This week’s guest is Amanda. Amanda comes from a rather surprising brand of Christianity she refers to as the “Serpent Seed Pentecostal Cult.” She goes into detail, and it’s quite a ride. 

Various things happened throughout her adolescence that made her wonder if Christianity was true, but her mother would violently put a quick stop to those doubts. By 17, Amanda left home to live with a friend, but that couldn’t last long.

Amanda spent a decade trying out every religion under the sun but never found the one that could give real, solid answers. 

“Everybody thinks that they have the answer but nobody does.”

Today, she knows she doesn’t need the gods to dictate her life. She’s living it to the fullest and always moving forward. 

Recommendations

Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer

Unlocking Us podcast with Brené Brown

Quotes

“I asked Jesus into my heart weekly, sometimes three or four times a week, from the age of five years old because I was scared to death of burning alive in a lake of fire for eternity.” 

“I was constantly told that I was a bad seed.”

“Girls? We aren’t supposed to be ourselves. We’re supposed to be what we’re supposed to be: the follower, the wife, the daughter, the beautiful one who does for everyone else without thinking for herself or about herself.” 

“…around the age of five or six, my grandfather explained to me that there was not a Santa Claus, so my brain automatically went to, ‘All the invisible men that I pray to must not be real then.’” 

“We became a doomsday cult.”

“…I married my high school sweetheart. We got married very young, early twenties, like you do when you’re in a cult.” 

“A lot of my family are of the cult variety where they believe that anybody who’s not white is going to go to hell…or they’ll be serving in heaven.” 

“Eventually I realized that none of the Abrahamic religions were my jam. They all fight over the same god, doing the same things, and it baffles my mind.” 

“Sometimes that’s all you need to hear: ‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t get a lot of ‘I’m sorry’s,’ I got a lot of, ‘It’s God’s plan…’”

“We have the Family of Origin and then we have the Chosen Family.” 

“Everybody thinks that they have the answer but nobody does.”

“…so many people find [spirituality] beautiful and calming, and they find relief. They find so many wonderful things in it that I never found there, that I never had. I found those things in science, in questioning. I needed answers and religions aren’t that great at providing answers.”

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Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

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. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to go through 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 Remember, we have a T public merchandise shop if you'd like to get your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. Go check it out. The link will be in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, my guest today is Amanda. Amanda grew up in what she calls an unnamed cult. She uses the terms serpent seed Pentecostal cult to describe it. As a young girl when she expressed her questions, she was strongly informed that she was not allowed to question like that sometimes physically. Later in life, she began to see the hypocrisy within the church. And after calling it out, she was excommunicated. Amanda describes unknowingly having end endometriosis, which caused a lot of pain for her and was ignored by doctors and family. She tells the story the first time that she kissed a girl and ultimately getting her master's degree in Medical Anthropology. Here is Amanda telling her story. Amanda, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Amanda  1:59  
Thank you so much for having me.

David Ames  2:01  
Amanda, thank you for reaching out to me, I've got to see a bit of the outline of what you're about to say. And it sounds like you have had a very interesting life. So I'm excited for you to tell your story.

Amanda  2:13  
Thank you so much. I'm I'm excited for a place to share it. Because you don't get a lot of those that are not in person, especially since COVID. Absolutely. I really absolutely.

David Ames  2:21  
Yeah. And I think that this is such a cathartic experience was for me personally, and I hope for you as well. So let's jump right in, you know that we always start with the faith tradition that you grew up with. So what was that like for you?

Amanda  2:36  
Well, that one's complicated for me, because it depends on who you ask what faith tradition I grew up in. Right. So my mom swears up and down, I did not grow up in a cult. However, my father will fully admit that he my mother and I were all raised in the same cult. The cult does not have a name. It is a serpent seed Pentecostal cult that is active in Georgia, where where we all live. And it has changed over the years. My mother still attends this church. However, now the church is on. It's like third or fourth pastor since I've been alive. And he has made it into a, you know, quote, unquote, respectable Southern Baptist Church. They even belong to the Southern Baptist coalition and everything. But before it was very much a Christian identity theology charismatic. There, it was very similar to the message, which is another very large cult that has been in the news relatively recently with a lot of things going on in, in Africa, and I'll let a lot of people look that up for themselves. It's very. So the church building, like I said, is still there, it still has the same membership that it had for the most part when I was a kid. The teachings however, are what make it a cult rather than a more traditional Baptist, what they call themselves Baptist, sort of church. So the teachings when I was a child, were the serpentine teachings and those teachings are that the forbidden fruit is actually a human being. That Cain was born of the forbidden fruit of Eve, laying with the serpent and having an offspring which was Cain and that Eve lie to Adam and said that Cain was his son, when in fact Cain was not his son. Cain was the serpent son.

David Ames  4:49  
I didn't think there was anything that could surprise me, but you've just surprised me. I was unfamiliar with that story. Interesting.

Amanda  4:56  
Welcome to a whole lot of it. Interesting, I can give anybody who is interested places to look about, about these very fascinating beliefs. So some other of their teachings are that because Eve laid outside of her marriage, and because she lied, all of her female descendants would suffer. Not only childbirth being painful, which is what the church like most churches believe that right? But that all of her, her female descendants would be lesser than or equal to males, so that they would have to have a male to help them get into heaven because they weren't holy enough on their own.

David Ames  5:50  
Okay. Right. So very, very patriarchal than

Amanda  5:54  
extremely patriarchal. Yes. So, you know, anybody who grew up in one of the Abrahamic religions knows that Adam and Eve had three sons, you only hear about Cain and Abel, the steps in there. Right? So Seth is their youngest, and he is who the Israelites are supposed to be descended from. And they are the chosen people in this circuit see belief, while Cain also went ahead and had, you know, had offspring as well. And those descendants are the evil people or the bad people. Right? Okay, so you have the first option, it depends again, on which branch of the cult you're in. The first option says that these these serpent seeds, these bad seeds of Cain, they can still go to heaven. Right. But they have to follow the exact brand of Christianity that the cult teaches. Okay. But while they're in heaven, they will not be equal to the Israelites or the children of Seth, they will be the servants in heaven.

