about the quality of the texts in the decks, Dead Sea Scrolls. Great. Something I can fact check, because that's one thing I like to do a fact check. And anybody who listens to steal unbelievable, you should know that my show notes are always full of links from anything that it's fact checkable. In any episode that goes out, there'll be a link to it, if I can find it in the show notes. So always check the show notes if you're listening to still unbelievable, because they will be jam packed full of notes, and links and references to things to mentioned in the episode. So anyway, so I went along, and I tried to fact check this claim that he made about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the accuracy is, and it was rubbish, is claim was falsified. The first thing I found out about Dead Sea Scrolls is the book, I think he mentioned specifically the book of Isaiah, if it wasn't Isaiah, it was one of the Prophet books, and the information that I found out about this book and Dead Sea Scrolls, that most people think it actually has two authors, two different people who've written it, and there's evidence of copying between the two. And in the various copies that were found in those caves, there are differences. So this entire claim that he'd made was completely falsified by literally 10 minutes of Google search, I didn't need to go deep. It was there really quickly. And I brought brought this up on that episode, and it was just roundly ignored. And he didn't even try to defend it and moved on. And that was deeply frustrating. But and the book was like that all the way through there was any everything that I could fact check was difficult. They basically failed. And most of it was based on what he called verisimilitude, which was, it sounds like it's too good to be true. Therefore, it must be too good to be true. It's it's such a, it really is such a weak thing on which to base base, any kind of case on that. And so my concern going on to unbelievable was once I got to be able to keep my call. I was genuinely concerned that I would just lose it and go off on a rant. And if I'm going to go on to anything high profile, that is the last thing that I need to do. Yeah. But I managed it, I managed to get through and Justin did say to me afterwards, he thought I did fairly well. And I got some really positive feedback from people still unbelievable. Got to notice for jumping the listeners, following that, that going out. So thank you to anybody who's listening to this and listened to that and join. So unbelievable. I really did appreciate the positive comments. But yeah, I'd have liked to have had a better quality conversation if I'm really honest. But it was quite an experience doing that on Justin show. I'm doing something so big.
David Ames 18:27 This is actually a topic that I want to explore just for a minute. I think in the early days of this podcast, you know, I thought, oh, I want to talk to more Christians. And in my mind, I thought of apologists. And for those of my listeners who don't pay attention to apologetics, my apologies. But that's what we are going to look at here. And I found the same thing. It didn't matter really who it was, I've interviewed probably, I don't know, three or four apologists like professional apologists. And my experience was that you, you know, you bring up a point that, you know, is kind of a fact. And they just walk around it. Right? Yeah, that was never the direct addressing of the point that you were making. And the better the apologist, the less they actually address the point that you're making. So I'm wondering, you know, after so many years of doing the podcast and talking to various different Christian authors, apologists, that kind of thing. How has that changed for you at all? Like how you approach a conversation like that? Possibly,
Matthew Taylor 19:30 I'm less forgiving of bad arguments. And I've noticed that over the years, I've definitely, and because I've seen so many bad ones. And when I first started interacting, I definitely took the attitude of I don't want to sell the typical stereotype of the angry atheist. I want to be thoughtful and I want to be considerate and because I understand Christianity, I want to at least to show to the Christian, a Christian attitude. But I've had so many bad responses in that kind of space, that I lose patience for that. And I'm, I'm not so keen and not so quick to go for the softly approach now, because I've tried it so many times where I've tried to gently feed and say, No, that's not quite that you didn't answer my question. And just try and rephrase it, rephrase it in a nice way, etc. And like you've just said, there's just no appetite to actually address it directly. So I've given up playing nice around that, and just go straight forward and call it out. I I'm wasting everybody's time. If I if I do that, let's go back to Justin. Because after that, I was on unbelievable. And then Justin came on to us. And we talked a little bit around because one of Justin's narratives and he comes, I think it comes out in the new book that's been I've not read it yet. I will, it was on my project list for 2024 is the book. He tries to push the thing about Christianity, being a global good being the source of all the great things that we have in society. And Andrew and I pushed him back on that, and we pushed him back quite firmly, and he just wouldn't budge. It was really, that conversation was really frustrating for Andrew, myself. And we ended up just moving on. And I had feedback after the episode from several people saying that they really didn't appreciate how hard Justin pushed on the Christianity has been a global good in these areas. And that particular subject is probably the biggest single subject that Andrew and I have had direct feedback on to an episode, people really did not appreciate the way that he was pushing that narrative. Too many people saw straight through it didn't like it. And so because Justin was a big name, and he and I both wanted to be polite, we didn't push it as hard as we could have. And I think if I was to repeat it, I probably be rude or pure, purely because I think this point needs to be made very strongly. And I think there's a danger. It's a balance, David, it genuinely is a balance in how we respond to prominent Christians, because there's this Christian narrative of, oh, they're an atheist, they're going to be rude, and they're going to be rude and angry is because they're a bitter atheist. Now I can write off everything they say. So we're under pressure to be on good behavior. Because the second we let that slip, oh, it's just atheists are going through, you know, they now you see their true colors, whereas a Christian is actually granted space to lose it. They're actually given grace, if they lose it. And there's this disparity there in expectation and judgment, of behavior. And I'm getting a little bit tired of that. So some of the episodes I've done also unbelievable. They've been solo episodes, where I've reviewed a Christian podcast, and I just go for it on those episodes, I ramp up the sarcasm, I'll put in appropriate sound effects for things now now raise my voice. And I'll really hit it because I think people need to hear an emotional response. Sometimes these I don't think it works all the time, to have this kind of thing. So I think if I was to have thing, have that again, and if I ever managed to tempt Justin, don't listen to this. If I ever tend to just him back onto still unbelievable. Again, I think I'll be less calm. And I think I'll push back a lot harder, because I think I think these narratives need to be pushed back more. Maybe we're going to get a new dawn of the new atheist and that kind of polemic. That's me, does that give you the answer you're expecting?
David Ames 23:50 No, I think that's a good answer. I think where I landed was about consistency. Oh, I'm
Matthew Taylor 23:56 not consistent. You're you're consistently graceful. I couldn't hold it up. Other episodes too little.
David Ames 24:05 Ya know, what I mean is when I'm when I'm interacting with particularly an apologist, right, for example, your author makes the argument about verisimilitude. It sounds too good to be true. So it must be true that I would respond. So the, you know, the Muslim says that it's a miracle that the Quran exists, right. So that is the exact same arguments, and so you have to be consistent, both of those things would have to be true. So are they both true or using a bad argument? And, and I don't think that that changes their mind at all. I still think they just go around it but but for me, the way that I've communicated these days is to say, I need to be consistent. And so if you are going to lower the bar of evidence required for something that lowers it everywhere, not just for your particular religious claim. Yes.
So part of what we wanted to talk about here is why we podcast. Yeah. And so I'd like to hear first, we've talked about a little bit but what why you started why you and Andrew began this process. And then maybe a little bit about why you continue to do that. Yes,
Matthew Taylor 25:17 there's some some good points were made there. So as I mentioned, when I was first on, it wasn't on my radar to podcast. And then Andrew and David off the back of still unbelief for the book thought well, that this brand, this momentum needs to continue. And they were right. So and podcasting is taking off? No, there's a deconstruction space that needs voices. Let's do it. So we started a small number of podcasts asking atheists anything we've talked about which has gone by the wayside although the episodes I believe are still available, if you there are some interesting episodes. If people want to look that up and listen to them. I will be gradually going through the back catalogue of that and picking off some of the best ones and rebroadcasting them on to still unbelievable, because we've got new listeners who might appreciate them. Yeah, so but it was never on my my radar to do it. And then probably David bless him everything is David's fault over at skeptic. It seems like everybody I know called David is responsible for something happening in my life. So David said, David F. Skeptics and seekers, yes. David Johnson Oh, from skeptics and seekers. And his guy I respect immensely. He helped me find my writing voice is complimented me immensely on my own writing. And he said, Matthew, I think you'll have a good voice for podcasting. Plus English accent, you know, what's what, what's to lose? And I genuinely I've loved it. And when I started was a little bit of a shaky start. I don't listen to some of our first couple of episodes I'm sure I would shivering, embarrassment. But we got it going, we managed to capture a couple of interesting guests. So we pick Greczyn momentum carried on and then we start getting some really interesting guests, people I really enjoyed speaking to I think my first high profile on was John Stein guard, I, I stalked him after he was on unbelievable. It took me a couple of months to find him. I eventually managed to find him on Instagram, I think and sent her a message. And he responded very positively. We had a joyful conversation with John Stein guard, which who I believe you had a conversation with John, as well. Fabulous, fabulous individual. And now suddenly, you say I'm a podcast, suddenly starts to open doors. And I've managed to reach out and I reached out to Joshua sama Das, who's a Christian apologist has written a book on the called the genealogical Adam and Eve. Interesting scientifically, I'm not entirely sure some of the things he says are safe, in terms of the conclusions he's come to. But definitely, if you're that way inclined, it's potentially an interesting book. There's lots of references, very technical, enjoyed the conversation there. And I've really enjoyed those kinds of conversations. And conversations are where it sets really have having good quality conversations, because you can show to each other when you're doing it across the table, having a conversation which is productive, and friendly, which I've managed to have, despite what I've said about spikey, and all that helps to see the other person as a human. And that helps conversation, I think, humanizing the opponent having an actual conversation with them. Lotter not a text based conversation, but actual conversation, has done wonders for my attitude towards Christian individuals. And I hope has done the same the other direction, because those kinds of things I've enjoyed the most. And like say Earthman said, the publisher have contacted me twice now with a Christian author. And we've had that conversation. The second one is one I just told you about. About the Hell yeah, if people don't see value in some of those conversations, they're not going to reach out and say, here's a book I think you should read. Here's an author, I think you'd enjoy a conversation with no, that must surely be a risk for somebody to push a Christian author on to a podcast like still unbelievable and say, I think this is the conversation you're you're like, because the gamble that they're taking is engineers, atheists will a pan the book, and then be continued to pan the book, and they've seen the panic with extra venom, you know, and then D continue to talk about it for the rest of the year about how awful that bloody book was. That's the risk that they take. And both times that I've had that contact, I've had a fabulous experience reading the book and and the fabulous conversation so I think it pays dividends to actually reach out and So I've reached out I said, I reached out to Joshua sama Das, I've reached out to Steve Chalke, who's the big name in the UK people outside the UK might not be familiar with the name. But certainly Christian people who from the Christian tradition in the UK will know the name, Steve Chalke fabulous conversation, it's sometimes it's worth making that reach out to somebody you never know, who you'll catch. And I think humanizing other people and having those lovely, pleasant conversations, actually is better than being spiky. Really, honestly, when it gets down to the bottom of it. It's worth it. And also, I think the reason why it's worth having those conversations across the aisle like that is look as on regardless of where they are, whether they're transitioning from one side to the other, or whether they're just hovering in the murky ground in the middle, will probably appreciate those conversations as well. And it probably just helps them to focus some of the thinking that they have some spiky people as well, let's Let's aim for the pleasant conversations because I get so much more out of those pleasant conversations I mentioned earlier about, sometimes I do those really snarky episodes, I actually get more pleasure. I got a lot more pleasure out of that conversation that I've just told you about. With Derek about his holy hell book I got so much more pleasure out of that. I do out of three episodes where I rip apart a Christian podcast talking about stuff I don't like.
David Ames 31:32 What do you get out of it? So you basically have been saying that you know, that these conversations I think are meaningful for you? Is that part of why you continue to podcast?
Matthew Taylor 31:40 Yes, definitely. Definitely. It is. And one of the big question marks over the whole deconversion deconstruction experiences, purpose and meaning you I grew up in a Christian condition where I was taught from a very young age and went into adulthood, God has a purpose for you, God has a plan for you, you know, part of what you need to do is find out what God wants you to do in your life. And one of the things that I experienced as a young 20 year old was, you're going to chuckle at this, I promise you. I was at a big evangelical meeting. And there was also it was it was a weekend and there was teaching and seminars and stuff like that. And at one of these big meetings, somebody came in, says, I've got a prophet here with us. And he's going to look around the room. And then at one point, he's going to walk around the room, and he's going to see if God's telling him about any of the people that so he did this, and this guy did this, walk this round the room, and then they came back in the couple of words, etc, etc. And then next thing I know, me, I was literally I was in the back row of this meeting. Literally, I got singled out from the front. And he pointed me out. And I said what mean, I pointed the person next to me said no, no, no, no, no. You said that guy there. He's going to have an apostolic ministry. And of course, my knees buckled under me, I sat down, you know, this was an emotional thing that I simply struggled to cope with. And yeah, I that weighed on my mind for quite some time. You know, and I was given some words of wisdom and advice about that. Because being singled out to be an apostle is quite a big thing. This wasn't just somebody who had a good teaching ministry, or was somebody who was going to bless the people, you know, this is somebody who's going to have an apostolic ministry, you know, it was, it was a big, big thing. So that weighed on me for years. And so how do I fulfill this prophecy? You know, when you come from a Christian tradition, where, you know, part of what you're supposed to be doing is looking for what God wants for you literally looking for God's purpose in your life, that creates an awful lot of stress. And I've seen people struggle with that very idea. How do I know if this thing that I'm doing is part of God's purpose in life? How do I know if buying this house is part of God's purpose for my life? How do I know if marrying this person is part of God's purpose? For my life? I don't feel like I've got a purpose in my life. And here I am just merrily having a family and going to church, you know, shouldn't I be doing something really great. And the I've seen so many people hurts by this very idea. And then you of course, when you deconstruct and you leave Christianity, this question doesn't go away you go, okay. Now what do I do about purpose because it's now embedded into life after decades of teaching, that you need to find a purpose for your life, your life has a purpose. You just need to find it. You know, it's this this whole thing you know, for sit on a mat and look to the dawn and why not just do what you love. If some thing gives you pleasure, do it and enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, it will be purposeful. Yeah, it's and make it as simple as that. And that took someone learning for me. And podcasting, this conversation that having you is actually energizing me, David, I'm loving, I'm really enjoying. And when I have conversations like this on still unbelievable, it energizes me. And sometimes I can come away from the microphone, it can be half past 10 At night, there'll be buzzing. And I have to go grab a hot chocolate, do my old man thing sits in bed, what's on what's on the crime genre and watch something because I need an hour to wind down. And then I get up at six o'clock the next morning to go and do a day's work.
David Ames 35:48 I would definitely say that it's very similar for me. And I was more explicit about this in the early days that I was doing it selfishly, I needed to be able to talk to people about what I was going through, as well. And then this podcast fell into, you know, more of the deconversion stories as the main theme. And that in those early days was just still very important for me to be able to talk about what I was going through as well. And I felt like I got more out of it than the people I was interviewing.
Matthew Taylor 36:21 Yes, I like it when we have an episode. Like that. And I like getting feedback, you know, underneath No, sometimes we have a little ego there that needs a little scratch. So guys, send feedback, do reviews on Amazon, and Spotify and iTunes, do all that kind of thing, because it genuinely scratches us. And it helps us produce content content that you guys like listening to. So please, reviews, reviews, reviews that let's do. That's really great. I love having feedback. It's really good to have had feed feedback from people in various scenarios. And it's even more strange to occasionally get feedback from a Christian saying, Can I have a conversation with you guys? Having an email like that just kind of, does he listen to my back catalogue? Does he?
David Ames 37:12 Yes, yeah.