David Ames  7:09  
Interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah.

Amanda  7:12  
So all of them pretty much believed that. But there are a few that are like, nope, these evil people just cannot enter heaven. They are demon spawn period, they cannot go they are only held, you know, for help. Right? That's a very small minority of the, of the beliefs of the groups that believe that right? So it also depends on who you ask which preacher which time of day. You ask him as to who are the serpent seeds. If anybody is, knows anything about Q anon and the Q anon conspiracy that's been really big, or that was really big, at least a few years ago. The reptilian people have Q anon. A lot of them actually believe that those are the serpents, the children of the serpent. Oh, in a literal sense, is what you're saying in a literal sense that they are reptilian. They don't, they won't say lizard people. Right? The people who believe in lizard people, they're different. Okay? They're the crazy ones. Yes. These people will call them reptilian or serpent people. And those are the ones that are leading the drinking of the baby blood and the and teaching, you know, Hillary Clinton how to sacrifice babies the proper way. She may be one depending on who you ask. Right? So there are those people literally believe in human reptile hybrids. Then there is another group who just believe in the racist version of it, that anybody with darker skin is the serpent seed and anybody with lighter skin is you know, the the chosen people that are going to happen, right?

David Ames  9:02  
That's surprising.

Amanda  9:05  
Surprising, right? It comes out of a group of British people from like the 1800s. A lot of them became what are now Neo Nazis and, and things like that. My family is very, very heavily into the neo Nazi movement. A lot of them still believe in it, a lot of them still adhere to it. And we will talk about that. Okay.

The group that also has like the final group that also has these beliefs that are a little bit different, that I wanted to mention, because a lot of people are familiar with the Moonies Oh, okay. The Moonies are the Korean cult that have a lot of guns. But they, they believe something very similar. But instead they believe everyone is born bad as a bad seed. And then because we all came from Eve, right? So everyone has that eat that her evil in them. But that you can become good by doing the right thing, believing the right thing, getting married in a mass, you know, wedding, or, you know, whatever. But that's the final group that kind of has these beliefs that people might have have heard of. And so I wanted to get kind of the turret that the church teachings out of the way so that I could talk about my personal.

David Ames  10:43  
There we go. Yeah, no. And I think that contact was really valuable. Because I for one was definitely not familiar with most of that.

Amanda  10:50  
Right. And it's something that I grew up with. So I assume all Christians, yeah, thought these things. Come to find out that no, they do not. So I asked Jesus into my heart, weekly, sometimes three or four times a week, from the age of five years old. Because I was scared to death of burning alive in a lake of fire for eternity. Yeah. I was constantly told that I was a bad seed. I was constantly told that. Because I didn't respect my mother. I didn't, I asked too many questions. I was, you know, the, I am. Myself and one of my siblings are gifted and gifted people have a tendency towards a lot of questions, a lot of defiance, a lot of, you know, just non neurotypical things.

David Ames  11:58  
I'll jump in here and just say that, you know, and really common theme is, you know, not necessarily gifted, but just precocious children struggle in these high demand religious environments. And it's very, very difficult that one's natural curiosity is seen as evil and bad. And you begin to doubt yourself and question questioning yourself, and it's a terrible vicious cycle. Right?

Amanda  12:23  
Especially when you're a girl in these environments, because, girls, we're not supposed to, to be ourselves, we're supposed to be what we're supposed to be. And that's the follower, the wife, the daughter, the dutiful one who, you know, provides for everyone else without thinking for herself or about herself. And that's in most religions, in general, if we're honest, but especially in these sorts of extremely painful, patriarchal ones.

Not long after I started asking God, and Jesus into my heart did I have before I started having doubts, okay. And that was because also at the age of around five or six, my grandfather explained to me that there was not a Santa Claus. And so my brain just automatically went to all the invisible men that I pray to must be not real then.

David Ames  13:33  
Right. That's a very logical step. Yes.

Amanda  13:40  
I explained that to my mother. And she, for lack of a better term, lost her mind. And she for it was days that she she called it spanking, but it was much more than that. She was going to make sure that I had the fear of God, the fear of my mother, the fear of the church in me, and make sure that I did believe forever and for always. I'm very sorry. Thank you. It's, it's been a long time. She and I have never had a better relationship than what we have right now. Good, okay. Because she understands that it was painful, and that she hurt me. And we had a lot of court ordered therapy to discuss it. Okay. So that was that was the big thing was from five years old until I left the cult. I was devout. I never questioned out loud again, whether or not I believed in God. My next doubts came when I was around 12 years old. Now this, this next part, I'll be 100% honest, is going to be very painful for me, because I've never talked to anyone about this except for my therapist. Okay, great. So if I get a little choked up, I am sorry,

David Ames  15:32  
you're more than welcome to be chopped up.

Amanda  15:34  
Thank you. But I, at 12 years old, I had already had my menstrual cycle for a couple of years, women in my family tend to start early. And so I had had my cycle. But when I was around 11, or 12, is when I started having excruciating and debilitating pain, constant, it was constant. And my mother took me to a doctor, but the doctor was someone she knew from church. So we told the doctor, everything we explained my pain, we explained that, you know, I was missing school, I was missing work. I was missing, you know, all of these things. And yes, I was working at false.

David Ames  16:31  
When we lie. Yeah, I was gonna kind of say, that sounds we lied

Amanda  16:35  
to the government, so that I could work. Wow. And so I missed school, I missed work, I missed so many things. I missed life, because of the pain. And the doctor sat me down with my mother, and explained to me that you're just gonna have to grin and bear it all women have pain during their periods, because Eve did evil things. And have that was when I was like, Okay, I gotta double down on religion. I gotta pray to God to take this away, because my doctor is not taking it away. So I have to, I have to beg God, I have to plead with God to take this pain. And I did that for years. years, I begged God, I tried to bargain I tried to, you know, do the whole, you know, if if I do this, will you take the pain away? If, you know if I proselytize? If I do, you know, XY and Z. And the pain never stopped.

David Ames  17:50  
I'm so sorry. That is just tragic that a doctor would, you know, not not do their job. And then it again, the vicious cycle of this makes you or someone in that position feel like it's their fault. Like it's your fault. And instead of this just a medical condition that needs to be appropriately handled.

Amanda  18:15  
So my father kind of took pity on me. And he took me to a Planned Parenthood. Okay. Which to me was I'm in an evil place with evil people. What are we doing? Right, but we didn't have any money. So I had to go where they could provide care. By the way, Planned Parenthood se i love you guys. i You're the best.

David Ames  18:45  
doing good work out there. Yeah.

Amanda  18:46  
Right. Exactly. Giving a 12 year old Pentecostal girl. Some Hope is what they did. Yeah. They put me on birth control pills. Okay, to help control the, you know, the cycle, get it? Manageable. And for years, I mean, he still to this day, I don't think anybody in the call knows that. I was on birth control pills. Because birth control pills were of the devil. Right? We always call them my hormone pills. They were my hormone pills. I had to be on the hormone pills. I was not allowed birth control was, you know, this evil horrible thing that you could not do. Okay. And so we never never explained what it was just she has a hormone condition. It's fine. And so I always felt even more evil for taking the things I wasn't supposed to be taking.

David Ames  19:47  
Oh, wow. So that's

Amanda  19:49  
right. And then as I got older, and I started to be curious about, you know, sexual feelings and things. I I was always told those pills are not to be used for that reason ever. This is not free rein for you to do anything. Purity culture was very, very big in my house. Yes, I guess. Yeah, I, you know, we dress modestly. My hair had to be a certain length. I was not allowed to wear makeup, I was not allowed to, you know, do a lot of those things. My mother was allowed to wear makeup because an adult woman had to be attractive to her husband and whatnot. But if you were not married, if you did not, if you weren't courting, you did not wear makeup, you did not try to attract attention to yourself in any kind of meaningful attraction, like sexual attraction kind of way. So I was like, Yeah, of course, I'm never gonna do any of those things. Those things are, are simple in bed. So I was on, I was on the pills for many, many years.

The next big thing, I guess, religiously, was when I was 14, I got baptized. And in this group, when you got baptized, you had to prove that you were in possession of the Holy Spirit. Okay, right. So the, there were a few ways to prove that you had been in possession of the Holy Spirit. And the biggest one. Everybody assumes, you know, knows Pentecostals speak in tongues. That's what, you know, that's what they do. So I was like, okay, yeah, that's, that's the one I have. That's the gift because they believed in a number of gifts that you could have. My grandmother believed that she was that she had dreams and was able to tell the future and things like that. Okay. So for me, I was just like, I can speak in tongues. That's what I can do. And so I got there. And they tested my gift is what they call it. Interesting. And I froze, I had no idea what to do. Okay.

So then I was like, oh, oh, man, I have so much trouble. And then I was like, Wait a minute. Speaking in tongues is just speaking another language. So I started speaking Greek and Latin, from my science textbooks.

David Ames  22:34  
I love it. I just started

Amanda  22:36  
I just started saying medical terms and scientific animal names and all these, all of these things. And they bought it. And I was like, Oh, good. Thank God, I'm in I'm in. I have, I guess I have the gift. Yes, they all they know what I was saying. They, they got it. And so I, I got baptized. I got I got the traditional baptism of being submerged in a river. Okay. Because in this particular tradition, they don't do this. Now. They have a small pool in the church, but used to the saying was if the watery flow in the Senate going,

David Ames  23:25  
okay, was how they various constraints on what,

Amanda  23:31  
because the, the reason you were submerged in the water was so that the water could purify you and wash away the sins, okay? So, if you're just sitting there in a pool, your sin, you're swimming and your sin is the way they thought about it.

David Ames  23:45  
Okay?

Amanda  23:47  
So I got I got baptized, I was like, Oh, thank goodness, I'm, I'm, I'm golden. Now. This is this was the goal this, we're done. I don't have to worry about my soul anymore. Right after that. The preacher retired and his son took over the cult. I was probably maybe 15. At that point. It wasn't long after I had been baptized. And then under him, we basically became a doomsday cult. And the world was going to end in the year 2000. y2k was going to was going to cause a civilization to crash. And we all needed to be ready for that. Okay, so we all became preppers. We all, you know, learned a lot of skills. To this day. I'm very good with Ebola as a weapon, because women weren't allowed to have the guns. We weren't allowed to do that, but we could learn other things. And so I learned how to use you know, more fit Quantico feminine weapons. And I still don't really know What y2k was supposed to be. I think even a basic Google internet search doesn't really explain it that well. But the world didn't end. And, you know, so I was just like, hey, wait a minute. The world didn't end like it was supposed to. I'm still scared of the world ending, we keep talking about the world ending, but it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still just as sinful, just as joyful, just as the same as it has always been in my life. So that was that was big. So that was kind of another faith crisis moment for me. And then after that, the next couple of years were really hard. Really, really hard for me. Because I started rebelling a lot.

David Ames  26:05  
Which is I got my hair the natural response to being controlled. Yes.

Amanda  26:11  
I got my hair cut. Whereas before, it had to be down my back. I got it cut up to my shoulders. The about the same length it is today. And my mother lied to the whole church and said that I had to get my hair cut because I had lice. And it was like going around my school. Wow, okay. None of my sisters had their hair cut.