Matthew Taylor 37:14 So that's why I continue to do it because I find that it motivates me and yeah, I am a busy guy. I do work more than my contracted hours because I'm in a very busy job. And on top of doing this, I do community theater as well. And for anybody who knows what it's like to do amateur dramatics, you know, when it comes up to, to doing a show, you get end up with a very, very busy couple of weeks with rehearsals and technical recur called rehearsals into dress rehearsals and then show it comes along and you literally don't sleep the entire week. Yeah, it's, it's hard, and it wipes me out. Yeah, and I do two shows a year, sometimes three or four shows a year. And that can completely wipe me out. This year I was in wasn't quite in two shows, I was doing front of house for one show, which is a busy job in itself, you know, talking to the community, making sure everybody's got their seats, making sure everybody's got their tickets and all this kind of thing, sorting out any issues that that come up. And that kind of thing is a very different role. Very busy role, very stressful role. And then two weeks after that was in the show. So as you know, it's it can get very, very busy doing that kind of thing. And I'm doing that on while also trying to schedule guests for a podcast, while also doing a full time job. And then, as you've heard a couple of times, I'm still trying to recover from a code that I had when I was on playing when you get over that magical 50 sore throats hang around for a ridiculously long period of time. And it's really, really frustrating.
David Ames 38:57 We've talked a bit about how it affects us. I'm curious how you think our podcasting podcasting in general in the secular world affects the community. And just as a bit of context, when I started I was I was responding to there were lots of angry atheists. There were lots of mostly debates, mostly hostile interactions, and I was interested in having human conversations more more person to person, you know, again, as to use your words, respecting the other person's humanity. And that felt new at that moment. Yeah. And in between then and now. The whole deconstruction movement took place, right? We were kind of at the tail end of the atheist kind of movement and then became this deconstruction movement as it were. And so I'm just curious how you think your podcasts what you and Andrew were doing and are doing has had an impact on that that community?
Matthew Taylor 39:55 Well, let's start with you. I guess we've touched base twins. The 19 must was it was it was it was it 2018 We first exchanged emails, it was around about that period anyway.
David Ames 40:05 Yeah. 2019 Yeah.
Matthew Taylor 40:06 And I've loved listening to your podcast growing in popularity, and I wished if your podcast had existed, when I was deconstructing it would have been an enormous help for me. So I think what your podcast does what the rest of atheist podcast does, is immensely valuable. And I hope it never goes away. Yes, I've heard you say it as well. And yes, not everybody wants to listen to a new deconversion story every week, for some people is a period of time in which it's really helpful. And then then they move on. And I've seen this in the community, some people come, and then they go, No, they've now they've shed their burden. They don't want to dwell in it anymore. And they need to move on.
David Ames 40:56 Yeah, I describe it as either aging out or maturing out. Yeah, it's no longer necessary for that person.
Matthew Taylor 41:01 Let me make it personal for a bit. I'm the eldest of three brothers. We all grew up in the same environment. We all suffered the same traumatic divorce of our parents in Zambia, we're all very familiar with the Zambian missionary environment. Listeners, you're going to have to listen to my original episode where I give more context this, but my two brothers do not talk daily about their past Christian faith. It's not relevant to them. It's not important to them. Yeah, I even talked with my youngest brother, I'm actually going up to see him tomorrow morning to have spent a couple of days with and helping out with this house. I'm really looking forward to a long weekend weekend with him. Yeah. Brothers, we bond. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that time with him. But I did say to him one day, I said, you know, maybe you and I could do a good episode on some belief or talk about our experiences, I'm sure we appreciate it. And he said, you know, they're not interested do not do nothing. And for some people, that's fine. You know, I'm not going to raise the subject, again, is we know, we've had that conversation. Fine. You know, it's, it's pointless me pushing it. Yeah. And because all I do is force him to rethink things that he doesn't care to think about. We've got better brotherly things to talk about which we'll both appreciate. And that's perfectly fine. You know, let's just lay that out there. No, wait, once you come in, and you join this community, you're not bound to it, you know, there, there are no pointy fingers. If you decide that it's not for you anymore, you know, we're not going to continue on condemn you to atheist hell for your turn or torture. Because you, you feel that this isn't serving you anymore. So for some people, the service that our content provides is, is temporary. But for other people, they want to hang around. And for those that hang around, you know, there can be a new role. And the role is holding hands with the newcomers, because there's always people coming in. And that's the one thing I've noticed, is being part of these deconversion deconstruction groups, and watching your podcasts specifically, grow. I'm not going to hint about any kind of jealousy about your podcast becoming really, really popular. I'm not gonna say through any kind of gritted teeth, whatsoever, but I'm really glad that your stories and there are others as well. I can't remember the tales of deconversion. Is that what it's called, or something like
David Ames 43:39 voices of deconversion? Like, which Steve hilliker Like I give him a lot of credit for you know, I'm basically ripping him off and doing what he did.
Matthew Taylor 43:48 But yeah, and it's a necessary thing. And it's nice to see people getting something new out of every episode. And it's nice to see people hang around to help those. But yeah, can you imagine how busy the space would be if every single D converter hung around town to welcoming all the new ones, it will become crowded and it will become untenable. It's perfectly appropriate for those. They've sorted out their deconstruction, grief, they've got to a comfortable place with any trauma they carry. It's time for them to move on because it's no longer good for them. Move on, is there are plenty of people around I think that's why I hang around. Because I've seen a lot of pain. I've experienced a lot of pain. And even now I still learn about things which shocked me and surprised me. So I still want to be around to be a voice for others. And every now and then they'll see somebody will ask a question in one of the deconstruction posts and I'll see some of the replies here and now. Add on saying yes I wouldn't say it was right. That's really good advice or so. Like, you guys have just had the most religious holiday in the United States, your Thanksgiving, weekend. And
David Ames 45:13 tongue in cheek? Yeah.
Matthew Taylor 45:16 What what happens when I noticed it when Thanksgiving comes up, is the deconstruction groups always say, there will be somebody will say help. I've got a parent coming round for the weekend, there's going to be this, there's going to be that, how do I handle this I need, I need something, etc, that's going to happen every single year. And there'll be somebody new every single year with that trauma with that panic. And it needs people to hang around to go, Yeah, I've been there, or your home your rules, you know, you're perfectly entitled to say to the parent, this is my house, you're an adult now. Because some people have a complex relationship with their parents, I've, I've still got I mentioned in that discussion, I still got a complex relationship with my father, I came out to my dad fulcrums, eight years ago now, I think it was atheists in a conversation. I didn't intend to, but the conversation went went into a particular direction. I just went low. We're not going there. I'm atheist. Now that's not happening. And he's not spoken to me about that particular subject again. But I've heard from my brother that he wants to, that he wants to talk me out of my atheism. Right. My brother just said, don't just just don't do it, you know, that will not end well do not have that conversation with Matthew. And my brother was a barrier. But you see, he had that conversation with my brother because he couldn't have it with me. And so even me, and I'm a very confident atheist, I can stand my ground and I will stand my ground if I need to, even to the overbearing parent, I just won't hold back and I will do it. Not everybody has got that confidence. Not everybody is secure to be able to do that. And so they need these forums, they need these groups to say, Help. Has anyone been in this situation? And half a dozen people go? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And they'll give their experiences. So we need those people to hang around, and to pass on the advice. And for those who feel comfortable hanging around, post deconversion. To be to be as part of the hands holding crowd. God bless you people, you are wonderful. You are here to say God bless. unicon bless you wonderful people. You are an asset to this community. Yeah, I did do that on purpose, obviously, David.
David Ames 47:58 So another thing that we share, that's definitely not unique. But it is interesting is that we have believing wives.
Matthew Taylor 48:06 Yes. How did that happen? David, we couldn't invent that. It's, um, it was quite peculiar to find out that we had that in common. And I'm wondering what it is about the spouse of a believer the form that they end up in doing this, what we're doing, isn't that scenario motivation to not do this?
David Ames 48:30 Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Let me address that question in just a second. I want you to talk about your wife and whatever generics or specifics that you want to get into. But my wife is a deep believer, right? If she never put foot in a church again, for the rest of her life, she's probably still going to be a believer. Right. It's internal for her on a super deep level. And I respect her faith, even though I think she's mistaken. All right. Yeah. So like I want to convey like it is about as opposite as you could be. The one thing that we do have going for us is I think politically, we're more aligned. And the two of us really care about people. Yeah. And we both do and in our various different ways. Try to help people and I think it's that shared values that is enabled us to get through what was a pretty rocky period of time going through this transition. When I said I had no longer believed in regards to what makes somebody motivated for this. You know, I think it's, it's in spite of that, like, my biggest concern, when I started was, I didn't want to hurt my wife. I didn't want her to feel attacked or abused. And yet, I had to talk about this stuff I had to because it was killing me. And so, you know, we've come to an uneasy detente, right. I can't say that she's happy about it, but she accepts that this is something that I do, right. Yeah. So I'm curious what your experience has been like. My
Matthew Taylor 50:00 wife would probably echo exactly the same things that you've said about your own. So we are very much aligned. And yes, it would kill me not shut up, I am very much a dog with a bone kind of personality. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily intellectual, but I like intellectual challenge. I like I like consuming scientific content. And I like discourse. And I like challenge. And doing still unbelievable and doing it with Andrew fulfills so much of that. And I love it. And I love listening to the other various atheist and some Christian podcast as well. I really enjoy consuming that content as well as creative. But all the things here, yes, it's uncomfortable as well. And my deconstruction was marred with fear. I genuinely believed that my deconversion at the point where I got to the point where I was fairly sure it was inevitable. I genuinely believed that would spell the end to marriage that I didn't want to end. And that, despite everything else, ignoring everything else, that little snip it in on itself is traumatizing, and fear inducing, and even paralyzing. Yeah. And when you go and read blog, after blog after blog of somebody in the same situation, and every single one of them is the marriages have failed. The attrition rate of marriages in this space is frighteningly high. You and I have gone against the odds, let's be open and honest about that. And yes, part of it is my wife and I are politically aligned. Politics has shifted over the last 20 years, and it's shifted in the same direction. We are very much aligned on an awful lot of things. And my wife's job is for a charity here in this part of the UK, which coordinates mentoring. So adults mentoring, usually teenagers who are in a problematic scenario and helping those teenagers to develop and foster a mature relationship with an adult, somebody they can confide in, who they can trust, who can give them adult advice, who has got the backing of professionals, if there should be anything problematic. And she finds that immensely fulfilling. And we talk about that actually tells me about a job an awful lot. And I'm interested in the job. And I'm interested in the technicalities and the things that are achieved in that job and off the back of doing that job she's doing. She's done one degree in child psychology, she's just started a second. And, you know, that is massively for funding for end, we are both on the same page with regards to the need for that. And I'm quite happy with whatever way I can to support her in doing that, so there is much for us to celebrate together. We don't she might. She might disagree, but we don't inverted commas need Christianity to in order to create a successful marriage. And I think that's why we've managed, it's not been easy. It's not been smooth sailing. And in the past 10 years. I'm obviously not going to go detail on these specifics. I'm not going to say anything about my wife that might later regret. But the conversation of separation did come up at some point during there. And we did talk it through and discern it didn't go didn't progress very far. We decided it was really nothing that either of us particularly wanted to stomach. Neither of us was in a mindset where it was something we wanted to seriously progress. And so it just really didn't go anywhere. It was a very short conversation, not to be brought up again. So don't read so this this please don't read too much into I've probably talked more about this than we actually talked about it. Don't Don't read too much into that. But I would like to say that for the Christian spouse of somebody who leaves. Life can be hard life can be difficult. I remember as a 20 something or going to church and knowing women at church whose husbands weren't believers, and they would come to church and they will come to church events and the husband was never there. Now remember, pitying those women and there is no better description of the patronizing attitude we took to those women then to at them, you know, why couldn't we treat them as individuals are their own rights? You know, they they don't they don't exist for their husband to be there with them. They are a person, they're an individual in their own right. Why couldn't we have treated them as persons and individuals in their own right? Why did we look at them as if they were incomplete? Because her husband wasn't coming to church? Now? What a shocking way to look at it. But my experience my decision for lack of a better word, although,
you know, we could talk about that I, it wasn't a decision, but let's just call it a decision. For the time being,
my decision has forced my wife into that scenario. Right. And she doesn't enjoy it. Let's be honest about that. She has responsibilities and church, she occasionally preaches a church, but she is that woman at church without a spouse? Yeah. And if people in the church pair up in couples to go out and socialize, she suddenly finds that she's intentionally or otherwise excluded, possibly because she's overlooked. Or if there'll be a conversation with somebody, and it's happened on more than one occasion, she will be talking with somebody at church who's relatively new. And they'll have seen Sarah up at the front of the church, either preaching or doing some other parts of the service. And they'll say to her, they said Mr. Taylor, yeah. And then chesco Now what what answer do I give now, you know, how much detail is safe to give to this individual? Yeah. And it creates a hell in church, for for those spouses. It's not pleasant for them. And, but I can't set foot in a church on a weekly basis, it's, it's not something that's pleasant for me. I've got other things I'd rather be doing. I'm usually editing a podcast when she's at church on on Sunday morning. And, and so it creates this, this, this inner conflict within each of us, I know that I've condemned her to this. And she knows that sometimes she'll have a less than pleasant experience at church purely because there isn't a man by her side. And for many, many spouses of the converted person, this is the hell of going to church. And I don't have an answer to that particular, maybe it's not mine to solve, maybe it's churches need to find a way to solve that. So, you know, sometimes in the deconstruction space, we can talk about us, and our trauma of deconversion. And our fear of leaving. But there are casualties that we cause as part of that journey as well. It's not our fault, I want to be very quick on that. It isn't our fault, that there are casualties now, and those people are wrong to blame us for what's happened. But that is sometimes how they feel. And that is the side effect of that. And we need to have compassion for those Christians in our lives. And Sarah and I are still navigating that. Incidentally, I need to say this, I went on to the grateful atheist YouTube channel. And because I was on it in 2019, and then my wife in beginning of 2020, she's got more than three times the number of views of her YouTube is something this is not a good place to be. If you've got an ego, that's just putting
David Ames 58:38 you know, we are quite entangled. So I did interview your wife, I thought that was really good conversation. I thought that she was really courageous to come on to the podcast, that was a brave thing to do. And then my wife listened to your wife's episode is maybe the only episode she's listened to. And then I had my wife on in I think it was late 2020. I don't think she'll ever do it again. Yeah, but it was interesting, like that interact, interaction, her hearing, Sarah story was part of that.
Matthew Taylor 59:08 I would love to have a conversation with a spouse of a D converted, unbelieving spouse of a D converted person. It doesn't have to be your wife. But if you if you or any listener has any context to a believing partner, who would love to, I would love to flesh out the things that I've just been talking about, about the experience of the Christian. I think Sarah is very much have the same mindset as your wife. Yeah, it's, I'm too close. I'm, I'm too personal. It would be inappropriate for me to even ask Sarah, to have that conversation with me live on air. This is something that's personal between us. I would never ask and I wouldn't I probably wouldn't even want it if I'm honest. But if somebody does have believing spouse, gender is unimportant, to talk through this kind of experience to see where how They judge what I've just said, and how we navigate this kind of thing. But it's it's a difficult situation. And so many people come into these deconversion groups with a believing partner. And some of the stories have genuinely moved me to tears, you know, marriages disintegrating in deeply unpleasant tones. And it's horrific to read and watch. That pain that must happen. It just touches the fears that I had 10 years ago, 10 plus years ago. And yes, those those experiences are still very real for people and those people. We need to work out a way to love people through that particular trauma. Because it's got to be the worst part of this kind of experience.