David Ames  26:40  
It was just me. Yeah.

Amanda  26:43  
And so my mom wouldn't let me go back because I went to a friend of hers, that was a beautician. And her friend was like, it looks beautiful. It's great. It's literally in my mom, like, called you, Pearl clutching mouth covering. You know, what do I do? Oh, wow. And she was like, Okay, you're never gonna go see this friend of mine, again, to have your hair cut, because because she doesn't know how to cut your hair properly. And I was like, but it's beautiful. She says it's beautiful. I love it. You know, I want I want to take it like this. So I can keep it forever. And so that was that was one of the things where I was just like, you know, it's my body, I can do what I want with it. And then I wore pants to church, scandalous. It was very scandalous. I didn't even wear them in the church. I just wore them to church, because I was a tomboy. And I loved to play basketball. They had a basketball hoop outside of the church. And I love to play basketball with the boys. But I could never really do it well, because I was always in a long dress or skirt. So I wore pants to church. Not into the building. I wasn't trying to disrespect anybody. But I wore them to the church to play and then I was going to put my skirt on. Before we had service. The preacher saw me in the pants, and he flipped out. Wow, she called me a bad seed again. And he told my mother, you know, you have to have more control of your daughter, get her under control. If you don't get her under control. She's going to start making the other girls do things that are inappropriate and not okay.

Wow. So my mom doubled down on a lot of the things that she had had previously. And so I was like, Okay, no, I'm gonna rebel even more.

And one of the things that I knew was like, the worst thing you could do was to be with someone of the same sex

I was on the school bus. And this. This girl was there and I always thought she was really pretty. And one day a guy dared me to kiss her. Because they always were like, you know, she's the she's the crazy religious one. She's not gonna do it. She's so I was like, alright, watch me. Do and I kissed each other. And it was the most magical experience I had ever had up until that point. Okay, cool. And I was like, Oh my God, wait a minute. Do I actually like girl? Yeah, turns out yes, I do. And so, I was like, Okay, wait a minute. Again, years of therapy has helped me realize that part of the reason that I thought that this was wonderful and great and not as bad as everybody thought it was, was because I had always had negative experiences with men because all of my previous You know, sexual encounters were extremely negative. It, you know, I was I was sexually abused by an uncle as a child. I, you know, the boys that I was supposed to be or that were supposed to be courting me were never boys. I wanted to be courting me. They were ones that my mom approved of. Right. So, I was very taken aback by how much I enjoyed that. And so, again, I was like, oh, no, I'm in so much trouble. I kissed a girl, I'm going to hell. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And so I go, and I try to talk to the preacher about it. And of course, I get called a bad seat again, I get told, like, you know, you got to repent, you got to repent. You got to repent. I'm like, okay, yes, I'm going to repent every Sunday, forever. And so it goes on like this for a few months. And then the preacher stepdaughter comes and lives in our house. Okay, because my mother and my mother sister who lived with us, at the time, they were known for the way that my aunt puts it all the time is picking up strays. My My aunt has so my aunt has never had a biological child in her life, but she has so many children, right. Okay. And my father had long gone, he had left the cold, he had basically left our family at this point. Because he, you know, he realized he was living in a cold and he wanted to get out. And my mom had was the one that asked for the divorce, which was like, super scandalous. And she was a trailblazer in her own right there. But, so when he was out, he was like, Alright, I'm done. I'm out. And he just left. And so that left me with my mother and my aunt. And now the preacher's daughter and some siblings and other children my aunt had acquired. But the preacher's stepdaughter had gotten kicked out because she was pregnant, out of wedlock. She wasn't that much older than me, she was maybe 1819. And one night, she confided in me that the reason that she was pregnant could be him.

David Ames  32:28  
Oh, wow. Okay.

Amanda  32:31  
And I was like, Wait a minute. Like, I thought you said that it was my cousin's son that you were having? And she was like, Yeah, I think it is. But it could also be my stepdads. And I was like, I do not envy your situation. When the baby was born, they gave him a paternity test. It turns out, he was my cousin's child. So, but that was a big shock to me. And I didn't say anything to anybody. I didn't tell anyone at that time. And then, maybe four or five months later, September 11 happened. And it happened on a Tuesday. And we went to church that Wednesday. And that Wednesday, you know, I questioned? Like, I mean, publicly, I guess for the first time in a long while, why would God let September 11 happened? Well, you know, and then we, you know, we got the Christian Answers, right. The, Well, God didn't let it happen. These these are bad people doing bad things. And God didn't let it happen. And it was, you know, it was all the fault of people who were Muslim and things like that. And so I was like, Okay, I guess. Right, because I, I went to a public school, I had Muslim friends and I knew they would never do anything like that.

The following Sunday, I was excommunicated from the cult.

David Ames  34:23  
Okay. Just for asking questions.

Amanda  34:27  
Oh, the so it's you it's an episode in and of itself, my excommunication. But long story short. Our preacher was known for having a verbal punching bag every week. He would choose somebody he wouldn't name you would he would name your sins and everybody knew who you were. That particular Sunday, he kept telling everyone that there was a sister who needed to repent and that she was bringing Shame on herself. She was bringing shame on her family. She was doing all these horrible bad things. You know, she had, she had worn pants to church. She had done this. She had done that. He didn't know I had kissed the girl at that point, but I'm sure he would have said it if he had no, right. So what you were supposed to do is you were supposed to come to the call of the altar, and you were supposed to repent your sins in front of the entire church and say, I'm sorry, God, please forgive me. I wouldn't budge. I was like, No, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna let him beat me into this right now. I can't. He kept on and on and on and on. Sometimes these services would literally last hours, where he would just berate us and tell us how horrible we were and what we were doing wrong in the world. And. And so finally, we were in like, our three of church, our four maybe, and I was done. So what I did was, I lost my temper. And I stood up. And I pointed at him. And I asked the first time I had ever cursed in church.

David Ames  36:14  
The first time not the only time.

Amanda  36:19  
I asked, Who the fuck could follow this man to heaven? Yeah, because I knew I sure as hell couldn't. Because the way that they believed was that you followed your preacher to heaven, you're your preacher, follow Jesus. But you followed your preacher. So you were part of his flock, and you had to be in that flock and do what you had to do to be there. And I was like, No, there's no way that this man is going to heaven. So if he's not going to heaven, I'm not going with him wherever he's going. And I let the beans spill about his stepdaughter to the entire congregation. And I said, you know, Jesus wouldn't want any of us following you. We know this is not okay. You're not okay. You know, and that night, I was not allowed back in the building. Okay. They told my mother that I was a bad seed, I was sinful, I was not okay, I was going to corrupt all of the other children. And that was the night that I got the worst beating of my life. And it was also the first night that I stood up for myself, and I hit my mother back for the first time. Okay.

And I did not I did not regret that. But it did put a wedge in, in our relationship for a long time that my mother still refuses

to talk about. So it does, it does bring up a lot that I'm still dealing with. Especially my relationship with my own child. But, you know, like I said, we have moved past it. My mother and I, and we are doing better. And a lot of that is because I left home. At that point. I was 17. And I called a friend of mine who could drive and I was like, Look, you need to come, you need to pick me up and get me out of here. I cannot be here anymore. One of us is going to kill the other one. And I went to go stay with that friend and her family. And I saw what quote unquote, normal Christians were like, for the first time. I had been over to friends houses, I had gone to their churches and things but I had never experienced it. To the degree that I did when I was staying with this friend and her family. They were Catholics. And they didn't go to mass that often. But when they did go, you know, it was a you dress up and you look nice, but it wasn't you didn't have the strict rules of that we had, or at least as strict of rules. I'm sure they're still strict comparatively. But

David Ames  39:44  
yeah, or maybe not the amount of control or micromanaging.

Amanda  39:49  
Right, right. And so the other thing that I thought was, oh my goodness, this church is so pretty.

David Ames  39:56  
Stained glass windows, stained glass.

Amanda  40:00  
Windows paintings everywhere. The church I went to was a Pentecostal church. They it's basically Foursquare walls and some pews. There's nothing, they don't do a lot of beauty because you're not there for the beauty. You're there for the message. Right. And so I was like, taken aback by how how awesome it was like, I knew that there were cathedrals out there. And then things like that. And I had seen pictures, but I had never dared into a church.

Like there wasn't ours. And so, you know, I stayed with them for a few months.

And I moved back home when I was 18. I left when I was, I had left when I had just turned 17. I left on my 17th birthday, as matter of fact. Because it was the loneliest day of my existence. I had been excommunicated a month before. My birthday is in October. I had been excommunicated a month before. And instead of being there with me on my birthday, which was a Wednesday, my entire family decided to go to church instead. Wow. And so I, when they when they came back, I was gone. I had asked my friend to come pick me up. And I was like, hey, look, I can't, I can't anymore. And I just can't be here, I can't do this. And so I was 18 when I moved back in, because my younger sister was starting to have a lot of mental health issues, mental health issues running my family. Nobody will talk about them, except for me and my sister at this point, because, you know, we have been far enough outside the coltan that being raised that way that we understand it's important to discuss. But my sister had a lot of mental health issues. And she was only 14 at the time. And so they were going to take her away, because she had been institutionalized multiple times. And my mom refused to go and get her the mental health that she needed. So finally, my mom was like, Okay, I'll do whatever you want. Just don't take my kid away. And so the court ordered family therapy for us as the whole family. They ordered even though I was 18, they still ordered me to be there. And so I was like, Okay, I'll move back to the house. I got guardianship of my sister. And we all went to court ordered family therapy for a good while. And then when my sister was 16, my mom still let her drop out of high school. And go, just work. Because that's what our family needed was money more than an education. Also, education is really, really looked down upon in culture, especially for women. My mother and her sister graduated high school, just barely. But my neither one of my grandfather's graduated high school. My father did not graduate high school. I have my siblings. I am the there are eight of us. I am the only one who has graduated high school. There is still one who might they are 16 years old right now. And so they might graduate. I'm not sure. I hope they do. But I'm the only one who who did. And I'm the only one who went to college. Which that is a very difficult topic for me too. Because nobody in my family supported that choice for me to go to college. I didn't have a college fund. I didn't have you know, I had I had parents, friends whose parents had like, put a second mortgage on their house so they could go to college or, you know, did all these things. My family was like, if you're gonna do that find a way

so I did, I found a way to go to college. I worked I ended up working for the school itself. So that I could go without taking out insane amounts of student loans, which I took out some but I didn't have to take out insane amounts. And I was able to get my undergraduate degree. Initially, I was getting my degree in biology, and then I was like, Oh, I love this. This is really cool. But I took a you had you had to have a fine arts class. And I took an anthropology class and I fell in love. It was that was that was my jam. Yeah, right. So at the same time, I was also figuring out a lot about my health. And I got diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a disease that anyone can get. But it's predominantly in a fat people, people assigned female at birth, and those who have estrogen treatments or estrogen hormones and things like that. So I found out that I had endometriosis. And I discovered this this really cool thing called anthropology. And I was like, okay, what can I do with both of these things? So I became a medical anthropologist, and I got my master's degree in Medical Anthropology, studying female reproductive systems and the inequality of people with, you know, the financial inequalities of people with uteruses, and how, if you had more money, you were more likely to get diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a somewhat treatable thing. And you know, it wasn't your fault. But if you were not as wealthy, not as well off, you got treated more like me and some of the other people is particularly women of color, who have a history in the gynecological record of just being treated like for lack of a better word shit,