David Ames 1:00:46 Yeah, I would be interested in talking to more spouses, as well, or partners of any kind. But to hear their perspective also.
Matthew Taylor 1:00:55 Maybe we could probably do it as a duo. Actually, David, I think that would probably work really well. You could be my Andrew for a day, and I'm sure. Very pleasant. So Jay, this is a genuine request to people listening to this. If you know somebody who could be there, please get in touch with David via all the contact details that he gives. On your show, I think it'd be a genuinely worthwhile conversation.
David Ames 1:01:18 Matthew, I think we could keep talking for a long time, but actually want to end on this note, because I think what we've just talked about was just really important. But I do want to give you a moment to again, plug your podcasts and how can people get in touch with you? Wow,
Matthew Taylor 1:01:31 okay. Yeah, so still unbelievable is where to find me any other podcasts associated with my name is, is probably unsafe to search for because they might not exist anymore. So search, still unbelievable or recent press dot there. Matthew Taylor is a depressingly common name. So try not to search Matthew Taylor on the internet, you'll find all sorts of other people. I had a very strange experience listening to to one podcast and it was a new evangelicals podcast, and introduced a guest Dr. Matthew Taylor talking about something to do with deconversion. I'm gonna say, Okay, it's not me from when I certainly don't have a doctorate. So that's the best place or recent press@gmail.com is the email address to use, or friendly mail or hate mail if necessary. You can contact me using that way. I love being in this space. I love having feedback. I love having the conversations with people. So but yeah, so I listened to a ridiculous number of various podcasts of all stripes and things to to create the content that I do for still unbelievable. Thank
David Ames 1:02:45 you, Matthew for being back on the podcast. It was amazing to get back in touch. Really appreciate it.
Matthew Taylor 1:02:50 Thank you, David always
David Ames 1:02:58 final thoughts on the episode. As Matthew points out, still unbelievable. And the work that he has done has really been an anti apologetics perspective. He calls himself spiky. But one of the things I loved about re listening to our conversation from 2018. And this conversation is just how much Matthew cares about people and that just comes out in in particular people who are in the middle of the deconstruction process, and the empathy that he has for that process having gone through it himself. One of the most important topics that we discussed is being married to believers, and how much we respect our spouses. I know that many of you are in unequally yoked relationships in one form or another. And that is a very, very difficult topic. A shout out again to Matthew's wife, Sarah, who did come on the podcast that was amazing. My wife who came on the podcast as well, even though I know that was incredibly difficult. I want to thank Matthew for being on the podcast on this 200th Podcast. I really appreciate Matthew's perspective. And he has been a fantastic friend. Thank you so much, Matthew. For the secular grace, thoughts of the podcast, it is about humanism. This podcast has been from day one about humanism, being human, embracing our own humanity, embracing the humanity of others. And part of that is recognizing my personal humanity. As I mentioned a few months back between work and family life, all of these are good things. I've had less and less time for the podcast. So it is time for a break. That break will be for an indeterminate amount of time, and not sure how long but I know that I'll come back For this, I know that this is not the end, this is not goodbye. This is until we hear each other next time. I have loved doing this podcast, we've done it for almost five years. Now, as we mentioned earlier, the 200th episode, could not have done it without Mike T, doing all the editing without Arline, doing interviews, managing the community, and 1000 other things. And most of all, has been amazing talking to you. As I said, in my conversation with Matthew, I started this for selfish reasons, I needed to talk about it myself. And I just hope that somebody else might be interested. And I cannot believe to this day, how many of you have listened over the years. And also, as we mentioned in the conversation, how many of you have grown out of it? That's fantastic. That's a best case scenario. And I'm really, really grateful for all of that. So I have some ideas about when I come back, I want to reset just a bit back to a focus on humanism. I'll talk about this more in the next episode, which again, indeterminate amount of time when that will be. I also believe that the podcast will go into seasons, rather than being year long, doing maybe three months sessions, spring and fall, something like that something that's maintainable and not quite as exhausting. But I have a number of ideas for future episodes already kind of planning those in my head. And when I feel invigorated again, to do them, you will hear them here. For those of you who are Patreon supporters, again, I 100% give you the freedom to cancel that support. I cannot promise how often episodes will come out going forward. And those were not the original terms in which you began supporting the podcast. If you do stick around if you do decide that you'd like to continue to support the podcast, that's fantastic. I will use that will continue to do the zoom for the community, as well as future production value for the podcast itself. As a year end to 2023 and the hiatus and break for the podcast I just want to say thank you to you the listeners for being here participating being a part of the community. That is why I podcast. Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network
Dr. Darrel Ray is the founder and President of the Board of Directors of Recovering from Religion and the founder and project leader of the Secular Therapy Project. See his full bio here.
Dr. Ray grew up in a Christian home but was already skeptical of certain claims at the age of twelve. He stayed in church—singing and teaching—but was relieved to finally leave the church as an adult.
He has decades of experience in psychology and has helped countless people who’ve been harmed by religion.
“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”
“Twelve years old, you couldn’t slow me down! I get to the top and I find sharks’ teeth on top of the damn mesa. I think, ‘Wow! That’s really crazy…how’d they get up there?’ And my aunt says, ‘Well, God put them there in the flood,’ and I thought…I know better than that.”
“I was very curious. You couldn’t give me enough to read!”
“I wasn’t even a member of the damn church, and they’d let me teach Sunday school! That’s kinda dangerous, you know?”
“It wasn’t that I was an atheist; it was that I came out as an atheist…The society will accept you as an atheist. Just keep your mouth shut; don’t tell anybody.”
“It was an explosion of emotion in that room, and it hit me hard: This is no gimmick; this is important…That was the first meeting of Recovering from Religion.”
“Families: That’s the way you infect people with religion. You do it through children…”
“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”
“When you separate from religion, you’re losing, losing, losing, losing. You’re losing a lot of things…Every one of those losses produces grief.”
“All ideologies have within them the elements of a religion.”
“The leader [of a cult] is never restricted by the rules like everybody else is.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all the supporters of the podcast if you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast you can become a supporter at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction and the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook community deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion There is a merch shop at T public that Arline has set up you can get your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed products links will be in the show notes. We are off next week. We will be back on August 20. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. My guest today is Dr. Darrel Ray. Dr. Ray is the founder of both the recovering from religion and the secular therapy project. He has been a psychologist, the brunt of his career was in Organizational Psychology. He started recovering from religion by using meetup.com By asking the simple question, how has religion hurt you? People poured out their souls and made a connection. Since then he's written two best sellers, the god virus and sex and God. As you're about to hear Dr. Ray is a fascinating person and has done an amazing amount to impact the deconstruction deconversion community. Here is Dr. Darrel Ray to tell his story. Dr. Darrel Ray, welcome to the graceful atheists podcast.
Darrel Ray 2:06
Thanks. Good. Good to be here. David. excited to talk to you.
David Ames 2:11
Yeah, glad that we could finally make this work. I have been a fan of recovering from religion. And we recommend the secular therapy project about every other week. So glad to have that from the horse's mouth. So let's start just briefly with a bit of your bone a few days, maybe a bit about your resume you've written obviously a number of books and you've been a psychologist for many years could just tell us a bit about that.
Darrel Ray 2:36
Yeah, I've been a psychologist, I guess and for 40 years, kind of dates dates me there, doesn't it? Or Or I don't know, you know, depends on how you start counting. But somewhere around that amount I started out in counseling and then clinical psychology and then moved into organizational psychology so I've kind of had two two and a half careers in areas psychology and then and then I got into what I'm doing now and that is Yeah, and retire I'm supposedly retired but I look at all the work I do and think damn and nobody's paying me now.
David Ames 3:12
Yeah, but yeah,
Darrel Ray 3:13
I read a written a couple books, the god virus, which was continues to sell really well and sex sex and God on on how religion distorts sexuality. And those all come out of my clinical work that I've practiced off and on six therapy and coaching and and you know, basic clinical psychology testing and all that and I just saw patterns of behavior that seemed to be related to religion throughout my career and right and, you know, retirement or coming close to retirement gave me the opportunity to start thinking about new things because I wasn't running my own business, my own practice. Anyway, I got started in, in a secular community in the mid mid 2006 2007, I guess you could say it when I was ramping down my my practice and that during that time, I saw Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris Dennett, all those folks writing books, and I had I had read quite a bit before that. And it just dawned on me nobody's written anything on the psychology religion. I mean, Dawkins is a biologist Harris is kind of a neuro scientist, but he's not a psychologist. So that gave me the notion that I loved all those books. I mean, The God Delusion was groundbreaking as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. But I thought there needed to be something more accessible to the layperson on how the brain works, how religion
influences us, and and gets us to do things we wouldn't normally do. I mean,
for example, being a celibate priest or celibate nun in the Catholic Church, that's pretty. That's pretty strange behavior. If you think about it, yeah. So that all those things kind of came together. And, and I just feel it's time to do a brain dump. And, and I did starting in 2009. I just started writing and working. And then that led to what else we'll talk about a little bit later. And that's recovering from religion. Now.
David Ames 5:29
Before we get into your personal story, I just want to acknowledge that we had Rachel hunts on the podcast.
Darrel Ray 5:36
She has she is an amazing, she's on the board of directors. She's our director of support groups. She's amazing. Yeah, just
David Ames 5:43
really appreciated her. And then I think that's how you and I got in touch with each other. So thank you to Rachel for doing what she does as well. Yeah.
Darryl, I know you probably tell the story often but I'd very much like to hear we'd like to ask our guests what religious tradition or or or not Did you grew up with? And then kind of what is the story of the trajectory of your loss of faith?
Darrel Ray 6:12
Well, I was I was born into a Christian family, pretty conservative, not fundamentalist. At least at the time. It got worse later. But going back before it was born, my my relatives, my my grandfather, my uncle, lots of lots of religious people, lots of elders in the family, my great grandfather on my dad's side, my answer, my grandfather on my dad's side was country church preacher for 45 years. Other grandfather was an elder in the church, Sunday school teacher, my parents actually founded, they were church planters at one point time and founded two different churches. When I was young, I was in my early teens when they were founding those churches. So as you can tell, I was surrounded by by religion, but I was raised in an independent Christian tradition, which is kind of a it's camera light. If anybody knows the history of religion in America, it was is a mutation of Christianity that happened in the 1830s or so. You know, it was one of those, you know, we got to go back to the basics, go back to the Bible that all that bullshit. So yeah, I was raised in the camera light. They weren't real strong. Kimberlite theology wasn't very, very good. I didn't think and it went, okay. Yeah. And so I, I went through adolescence, early on, like when I was like, 12 years old, I was visiting my aunt and uncle in New Mexico with my family. And they were they were teachers and the principal of Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Gallup, close to Gallup, New Mexico. So I love going down there because it was wide open. You're right in the middle of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and I'm 12 years old, you know, that's just that's just a kid's dream. And behind him is this Mesa that's 500 feet above the valley floor. And I love mountain climbing to this day. I mean, I've climbed 50 the highest mountains in the continental US. So I still I'm gonna go out and climb another one here. Probably this summer. But I you know, if it's there, I want to climb
David Ames 8:26
it. Yeah.
Darrel Ray 8:28
12 years old, you know, you couldn't slow me down. I got the top and I'm looking around and and I find shark's teeth on the top of the dam mesa. And think wow, that's really crazy. Yeah, I come down. I show it to my aunt Margie, and my my mother. And I say, hey, look, shark's teeth on the top of the mesa. How'd they get up there? And he says, Well, God put them there in the flood. And I thought to myself, you know, unkind words in my head. I know. I'm pretty sure so from time I was 12 years old, I thought evolution was cool. I never bought the creation story. My, my grandfather's weren't too happy that they had a grandkid that didn't believe that God created the earth in six days and in 6000 years ago, so but but they didn't, didn't disown me or anything. And I grew up to be who I wanted to be. But I always wanted to help. I was very socially active. As I went through adolescence, very active in high school and various groups and I sang I sang in the choir. I was in the United Nations Model United Nations. I just did lots of very curious and I couldn't give me enough to read I can read read constantly, which is kind of unusual for adolescent boy, although I was chasing girls too. I'm not saying I was distracted. Sometimes
went to college at Friends University fu for short. Some people say it's Friends University of central Kansas, you'll I'll let you figure that. Anyway, it was a good school then it's since become an evangelical nightmare as far as I'm concerned. There's a good school I got some good education. I majored in sociology and anthropology, I would have actually kind of minored in anthropology. I had enough to be a major, but they didn't offer major. So I basically got a double major, but I couldn't claim it because they didn't offer it. But anthropology was a real big love of mine. I thought just it just captured my attention. I liked sociology. But that wasn't my first love, even though that's what my maths major was. But the end of my college degree, the I had a college deferment for the draft. So I was, I was, it was right in the middle of Vietnam War. And if you didn't get a deferment, you were going to be cannon fodder in Vietnam. And I had been from from my freshman year, I did something. I look back and say, Man, I, my 18 year old self was braver than I am now. I'll tell you, I basically stood up and said, I ain't gonna fight that war mom, I was not gonna go they're dead. They can put me in jail if they want to, they can sit and go to Canada. But I am not fighting. I am not fighting the Vietnam War. And I'm gonna file as a conscientious objector. So I did. I was discouraged. Of course, everybody thought I was horrible, you're not patriotic and a true American for one to go kill people in another country that didn't do anything to us. And I I, they said I won't get it that I'll probably end up in jail. I mean, they did everything you know, to stop me but I was successful. I got I got a I got a for what they call a conscious objector status or whatever. And I was out there protesting the Vietnam War of protest and Richard Nixon of protest, and Linda Johnson and I was protesting, Bureau Agnew. All the people I was out there protesting. And, and even working a little bit at that time in civil rights, but main thing I got was a little part time job. I don't know where the money came from. But it was pitiful money, I got a part time job to get in my car and drive around to all the Kansas, all the little Kansas colleges and handout anti war information and material and organize, you know, try to get people to come to our I wouldn't organizing come to our organized meetings and protests. So it was pretty politically active. And then when I, when I got out of college, the war was starting to wind down but there's draft was still there. And I had this incredible desire, I've always had a desire to help people. It's just, it's just part of my nature i I've since learned to just accept it, you know, I'm going to help you with it. I'm not going to help you against their will. But I the only avenue I could see that to help somebody or help be a helping professional was to go in the ministry, I really didn't understand. I took one psychology class in college, they didn't even have a psychology department and Friends University. That's how that's how small university was. So it wasn't like I thought, oh, psychology would be a good way. I didn't even think of that. I went to seminary, and I looked around for a seminary, that would was so had a social justice component to it. Because I wanted to I wanted to, I didn't want to preach in the traditional sense. I wanted to get out and get my hands dirty and work with people and, you know, engage in civil rights work or political work within the church. And so I got it to I went to skaret college for Christian workers. It's not a it's not existence anymore. At the campuses, it's right across the street from Vanderbilt University and in Nashville. But I went to scared I got a two years degree in religion, with the goal of getting out and going and working and some kind of social justice or civil rights thing within the confines of the church. Which, after two years, I realized the whole religion things kind of bullshit. I didn't think much of it. I was still a liberal Christian, very liberal, Christian. Yeah. But I started realizing this isn't what I want to do. So what am I going to do? So I went to I went across the street to Vanderbilt University where they had the Counseling Center and I, I took some, some tests, you know, occupational tests and career tests. And they said I should be the test showed I should be the lawyer or a psychologist. So I said, I'm too honest to be a lawyer. You must be a psychologist, at least in my mind up to honest. Yeah. So I went to psychology route I accidentally. I didn't even intend to but I got a job through a mutual friend of mine at an institution for juvenile juvenile rehabilitation for juvenile delinquents. And I, I went there and I realized who I really really liked this and I'm pretty good at it to at least what at that level I was pretty good at it, I guess
so after about six months of that, I just said, Well, I'm gonna apply back at Vanderbilt Peabody College, people in the College of Vanderbilt University and for for doctoral doctoral program. And, and I did, and I got in, and, well, I had a lot of fun. I was working full time, my wife and I were about ready to have a baby and I was going to school full time in a doctoral program. I look back now and say, I couldn't do one of those three levels. But it was it was it it just, it just felt right. You know, I, the classes I was taking the professor's I was encountering the research that I was able to get involved with, it was just really cool. And that that gave me a nice boost into a career of lifelong career of psychology. But what I learned, one of the things I learned in my doctoral level studies is I get bored with one thing I've always got to be, you know, I like lots of variety. And Counseling Psychology wasn't really that interesting to me. So I didn't stay on that route long. I moved on into clinical psych, where I was doing a lot of testing and other things, getting some good training, and also getting the opportunity to train other people and and I learned at that time that I'm, I'm a good trainer, I can teach people. Yeah, and I really enjoyed teaching people. But I was a terrible psychologist. On Monday, I was the best psychologist on the planet. On Tuesday, I was a damn good one. But by Wednesday, I was average and you didn't want to get me on Thursday and Friday. So after a while I realized this is not for me, you know, it takes a special person to see patients five days a week I I just I never had the energy, not that kind of energy. And my mind was always going somewhere else. Well, if you're in an office with me, you don't want my mind somewhere else to be listened to. Yeah, so that led me into organizational psych because I'm good at organising, organizing, I'm good at helping structure organization. So they function well I understand the human human factor. And that's ultimately I ended up in or design org site. After about 10 years and clinical and I I loved org psych It was so fun. And I was interacting with VPs of fortune 500 companies I was flying all over the world I had a really good career. Very rewarding. But in the back of my mind the whole time I'm I'm looking at you know, I'm reading stuff I'm looking at religion. I'm watched what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is doing. And I'm looking at the abortion issue. I'm looking at the read the religious right, what they're doing with Jerry Falwell in their early 80s. And it's not sitting well with me. And I think you know, I'd really like it someday I need to do I want to do something like that, or about that. So that's kind of, I guess you could say the big picture into into where I ended up and why I ended up here.