David Ames  46:40  
ignored, and you know, yeah, and not taking their pain seriously. Right,

Amanda  46:45  
exactly. So, that's what my whole graduate career was based was based around between the undergraduate and the graduate degree, I married my high school sweetheart. We got married very young, early 20s. Like, like you do when you're in a cult. And so they and I, we married for we were married for a few years. Most of my family did not want me to marry this person. Because this person was Korean. And, like we mentioned earlier, a lot of my family are the, you know, of the cult variety that believe that anybody who's not, you know, white is going to go to hell, and that they are or they're going to be servants in in heaven. And that they, you don't you don't marry them? Because that's just, that's what do you do unto yourself and your children? So I got called Race traitor. I got called all sorts of things. Wow. Okay. And so I was like, Okay, I guess you guys aren't coming to the wedding. Because it's still happening. Yeah. And so I, I married that that spouse, and I reconnected to my dad and his new family. And my spouse and I, and my dad, we all kind of went on this journey together, of finding another place to call our spiritual home. Right? We went to churches, synagogues, temples, we did not go to mosques, because it was just after September 11. And we were like, I don't need to be on an FBI list. So we went, you know, to behind temples, Buddhist temples, we went to Jewish synagogues. We went to churches of all denominations, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, we went to mega churches, tiny churches, you name it, we went there. Okay. And eventually, I realized that none of the Abrahamic religions were my jam. They're all they all fight over the same God doing the same thing. And it baffles my mind. So I was like, Okay, we gotta get out of here. And so eventually, we kind of found Neo paganism. And that was a lot of my 20s was Neo paganism and

a lot of the beauty that you found there so i just i Still had Jesus a little bit, because I was like,

he's he's really, you know, I feel that feeling of the Holy Spirit and the, you know that all that beautiful mastery that they always talked about it when you have a religious experience or conversion, right? So I was like, you know, maybe Jesus is still there, technically, I still have the end because I've been baptized so I can do anything. You know, I can do all these pagan II things and, you know, look at tarot cards, because they're not going to burn my eyes out the second I seal. And, um, I can do all of these these wonderful, beautiful things. And so we did my, my ex, and I did that for a while. And then I started to have, I went off with my hormone pills. And we started to try to have children. We were not able to have children. Because of the endometriosis. I had multiple miscarriages with my ex.

Thank you. I appreciate it. That's sometimes that's all you need to hear as I'm sorry.

I didn't get a lot of I'm sorry. I got a lot of God's plan. It's God's plan, Amanda, that you don't have a baby right now.

David Ames  51:22  
Wow. Yeah.

Amanda  51:23  
I'm thankful that made me hate God. At that point, I was like, You know what? As much as I've been trying to hold on to that. Why would you do this to me? After all I've done like to try to prove myself to you. Why on earth would you take away this thing that I that I want so badly. And then the following year, my spouse came out as trans. Okay. And this is the part where it gets a little tricky for me to talk about legally, because the state of Georgia was not happy about myself coming out as trans. Because we had been married legally and distinctly as husband and wife in the state. And when my spouse came out as trans, I didn't leave my spouse right away. We stayed together. It's actually on the court record as this I fell in love with a person not a penis.

David Ames  52:35  
I love that in your notes. I thought that was great. That's, that's very eloquent, succinct way to say, what needs to be sad.

Amanda  52:44  
Right. So that was that that's literally in the court records. And it's how I explained it to my family as well. It was like, I fell in love with a human being I didn't fall in love with, you know, a body part. I don't need that body part to be happy. And neither did my spouse, obviously.

I was disowned by huge swaths of my family at that point. I mean, obviously, they were never happy about me being with a Korean person in the first place. And now that Korean person was going to be a woman. So they were like, no, no, we're just, you're all out. You just gotta go. And so it was very hard for a while. And that caused a lot of strife between my spouse and I. And then, you know, we decided that we were more like, siblings or best friends than we were spouses. And so they are still one of my dearest and closest friends to this day. It's actually very funny to me. My son was born on their birthday. So when when my son was born at 6am, I called them up and I said, Look, I'm gonna tell you right now, you're never getting another birthday present from me ever. I just gave you a baby. Yeah. And they were like, oh, yeah, no, don't never have a birthday present ever again. And we just dote on him for for everybody's birthday. And so, you know, when I, when we got to divorce, the state of Georgia tried to get me to Kevin annulment. Because they said we got married under false pretenses that my spouse had lied to me about their gender. And I said, No, they didn't lie to me. They were mistaken for themselves, but then lie to me. I'm not going to blame it all on them, because this was a choice that we both made together to separate not it wasn't because of the transition.

David Ames  55:00  
Right, right and two adults can decide to enter into a relationship and exit a relationship and healthy way. And it sounds like that's what you decided.

Amanda  55:08  
So we had to go in front of multiple judges and explain it. Which was a parade in and of itself, and felt very religious and a lot of ways because one of the judges was extremely religious, and asked a lot of very inappropriate personal questions that I that we had to answer, otherwise be held in contempt. So, long story short, we are now divorced. And I am married to a second person who my previous spouse introduced me to, okay. And that man, and I share a son that again, was born on my ex's birthday. And he is a staunch atheist. I've always been always will be a staunch atheist. And he and I got married. And then I got my master's degree. And nobody from my family came to my graduation ceremony. His family was there. My ex and my ex's family was there. My best friend who I had stayed with, when I was 17, she and her family were there, my family was not there. So that was very hard for me.

David Ames  56:30  
I can imagine, we say all the time that you learn who your your real friends are when you go through this process. But unfortunately, and painfully, sometimes you recognize that people you call family aren't what you think family ought to be right? To be with each other through thick and thin. And I'm very sorry for you.

Amanda  56:49  
Thank you. So I know, the listeners can't see my notes. But my notes often refer to my fo family of origin. And a lot of times, that's the way we speak about it in therapy, because we have the family of origin. And then we have the chosen family. Right? Yeah, the the chosen family is my spouse and the son that I created with him. That's my chosen family. My chosen family are my friends and the people who love me, no matter what my belief system is. And my family of origin are the people who tried to force a lot of these beliefs on me whether I wanted them or not. And they there was a lot of pain there. And there was a lot of happiness as well. But it comes with a lot of baggage. And my husband and I are trying to raise our son you know, the best way that we know how. Because at this point, I'm an atheist as well, I completely D converted. Even after trying all the other religions, they all were quite beautiful and, and had a lot of things to

offer. They just didn't. It didn't speak to me, like I had hoped they all would.

And I know in my notes, I say that the place that I that I kind of ended up right before my son was born, I had a very, very difficult pregnancy. And the place that I ended up Believe it or not, was the Satanic Temple of Atlanta.

David Ames  58:36  
Interesting. I tell you, you've got a very, very interesting story.

Amanda  58:42  
And they were the place I felt the most at home. And the reason for that was because a I had always been called satanic. I had always been called bad. I've always been called this horrible thing. And then when I went there, I was like, these people are really cool. Unfortunately, COVID and a lot of the restrictions and things like that. The temple is not currently active. There. There are some chapters still online and things like that. But it if you talked to the people, they were all atheists too. But they didn't want to lose that community and that beauty that you found in a place of worship. So they came together and did a lot of interesting things. Right. So the, the things that they that they did, weren't always things that I agreed with. So that was part of why I left and then also because I was having a child and I didn't necessarily want my child associated with that because, you know, that was a me thing. That wasn't a that wasn't something for him. And so that's kind of where I left religion behind was when my child was born. And I realized that, wait a minute, I'm a creator, I literally created this life with my husband. We made this beautiful human being that, you know, he asks so many of the same questions I asked. And instead of just telling him, You have to have faith, I've needed answers for him. So we look it up together, we find out the answers together, and we do the work as a family to find what works for us. So my son very much wants me to tell everyone that my husband and I are atheists, he is not an atheist. He is an animist. He believes in spirits, and he believes that everything has a spirit. So it's, for lack of a better comparison. It's a lot like the Pocahontas Disney movie. In my eight year olds world,

David Ames  1:01:07  
right, I was just gonna ask Him, He's eight years old. Sounds like he's got, you know, very good sense of who he is and what what he wants to be.

Amanda  1:01:16  
That's great. And we've always encouraged that because I wasn't allowed to. And so I was like, No, you can be whoever, whatever you want to be. If you don't feel like, if you don't feel like you're an atheist, like me and daddy, that's the 100%. Okay, you can be whatever you want to be I just ask that you please not necessarily join a cult?

David Ames  1:01:36  
Yes. Yeah.

Amanda  1:01:47  
Yeah, it's, it's been a very long and interesting journey to get here. But I am very happy that I'm where I'm at now.

David Ames  1:01:57  
That's awesome. I have a handful of questions if you don't, if you don't mind. One is that I want to be careful here. I don't want to be rude. But you know, being excommunicated. With hindsight, do you feel like that was a positive thing for you? And that kind of forced you to get out?

Amanda  1:02:15  
So I see it as a positive and a negative, right? Because a lot of people have that slow deconversion a lot of people have that, you know, I can I can do this on my own. I can, you know, mine was so abrupt was so charged, that that was very negative for me, and still has a lot of negative feelings associated with it. But yes, it did help me in the deconversion process, because I don't know where I would be now if I hadn't been. And I'm very happy with where I am.

David Ames  1:02:54  
Yeah, interesting. Okay. And then, when you met your current husband, and he was an atheist, how were those first conversations? Like, did you go over the same kind of story that you've just told us? And what was his response?

Amanda  1:03:09  
My, my first husband, or my, I'm sorry, my current husband, my first spouse introduced us when that spouse and I were still together. So I had known that my current husband was an atheist the whole time. And he had known that I had a very interesting and complicated spiritual life. So when we first started dating, I was still Neo pagan ish. He knew that I had gone to the Satanic Temple a couple of times. And he was like, yeah, there's some really cool people that this interesting legal stuff. Because they're the ones who always fight the 10 commandments, statues, everyone. Right. And so he knew that I was kind of on my way out. And I've asked him in hindsight, did you know that I was an atheist, or I was gonna end up an atheist. He was like, Yeah, I kind of thought you would. Yeah.

David Ames  1:04:03  
Yeah. Okay. And then the other thing is, you know, congratulations on the education. And I'm curious if I understand your expertise is in medical anthropology. But if the study of anthropology gives you any insight into that cult experience, the human experience of being behind a band group,

Amanda  1:04:26  
right, so it does, right, so I that was one of the things I looked into was, maybe I want to study cults. But then I realized that no, that's very triggering for me, that's not a place that I want to go talk about all the time.

David Ames  1:04:43  
Yeah, that makes sense.

Amanda  1:04:44  
Whereas the the endometriosis is also very painful and triggering for me to talk about. It's also something that I could get behind and try to do activism with and things like that. Whereas I didn't see a place where I could really go and do activism for people who had been in a situation where I was in an unnamed cult. Right. I knew that there were support groups for Mormons, I knew there were support groups. For people who left the LDS. I knew there were support groups for Scientologists. But there wasn't a name for what I was. So I didn't have that place to go, necessarily. And so that's i That's why I didn't go that way with the education. But I did. I did do a lot of Religious Studies. I, my official degrees are in anthropology and women and gender studies. But I have a little certificate tacked on the end of Religious Studies. Okay, because I was so interested in I took all the classes, I was like, I have to understand, what what are all of these Abrahamic religions? Why are there so many types of Buddhists? Like everybody thinks they have the answer, but nobody does?