David Ames 19:00
You mentioned that you were a liberal Christian for some time. Was there a moment when you decided that it was you weren't that either that you were done anytime you well?
Darrel Ray 19:07
Yeah, I'm starting. I graduated in 1974 from seminary and my I was married. My wife and I were living in Nashville and we kind of had an agreement she was raised in a fundamentalist her parents were even more fundamentalist, and they were in the same denomination but even more fundamentalist, and she and I had an agreement that we would just find the most liberal church we she wanted to always be in church always want to be going to church somewhere. So okay, I can deal with that. Although I'd rather sleep in on Sunday. But she I did that I was compromising. But I also liked teaching, you know this so this comes back to right make sense. I would go to church and no matter what church we went to, I would end up teaching Sunday school. Yeah, I wouldn't even remember the damn church.
But you know what they're desperate to find somebody to teach. And I taught. Well, when I was in, in college, I was teaching the senior high kids Sunday school. Can you imagine me teaching kids about evolution? I was, I was teaching evolution. When I was a sophomore, junior suborn junior in college. I was teaching evolution in Sunday School at my home church. Wow, okay, yeah. And I got away with it. I will tell you that, Oh, God could have created the world in 6 million years or 6000 years, you know, you take a mad angle, you know, and get away with it. So I experimented with that. And I really enjoyed it. And then when I've gotten married, and we moved to Nashville, I had the opportunity to teach Sunday school again there. And then when I moved back to Kansas, where I live now, my wife and I moved back here. We found the most liberal church we could find in Leavenworth, Kansas, which is hard to do, because it's pretty, it's a military, kinda. Okay. You know, the commander, General Staff College is here with the US Army. So it's pretty conservative area. We went to the Presbyterian church and they were desperate for somebody to teach the adult Sunday school class. So I volunteered to teach it i I'm, I'm not even not a Presbyterian. Right, exactly. I call myself a Quaker atheist. That's what I call myself today. Yeah, yeah. So I was, I started teaching the the adult class, they might get four or five people to show up for Sunday school. On any given Sunday, it was it was a dead class, basically. So I take over and within a month, I'm getting 30 and 40 people come to my class. Well, the room was too small to move me into a room that would hold 100 people. I never I never drew 100. But I was drawn 50 to 60. Because I was I was bringing interesting things in like mostly things like comparative religion. So let's compare Christianity Hinduism. Let's find out about Sikhism. Let's find out what the Baja behind religion is. And they were just eating this shit up. These are these are inquisitive adults, there had never learned a thing when they went to church. That's why they weren't coming. But when I started teaching, I was and I was having a blast because then I'd leave the Sunday school class and I'd go sing as a tenor soloist and the choir just let you know. And I was a, I was a good singer. I was even gonna major and in voice in college, but I was terrible at music theory. So I had to give up a career. I saying for years, so that the answer the question was, I was married, my wife wanted to go to church, I'm surrounded by religious family. We're going to a liberal church that I really only reason I was enjoying us because I'm teaching and then marital problems happen. And after almost 18 years of marriage, we get divorced. Well, to me, that was like a Declaration of Independence. I no longer have to compromise. I don't have to get up and Sunday morning. I can I can go and do things that my ex in laws would be terrified at. Go look campaign for, for Jimmy Carter, you know, or something like that.
David Ames 23:29
Yeah.
Darrel Ray 23:30
Which, which wouldn't have been Jimmy Carter at that time, it was Michael Dukakis. Anyway, yeah. I got to remember my president's here. That was the issue. It was it was that break from, from family break from her family specifically. Because my family always knew I was the weirdo. I'm the black sheep in the family. I'm the oldest child. And, you know, I know a lot of privilege comes with being the oldest kid, you know, there's other things, you know, like she had to do babysitting that I didn't like doing but beyond that, you know, the first kid got to get some privileged position. And I was able to leverage that to my advantage. And I really, I really enjoyed my childhood and I and what's back to back to why I got up. I really started reading more deeply once I got away from the marriage. And don't get me wrong. It was it was a miracle marriage. We we actually use the mediator we didn't we didn't go through divorce lawyers or anything. And we're still friends today. We've got two great kids and you know, there's no animosity or anything. They're just, you know, separating from her family. Was, was a really good step step for me. And it gave me the opportunity to read and interact and not go to church and, boy, I'll tell you It was like decompression it was fresh air i, I can interact with people I wouldn't have normally interacted with I could travel. My wife didn't like traveling. And I love traveling. And I've been I have literally been all over most of the world since then. Yeah, I'd never I'd never hardly been I'd never been on the I'd stage before I got divorced. So now I'm traveling, took my first trip to Europe in 1989. And then now the country almost every, every year at least once, except during COVID. Of course.
David Ames 25:34
Yeah, yeah.
Darrel Ray 25:44
Don't know that there was a single break. But I was. I was agnostic, I would call myself for a long time, until I started dating, my travel companion. And 2001 And we're on a plane to Ireland. We're going to go visit Ireland. And she says, I'm sorry, we're on a plane to to England. And she's reading my manuscript. The God bears. Yeah. And I have everything but I'm an atheist. Yeah, everything but name. But remember, I'm still a psychologist. I still have a practice, right? 2001 or 2000? And no, no, I'm sorry. She's reading an article. No, not this book is but Caitlin. And she recently, she's on the plane, she looks up at him and said, Darryl, you're an atheist. You need to sit or get off the pot. She had been an atheist her whole life, you know, so I said, you're absolutely right, Judy. So I'm gonna stop pretending I'm definitely an atheist. This is 2000 2001, somewhere in around that timeframe. And the fact was that I still couldn't say out loud, I'm an atheist, because I'm in a work environment. I'm a I'm a consultant. I'm interacting with religious people. And I just didn't couldn't take the risk. You know, I'm a, I'm an independent businessman. My whole business depends on and nobody asked me my religion. It wasn't a part of, of what I did. Until Until the god virus came out. In 2009, when when I was writing that I gave, I told my staff, I'm writing this book, I had five staff members. And my office manager turned white and said, Darryl, we're going to lose clients over this. Yeah. And I said, Well, you know, I need to do it. It's just, it's just in my blood, I can't, can't avoid it. And she was right. I lost all but two clients within six months. Wow, clients that I've worked with for 20 years, clients that have known me, trusted me, took my advice worked on me closely paid me lots of money. I mean, but just, it wasn't that I was an atheist, it was that I came out as an atheist.
David Ames 27:59
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Darrel Ray 28:02
So it was it was crazy. I learned a big lesson then, that this society will tolerate you as an atheist, just keep your mouth shut, you know, don't don't tell anybody. And that's kind of the way I've heard from many people and talking about it's being it is one thing talking about another thing.
David Ames 28:21
I think there's a bunch of things there that people will relate to. And that's one of them is like, you know, the the fear of social ostracization in one form or another and particularly if your business is dependent upon it
so I want to hear about the the beginnings of recovering from religion, I understand that you basically did a meetup.com K come hang out. And that that kind of exploded into what we what we now have as recovering from religion.
Darrel Ray 28:55
Yeah, I announced this, I was just after the god virus came out, I was getting constantly inundated with people saying I love your book, but I need help. I couldn't possibly help all these people. And, and I wanted to obviously, that's why wouldn't written the book if I didn't. So I just decided, let me try something. My I will confess, though, that it was a bit selfish, the beginning of this. I had a publicist, he was pretty much worthless to cost a lot of money didn't do anything, except one thing. In the process of trying to publicize the god virus he, he says, why don't you start an organization called recovering from religion and use that to sell your book? I thought, well, that's an interesting idea. So I decided to do that I announced it on meetup.com was fairly new at that time, announced calm, had a had the meeting at Lowell back back room of an IHOP restaurant here in town and and 11 people showed up and I only knew one of those 11 people and after Two or three hours, the restaurant owner is kicking us out. He's closing the room. Yeah. During that time I had people weeping and crying and telling their stories and hugging each other. It was it was. I'm a good group facilitator, I know how to do group therapy. I mean, I got that training and way back in graduate school. And this was like group therapy. But I wasn't being a psychologist. I was just facilitating a meeting. And I only asked two questions. I said, How did religion hurt you? And how did how have you benefited from leaving? It's all I said. And the rest of it was just making sure everybody gets to tell their story. And I'll tell you, David, it was an explosion of emotion in that room. And it hit me hard. As I was walking out, this is no gimmick. This is this is important. It's something people need. And I had no idea that need was so great. And that was the first meeting of recovering from religion. We then had another meeting a couple of weeks later, same thing happened. And we're getting ex Moonies ex Scientologists, ex Mormons, ex Baptists, will get all sorts of people showing up. Ex Catholics was a second meeting. We had these two older gentlemen show up there. They're both in there. They're both in their 70s. Late one of them I know was almost 80 years old. And both of them are musicians. They're they're played the organ. And church. One plays in the Catholic for the Catholic Church, the other plays for some Protestant church. And they're both gay. Yeah, and they're sitting in the meeting. And I'm just assuming, because they sat, they sat next to each other to, I'm just assuming they know each other. Yeah. They didn't know each other. They had no clue. And they show up and they just accidentally sat next to each other probably because they're, you know, both older white guys. And it turns out, they're both gay. They're both musicians in church, and their church would throw them out in a heartbeat if they found out that Yeah, okay. And they're now atheists.
David Ames 32:13
It's all it's all your fault, Darrell.
Darrel Ray 32:16
That was, that was a crazy meeting. Really crazy. But so that was the beginning. And it took off took three or four years for us to get our nonprofit status and really get the organizational structure the way it needed to be not like I said, I'm, I know how to organize I know how to create businesses. So I just took my skills in that area and applied them to this, this organization. And I got bylaws and incorporation and all that sort of stuff. And it started growing and ideas were starting to come in. And before you know it, the idea comes in, we should have a phone line. Not just have not just have meetings or meet up but have a phone line. So we gathered some money together and got got some GoFundMe to do that. And we got a phone line started. And then not long after that. Somebody said, why don't we start taking chances? Good. Not everybody can call in plus, we were getting inquiries from overseas from outside the continental United States. Yeah. So we, we started doing the chat thing. And these things just organically started growing. I cannot possibly do all this stuff. And I don't have the technical expertise, but I know how to facilitate it. And as we got volunteers with various skills, they would say, Yeah, I can do that. Or, you know, I know somebody can do that. And then the next thing was to really develop our training program and and start start trying to understand what, what what's possible for us to do and what, you know what, out of our reach that point in time. And in 2012 the issue of sex, I mean, the first printing of sex and God came out and that caused another tidal wave of need. People are calling me and you know, I need help. I appreciate your book. I'm gay. You know, I'm, quote, sex addict, which there's no such thing by the way, I just don't want to rant about that. And I'm trying to help all these people and I, they say I need a therapist, you know, every therapist to go to called me a sex addict. Every therapist I go to says that I need to go back to church or I need to pray about it or, you know, I violated God's law or some bullshit. I'm thinking therapists shouldn't be doing that. That's unethical as hell until I started trying to find a therapist for people. And I couldn't. I mean, I'm a damn psychologist. I should be able to know the signs but you can get on a therapist website, look at everything they've got, and still not know if they're going to send you back to Jesus or they'll have a cross around their neck or they have a Bible They're on their table. So that led me to start the secular therapy project and not any 2012. We started with 24. Therapists I personally vetted, I knew they were secular, I knew their evidence base, I knew they were licensed. And in 12 years since we started 11 years, since we started, I'm sorry, we've now got 734 registered therapists, and every therapist has been vetted, to make sure they meet those three criteria. And we turned down about 30 to 40% of all applicants, because they don't qualify. I mean, we take this shit seriously. The worst thing that could happen is one of their art therapists would practice woowoo on you or say, you know, you need more spiritual guidance, or, you know, some bullshit that comes out of their own religious worldview. So we pretty much that all of our therapists to make sure there's none of that going to happen. And we're very strict about it. So anyway, so that's the story of both recovering for religion and secular therapy project.
David Ames 36:11
Yeah, very cool. And again, we, you know, at the podcasts were recommended all the time, we're very pro therapy to begin with. And then we referenced people to psychotherapy project, as many, many people tell their stories, and they'll say just what you've described, they went to a therapist, maybe even their website was unclear, but then they get, you know, you have to read your Bible more. And that just isn't an answer to the real world problems they're experiencing.
Darrel Ray 36:35
Well, and that After that happened, I started getting more information about how these are various institutions. Universities, if you will, or training therapists. And I realized that there's been an explosion of universities that are training marriage and family counselors. And most of those institutions are religious institutions. And they're given people master's degrees in marriage and family counseling from Regents University, or George Fox University, or Liberty University, those are all fucking fundamentalist as hell. So what do you what do you really learning in those institutions? What you're really learning is a few techniques that might be psychologically sound, but mostly, how do you bring people back to Jesus? Or how do you Eddie, because families, that's the way you infect people with religion, you do it through children. So that's why the emphasis in so many institutions, religious institutions of higher learning, has been on marriage and family counseling. It's a lot easier set that up. And you know, a lot of people are wanting to come they want to help children and help families and they also believe in Jesus. So, I have been so shocked sometimes at for example, pH, you can get a PhD at you get a PhD at Regents University, which is Pat Robertson's University. Okay. And you will go, one of the requirements is you have to go through a year of pat robertson theology that says God sends hurricanes to Orlando because Okay, so you got a PhD from the University that teaches that shit. And what I mean, that's just, that's just so unethical. And yet, they got a PhD. They are licensed in the state of their residence maybe. So we're challenging that we're starting to try and challenge that and our, our current director, Dr. Travis force. McKee, bourse is actually making speeches around the show. He's done it once. He had to cancel yesterday, this weekend, but he's making talks about religious privilege in therapy. And that's crazy. Why would religion be privileged in therapy? And I did a you can go look this up. I did a talk at the last year at the conference on religious trauma on whiteness, professional psychology ignore religion, religious trauma, religious abuse, and there's a there's a lot of implied training within many adversities that you don't touch people's religion, even though that religion may have caused the abuse or the trauma that you're trying to treat. How the hell do you do that? How do you treat religious trauma without talking about religion? Anyway? So that's, that's where I'm at right now in my career. I'm really push on religious trauma
David Ames 39:58
that's a great segue. That's what I got. I want to talk about next just the a bit about the psychology of religion and, and, or the deconstruction process, the conversion process. But as a jumping off point, you're describing the god viruses, it's almost like a transmission vector. Religion is going through families, as you just mentioned, generally indoctrination and childhood. My experience, you know, I became a Christian, my late teens already had very much a sense of identity already. And what I've been shocked at as I've interviewed people is, how devastating it is for those of those people who grew up with it. Right? Like, yeah, right, five years old, you're, you know, you're right and center, you're going to hell if you don't do X, Y, and Z. And that stays with a person. Right? Maybe if you could talk about a little bit about your understanding from that perspective.
Darrel Ray 40:50
Yes, and I think this is, it's a lot of new information has just come out in, let's say, the last five or 10 years, about things like trauma. And I'm not talking to religious Trump, just Trump trauma in general, and how to treat it, how trauma affects the brain, that sort of stuff. And there's other information. I just, I think, what we're doing what I'm doing, and what my colleagues within regard for religion and the psychotherapy project are doing is we're, we're taking this research that's being applied to, you know, people who were abused by their childhood, or somebody who's, you know, think of a refugee coming from Syria right now, a 10 year old kid from Syria is probably experiencing trauma, or a soldier, or a family member in Ukraine, they're experiencing trauma. So those are all traumas that we can, we can put our finger on we understand much more lately, what that means and how to treat it and why it why it's so hard to treat in some cases. But nobody said, Okay, let's look at this. How many people have been traumatized by war? How many people have been traumatized by non religious child abuse? I mean, there's been a lot for sure. But I'm guessing there's more people throughout history been abused by religion than any other single thing. I mean, religion has built in abuse, look at the Catholic Church, pedophile problem, are the Jehovah's Witness, sexual abuse problem, there, there's just so much of it out there that's been covered up never been examined. until relatively recently. And that is, that's where we're at. We're saying, let's look at all this. And then there's, we see in recovering religion, we see this just just difficult emotional journey that people have. And their, their tendency to be drawn back into religion, or they leave religion and they still can't get over the fear of hell. Or they leave religion and they lose their whole family. So they lose the connection there. So there's a lot going on there. It's not a simple psychological formula. It's, it's a massive amount of emotional complexity. And it's, if you think about it, when you separate from religion, you're losing, losing, losing, losing, you're losing a lot of things you're losing, you might lose parents, you might lose your own kids, you might lose your marriage, you might lose your job. I mean, there's a lot of possibilities there. Every one of those losses evokes grief. So you've got a complex pattern of grief to have to deal with. It's hard enough to get over one thing that you're grieving over, let alone something as massive and big as this incredibly big worldview change you're going through. And then there's another piece that I think is interesting that we've been talking about lately. And that's attachment theory. You know, as we know, people, people, we have attachment systems in our brain. And they're, they're very important for our survival as a species. Because our infants are so immature. It takes years for human infant to become self sufficient. And I'm not talking now I'm talking about 10,000 years ago, we were still hunter gatherers. You still You can't let a five year old just go you'll get eaten by lions. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to be careful how you raise children. And those children better be bonded to you better better have a close attachment. Because the best guarantee of survival is attachment to the parent that can protect you and teach you how to survive in this dangerous world. Whether the dangerous world is Van is of Africa, or the jungles of New York City. I mean, it doesn't matter. There's danger out there. And that attachment is important. So we have very strong attachments as humans, to other humans. And we know this from a very, very old and unethical experiments, for example, the Harry Harlow experiments on monkeys back in the back in the 60s, which today are totally unethical, but, but they were done. And we know that that attachment is so important to the baby monkey, the baby monkeys will fail to thrive, they will literally die from lack of attention. And then there's other experiments like the Romanian orphanage crisis that happened after or late in the Ceausescu's dictatorship back in the 70s. And we have the same thing happening to human infants, they're getting plenty of food, they're getting nutrition, nutrients, they're not getting attention, they're not getting human contact, and they're dying, or growing up with incredibly bad, difficult mental health issues. Well, what we're seeing in religious deconversion, is they're having to deal with that detachment. Yeah, there's, that attachment is strong. And most of us stay attached to our family are appearance the rest of our lives. Most of us, not all of us by longshot but but then what if I have to tear that attachment off? My brain is going to go through some cycles, a lot of cycles, about how do I reconnect with appearance? How do I tell my parents, I'm an atheist? How do I do this or that, and all these things have consequences for the attachment. And what we understand better now is that this incredibly difficult time people have leaving religion is tied up with the grief and loss of all these things, but also tied up in attachment. And how to I mean, it's a big step to, to step totally away from your parents, because that's where the original attachment was, yeah, or to be rejected by your parents. And so it takes a huge amount of effort, psychological energy, emotional energy, to make that step. And it requires help, most people have a hard time doing it by themselves. Yeah. Especially they're raised in an environment where they were gaslighted say, are really abused as children. Because as we know, an abused child still has a very strong attachment. It may be an unhealthy attachment. But there's still attachments still there. So a lot of what we do at recovering from religion and secular therapy project is simply helping people deal with their, I call it detachment.
David Ames 48:05
Yeah, exactly. So I love that framing actually, and I again, I know that listeners are going to respond to that or see themselves in that.
Darrel Ray 48:15
Yep, yep. So let's just call it detachment syndrome. Yeah. And it's a part of religious trauma syndrome, of course, but it's deed. Yeah. Yeah.
David Ames 48:34
So it's interesting you say that, because I've heard you say in the past, that you agree that religious trauma exists, but you at one point in time, said you didn't think that religious trauma syndrome. Oh,
Darrel Ray 48:46
yeah. My my mistake. I don't usually word you add the word syndrome. Yeah. Yeah, I still don't it. Could
David Ames 48:54
you explain this? Yeah, for
Darrel Ray 48:58
a technicality. I don't think the layperson really cares. Okay. But it's, if you have a disease, there's there's a, there's a pattern of symptoms. I'm talking about physical disease, right? There's a pattern of symptoms that tell you what that disease is, you know, if you got measles, there's probably four or five things that are observable and testable. That will tell you it's measles. The same thing is true of psychological conditions as well mental mental conditions. So you need to you need to be able to determine what those symptoms are with some degree of accuracy and independent, objective observation in order to say okay, we have a cluster of symptoms here, and the cluster adds up to religious trauma syndrome. A syndrome is a cluster of symptoms, it's all okay, so, I don't think we're scientifically at the place where we can say we have a cluster a syndrome with We don't have a cluster of symptoms. Now, I do think and Dr. Merlin Waddell, and I kind of disagree a little bit on this, although I'm a great admirer of of her work back and she coined the term religious trauma. I think someday we may be there. But you know, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter if we ever call it syndrome or not. Okay, because we have a, we have a set of criteria within the DSM that helps us understand and identify trauma, just trauma, without respect to religion. Right? Right. And if you have those symptoms, you have trauma, you have a trauma syndrome, you have a cluster of symptoms that fit the diagnosis of trauma. Now, where that trauma comes from, it could come from childhood abuse, gum from a bomb going off in a war, it could be being a refugee that, you know, has, has had periods of starvation. And all those things could cause trauma, or it could come from, from the terror that happens, you know, having people shooting guns around you in a war, or it could be the terror of being told you're going to hell every day. And that Satan is Satan is speaking to you when you touch your genitals and masturbate or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I don't care which one of those you choose, they all lead to trauma. So we don't need religious trauma syndrome, we just need to understand what trauma is. And then we might, if we really want to get help the person, we're going to have to understand where that trauma came from. And if it came from religion, then we need to label that as religious trauma. Whether it's, you know, you don't need to go any farther than that.
David Ames 51:57
Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that clarity there. So.
I've been kind of waiting to get here. So you know, your second book is sex and God. And you also did the sex and sexuality podcast, a massive theme. The people that get interviewed is the effect of purity culture, on their sexuality as adults, even as D converts, maybe talk a little bit about what effect that has on a person and the repression of normal human sexuality.
Darrel Ray 52:36
Yeah. Well, we can almost go right back to the attachment piece. Because if you think about it, the first human being you're attached to is probably your mother, the second one, maybe your father or another close caregiver. When you become an adult, those that attachment approach, you take into adulthood, because I mean, what is what is marriage, but some kind of attachment. But if you if you're going into if you're going into adulthood, with a messed up attachment system in your mind in your brain, then you don't know how to attach to other people? Well, what religion does is religion comes along in your early teens, and tells you your body is your enemy. normal sexual behavior, is the devil talking to you that you shouldn't have thoughts that, you know, you shouldn't have sexual thoughts. So we've got the religious thought police involved. Yeah. And all these things are, are oppressing you and confusing your mind about how to view your own body, and how to view other people's bodies. How to have a relationship with another human being with a body that and then what if you're gay? You know, what if you are LGBTQ? What if you're trans, you're getting incredibly mixed messages here. They're just incredibly confusing. So is it any wonder that that people have a hard time creating healthy attachments, sexual attachments, because they had such a terrible model in their teens? And if they're raised religious, their own parents also were infected with this purity idea. I mean, I my own family is a perfect example of this. My grandmother got married to Amanda main Thompson, and somewhere around 9029 She got pregnant. She had my father 1928 My father was then born in 1929. She was a flapper. She was a wild girl. She was out there dancing every every night. Yeah. Now, of course she never she would admit to it only only marginally. You couldn't get her to say too much there. Are she has My dad. And by by the time my dad was 10 months old, and the timeframe is as unclear because there was no documentation. Yeah, by the time that my dad is 10 months old, the census, the US Census 9030 shows my grandmother living with a guy named Ray.
David Ames 55:20
Okay, so she was
Darrel Ray 55:23
married to Thompson, there's no divorce records. And now and and oh, by the way, the US census in 1930 says, my grandmother Pearl Ray is living with a guy named Thompson. So the record shows she's living with Thompson and she's living with Ray It's okay if she wants to be polyamorous, I don't get the way she looked at it. And she was so ashamed of that little fact that we didn't find out. We didn't find out about this till much, much later after she was dead. She basically lied to us her whole life about about the fact that she may have had a baby quote out of wedlock. We're not sure. We're not sure about the timeline here. And then and then she is there's a divorce paper. The divorce papers show up in 1941. Now this is 11 years after she had moved out. Yeah, so she's been living with my grandfather and sin for 11. Okay, that's, that's purity culture. At at its best or worst. I don't know what you call it. Yeah. And then she she gets religion around 1941 or two Big time, big time. Religion. I don't know what caused it. But she be she goes, dives, takes a deep dive into Jesus. My grandfather becomes Ray, my grandfather raised the old grandfather knew him but he's not my genetic grandfather, he, he becomes a preacher and a Sunday school teacher and all this may really get into religion and my grandmother decides that my dad needs to get circumcised because it's okay. Because that's the Christian thing to do. Circumcision was never practiced in the United States until about 1890. It started. It had never been practice. I did not have that. Okay. Yeah, it's a it's a fundamentalist Kellogg, Kellogg cereal. Ah, Dr. Kellogg started the notion that boys shouldn't masturbate that masturbation leads to mental illness. And one way to reduce or eliminate masturbation is to circumcise boys. So in the 1890s 19, early 1900s, he started this campaign, forcing boys to get circumcised and shaming parents into it and saying, Look, Jesus, Jesus intended us all to be circumcised. And was it was a religious notion. He was a he was he may have never had sex his whole life. We're not sure he was married, but he never had kids. And he was too busy shaming everybody else. And he belonged to a sect of Christianity. That was pretty weird. I think Seventh Day Adventists are some derivative of that I forget. But anyway, remember Dr. Kellogg of Kellogg's cereals? The one that fucked a lot of men up? Yeah. A lot of us.
David Ames 58:23
Yeah. I have some words for him as well. Yeah. And so
Darrel Ray 58:29
my grandmother forces my dad at 12 year olds 12 year old to get circumcised without anesthesia. Oh my Wow, that that is purity culture. Yeah, as extreme if you think about it. Muslims do that now to boys and girls. Many many all Muslim culture, do it to boys that many several do it to girls with no anesthesia at 12 years old. You just read all these. Her book about Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book. You'll you'll hear the worst of it. But so my dad experienced this. And then I watch. You know, as his son, my parents son, I get access to information about them or know things and my mom always wanted to confide shipped to me, she probably shouldn't have. Like, I was like a psychologist in the family when I'm a good listener. And I find out I find this all out and my mom says this really messed up your dad. He has a hard time with sex. He loves sex. I know that but they did not have a good sex life for years. But, but partly because of this. And in fact, it took my grandmother dying. They their sex life did not really get good until after my grandmother died. I think something like that had a cathartic effect on him and he was able to move on. So I just look at my own family and look at what did purity culture do to my family and it And I've only got I've only gotten up to my father's generation. Yeah, the rest. I mean, I got so many more examples in my generation and then sub two more generations, I mean, old enough to have two generations now. And I'm watching the religious trauma still work its way out. I'll give you an example. A relative of mine had had a baby, quote, baby out of wedlock. I hate I hate that term. But that's the term they use back then. Sure. So she was shamed for having this baby before she got married. She did get married. But when the baby was born, it had a birth defect, a serious birth defect, okay. And it's she believed this purity culture at work, that God was punishing her and her baby for her having sex outside of marriage, man. Now, that was that would have been the next generation beyond me. Yeah. And that person has now grown up. Oh, and throughout this poor, poor person's early life, they were abused, because God was punishing him. Oh, man, you know, there's a lot of child abuse going on here. So much so that other relatives had to take the child because the mother was not capable or was abusive. Now that child has grown up, that child has had other children, and the same thing is being perpetuated by them. So this is you got Greta 1929 through to today. And you can see a pattern of religious sexual abuse and purity culture. Through what what how much is that? 8090? Yeah, well, that's that's a long time. It's 90 years of, of trauma in one in one family. And I'm sure my family is not unusual at all.
David Ames 1:01:55
Wow, I really appreciate giving us the personal perspective on that. That was that was really, really valuable.
Last topic, you hinted at it and talking about Catholic priests who are nuns who are celibate. But I've heard you talk about the connection too hard, right? Like the proud boys, for some reason, there's this purity element within what are not obviously religious ideologies. And maybe we could talk about how that happened and why maybe,
Darrel Ray 1:02:33
wow, okay, that's okay, wow, that's a whole nother two we got three more hours. I will just say that, to begin with all ideologies, have within them the elements of a religion. It doesn't matter. If you read my book, The God virus, I talked about communism as a religion. I mean, you look at Russia, Lenin is in a tomb, as if he's immortal. You know, the pharaohs were immortalized as gods. Well, same thing. They immortalized Lenin as a god you look at North Korea. Kim Jong Hoon, or Kim Jong Il Kim was one of those camps, yes. Now is now he's president for eternity. I mean, that's their word. Right? He'd been dead for, what 3040 years, and he's still president, there will never be another president as far as they're concerned. So those are religious ideas from what appears to be a secular ideology. And how many ideologies I mean, Nazism was an ideology, but it had incredible amounts of religious overtones to it. And wasn't Hitler really godlike in in the minds of the of those people. And if you look at things like the ideology that Putin is trying to espouse in Russia to justify the imperialistic Tsar czarist kind of expansion, it looks like the religion of nationalism, just like the religious right is looking at etiology of Christian nationalism. It these, these ideologies are remarkably similar because because the brain works the same whether you're a Russian, you're an Egyptian pharaoh, or you're, you know, you're a, Jerry Falwell, the human brain has these has these tendencies and there's openings in the brain for what it needs to absorb to survive, right? And in religions just come along, says, Oh, we could take advantage of that. Religion. To use the metaphor is a virus just like I said in the book. So etiologies are simply a virus, just like Any other any other biological virus the virus of Christianity wants to get from, from my brain to your brain. Now the most effective way to do that is to go through children is to brainwash indoctrinate children, that's the most effective. But you know, you got to Jehovah's Witnesses that knock on your door, when they're knocking on your door, they're trying to sneeze on you. Right? And the same thing for Mormons, they're trying to sneeze on you. They're trying to give you their god virus. Yeah, well, you so no matter whether you call it the proud boys, you know, or you call it, the Nazi you Hitler's youth, it doesn't matter. It's an etiology that's infected the brain. That gives a sense of longing, comfort and attachment. And I don't think I don't want to overemphasize it. But I also want to emphasize enough that we should, we should start acknowledging that attachment is a component of what what etiologies bring. They give me a sense of security. That's what that's what you're seeking as a child is what you're attaching to your caregiver is you want that security, so you can survive? Well, at all just come along, says we have the answer to surviving in this environment. And once you get infected with it, your rational brain is much weaker than this. I mean, it's so weak. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort to rationally work yourself out of these. So there's a lot of purity culture in, in things like the in cells or the proud boys. There's a lot of purity culture going on there because they've discovered the same thing that religions discovered. I don't quote Richard Nixon often, but this is one of the times I think he's, he's correct here. If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. It's if you've got them by their genitals, if they've got if you've got them by their sexuality, they will follow and that's what all these ideologies are doing. If you look at Russian communism, it was incredibly sexually repressive. If you look at Chinese communism, from the very beginning, it has been incredibly sexually repressive, even though Nazi dung had many, many girlfriends concubines, wives, whatever he had. Of course, it never belongs to the leader of the cult. The cult is not restricted by these rules, but everybody else is Communist China. Etiology is sexually sexually negative Russian, communist ideologists, actually negative proud boys a sexually negative it's, it's because sexuality is so important to us. If you can control a person's sexuality, you got him, they cannot get away. And then if you if you create fear around that sexuality, and terror of my own body, or terror that I might, for example, if if whatever the ideology is says, gays are the enemy, and I'm gay, I'm gonna have to look extra macho, I'm probably gonna have to do things to show that I'm worthy of the cult leader. And so you get gay Republicans in Congress, you know, they're outright or gay fundamentalist ministers doing crazy shit, but it's just a psychological pattern. I've seen it time after time or time whether you call it religion or ideology, they use the same techniques.
David Ames 1:08:46
I think that's actually a profound insight that if you have their sexuality that you basically have their minds and hearts as well. So yeah,
Darrel Ray 1:08:54
yeah. And Richard Nixon of all people. If you look at there's a documentary things called Wild Wild West it's about a guru from India that comes to Portland, Oregon or Oregon, I think it was and I've watched the documentary yet. It's like a classic study and all this shit. Yeah, it was it was incredibly sexually there. His cult was sexually restrictive. Yeah, he's grown. A whole bunch of women. And it's a look or look at the Waco Texas, you know, the brand's videos. He he had 20 or 30 Look at the Mormons Joseph Smith. 38 wise Brigham Young 54 wives or 52 wives who knows they lost count. So the cult leader is not restricted by the rules. But they know that formula for for getting people infected is through through religion. Religion is a sexually transmitted disease. Interesting. Yeah. If you think about it, without sex religion could would not be transmitted, it would be very hard. And you've got to have purity culture or some mean that's Hinduism, Hinduism, an incredibly purity, culture oriented religion. And so it's Islam. I mean, they're incredibly sexually restrictive. So I rest my case there find, find me an example that that contradicts. And I'll be very interested in that example. But I haven't seen one yet.
David Ames 1:10:30
I think that is the Mic drop. I also appreciate that you bring out that this is not limited to Christianity in any way, it's not even limited to religion, that that right ideologies in general. I think that that's profound insight. Dr. Darrel Ray, thank you so much, I want to give you a moment just to talk about anything you want to promote the secular therapy project, well, if
Darrel Ray 1:10:53
people need help, if they're dealing with some of the issues you and I've talked about, go to recovering from religion.org, hit the chat button, or call our number 8184. I doubt it. And you can call us from anywhere. And we've got five phone numbers directly from English speaking countries, like South Africa, like Australia, you know, and so forth. But you can literally call us from anywhere on the planet, if you've just got an internet connection, because we have web call as well. And we can help you and we can help you in many ways we can get you resources that you probably can't find yourself, you just tell us your story. Tell us what you're struggling with. We will find resources, we have a very huge, vetted, very curated library, that that we can find stuff and help get get help for you. We can also connect you with local groups, if you want to face to face meet with people. We don't have groups in every city. But even if you don't have one in your city, we have virtual groups that meet by zoom just like you and I are doing right now. They're meeting all the time, and you can you can meet with other people are going through the same thing you are. Or if you want to get in and talk to other people, maybe you're an ex Mormon, you're an ex Joe's witness, maybe you're LGBTQ plus, and you want to talk to other people in your same say having same issues, you can talk to us and we can let you into our private Slack channel, you have to come through us you cannot find on the internet, come to us say I'd like to join the ex Mormon group or whatever we can connect you with with that as well. And then of course, if you need professional, we're just peer support. If you need psychological professional support, you go to the secular therapy project and register at the STP. And then you can just search close to your zip code. It's kind of like online dating, you can search for anybody close to you, and you email them through our system. So you maintain confidentiality, and privacy. And then once you've found a therapist that fits your needs, you make an appointment, then it's you step outside of our system. And you know, go go get the therapy you need. Excellent. Other than that, I'd say read my book, sex and God or read the god virus. I think almost any human on the planet would probably benefit from either of both of those books. If I do say so myself.
David Ames 1:13:22
I concur. I and we will have links in the show notes to all of those things. So Dr. Darrel Ray, you've been incredibly generous with your time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Darrel Ray 1:13:31
Thank you, David.
David Ames 1:13:37
Final thoughts on the episode. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. What's important to me is that the deconstruction process and the move away from religious thought has scientific underpinnings and we get to hear that from someone like Dr. Darrel Ray. The quote of the episode has to be religion is a sexually transmitted disease. I think what Dr. Ray meant there is that religion propagates from parents to children. And it's in that indoctrination that allows religion to continue, I also thought was very insightful to make the connection to attachment theory. And that part of the grief process of deconstruction and deconversion is the loss of that attachment both to community and to a sense of God's presence. I think that's absolutely true and why it can be so traumatic and painful when we come out of religion. At the podcast here, we are trying to be as open as possible to as many people as possible, but it's also good to reflect at times that religion can be criticized the analogy that Dr. Ray uses a virus is valid and As Dr. Ray said, to quote, I'm guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built in abuse. It's okay to say that that is an abusive system, it is okay to want to leave and to get out. If you need to talk to somebody, the recovering from religion is a great place to start. They have, as Dr. Ray pointed out both telephone numbers and online, you can reach out to somebody and have a conversation. They also have a bunch of resources, including more liberal churches. So if you aren't ready to leave, they have those kinds of resources as well. No one there is trying to D convert anyone they are there to listen to you will also mention the secular therapy project. If you're looking for a therapist who is not going to ask you to read your Bible more and pray more. It's free to you to find the therapists you do need to pay the therapist once you engage with them. But the secular therapy project is a great database to find people who have gone through that rigorous vetting that Dr. Ray spoke of in the interview, we will obviously have links in the show notes. I want to thank Dr. Darrel Ray for being on the podcast for sharing with us his wisdom, His education, his expertise. And his personal story, I think it was really valuable to hear the personal side of the scientific aspect that Dr. Darrell brings to the table. Thank you so much, Dr. Ray for being on the podcast. The circular Grace Thought of the Week is about independence, I originally had the experience that many of you have had as well of being the atheist at church. While there I tried to think of it from an anthropological point of view. I was watching my former faith tradition with fresh eyes and how I might experience it had I been at a religious ceremony that was unfamiliar to me. And it was striking, like what would lead people to raise their hands and sing and be demonstrative about their faith. And it struck me that it was absolutely about culture, it's about being a part of the in group and conforming to be accepted by that group. And I want to encourage you that if you were one of the people who couldn't conform, you couldn't make it work. And you needed to be independent, that that's actually a good thing. beyond religion, we are products of our culture. If you're listening to this in the United States, you're an American, you have a set of cultural ideas that are built in. And some of those are great, and some of them may not be. So independence and the ability to be an independent thinker is critical. Maybe especially in the moment in time in which we are in politically and technologically that we have to be able to question what we are given question the expectations to conform. I don't mean here rejection of norms just for rejection sake, but rather critically taking a look at what we accept to be true and good and moral, really working through that individually to the best of our abilities. We are going to take another week break. So we were are back on August 20. Arline interviews our guests and Jay, that's going to be a great conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheist United studios Podcast Network
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s guest is author Jo Lloyd Johnson. Jo grew up in a “non-denominational charismatic commune”. She spent her adolescence in various churches, but they weren’t as “Spirit-filled” as she was taught they could be.
She married young and the first years of marriage were difficult–alcohol abuse, church-shopping, and the difficulties that come with having young children.
She and her husband needed the church to be a place of deep and meaningful relationships.
“When we started seeing church as a social club [with no depth], we were like, ‘No. This is not what we thought it was…’”
By 2018, Jo realized the Church was steeped in Patriarchy. She was fine with “a woman’s place” until she wasn’t.
Jo has used writing as a way to process the trauma and emotions she’s experienced and her book, Silenced in Eden, is helping others on their own journeys.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I are trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my patrons who support the podcast. You too can have an ad free experience of the podcast by becoming a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you are doubting deconstructing, or de converting, you do not have to do it alone. Our private Facebook group deconversion Anonymous is trying to be a safe place to land. Join us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. onto today's show. My guest today is Joanna Johnson. Joanna has written the book Silenced in Eden. That is a memoir of her experience growing up as a dedicated Christian. experiencing sexual trauma is a young child growing up within a family and extended family of Christians trying to fulfill the expectations of being a Christian trying to go into ministry. The purity culture she experienced the sexism and repression were common throughout her life. Jo is an obvious leader and that showed throughout her Christian journey as she was a leader in various places but always was held back. You can find her book Silenced and Eaden on Amazon. Of course, there'll be links in the show notes. But before we begin, I want to read a statement from Jo Silenced and Eaden is meant to be a voice for all who have been silenced and encourage others to speak their painful truth. Because of this $1 from each book sale will go to the nonprofit Louder Than Silence. Louder Than Silence exists to provide survivors of sexual violence with the community and resources needed to gain hope and healing. They focus on paying for EMDR trauma therapy, hosting workshops and retreats providing self care kits and much more. Their biggest dream is that survivors know that they are not alone and have a foundation of support among other survivors as they navigate their journeys together. If you are a survivor of sexual trauma, I would very highly recommend that you reach out to Louder than Silence. And thank you to Jo for making that a part of her book sales. Here is Joanna Johnson telling her story.
Jo Johnson, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Joanna Johnson 2:44
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
David Ames 2:46
Jo, you have written a really powerful book called Silenced in Eden, it is a memoir. It's really raw and honest. And we're gonna get to hear a bit of that story as you tell us here today. Thank you for reaching out, first of all for wanting to be on the podcast and I'm excited. You're here.
Joanna Johnson 3:04
Thank you. Yeah, I love what you do. I love the the thing I love most about this podcast is it's people who have D converted or deconstructing reaching out and like helping other people who are in it. And like that was the whole motivation of writing for me was this idea that like we those who came before can help those who are in it now.
David Ames 3:29
Yes, yeah, exactly. Jo, since your memoir is your story, we're basically going to go over the book in telling your story. But as we always talk about what was your faith tradition, when you were growing up?
Joanna Johnson 3:41
Yes. So I did prepare for that one. So I was I am a grand pastor's grandkid. Okay, so my grandpa was a pastor. He started a non denominational charismatic commune. So it was a church but then people also started living together. And just like with both charismatic we had spent praying in tongues, we had my grandma would often see angels worship time would never have like a end to it. It would just go as long as it went. But my grandpa passed away. I was only four. So the church ended when, when his shortly after him. And then we were in the world of Calvary Chapel. And first Baptists and my parents it was kind of like the desert to them, because here they are these very Spirit moving, and then they're in dry.
David Ames 4:52
Yeah. That's quite a change. Yeah, yes.
Joanna Johnson 4:56
Very, very big change for them. So when I was 16, I actually stumbled on to a nondenominational charismatic church. Okay. And so I, of course, when I went there, I was like, hey, this feels really familiar, right? This seems like what my parents have been telling me, You're just supposed to be like, because you have very little memory before five. So I didn't really know, I just saw their Christianity and then the Christianity that was in front of me, and it didn't, like, line up the same. So I knew that there was a spiritual NISS or a charismatic pneus to their faith, but I didn't see it in in the church practice that I was growing up in. Right. Got it. Okay. Okay. So when I see that at 16, I like, this is what they've been telling me about and call it like, clamored onto it. And that became my entire life. Yeah. So at 16 and, you know, 16 years trying to find yourself, you're in high school. I had my like, six months of rebellion. And then I was like, Okay, I'm going to be perfect. Yeah, I literally tried to be perfect. And so, charismatic church became my life. I actually did two years of an unpaid internship, where I actually paid to go, like to work for them right or free. paying them also. And that was where I met my husband. Okay. Yeah, so, Christian, Christian. Everything was church. We were doing leadership together. He ends up on staff at church. Okay, we're we're courting or dating. Purity culture, right? Well, we're also Hardy kind of human in love for the first time ever. So we fumble the ball, right? We don't make it to the altar before we make it under the sheets, if you want to say
David Ames 7:17
yes, yeah.
Joanna Johnson 7:27
It's funny now, just the last like two years, somebody told me to read the great sex rescue. I don't know if you've read it. So it's a Christian book about like, from a Christian author, but it's talking about how purity culture, Christian idea of sex actually leads at it statistically showed leads to bad sex. Yeah. And like, I think, especially for women, because we're not allowed to have a sex drive in Christian, whatever. And I do try to talk about that a little bit in the book, like, we're either Virgin Mary or a whore. Like, that's the Bible's idea of women. So, now, so my husband and I, you know, we have sex before marriage. And now looking back, I'm like, I'm really happy we did. Yeah. Yes. Because I am a victim of childhood sexual assault, which disconnects you from your body? Christianity, which tells you your feelings are bad and your you are bad. disconnects you from your body. And so as we as me and my husband, at the time fiance, are trying to ignore our body but not doing it well. Right. Right. I it was the first time in my life, I realized now where I was able to connect with my body. Okay, and I realized, like, if I would have done the Christian way of being perfect, ignoring your body's urges, then you say a little promise. You end up half it like you're supposed to then that night, right? It's like, okay, yeah, on, turn everything on. All of a sudden it goes from zero to 100. And so knowing my own personal like trauma, that probably would have destroyed me, it would have destroyed our marriage. I don't know if if having sex and knowing my bodies, whatever, like I'm not ready yet. I don't know how I would have been able to heal. Like I know that would have been more damaging is what I'm saying. Right, right. So now I can look back at our first time with happiness. But sadly, I didn't have that this realization while we were in it, right? Yeah, yes. So while we're in it, we would have you know, it was pleasurable and then it was shameful. Immediately after, right, right. So, so it was. So Anyways, long story short. He, the church has this pre marriage counseling, counseling.
David Ames 10:43
Yeah. Yeah,
Joanna Johnson 10:45
exactly. Counseling by people who are not trained to be counselors. Well, the last one is on our last meeting was on our purity. And my husband spills the beans. Right? We are no longer pure.
So two weeks before our wedding, he gets fired. Oh, wow.
David Ames 11:17
Yeah, you're Yeah, you're so you're already engaged. The church knows that you're getting married? We both are honest. Yeah. And in in marriage counseling, or in premarital counseling, you admit that or your husband admits that you've had sacks? And they fire? Unbelievable?
Joanna Johnson 11:33
Yes, absolutely. Which, yeah, again, just like, Let's load the shame on us. And, yeah, so we ended up having to, like, move in with his parents, because that was his income. And so it started out our marriage really rough. And at that time, the pastor meets with us and she's like, okay, you can do X, Y, and Z for nine months. And then we'll talk about coming back on staff. And I'm like, Okay, let's do that. I'm like, Okay, I know how to try to be perfect. I will go back to trying to be perfect. Where, where my husband's like, no, like he's mad. He feels like a failure. Also, they took away like, we were in ministry, we were he was on staff, we already had multiple outreach things going on. And they just dropped all of them or took them away and handed them to someone else. So he's really hurt by that. And does it at the time is just like, forget everything, right? So we're on two very different ends of the like, reactionary spectrum. He starts drinking heavily. And I'm begging him to go to church. Right. That's how we start our marriage. Yeah. I feel like I end up pregnant pretty quickly mothering my daughter, well, my husband's still in this angry but not really dealing with it. That's the problem with alcohol. Right, is that you're not feeling the feelings. You're not. He's not deconstructing, he's not deciding what stays and goes. He's just mad. And numbing the mad, right. Sure. All the pain, the pain under it? Yeah, yes. Right. Because anger, I've learned is a second emotion. Right. So there's the hurt that he's hiding from. Um, so we're in that for a while. We start we actually find a it's funny, we call it the church, the church to point out because it was a church, that was birthed out of leaders that left the first church I found at 16. So in the end, it ends up being the same problems, right. But at the time, it's a lot easier to blame the one pastor, right. And even we hear this a lot with deconstructing and de converting. It's like, Oh, you got hurt by one person. But then you're for those of us who have left like, I guarantee it wasn't one person, right? Yeah, it was. It was multiple people it was you start to realize it's a system that is harmful. So at the time, we didn't know that it was the one pastor.
David Ames 14:55
Sure. Yeah. It's easy to identify that way and I think you've expressed it really well. So far, just to say that purity culture, which is a major theme throughout your whole book separates us from our our bodies and our desires in very natural, normal things, and we're suppressing that. And as I've just been coming to learn that many, many people are affected by that. And even what you were describing that having to go from zero to 100, right off on the wedding night, so to speak. It does not work for many people. No, it
Joanna Johnson 15:28
doesn't. Yeah, and the heartbreaking is I've heard stories of people who ignore that, like, I've heard both right. I've heard men who are gentle enough to be like, Oh, you're not ready. Okay, well, tonight we won't, and we're going to enjoy whatever level of intimacy we can have. Right. I've also heard the horror stories, where it is traumatizing. And the man is promised I get to have sex on this night. So I will with or without your
David Ames 16:03
participation. Yeah. It tends to be better with the participation.
Joanna Johnson 16:11
Yeah, on all blends, right. Yeah, for all people involved. And that's where, like, I know, with my background, that that would have destroyed. And it's funny because my husband is the most overly aware of my arousal and feelings. And I would joke with him that he was more connected to me than I was.
Speaker 3 16:35
Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah. And not just physically like,
Joanna Johnson 16:39
he will tell me when something's about when something emotionally is bothering me. Because I'll start to get I am so disconnected from my feelings that it usually takes a week, something will happen and I'll like ignore it or not realize, like that, that bothered me. But I'll start to get short with people. I'll start to get irritable, I'll start whatever. And he'll be like, Jo, something's something's going on. Take a moment figure out what's under neath here. Something hurt your feelings or something's wrong. But so yeah, I would just joke that he is more connected to my feelings than I am working on that though. Yeah.
David Ames 17:24
Day to day by day, okay.
Joanna Johnson 17:34
So anyways, we ended up back at a church. And he spent five years stone sober, starts preaching at church, okay. We're at a Calvary Chapel at the time. starts, he'll, he'd preached like, you know, pastor wants a day off or whatever. And then there was a church close by, that had a pastor situation where they needed a pastor. So we go there a couple of times to oh, I'll share this Sunday. Well, they ended up offering him a pastor ship. Okay. As well, yeah, I mean, fairly, it was like, you know, we interviewed for it type of thing. went to dinner with the elders, blah, blah, blah. But it's the Calvary Chapel. And we I grew up nondenominational, right? Where women are, at least pretending to be equals. Right. Okay. Are not head pastors, but they can be pastors, right. They can share at the pulpit, they can help lead a ministry. So like, at 16, I was leading a small group, and I'm trying to think if I ever I mean, I pray on the mic. I don't know if I ever liked it a sermon on the mic. I actually, that's I did I did do a sermon on the mic to a smaller group anyways.
David Ames 19:17
But you were you were a leader in the church, though. You were a leader.
Joanna Johnson 19:21
And, and a leader in the church and and acknowledged, I guess, yes. And so he's offered this pastor ship at a Calvary Chapel. And I remember this conversation with him. I'm like, Would I be able to like, even share my testimony? Like, from the pulpit? And he's like, I don't, I don't know. Maybe not. And so the book is Silenced and Eaden, right. So the whole theme is that I had a hard time voicing my feelings voicing for myself. So he's literally saying If I take this job, you will have no voice. Right? And he so he says, I don't think so. Can you? Like are you okay with that? And I'm a people pleaser, right? I'm a female in a Christian church. So that's what I trade.
David Ames 20:18
Yes. People from Chinese. Yes. Yes.
Joanna Johnson 20:21
From birth I come out. Yeah. So I couldn't answer him. Because I knew the answer. I'm supposed to say right. The people pleasing answer of Yes, of course, babe. I'm totally fine with that. But in me, I was like, screaming No, no, I'm not okay with that. No, you can't lead and lead without me. You can't tell me to stay silent. And it, it took me a moment to be like, okay. Okay, what do I say here? And for me, that was the little string that just unraveled everything. Okay. Yeah. That was the moment where I was I No, no, you can't I cannot okay with that. No, I'm not okay, that this is normal in any church. No, I'm not okay, that women are expected to watch the children and help you right sermons because I had written most like, helped him work on most of them. And then, okay, I have no voice like, yeah, I was like, No. And so yeah, it was interesting. It was like, an eye opening of the patriarchy of my whole life. Okay. I had been at until that point, I was fine with a woman's place, right? I was, I mean, for me, I am really nurturing. So the idea of like, oh, you get to be a mom, like, okay, that's fine. I love people. I love taking care of people, I can gladly be a mom. I am not quiet. So that was the problem, right? In the what the church I went to when we were like 16 women were a lot of, I would say they were arm candy. Like they would be able to pray and lead and whatever. But they were was it was Southern California. They were gorgeous. They wore high heels. Then there was me where I was like a punk rocker, I had a studded belt. And I would jump in the I would jump in a mosh pit. Like, I didn't fit the mold of what the church told me I was supposed to be. But I could definitely be a nurturing mom, like, I could do that. And so I do feel like for me, when I got married, it was like this. I got mold. I was like, okay, I can try to fit in this right? I can be a mom, I can be supportive. I can be a people pleaser, like I can fit in this mold. And that was the moment where like, the mold broke. I can't do this anymore. Yeah, we're done. And I'm super blessed that we, when my thread pulled a different thread for him pulled.
David Ames 23:28
Oh, okay. I want to pause just for a second, because one of the things I want to mention is how common this message is that strong personality women who have natural born leadership qualities, and they find themselves trapped in you know, you can do church, you can do children's ministry, or you can, you know, do director of education, but you can't preach in front of the congregation. And it amazes me, especially outside of the bubble, right on this side of deconversion that so many denominations are losing half of their talent pool. Right off the bat, like I just think tactically, it's stupid. And then obviously the devastating consequences. If you are in fact a woman and you have these leadership qualities and you feel just completely contained and unable to use those gifts to use the Christianese. Right. It's absurd. It's a complete absurdity. So
Joanna Johnson 24:28
it is and it's also crazy, because you said half but statistically, women are there's more women in church than there are men. Right. Good point. Yeah. So it's funny. It's like you have more women, but those are the ones you want to say they have no place so they have no you know, yeah. So that's a funny reality.
David Ames 24:58
I digress there so you both are Pulling on different strings, but the sweaters are unraveling.
Joanna Johnson 25:04
We're unraveling. So for him, he did a sermon on I'm not sure exactly what it was. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit. I just remember he got really into the word spirit, and, and hell. And he had an I do put this in the book, he had an experience where he goes in, and he was at work. He was doing insurance claims to get to go into someone's house who had a flood. And the person was clearly a drug addict. The house was in decay. Like, there was trash all over the house. It was. And the guy was looked nearly skeletal like he's just wasting away. And my husband was like, This guy is in hell. Yeah, like that. That's hell, I don't know how else to explain it. But that's hell. And so he did a deep dive into the word hell. And literally everything that love wins from Rob Bell, like II without reading the book came to all of the same like, this is how the Bible explains how the hell isn't even really in the Bible.
David Ames 26:26
It really isn't a thing. Yeah.
Joanna Johnson 26:30
So that was one of the things for him. That was like, Wait a second. And it was funny, because during that, that time, it was like 2018. We would have like, I would share this, you know, this doesn't fit in my Christianity anymore. It'd be like, Well, what about this? This doesn't make sense. And then I'd be like, Wait, well, you can't question Oh. And then I'd be like, Wait, that actually makes sense. And then the Spirit, okay. There's actually no diff difference of the word holy spirit or spirit, our spirit. And so it was just one of those things where it was interesting, he would have one thing that had bothered him, right, that didn't sit in his gut. And it would come up, and then I would be like, Wait, you can't question that. And then I listen. I'm like, Oh, that makes sense, actually. Right. Vice versa.
David Ames 27:24
You both were sliding down that slippery slope together.
Joanna Johnson 27:27
Well, it was funny, because there was definitely times where I'd be like, I'd grab him and be like, catch up. Now, yeah. But yeah, so clearly, he decided not to become a pastor. And for him, at that time for him, the we were at a church. The pastor who was was there had had some inappropriateness with a younger secretary or something. Okay. Something where the powerplay would be unethical as well than just an affair, right. And I don't think it was an actual affair. But the point was that something was icky. And the pastor left. And the congregation was really sad and lost. And my husband went to the elders is like, you know, I don't see why you guys are still having like a Sunday service. Like, why don't we go back to like a house church, try to build this community back where we heal, whatever hurt has been done. And, and then we'll start church, like, once we feel like, that process is over. And they were all like, no, we want to have our Sunday service. We want to print our pamphlets we want to, and for both me and him were like, This is playing church. Yeah, this is a show. There's no real depth. There's no community here. Is this what church really is? And so it was that realization of like, okay, for them churches, this is a band that shows up, and people fill in a room, sing a song, here's something we like, right? Well, we want a younger pastor, because we want you to bring some life. Okay, we want you know, and it's just this. There was just not the depth anymore.
David Ames 29:31
You passed over very quickly that, you know, he didn't become a pastor. But but in the book, I think you really described that both of you are pretty dedicated to ministry, you that's like your vision for your life is ministry. So my question is, when you made that decision, did you think you would have already started deconstruct enough that it wasn't traumatic, or was it or was that a loss of a sense of like your purpose in life at that point?
Joanna Johnson 29:58
Yeah. So when we started, do deconstructing it was a? Yeah, I think we had already gotten to the point where this doesn't feel right like this, this, this church is not just that this church is broken, maybe all churches broken. There we go. Okay, got it. So once we had that, yeah, once we had that piece of like, wait, I think that this church is showing us what all churches, all churches are people playing happy people playing a hole. And it's actually maybe it's really just a facade, and there's not the depth that we want it to have. Right? Because yeah, the reality was for us. Church was the deeper, like, we both came to church and like, got dedicated when we were in high school. And it was our whole life. And it was where we had friends, it was where we had these emotional experiences. So it was, for us always was relational. Like, we wanted to do ministry, because I mean, all these young people that we care about are dying and going to hell in our minds. So we need to save them all. And there was I'm not sure if it was on your guys's group deconversion anonymous, it probably was, but there was one about it was the social media post about if people, people really thought if Christians really believed in hell, then they would constantly like it would break their hearts. Yeah, something like that. And I remember being like, that was me. Okay, I was, I was the Christian who literally like I remember, staying certain nights, staying up until two in the morning crying over people that I thought were gonna go to hell. I was the person who was like, I can't let these people I care about or anyone go to hell. Because I hate people in pain. Like, I would rather be the one in pain. Let me have the pain, don't let them have the pain.
So I think that for my husband, Josh and I, we, what what we liked about Christianity that we had was the depth, the interconnectedness. So when when church became this plastic shell of a I don't know what you'd call it, like a social club. Right? When we started seeing church as a social club, we're like, No, this isn't what we thought it was. So I don't want to lead something. That's that. Right. Okay. So it was a lot easier to leave the idea of ministry at that point? Oh, yeah, I do think that there's been, for me specifically, that is something that I still feel the loss of. But it's been like, sometimes there's things where you're like, oh, I don't want that. But then you don't realize like, what you're missing now? Sure. I don't know if that makes sense. But it's, I guess I didn't feel the loss while deconstructing, but I feel it now.
David Ames 33:34
Yeah. Yeah, we talk a lot about that, you know, there are good aspects of church, right. It's the built in community, you know, people that are there who care about you when you're sick. Hopefully, they come and bring you food and you know, ask about your children and maybe babysit for you. And all those things like having that interconnectedness is really important as a human being. And there are not great solutions for that in the secular world. So like, there's definite aspects of that. And then that does just what you're describing, again, your natural talent as a leader to want to be a part of that to foster more community to bring people together. And maybe not having the venue to do that in a secular world is a loss. And we can we can acknowledge that and recognize that that's, it's, it's sad.
Joanna Johnson 34:21
Yeah, looking at. It's interesting once the cards fall, and you look back, and you can find certain points of your life where you're like, oh, that never sat well with me, or that's why I did that. And so now I look back and I'm like, Oh, well, that's why. When my husband and I went to the church, 2.0 they were doing, we started, we were in a small group. And the small group wanted to go over Sunday's notes. So we'd hear a sermon on Sunday. And then we talk about it on Tuesday, whatever. Sure. And I remember going to the, the leader and I was like No. This strong dominant woman was like, No, we shouldn't do that. And I asked him, I was like, why don't we all take turns and share our testimony? Why don't we all take turns and share part of our life and why we're Christians. Because I want that connectedness I want to learn about these people sitting in a room that I'm trying to have, quote, fellowship with, right? I want to get to know them. I don't want to talk about the pastor's five point message, I want to get to know my person next to me. And, and he let me do that or let us do that. And the people who are in that group have said, like, that was the best small group we ever have been a part of. And so it's interesting. Now I'm like, Oh, I wanted that I saw the surface, and knew that there was surface SNESs already and was trying to find depth. So it was like, I already knew that something was off. Right? I already knew that there was something wrong in the church, I was just trying to tweak it to still make it work for me.
David Ames 36:09
Right. This also reminds me of what I call church shopping, that you start, there's some nagging thing that's missing, and you start to look around like, Well, maybe it's over here, or this denomination or this tradition. And you're just you're looking to fulfill the thing that, you know, ought to be there but isn't add it that is the beginning of the end, right. It's, it's going to end in tears.
Joanna Johnson 36:32
It can be it's interesting when my so you know, I said my grandfather's church ended. I was really young. And then we would we went to Calvary Chapel. We went to first Baptist, like, during that entire time, my dad was desperately church shopping. Okay. Okay. He would like we would have the church would go to and then on a random Sunday, he would just show us up at some other church because he was not happy. And, and I don't know if he's been happy in a church since my grandpa's church. Right. But he's still at church.
David Ames 37:10
I understand. Yeah. But I imagine that nagging feeling is still there. It might be if he were aware of that unable to articulate it.
Joanna Johnson 37:19
Right. It might be. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe it's still there. And he's just a little more resilient in his faith than I was some.
David Ames 37:32
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Joanna Johnson 37:41
So yeah, we left that behind. And I, it's interesting. I'm trying to think when like, it was really done. Like, deconstruction is such an interesting thing. And it wasn't until really recently that I would even say deconversion. Okay. Yeah. Because yeah, it was. It was. And there's also the level of like, coming out of the closet. Right. It's deconstructing is like, Okay, well, you're just asking questions. You're still a Christian. You're still with us. You're still in our tribe, you're still a part. And hopefully, you'll come back to the truth. Right. deconversion is like I, you're out?
David Ames 38:37
Yes. Exactly.
Joanna Johnson 38:39
Yeah. Yeah. And I even recently, I had that like, Well, Ted, what are you a person? I'm a first time well said. Yeah. Yeah. So it Yeah. And recently, so there was a time where I was like, Okay, I'm done with the term Christianity. I feel like it's done harm to me. I feel like it's done harm to many cultures. And my husband was kind of like, yeah, I understand that. But wouldn't tell me where he was at. And that was, that was hard. I was like, okay, am I alone in that? Are we are we good? And then, very recently, he was like, yeah, no, I don't think I would call myself a Christian either. And I was like, Oh, cool. Okay, we're on the same page. I thought I had just gone all the way down the hill, and you were still up, right? They're not gonna move. Yeah, so for me, I'm really glad that we rode that ride together. It wasn't super easy. Because there like I said, like there were times where he'd question something and I wouldn't, or he would want to go to church on you know, Easter and Christmas or at one point he was talking about like going once a month just because this is These stories that we grew up with, it's part of our culture, right? It's, my parents are still Christian culture, our culture is Christian, basically. And so he was like, I don't know if I'm okay with like, my kids not knowing Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark and. And I was like, Well, can I tell you why each one of those I don't want my kids to know? I'm okay with my daughter's not hearing that Eve was the reason sin came into the world. Yeah, I'm fine with that one. I'm okay with my kids not hearing that. God flooded the whole earth and only saved this handful of people. Like I'm, I'm actually totally fine. Not having any of that. And, yes, that was a funny time where he was like, and it was, it's so ironic to me to because for those four years of him, self numbing and me, pulling him into church, like I was the one being like, Come on, baby. This is our raft. This is our safety net, like God is everything. And and so it was ironic when the shoe was on the other foot, and he was like, Jo,
David Ames 41:24
just once in a while. Right.
Joanna Johnson 41:28
But yeah, as of now we're both I guess we'd call I'd call. I think we'd say agnostic. I I do think that the secular humanist is probably more where I would land. I love the idea again, like with this podcast, I love the idea of human helping human.
David Ames 41:51
Yes, yeah. Yeah, the labels are not important. Like, you know, it's, it's sometimes helpful as a shorthand to talk to one another, but but really, we're just talking about caring about people. And it really is that simple. And like, we make it too complex. And I think that the side of the podcast that is important is embracing your own humanity. So we've talked about in this conversation, you know, one's own sexuality, your own desires, your connection to your body, all of those things that have been denied you through your life. I think that part's important. And then whatever label you put on, it just isn't so
Joanna Johnson 42:28
great. I definitely agree. And it's funny, on this side of deconversion, because, like, in my childhood, upbringing, an atheist was like, Oh, yeah. Like, I remember my dad talking. At one point when I was I think I was in like, fourth, fifth grade, they started doing evolution at school. And, surprisingly, at the time, I was at a public school, my parents had shifted gears a little because at first, we were homeschooled. And so because I was at a public school, and they tried to get me out of this, the science of evolution, they asked the teacher even if I could do something else, right, because evolution is evil. So when the school said No, his work, my dad's work around was putting on young earth movies when I got home. Okay. I would literally go to school, right? And then at home, be given school of just young earth school. And so I think it was in that time when I first heard what an atheist was, of course, it's from a Christian idea of an atheist, where's your, they don't believe in anything? They hate to God. And so it is a funny because now I'm like, like, especially with this podcast, like, like, Well, this looks a whole lot more loving and kind, but this is an atheist.
David Ames 44:06
Yeah. That's what we're playing with. I mean, that's why, you know, I've said many times, you know, I could have called this the graceful humanist, you know, like, but it was kind of intentional to say, you know, to break down that stereotype a bit. And, you know, like I I've said to what, I meet somebody, I don't go Hi, I'm an atheist.
Joanna Johnson 44:28
Turn around. Yes, it turned around because when you're a Christian, it says, Hi, I'm a Christian.
David Ames 44:33
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. If someone does ask I will talk about secular humanism and you know, if we get deep then I'll start talking about secular grace and you know, my conception of that that can
Joanna Johnson 44:43
I love it I love that you did choose atheist I because I think there is like, taking what Christianity for for those who are de converting has like tainted and turned it into something evil, right. And being like Hear this is it not? It's not evil. It's not scary. It's not bad just is yes
David Ames 45:15
Well, you said very kind things about the podcast what other resources, podcasts or books or people? Have you found really helpful throughout this process?
Joanna Johnson 45:24
So when I first started looking into my specific upbringing, I started obsessing about like, books on people leaving and cults more specifically. So I read girl at the edge of the world and sorry, girl at the end of the world under tow, unfollow, so once that come to mind, some some books on people who left, which was why I was like I should I writing for me is processing my feelings I am so I'm so disconnected from my feelings that it's easier to type it or write it and, like see it on paper homos? Because I have a hard time seeing it in myself. But so when I started writing for my own therapy, if you want to call it, I was like, I should put this out because memoirs were what literally, like, were my lifeline at the beginning of leaving. Yeah. So those with some books. And then for podcasts. I'm like, I guess I'm picky. Yeah. I really like dirty rotten church kids. They're like my age group. Sadly, this is their last season, so I'm going to have to find something else. Yeah, this this is a podcast. I do listen to. I'm trying to think of as any other Oh, the fundamental. I grew up of Christian fundamentalists. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. I was a teenage fundamentalist. Yeah, so some, but a lot of times, I'll just do books. Hashtag church to was when I read recently. Yeah, that one was really good. Gets into purity culture gets into how women are treated. And then if for specifically, like my book talks about the sexual abuse side, so Chanel, Miller's No, my name was it is an amazing book that I would strongly recommend for anybody who either wants to understand what sexual trauma does to the brain and a person or who have lived that. That book was amazing. But yeah, a lot of times I'll do books, like Audible books on audible or my like, go to Yeah, and I am on deconversion anonymous. Excellent. Recently, I read God and sex by the same guy who did the god virus. Okay. That book was like, blow my mind. Okay, okay. In the book, I, at the very end, I talked about how like, I felt like I hit a point where I stopped deconstructing everything. Like before, it was like I had a sledge hammer, and I was just pulling down everything, right? And I was like, hmm, maybe I'm at a point where I can like, get a broom. Start cleaning this up. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then and then I read that book, and I was like, okay, maybe I need another sledgehammer.
David Ames 49:04
There's a bit more.
Joanna Johnson 49:07
A little more cultural, you know, stuff that there's stuff that was like, clearly church, right? And then you can deconstruct that and then it's like, oh, okay, maybe there is some validated this gender stuff or this. Yeah, just the culture. And then I'm like, Oh, maybe I want to maybe I want to pull down some of this stuff, too. Exactly. That's where I'm at.
David Ames 49:32
Okay, yeah, yeah, it is definitely a process and it can go on for a while.
I definitely want to give you a minute to talk about anything about the book how people will find the book. Let's just Let's just promote it.
Joanna Johnson 49:51
Okay. Yeah, so the book is silenced and eaten. The books somebody people have asked me like why silence didn't even know So I was born in a Christian commune where they separate themselves. They tried to build their perfect Eden, perfect idea of God again, right? And through trauma, and through being female and a child, I wasn't given a voice. So as that's why it's silenced in Eden, I was silenced. And they thought it was perfect. They thought it was a garden. I explain Christianity or Christianity as like a perfectly kept garden, where everything has its specific place. And then realizing at one point, like, I'm not a garden, I'm kind of wild. Maybe I'm the forest.
David Ames 50:48
I love that analogy.
Joanna Johnson 50:52
So yeah, so yeah, the book talks about purity culture, it talks about patriarchy. For me, I spent my first 35 years being told what to do being preached at. So the book is not that, right? I'm not, I'm not saying this is what you should believe I'm saying, This is my, like, what I went through, this is my path of life. These are the things that when I was in Christianity didn't fit didn't seem to work didn't feel right. And then these are the things that I'm starting to be like, hey, this feels better. Hit this sits better. And so I try very much to be like, this is where I'm at. And hopefully, the reader can find things that resonates with them. But I'm not going to tell you what to think I can tell you, if there's a heaven or hell, that's that's you, like that's on you. But I'll tell you my experience with deconstructing hell, right? Yes, the book is on Amazon. So I partnered with louder than silence. Louder Than silence is an organization that fund raises to help women who have been sexually abused, get get EMDR therapy, so they pay for therapy. And they also do workshops. So I'm a I'm a part of one that starts actually just started. And the whole idea of the workshop is for victims to help other victims. So it's all ran by victims. And they have, you know, we talked about feeling your feelings, okay. Today, we're going to work on what emotions are coming up and how you know, so it's all but it's all human helping human? Yes. Yeah. And so for me, like when I that was when I was like, Okay, this is the organization I knew when I put the book out, like, I'm talking about a crazy subject, I want this to help that subject, I want to do something good with my messed up story, right? More than just promote myself or whatever, I want it to do something good. So $1 for every book goes to that organization. If you are a woman out there who has been victimized and you want to heal louder than silence has workshops, we meet for 12 weeks, you will meet other victims completely anonymous. And then they also will help with the cost of EMDR therapy.
David Ames 53:47
That's awesome. Jo Johnson, you are the author of silenced in Eden, I can tell the listeners that you know the story is is very raw and, and real. And I appreciate that. I think just like what we're doing here on the podcast telling your story is so powerful people are going to read that and especially those who've been through sexual trauma will recognize themselves and hopefully gain some healing from that. So thank you, Jo, for being on the podcast.
Joanna Johnson 54:14
No problem. Thank you so much for having me.
David Ames 54:22
Final thoughts on the episode. As you could hear, Jo is an obvious leader and an outspoken voice to help people. I'm always amazed at that women who are held back who have a real sense of ministry in their lives and because of the sexism and patriarchy within the church are limited to the roles that they can take. Even her describing writing her husband's sermons is just amazing to me, and then not being allowed to speak in the pulpit. One of the core values of the pod Cast is rigorous self honesty. And my belief is that when we are deeply honest about ourselves and vulnerable, that that helps others. Jo exemplifies that in telling her story of the sexual trauma she experienced as a child, and the impact that that had throughout her life, as well as the impact of purity culture on her and the people that she has talked to that have been affected by purity culture, as well. I know many of the listeners might be in that category, if not in the sexual trauma category, as well. So I want to thank Jo for being vulnerable and telling her story, I think it's going to help many, many people. Again, I want to point out that Jo says that $1 From every book sale goes to louder than silence that helps survivors of sexual trauma and gives them a community to build from, there will be links in the show notes that you can find that if you yourself, have experienced sexual trauma, please reach out. The book is Silenced and Eaden. It is fantastic. I couldn't put it down. I read a lot of stories. I don't say this about every guests book. This was great. It was compelling. Jo really has a way of letting you feel the experience that she had. I want to thank Jo for being on the podcast and for being so vulnerable and telling her story. Thank you, Jo, so much. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is about that rigorous self honesty. If you've ever been in a 12 step program, you're going to recognize that phrasing. This is a core value for me. And I want to differentiate it from the way that truth is often used as a cudgel within Christianity, or even in the atheist community. There's a way of using the truth to beat people over the head as opposed to helping them to thrive. And so juxtapose that with what I'm trying to describe here about a rigorous self honesty, truthfulness with oneself. I often quote Alice Greczyn, who said that she stopped being good at fooling herself. And I love that I want us all to stop being good at fooling ourselves. And it begins with rigorous self honesty. And this applies very deeply for those people who are in the middle of their doubts, the middle of deconstruction, who are counting the cost of what deconversion might cost and terrified. All I can say is that within the sanctity of your own mind, be honest with yourself. The truth, in that sense, will set you free. Next week's guest is Josh, who goes by after God's end on Instagram, or lien interviews, Josh, definitely check that out next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Poetry is one way we homo sapiens, can get a glimpse into another’s life, into the lives of people whose experiences may be wholly different than our own. Poetry has the power to meet us where we are and possibly begin to change us.
Humanism is about human lives–the story of our lives–both our individual and collective experiences but without any divine intervention.
Poetic Recommendations
At the beginning of April, in honor of National Poetry Month, members of our Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group shared some of their most treasured poems. Enjoy!