David Ames  1:06:13  
Turns out we're all just winging.

Amanda  1:06:16  
Exactly, yeah. So yeah, it gives me a very interesting insight into what spirituality can be for people. Because so many people find it to be beautiful and calming. And they find relief, and they find so many wonderful things in it. That I never found that I never had there. I found those things in science and understanding and questioning. I needed answers. And religions aren't that great at providing answers. They're great at telling you what you're supposed to feel. But they're not great at helping you necessarily get there.

David Ames  1:06:59  
Right. Well, Amanda, I think your story is just amazing. I understand that you have a few recommendations that you would like to share with with everyone. So let's let's hear your recommendations.

Amanda  1:07:09  
Yes. So some podcasts and books and things that I found very interesting. One of them is the first like non Christian religious book that I ever read, was called start where you are a guide to compassionate living by a woman who goes by Pema Chandran. I hope I'm saying that right. But she is an American born Buddhist nun that runs a nunnery in Canada. And she, she writes about a lot of the the Western society and how it's made to kind of be questioned and and how you can find compassion through the religion of Buddhism and her her opinion. But it also gives you a lot of just, in the moment, thinking mindfully and doing a lot of those things. And she has a website and she's, she's, she's almost like a, an American Dalai Lama in a way. She dresses very similarly speaks very softly. And similarly to the way he does, and she's Look, she's a lovely elderly woman in her 80s. And I think everyone who's even interested, check that out. Another one, especially for people who have a lot of spiritual abuse in their past. And people who have even physical abuse and things like that is a book by a gentleman named Bessel. Vander Kolk. It's called the Body Keeps the Score. And it talks about how we hold all of our traumas in our body, and how we need a lot of ways of getting it out. And for some people, that's religion, and that's the, you know, the things that they do in their religions. But for other people who have like religious trauma and things like that, it's in finding other ritual in your life. It's in making that morning coffee for yourself to take care of yourself to help you wake up. It's in that dance that you do when nobody's looking. It's in a lot of those things that we take for granted.

David Ames  1:09:29  
Hey, see, it's just self care when I dance by myself. Exactly.

Amanda  1:09:34  
You need that you have to have that when you're singing to your soap in the shower. That's right. And then another one is by a medical anthropologist named Paul Farmer, he recently passed away. And it's called pathologies of power, and it's about how people in power keep that power by keeping everyone else sick and How, especially in America. We have a for profit medical system that really needs to be dismantled and is very much like a religious cult in a way. Right. And then the final thing, I'm sure everyone listening is familiar with Brene Brown in a way. She's all over the place. She has Netflix, she has podcasts, but her podcasts, unlocking us is beautiful and wonderful. And she has so many ways of helping, especially women get past the guilt. Because we all still have that guilt no matter how, you know, we were raised, especially leaving a Christian called or a Christian denomination. So many women have that that guilt of Oh, my goodness, it's not I'm making this about me. And my life is not supposed to be about me. It's supposed to be about my husband. It's supposed to be about my family. It's supposed to be about my parents. And she's like, No, you can make it about you. You can, you can do that. And you can still have your religion if you want to and do that.

David Ames  1:11:08  
Well, fantastic. We will definitely have those in the show notes. Amanda, you know, I say all the time that when somebody tells their story with vulnerability and honesty, and that can be painful, that process can be painful, but I guarantee that there are people that are going to hear your story, and recognize themselves in your story now, maybe not that specific cult, but that experience and many of the things of just the purity culture, all the things that you've described, I think are are fairly universal. And so thank you so much for telling your story.

Amanda  1:11:41  
Yes, thank you. And if anybody wants to reach out to me, I am in the Facebook group. Excellent. And if anybody wants to ask any questions in there or anything, they're more than welcome, and I will do my best to respond.

David Ames  1:11:53  
Yeah, you can also email me and I can get that message to them as well. Thank you so much.

Final thoughts on the episode? Wow, that is an amazing ride that Amanda has taken us on. Again, not all of us will have come from such an extreme circumstance. But it is inspiring and hopeful to hear that even within what Amanda describes as a cult, she was able to escape, she was able to come out of that environment and be free. The sexual abuse, the physical abuse is just heartbreaking. And you can hear that she has been through lots of therapy to help her get through those things. She did not have her family support. As a young woman, she gets excommunicated from the church. These are all just devastating moments in time, ultimately being called the bad seed is the dark side of Christianity. The sense that one is bad and wrong and dirty. And this was explicit in Amanda's case, even to the point of as she was experiencing the symptoms of endometriosis, that being assumed that it was just a part of the curse on Eve. There's so much more to Amanda's story, being married to someone who then transitioned marrying an atheist and going through her own deconversion process. But the exciting thing is that she then studied the medical anthropology, the anthropological side of things that will just studies side of things, as well as with the therapy, I think she's in a much healthier place today. I want to thank Amanda for being on the podcast for sharing her story with such vulnerability and honesty. Again, I think there are many of people who are listening that are going to really relate even if they weren't in those extreme circumstances. Thank you, Amanda, for sharing your story. The secular gray slot of the week is you are not a bad person. At first glance, this sounds like a platitude. But Amanda's story reminds us that in her case explicitly the being the bad seed that the dark underbelly of Christianity is that humans are meant to feel like they are not worthy that they are not good. And we try to have this discussion with religious believers. They will push back and point out all the damage that human beings do to one another. So I'm not saying that we are pure goodness. I'm saying we're neutral. But we are not bad people. We are not broken. You are not a bad person. You are not filthy rags. You are worthy of respect, love, community and kindness. Next week, our lien interviews Mary justice, you will not want to miss that episode. 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 atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai