This week’s guest is Sara. Sara grew up in a Canadian Mennonite community and embraced it wholeheartedly. She was surrounded by evangelical Christianity and she thrived.
As a young adult, she married and followed her husband into ministry. While he led, she helped as was expected of her. It didn’t occur to her until years later how little her own leadership skills had to be set aside.
Sara’s husband started deconstructing his beliefs before she did, but as he was learning, she was also learning. Years later, she knew he’d become an atheist before he did.
It wasn’t easy, but they made space for one another to learn and grow and move down their own paths. Today, Sara is a spiritual director for others and doesn’t have a specific label for herself, and it works just fine.
“There’s a whole host of ways of being in the world…”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be a graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. 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 Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline interviews this week's guest Sarah. Sarah grew up in Canada in a Mennonite community that also had a lot of evangelical influence. Her and her husband were both deeply committed Christians, her husband deconstructed and D converted first. And Sarah began to deconstruct her faith. Sarah is still a spiritual person, and does not care for labels. But what she is describing is a Christian or a spiritual humanism. Here is Arline interviewing Sarah.
Arline 1:50 Right. Welcome to the graceful atheists.
Sara 1:53 Thank you. Good to be here.
Arline 1:55 You and I have chatted, we're both in the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. You are the lovely spouse of one of our former guests. And yeah, I'm just excited I get to talk to you.
Sara 2:07 I'll take it. I'll take it.
Arline 2:10 Okay, so we usually just start tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in.
Sara 2:16 Sure. So I grew up in small town, Manitoba, Canada, and that is a cold place. But it was full of warm hearted people. For me, growing up growing up Evangelical, Mennonite, Christian, so I'm not sure who's all familiar with Mennonite people out there. But a lot of people in the States could think of Amish people for a first comparison. We still have people groups in that tradition up here with the bonnet and and the old fashioned dress, the modest dress, but mostly progressive communities. So modern communities, full of evangelical based Mennonite Christians. So that's how I grew up, was just being ushered into the faith. So I've learned the term cradle Christian. And that definitely applies to me. So I remember I remember being told that I said the center's prayer around age four. So you know, in in smack at the age of innocence, just reciting, reciting to my parents at bedtime, the sinners prayer and thus becoming a Christian. And my parents describe to me, our faith, our family history as culturally, we came from Mennonites, but our faith was more progressive. So we did attend a non denominational church in our community, which of course was full of evangelicals. So non denomination or not, that's that's what I grew up in and really embraced wholeheartedly. The faith. And so for me that looks like let's see if I can age myself. Date. give you guys a date reference in the 90s. Growing up as a teenager, a little bit of purity culture, a lot of the youth rallies, evangelical, mainstream musicians and concerts. A lot of the culture that I was involved in was all Christian so from morning to sundown, was Christian media and Christian teaching. You did not go to Christian school, we had public school, but really was not exposed to other ways of life or other faiths or other cultures. I'm really just, what's the word one tone, just a uniform tone in our in our small town at least. And I guess you could say I, I wasn't popular, growing up, but I was good. And in the Christian circles that made one feel pretty secure and the affirmation of elders and peers was something that I enjoyed and sought and was rewarded with, because of being good. And I, I was really good at being a Christian and enjoyed it. And I do, I would say, I was lucky that we did grow up, I would say more progressive. And the purity culture, stuff that that did come around indoctrinated a lot of the younger teenagers younger than me at the time. And I didn't get hit with with too much of that guilt messaging. But as a grew up into young adulthood, I, I took the opportunity, of course, and to take the next step from being a good Christian in my small town to being a good Christian in a small college, a small Christian College. So our community has Christian College, about seven minutes away from the town. And so that was my big leap forward out of high school, into the big wide, wide world, seven minutes down the gravel road, away from my house where I grew up my whole youth. And at this school, I would say I did receive, again, a more progressive Christian evangelical education. So in that way, continued to avoid some of the more the pitfalls, some of the more abusive messaging, I would say that the messaging I received was, stay on the straight and narrow and listen to your elders. And, and really, the the messaging Other than that, was, you know, that, that women were submissive to men. But that was never really something that that was something that I struggled with. And it was never rammed down our throats, maybe because nobody questioned it. So regardless of why the messaging didn't seem that traumatic for me. It did enable me to keep mostly an open mindset, I guess. So it was at this Christian College, that I would say, I continue to learn a more open minded and open hearted way of being a person of faith.
I did go on to to take a marketing degree, somewhere else and return to work at this college. And the the marketing challenge that I was presented with when I worked there was very interesting to me because the school was transitioning from I'm not sure what they would have been called beforehand, but they were embracing what was called a liberal arts, education. And so the liberal arts in our area of Canada, all people heard was the word liberal. And they thought this, this college was off the rails and that that was it. However, how I understood it then, and how I understand it now is liberal arts is just a wide range of studies. It's a broad spectrum, education, that's what they were seeking to provide. So I would contrast that with other colleges where the religious messaging is heavy handed and inescapable, and in as much as this college wasn't perfect, they did present as far as I understood it a more open way of being. So as I transitioned from attending the college to You know, ending up working there, I met my husband there. And he was, you guessed it a very good Christian. At the time, we were well matched, both of us wanting to be not just good Christians, but leaders in our community. So leading, as someone who worked at the college, was what I was fully embracing. And my husband eventually ended up working in ministry. We were volunteering at our church multiple times per week, he was volunteering and working full time with youth. And that was always interesting to me, as well as he was fully whose full time employed in ministry. And I was expected to come and help. And this was a fully unpaid understanding was that I would be there to support and help but also lead and teach teenage girls and be a mentor to them. And I didn't quest question it, I enjoyed it. I felt that there was room for me as a strong, outspoken woman to have leadership skills. It wasn't until later that I would realize that in all of that, the ability to fully use my voice, my intellect, was still completely under the the leadership of others, especially under the leadership of men. So from there, we had started a family, we had a young family, and I would say, a catalyst to our growth. My husband and I would be when we did start a family, one of the things about having children having a baby, what is the the expression, having your heart, on the outside, walking around in the world, having having your heart outside of you walking around in the world, we both experienced that intense vulnerability that comes with realizing we're not in control. We leave, pray to and believe in and trust in this big, omnipotent God. And yet, there is there suffering in the world, and there are things that can happen to your loved ones. So the problem of, of pain, the problem of suffering, the fear of not being in control, or wondering why there's a God that would allow suffering, we did have few intense health scares with our first with our first child. So that really prompted both of us this question of what kind of god is this, that we believe and we started to question a little deeper? Hey, what's up with?
The questioning, I would say lead to my husband D converting first. So the deconversion of one spouse when the other isn't ready or hasn't made the same types of growth or the same direction of growth. That's something that we confronted early on, I would say my husband found it difficult to tell me what he was going through for fear of what I would say, and just not necessarily fear, but the the intense, honest discomfort that comes with realizing your spouse and you are, are different and growing differently. And my husband at the time was studying Christian psychology and pursuing his master's in Christian counseling. A lot of the benefit of being a spouse of a student is that you you learn a little bit alongside with them, definitely not to the same extent that he was learning, receiving the training directly, but watching and watching the books that he'd bring home and hearing him talk about what he was learning did benefit me as well. And, and I knew he was questioning and and I did question. A lot of the things I was told from the Bible as well, when one of the areas that we immediately agreed on was the area of the Bible as a book, a literature book, and for context, how it was put together and who wrote it and when and why and learning about the different types of literature contained within this book. Being open to the Bible as Miss being open to portions of the Bible as poetry, and art. We eventually realize that the Bible being the be all and end all, it, it didn't strike us the same way as it used to, using the Bible as a rule book. Using the Bible as law at more than just as a place to find messaging about values, just using it as the foundation for everything for all sources of thought, was not something that we could both condone. I was, I would say, I was very at peace. With that, as you could probably tell. Living in the headspace and questioning and learning and embracing my intellect is not something that I would say that I naturally gravitate toward. That's not me. I, I was always the one who would say I have the gift of faith. I don't question I just believe I, I just know. And even as we were growing and changing, it didn't seem very unrestful to me, because we were still good Christians. We were still going to church, we were still leading in the community. And we also experienced some freedom in what my husband was doing in his ministry, where we were learning about evangelicalism as relational. Instead of, we called it we call it relational instead of vacuum cleaner salesman, evangelicalism. So instead of saying, you know, upfront, hey, we're here were Christian, you should be to Why aren't you one? Here's how you can be one Why aren't you and yet very heavy handed salesmanship. We embrace relationship. First, I, I would describe this as an immature way of knowing that love is more important than law. And we wouldn't have had the words for it then. But we were thankfully supported to continue to do ministry. Without being heavy handed. Or I would use the word abusive now we we were able to be loving in as much as providing religious propaganda in central rural, small town Manitoba can be loving. So I would say, my I knew my husband had become atheists before he did. I remember that conversation on our, on our hosts, we're both are on our coach. We're both night owls. We were staying up way too late having one of our discussions like we do. And maybe I wasn't being the most loving at the time. But, but I remember telling him after he he'd told me for a few years, he was agnostic Christian, which then I had to look that up and make sure that I knew what that meant. And at the time, I could say, okay, yeah, I understand agnosticism, and being able to say that I hold a view of God or what is out there and I don't know for sure. And there are there are more learned and technical definitions than that. The way I understood it very simply was this is what I think I believe, but I may be wrong and I hold that opinion loosely.
So for him to tell me for years, he was agnostic, Christian, I was fine with. And I looked at him one night and I said, you're not you're not agnostic, Christian, you're agnostic atheist. And that that term that's a laden term. So for anyone, and I think I know your audience pretty well, there's probably a lot of people out there who for a long time, that term atheist was so laden with guilt and fear and condemnation. And it was probably the worst thing that could happen to someone was who they've turned into an atheist. And so for me at the time, even though our, our growth as people our development as people was heading in that direction, it definitely scared me. And I think more so than the label was just the implication for our partnership. And the questions that that would raise, how would we raise our kids? How would we celebrate the holidays, the really practical ins and outs of having partnership between two people where their faiths are so different. And for the next year or two after that, I would say my growth continued. But I wouldn't say necessarily the same direction. And now, this is probably where it might get interesting. Because as much as I could look at what I believed and and see that the term agnostic fit with me as well agnostic Christian, I couldn't quite embrace the term atheist. And, and so that's kind of where we parked for a long time. As we both continued to grow, my husband getting more and more comfortable with the term agnostic atheist, eventually found his way to community Bihu humanist Canada, the community of humans Canada, and, and so for him to announce to me that he had become a humanist. That was the next step in in his growth and I still felt I still felt a little left behind, I still felt a little bit like, that wasn't the right direction for me. I did look into humanism for a while and try it on the label of Christian humanist. And I wrote a few essays, developing the idea and, and show making a case for Christian humanism, which I believe there is a case for that type of belief. But along along the way, of my, my studying on my own, not professionally, just casually, I'm pursuing my own topics and books that that kind of served me on my growth path. I realized that I didn't like any of this anymore. Any of these labels. I didn't like the Christian label. I didn't fit the atheist label. I didn't fit the humanist label. I didn't fit the deist label, see theist label. I every label that that someone suggested to me or put on me, I just there was always something that didn't quite fit about it, and portions of it would fit and others wouldn't. And I struggled with feeling about, you know, where did that leave me? What type of community did that leave me with? And then COVID Hit COVID I feel like that's every single story these days or every single interview. There's the point in their history and then COVID. So, the loss of community was happening for me before COVID And the first year of COVID in our small town, cemented my husband and I are shared need to be out to be out of the church. or there was not really a path forward for us that continued to see us. In the church, I was working in communications at the time, I was actually a small town journalist, small town journalism at the beginning of COVID, when all of our governments were doing what they were doing and doing what they could, what they thought they needed to do during the beginning of COVID. And, and I was also on the communications team for our church, and realize that I needed distance from the church, and COVID eventually became a gift. The, the quarantining the bubbling, the distance from the community became a space to breathe. And I know it's cliche. But there's people who would say, there's more people now that would say, they're not a Christian, they're still a Jesus follower. And that's where I saw myself, Jesus follower for a while. And eventually, I wouldn't say that that part has necessarily fallen off. But I started to find other ways of finding information and finding community and finding teaching, outside of Christianity outside of the Christology that I had grown up with. That just made sense. And once you find things that just make sense, you can't go back.
What I deconstructed from is easier to define evangelical Christianity is what I deconstructed from. And I would definitely say D converted from. And we haven't found our way back to a church, there's no plans in the future to return to a church. That's not a healthy environment. For us. It's not where we find that there's life giving activity for us. And what I've reconstructed to is harder to define. So I think I'll leave it there, as far as giving you a history of where I've come from and where I where I'm at. So
Arline 28:05 I have a few questions. Yes. You said there were. There were other ways that you found. I'm not sure the words that you use, but like other ways of thinking about things that you found, what do you have any examples of some of the the no longer Christian things that you were finding that were helpful to you?
Sara 28:27 Yes, there were some big ones that ended up being my non negotiables. One of the first ones that I had to turn away from was the term would be complementarianism. The idea that the genders the idea, first of all, that there's two genders, and that one is subordinate to the other. That became a no fly zone for me in a no go zone. It just did not add up. And the way I rebuilt from that was finding, first of all, a healthy dose of feminist theology. Once I immersed myself in feminist theology, and knew that it wasn't wrong, it was biblically supported. And more than that, it was holistically healthy for women to be seen as equals and operate in the world as equals. I could not subscribe to a church or faith tradition that views women as less than men. So I've constructed the, the author that that helped me the most, I would say would be Rosemary Radford rather. And she's a medical All Episcopalian, Catholic, whatever labels can we give to her? Eco eco theologian, feminist theologian. She passed away just a few years ago, after a lengthy career in writing and pursuing theology and teaching. And of course, it can't remember the the Catholic school she was at. Come on brain. But she she her writing very technically heavy, theologically textbook key. It gripped me and provided for me something to set my back against, so that I didn't need to just say I don't think that it's correct that women are subordinate to men. Now I have some theology that made sense to me now, now that I've come to where I am. I wish I could say I've picked up a lot more non religious feminism. There's no authors for me to name drop there. And that's on my list of things to continue pursuing.
The idea of health? No, that was. So the idea of health as an eternal place of torment became something I could no longer believing, and turning toward more progressive ideas of universal universalism became a way for me to stay as a Christian. And as I continue to grow, the idea that everyone is loved. It's an idea that transcends religion, it transcends Christianity. And the Universalist theology made sense to me. But just a mindset of love and acceptance. You don't need a textbook to flesh that idea out. So the idea that we're all connected and all okay, and loved. That was something that kept me growing. And interestingly enough, I would say the idea of time. And now now's where, you know, I don't put my foot in my mouth over this issue. But I started to find issues representative in science, physics, the study of matter and energy became extremely fascinating to me. And realizing that a, a spiritual being attached to a concept of time that we as humans could possibly begin to understand was, it became evident to me that in my tradition of Christian evangelicalism, the concept of linear time had to be upheld in order for the concept of morality and goodness and final judgment. To make those concepts possible, you had to hold up this linear version of time. And I didn't like that it didn't sit well with me.
Arline 34:09 Interesting. I thought of that. But yeah, that makes sense. There has to be an end. And then a hell. Yeah, well, yeah.
Sara 34:17 So to realize that our universe is growing and expanding, and that the Christian God doesn't fit with science. That became something that I needed to dig into my husband being the more intellectual one and challenged me in that regard. A lot. And it became kind of fun because we would often read articles or or read books. He had read the whole thing, I would just read portions of it. But who did we enjoy Carl Sagan? Neil deGrasse Tyson. There's more I try to remember who else we've read. And I'm not so good with names all the time. At Anyway, the game that we would play between the two of us was that he would read article based on physics and say, See, there is no God. And I would read the same article, and I would say, See, God is so much bigger than how we understood.
Arline 35:35 That's amazing. I love that chocolate have that conversation. And it's fascinating to watch. Two people read the same thing. And yes, the interpretation, the takeaway, the inferences are different. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So when you say earlier, you said, like, we're all we're all okay. And we're loved. I don't I don't even know how to ask this question like, is it a by whom? Or is it just like an inherent worthiness? Or is there a god? Little G quotation marks? Or is it still like up in the air because you don't have to have integers and all that good stuff.
Sara 36:15 For me, it's still up in the air I like for someone who I would describe myself and others, of course, would would agree with me, and call me an all or nothing person for someone who was an all or nothing person. Faith for me has not become an all or nothing. Zone. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, I still use the term God. But what I'm talking about what I believe in, is not what Christians the way I understand them, I would say 99.99% of the Christians I grew up with, they would not understand if I just use the word God. Rosemary Radford brother suggests, for the sake of egalitarianism, of course, she suggests using on paper anyway, it doesn't translate very well to, to spoken word, but she recommends using the term Gods slash depths. So capital God slash d s, s, to represent both genders of God.
Arline 37:34 Okay, got it. Okay, I
Sara 37:36 see it. Yeah, I enjoy that. But also, I don't view God as both male and female. And I don't view God as a God is gender less. That is another way of looking at God, I don't, that doesn't resonate with me, I finally landed on God being gender full. So as the spectrum of gender becomes something that science and the Western society as we understand, it begins to wrap their heads around, realizing that if one believes in God, I believe God is gender full. And I started creating a document for myself as a writer, as a researcher, I've started creating a document for myself to collect names for God, I'm not happy with any of them. And there are some that I like more than others. So in when you dig into the different traditions, surrounding God, capital God is, is what Christians are comfortable with. Jewish tradition, not writing the name of God and seeing the name of God as being holy, and not even capturable. In in a written form that intrigues me terms like the, the great mystery, the divine, the source of all being the ground of all being the most ancient parents. There's some poetical language and some scientific language for God that really resonates with me. And I think that's indicative of, you know, again, not needing to be fully in or fully out. So The way I see God is that source of love, that connection, the the embodiment of the whole way of approaching and enacting and being part of love. To me, that's God.
Arline 40:20 I have a hard time separating the word God from the stuff that I was taught, I have enjoyed or liked to see, when I was on my way out and didn't know I was on my way out. But I was just reading different books, I was reading Anne Lamott squirt, like her more explicitly Christian stuff. And she always talked about God, and called her. And she. And that was fun for me, that just little experience of the feminine pronouns for what I had always thought of as masculine God. And again, I didn't know I was on my way out. But that was, that was a nice little change. Eventually, it shifted. And I liked the idea of goddesses until I read about a bunch of the goddesses and I like, they're all heifers, I don't like any of them. Like, they're all just terrible. And for me, I don't believe in gods and goddesses and things like that. And at the same time, I like the idea of just some kind of whatever the reason is that love seems to be so important for humans, for primates for animals, to to exist well, for our species to keep going like this. It does as well, when we cooperate and are kind and loving, and all these kinds of things. So I love that I'm like, prepare for that.
You in Your un hubs. He's his ADSL. And you are your unlabeled, wonderful self. How did how are the conversations these days? Do you guys just let one another? Do whatever works for you? Is there any conflict? How did you decide about raising kids and holidays? And all those things you mentioned earlier? Once you guys just are have to figure that out? Or are you still figuring it out?
Sara 42:19 Yeah, we're still figuring it out. There's, there's no right or wrong way to do this. So we do feel a lot of freedom. In that regard. A lot of our conflict has dissipated, I think the confusion or fear about what each other believes, or why or how it's going to impact us a lot of that has just dissipated with with time when you're in it, it's scary. And when you've been in it a long time, it's not scary anymore. And we, for how strong willed both of us are, we did find a way to let each other be ourselves and let each other grow, how we would grow. And for me that ended up looking like after experiencing the loss of community, I didn't want to stop growing, I didn't want to stop trying to find people who were like minded. One of the authors that I had picked up earlier in my deconstruction was Kathleen Norris. And for someone coming out of an evangelical tradition, just to be exposed to a writer, for me who represented feminism and an open minded, open hearted way of being but someone who had been an atheist and came back into the church and why was very interesting to me. How she seemed to retain an intellectual integrity and open her heart up to what ways what ways she could grow as a human. And so her book. The cloister walk was one of the first ones that I read, and in her frustration with the church community that she was just kind of finding her way back into. Those were the same frustrations that I had found were leading me out of the church, and I thought both trajectories were AOK Kay. And that that felt good. That amount of acceptance, felt good frustration, vocalized healthily can lead to making healthy steps and choices, away from away from abusive situations away from dogmatic theology away from confinement into more open minded ways of experiencing the world. And from there, she helped introduce me to the Benedictine way of living, which to me was a delightful way of incorporating spirituality. Without the heavy handedness of what I'd experienced in evangelicalism, which is so funny because you think about monks, living in community with rigid rules and expectations. And how could that be a place of more freedom than the modern church, and without judgment, I just say that that's, that's a mirror for the Western Church to be looking at themselves through, that's for sure. When a life of a status ism, become becomes the, the way of freedom. It just ended up fascinating me what I ended up doing to continue to pursue studies and growth while my husband was finishing, not a counseling, Master's in Counseling in a Christian school, he was finishing a Master's of Science in, in a secular university. While he was finishing that I ended up looking into taking courses and studies in what I would eventually know as spiritual direction. So through the Benedictine community, close to where I live, they offered a two year certificate in spiritual direction. But what interested me most what fascinated me about what they offered was the open handed way of offering what they knew with a take it or leave it, gentle kind of way of offering spiritual study. So the program ended up being something that I couldn't take until COVID hit and it could be fully operational online, and suddenly became something that fit into our lifestyle. And what I was able to make work was my schedule. And the the program itself being open to anyone from any faith from any spiritual tradition became something that was very important to me. So I didn't want more Christian education. I wanted spiritual education. I wanted to know if I'm not a Christian, what else is there? What can I still be? And for me, that program really helped to answer a lot of those questions. But more importantly, it showed me which questions served me and which questions didn't. Questions that resulted in closed thinking or closed loop answers. Let's just say the Benedictines are not great at those questions. They're good at the kind of questions that leave you asking more questions.
Arline 49:37 And
Sara 49:39 to me, yeah, to me that represented the freedom to arrive where you're going to arrive in your spiritual journey, whether that is to remain a Christian or not. And whether that's to be a humanist or not, or an eight atheist as long as the way of being in the world is loving and open. That seemed to be okay. And, and I liked that. Yeah,
Arline 50:17 like love and kindness and the things that are mostly universal. I don't know if they are fully universal, but that most society see as very important and very necessary yet again for us to thrive. They're not inherently Christian, they're not owned by Christianity like, and even within Christianity. There's so many different versions of it, we're exposed to this one. Very Evan Jellicle. White, I would say North American in the nine different countries, North American version of Christianity, Western, I guess. And like you were talking about the Benedictines and then there are there's Orthodox churches, and I mean, just Christianity looks very different in different places, and spirituality looks different. And I love that you've been able to figure out like, what feels best and is right for you. And knowing that we have that kind of freedom and relief, the more constricting Hi, what's the word? Hi something religions, high demand religion?
Is there anything I should have asked, we have a few more minutes or anything I should have asked but that you want to talk about.
Sara 51:47 Just trying to think if there's any more pieces of the puzzle that would lend any clarity. If if I would just name another author that helped me on my journey. Anyone looking for further reading. If there if, if any of your listeners are, are still deconstructing still in the process of D converting, because as I mentioned, I'm, I'm not a black and white thinker anymore. It's not a switch that gets flipped. I'm a Christian, and then flip the switch. Now I'm not the spectrum of faith is wide. And Thomas Keating, helped me on my way, as far as presenting an open minded theology that insisted that science be involved, and included and important in a holistic way of being in a way of being a spiritual human. There's no conflict with looking at the way the world is made and coming up with new ways to think about it and new language to talk about it. Thomas Merton, another Thomas, from from Thomas Merton's righteous anger, in the 60s, and his writing. And just one of his final lectures, admonishing people, encouraging people exhorting people to be open to language to learning about, you know, why do we say the things that we do about God? And why is it written that way? And where did that come from? And hey, doesn't this tradition in Christian meditation mirror that in Eastern religions and, and from there, I talked myself into some Buddhist studies for a while, and, and from from, you know, realizing the practices of Buddhism, the commitment to lessening the suffering of others, and how that's not in conflict with, with Christianity with, with how I want to live, and realizing that truth is truth. I know that's a loaded word these days, that everyone claiming to have the capital are real, capital T truth. And realizing that, even though it's subjective, you'll know it and you'll know with whom you share your definition of God, you'll know with whom you share your definition of love, you'll know with whom you share your diff admission of truth if you hold that openly and yeah,
Arline 55:08 leave it there. Yes, that's a lovely place to end. Sarah Thank you so much for being on the podcast I would ask for recommendations for girl you name drop. So many fantastic authors and books that people can find who are still, who still Christians like Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris, Richard Richard Rohr.
Sara 55:31 Richard roars in there, anyone with a psychotherapy bent or psychology bent? Carl Jung Jung, in fact, psychology has been really formative for me as well. And yeah, just realizing that there's a whole host of authors, there's a whole host of ways of being in the world that aren't Christian, as in it, you know, being pegged being in the box it and it's okay, and it's scary at first. But once you're out there, it's wide, open and wonderful.
Arline 56:11 How can people find you online? If you're doing the spiritual direction? Is there a way people can find you?
Sara 56:17 Yeah, I do spiritual direction. I also just write my own reflections on life and the world and deconstruction. So I have a website called the prairie thistle, tours that are really hard to spell it. I don't know why I picked them, but just spell check, and you'll find it WWW dot prairie fissile.ca.ca. Because I'm in Canada. So yeah, okay.
Arline 56:41 Well, we'll put we'll put all the links in the show notes so people can find it. And thank you again, for being on the podcast here. This is lovely. Thank you, Arline.
My final thoughts on the episode. So when I've already talked to someone and gotten to know them, I get really excited when I get to speak with them on the podcast, because I just know they're lovely and wonderful. And I get excited. And Sarah was no exception. It was such a great conversation. She's so kind and gentle spoken and I just, I could listen to her forever. Go, you need to narrate some books. There you go. There's your future job. My final thoughts on the episode. There are so many, I don't know to call them universal truths, because I'm sure there are places where this things are not absolutely true. But like, it seems for humans to survive as a species and for us to survive interstitially with other animals and plants, fungi, the whole earth, like love, kindness, cooperation, empathy, like there's so many things that seem to be integral for us. No matter where we live, like Christianity does not have a hold on humility, kindness, gentleness, whatever the fruit of the Spirit, whatever they were, these are just good things to have. And she kept using the word openness, like if we can be open to things, and I can't cite the science, but I've heard on plenty of podcasts. 10%, happier podcast talks about a lot. And I don't know where else. But when we stay open to things, and we're not judgmental about things and we're not closed to whether or not we could be wrong. It's just good for us, our mental health is better. Our nervous system is less activated. When we stay open to things when we are willing to be wrong when we're willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when we're willing to hear new information and not be closed off to it. Like it's just it's just good for us. And so staying open, being loving, not at the expense of our boundaries and our own personal well being but loving others, because Christianity will teach you to love others, and it'll just burn you out. And that is not that's not good. Last thing, she also talked about having children and the problem of pain and suffering. Like when she when they had children, she and her husband realized like, she didn't say this explicitly, but I've heard it from a few different places. And this was true when my husband D converted. It's like, we should not feel like we are better parents to our children because we treat them better than God treats his kids. That doesn't seem like we should be more moral, or ethical, more kind and loving than God is. And, yeah, there's so much suffering in the world, trying to square up the god we're taught is in the Bible with what we actually see in the world and what we actually see in the Bible. That takes a lot of gymnastics, lot of mental gymnastics, and it's just not worth it. It's not worth it at all. Sara, thank you again for being on the podcast. It was wonderful and I really enjoyed it. And
David Ames 1:00:03 the secular Grace Thought of the Week is humanism. This podcast has from day one been about humanism. And what that means to me is caring for people. I believe in people. With hindsight, I recognize that I had been a religious humanist and after deconversion it was a natural move to being a secular humanist. But really, my core values of caring for people did not change. Maybe my reasons did, but it did not change. I legitimately do not care if people are spiritual and not religious, or Christian or Muslim or Jewish, if they care about people, if they recognize that relationship with other human beings is the most important thing in the universe. Until next time, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human being. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. Do 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
This week’s guest is Beth. Beth grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home that revered James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and all those who created the “Moral Majority.” Her father was a pastor whose sermons centered on the End Times and protecting their families from the “shifting culture,” (read: all the movements happening in the 60’s and 70’s).
As a teen, she lived a double life, keeping plenty of secrets from her parents. However, as a young adult, followed all the rules with the expectation that the “umbrella of God’s protection” would take care of her. It didn’t.
It took decades of trying to do what was “right” and watching the promises of the Church come to naught before she finally took the leap out of Christianity. She now identifies as SBNR—spiritual but not religious. Beth is now able to trust her own judgment and make decisions that are best for her. No “umbrella of protection” needed.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I are trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider reading and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. We have our merchandise store on T public where you can get your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. 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. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, or lean interviews, today's guest Beth Beth grew up during the time of the Moral Majority. She was a PK. She went through a quote unquote rebellious period during her youth, but came back to the church to try to do everything right. It wasn't until decades later that she was able to deconstruct her faith and experience the freedom on the other side. Here is our Lean interviewing Beth.
Unknown Speaker 1:43 Beth, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Beth 1:46 Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here. Yes,
Arline 1:49 I'm excited to hear your story. You and I've chatted a little bit through the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. And yeah, I'm glad to get to hear your whole story. So we usually begin, just tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in. Okay,
Beth 2:05 well, I was born into a pastor's home and independent fundamental Baptist pastor's home. Oh, wow. And so it's all I ever really knew. And I'm the third of four children. I'm very extroverted came to the planet very curious, asking lots and lots of questions. I was born in a small town in central Florida. But in 1959, my dad took a pastoral calling to an Independent Baptist Church in the Atlanta area. Okay, so he was the pastor of that church, if you can believe it in this day and age, for 44 years. Wow. It relocated three different times in the Atlanta area. But it was always in that area. So the landscape of my childhood was just centered on the church, and our version of Christianity. My dad networked with other Independent Baptist pastors in the Atlanta area in the 1960s. Most of those people were Bob Jones University graduates. And quite frankly, anyone who had any connection to BJ you was just considered auto approved. That was the that was just the gold standard for the fundamental Baptists at that time. And so he basically took his cues on the way we should all be living our lives on the sermons he preached from Bob Jones University from Jerry Falwell, who kind of came to prominence in the 70s. And you know, he eventually started the Moral Majority. And then James Dobson came out with his, you know, parenting books, strong willed child, which I was considered to be, and I'm sure my parents were not wrong about that. Just to be honest, but in his preaching, the sermons were a lot about protecting your families from the shifting culture, and you know, kind of railing about things in politics. And there were a lot of sermons on Hell, the evils of rock and roll communism and the Red Scare, teaching about in times, you know, lots of scary sermons from the book of Revelation. And we were taught that the second coming of Christ would be at any moment. So the most important thing that you could do was to speak to every single person you encountered whether you they were a total stranger or not, and say to them, if you died tonight, do you know if you would go to heaven? And if not, I'll tell you how you can be sure if that and that was the way people in my church were taught to be. And even though I was extroverted and loved people, I always felt embarrassed to do that it felt really intrusive to me. It was difficult for me to get on board with that. And, you know, I questioned everything. And it really was not appreciated. I was in public schools up through the seventh grade before our parents started putting us in private Christian schools. So in our home, and in our church, you know, there were very strict rules around our behavior, the way we could talk, that way we could dress the media we could consume, and we were never really taught any type of boundaries, or self awareness, other than the fact that be aware, you're very simple. That, you know, yeah, that that's what the self awareness was, was all I'm focused on. So I was saved, and baptized by the age of five. So I guess I had a really long list of sins by that. I
Arline 6:04 know, right? Like little children have no concept of Oh, my heavens.
Beth 6:09 Yeah. Yeah, you know, like talking back to your mothering, and having to get a spanking, those were the deep sins from those times. And that Independent Baptist church movement was really growing in the southeast at the time. And that was also during the rise of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the anti war movements. And so because of all those things, being in the news, we did as a church and a family, a lot of othering of people who just weren't like us. And the whole tone of that really lacked compassion, and you know, just about for anyone who was different than us. And for me, I was just fascinated by other people who weren't like us. You know, so like, occasionally in elementary school, if that got to go to a friend's home, or go to a sleepover or something like that, with a family that wasn't like ours, I was just fascinated, and love to see that, oh, they don't go to church. But wow, they're the nicest sweetest people. And that was just very curious to me. I thought that's very, very interesting. And then when in when I got into the 70s, and became a teenager, all of those strict rules were harder and harder to deal with.
Beth 7:28 Yes, I imagine you were there, my dad was so big on trying to keep us from watching the wrong things on TV, that back then when my mother would go get the weekly groceries, she would buy that little TV Guide magazine. And it would tell you a little synopsis of all the shows that are going to be on the major networks for the next week. And she would hand it to him when she got home from the grocery store. He would take out a ballpoint pen, sit down, flip through it, read every synopsis and write the word no, very large. The process. And that's how we knew when we turned on the TV and we picked up the TV Guide. What we could and mostly could not watch.
Arline 8:14 I was gonna say he picks no instead of like, here are the things you can watch. It's here the lot. Yeah,
Beth 8:21 exactly. Yeah, yeah, it was definitely all about that. That's for sure. And also to there was this pressure that because we weren't a preacher's children, then we were being watched by everyone in the church. And you know, when you're an adolescent, that is just the worst. Feeling, you know, it's you must be a good testimony. You know, you can't embarrass your dad, you can't embarrass the church.
So we're along the way. And they're Bill Gothard. You know, he came to the fore, and his first conferences in those early 70s. It wasn't called IBLP. Yet, it was called the Institute in basic youth conflicts. That's what it started as, uh huh. And he came to Atlanta, and he did these big conferences, I think down at the Civic Center, if I recall correctly, so there were lots and lots of conservative churches in the area that came to hear him speak and I was made to go to two of those conferences as a teenager. And, and the the main thing I remember was all that emphasis on the authority structure of the umbrella protection. Yes, yeah, that's covered in shiny happy people on Amazon Prime about the IBLP called, so everything about that was authoritarian. It was misogynistic and It just reiterated, like the conditioning I had from birth that as a female, because I was female, it was just my place to submit and, and stay in my place. And then I would be safe and all would be well in my world. So I was never prepared for anything else. As as a female, my sister and I were not taught how to manage finances. We were not taught to be ambitious about anything, you know, hopes and dreams, because that was already laid out for us in the Bible as to what our place was going to be. We were told that if we did go to college, the only purpose would be to find a husband and you didn't even have to worry about graduating. It's just all about finding someone to marry. Because it's that person's job to take care of you. Yes. You know that you don't really need your own agency. That that's that's just a bridge too far. Oh, wow. Yeah. So basically, I did what a lot of teenagers do, and oppressive situations, I just lived a double life. You know, I sang in the choir on Sundays and top children's church, but I was sneaking out of my parents house in the middle of the night to be with my friends. I was looking for all kinds of ways to get around the rules. I basically took the list of things they told me I could not do and I just made it my to do list. Yeah, and I basically checked off every box before I was 18. All right, there you go. Hey, they they put it on a list?
Arline 11:32 Yeah. And that's the thing. That's the whole thing with like, the forbidden fruit when you literally say here, here is a church tree that I'm going to sit in the middle of a garden and then tell you not to eat that tree. That's like parenting 101. You don't? You don't do that. Yeah, that's right.
Beth 11:47 That's right. So as a result of that, when I was 17, and in between my junior and senior years of high school, I got kicked out of my Christian high school. Oh, wow. I remember along with, along with, with two boys that I had actually run away with to Colorado one summer. Oh, wow. Yeah. While my parents were ironically, at a youth ministry, preaching to teenagers. Oh, wow. Yes. Yes. And yes, it did get their attention. I imagine it did. Yeah. And when when we were found, and I was retrieved, you know, wasn't 18 yet. And because I, I messed up my senior year of high school, I basically was told that, you know, they had to watch me all the time. I had to finish my senior year of high school through back then, you know, there was no online thing. So you had to do that through like, a through the snail mail, correspondence school. Take your classes. So I did that. So I finished my senior year in three months in the fall of 1973. So my parents told me that because I was going to graduate by Christmas time that I had to go to a Christian college in January of 74. And they first said, our first choice for you is Bob Jones. And I busted out laughing and said, I won't last three days. And, and they and they knew it. They knew that. And then my dad found out about this very small, independent Bible believing College in Florida, that a pastor friend of his was on the board of and he asked me if I would be willing to go there. And I said, Yes, because I was just in anywhere but here mode. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I did. And honestly, it was just so good to be away from all of that drama and scandal that I had caused. And, and and so, you know, I really did enjoy my time in college. I really did. Yeah, yeah, I did enjoy that. I did actually graduate. But I also did meet my first husband there. And yeah, he he kind of like you. He didn't grow up as a Christian. But he did come to faith when he was in college living overseas, and so that's why he came to a Christian college.
So we ended up getting married and starting her family. You know, we had three children born very close together in the early 80s. So they were super busy years and my husband was actually working at our alma mater at that Christian college while he was getting advanced degrees, a masters and a PhD and And, and because I was running a household and have three little kids, I just did part time jobs as I could. And I shuffled them around and ran the home, and we were very active in the church, and you know, how you want your kids in the program since that, so that becomes your social life, you know, becomes your whole life. And, and so we did that, where he worked, they did not pay well at all. So we, we really struggled financially, and it was just a constant source of stress. And, you know, I was always praying, you know, and doubling down on all of that, you know, that, Oh, I knew God would take care of us all of that, but it was just so hard. And as he added to his education, you know, you should make more money based on that. Right. And it just was not happening to the level that it would have, you know, outside of it being a small ministry. And, you know, as our children get a little older, you know, our, in our marriage, we started having conflicts over our parenting styles. And in his work environment, at that Christian College, which it no longer exists, the school went out of business several years ago. The leadership had changed over. And a couple of I call them Bo Joe's Bob Jones students. Were running it. And yeah, there was some, yeah, it just the way that they work, they were just harsh. They were harsh. And, and they didn't seem to care that much about how little all these people with young families were getting paid. And but that was somehow supposed to be spiritual, because this was God's work, and all your rewards will be in another life. There
Arline 16:49 you go. They don't have to tell you a whole lot, because this isn't what this is about. This is about serving the kingdom. And yeah, yep.
Beth 16:57 Yep, that's exactly what it was like. And so you know, I just kept thinking, well, we're doing this for God. And you know, so it's almost like a magical thinking is going on. After a while in your brain. You know, that you think that prayer, and just, oh, maybe I just need to go to another Bible study. read another book. Yeah.
Arline 17:15 All of that. I mean, what are their options? They don't give you any other options. It's just getting the word pray, being community, getting the word pray and being community. There's they don't give you anything else. Fasting? Sometimes. Yeah.
Beth 17:28 Yeah. I mean, that's just the way it was. And then when the early 2000s, rolled around, he left his job there. And he got a very well deserved position in a secular college. And I was so glad to see that. And with our kids who were now all living away at college, I thought we might be able to reset our relationship, you know, just have a different time. But that was not going to be, which was such a shock to me. Oh, no. And I was absolutely stunned, you know, by the fact that he told me that he just didn't want to be married anymore. And I'm sorry, you know, at a time when you know, and so it was just really shocking. And, you know, the fight flight, freeze fawn reactions to trauma. I'm a freezer. Yeah. And I just stand when it comes to trauma. And yeah, I was just stunned because I didn't know how I was going to live my life. Because, you know, I thought there was this story that I can see the end of Yep. Of how things were going to go. Now, he did agree to go with me to a Christian therapist. Honestly, I think that therapists let it let us go to therapy too long. Like, I think he probably could tell in the first few sessions that there was no way we were staying together. Yeah. But, but part of it too, was me digging in. I just would not accept the D word. You know, I just It wouldn't go inside my brain. And there was in the Christian circles we were in that was a huge shame to go through a divorce, man. That was considered a big deal. So anyway, unanswered prayers again, right. So these were the cognitive dissonances. Right, that were happening along the way. And, and probably the biggest thing about me for the divorce at the time, because of the circles we were in, I just felt like a failure. And I felt like a cliche, you know, the midlife crisis happened. Ah, I say, yeah, right. Right. Cuz I was around 48. At that time, I should say we were
we did divorce. And I found myself on my own was something I'd never thought would happen to me. And, you know, I was just grieving I was facing You know, oh, it's up to me what I do next? Oh, wait a minute, God, God, I'm sure God's gonna be in there with me. And we're gonna do this together, you know. And so, I stayed in church, you know, I mean, I had doubts about all of this, but it was just all inside of me, you know, that I was holding inside. And we had been a really visible family in our church, there was a church of about 1500 people. And I thought I had 1500 friends, you know. But basically, what I found out was that I have maybe five left from that church. It was so weird to come to that realization about that. Yeah, that if everything's going great. Yes, you're, you're, you're in the in crowd. Right? That is definitely the way it felt to me. So I started looking for another church. And I found this little Presbyterian Church USA, in our town. And I slipped in there one Sunday on the back row. And the the service was, it was a progressive Church, which I wasn't used to, but the whole service was so refreshing. And I thought to myself, Oh, I'll never be in leadership in church again, because I've got the big D up on the shoulder, you know. But as I kept going and meeting people, I found out that the current interim pastor had been divorced. And I'm like, say what? Oh, wow. Yeah. Rebels? Oh, oh, oh, yeah. I mean, I was just and then women were behind the pulpit to participating. And it was such a shock to my system. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. So as that got to know people, and they found out my background, they were like, you know, you should be tapped to be an elder and the short story is they, they really kind of put me up on spiritual crutches. Really lovely people. And they did, you know, affirm my gifts and, and I decided to become an elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA. And I did that, and it just felt good to me. All of that was good to me. And, you know, nobody there saw me as damaged. You know, yeah, the way that I did the way that I had felt they were wonderful. And I wished I had stayed there. But what happened was some, some college friends of mine told me that a new church had started in the area. It was a P with a PC, a pastor. So the Presbyterian Church in America is a much more conservative. They're a break off from the PC.
Arline 22:40 Yeah, we were part of that. And we learned, because we were PCA. You had to learn how the bad PCUSA people had had gone rogue and believed all this crazy stuff. But we were the true church. And the conservative. Oh, yeah. So I'm familiar with the, a little bit of that.
Beth 22:57 Yeah. Yeah. So that's really, really, yeah, it was interesting. And I really was taken with the new young pastor of that church, I got really involved. And I actually ended up leaving my PCUSA church to go be a part of that little Turk. So that was kind of interesting. But I did meet lovely people there. It was an interesting experience. But I think it kind of held me back from broadening my horizons, because I made that decision.
Over time, you know, after I helped my youngest child who had graduated from from college to move to San Francisco to start her career, when I came home, from that trip, you know, I was just feeling very alone, you know, in spite of the fact that I was working, and I have my church friends, and you know, and then kind of a perfect storm started to form that I completely misread. So basically, what happened was an old friend from my Christian High School, contacted me and said, Oh, do you remember this mutual friend of ours from high school? Well, he's also divorced. Would you like me to connect? You know, you too. And the short story is, I said, Yes, sure. Why not? You know, so I started talking to that guy, and emailing and then talking on the phone, and then he came to see me and we started dating and our relationship moved very, very quickly. And we seemed very, very compatible. And instead of doing my due diligence about him, I really rushed into it because I'm thinking, God's answer my prayers. He's open this door, and it's my turn for happiness. And of course now I know that's just you know, all those chemicals in you that high you get from a new
Arline 24:54 love relationship in a new relationship energy. Yep, exactly.
Beth 24:58 That's exactly what it was some apart, but I kept thinking, you know, like, he seemed to be so compatible spiritually. We were praying together. We were reading Scripture together, we, because we had known each other when we were younger, we remembered each other's families, he didn't seem to be a stranger. You know, it's that kind of situation. And so I married him with, you know, after not, not a lot of time, just few months. And, like, for six years, I was with someone who actually had very serious mental health issues. And, and they presented very gradually. And so there were like, lows, you know, and then highs, and the lows, and then highs. And so I thought the highs were from my prayers, those were my answer prayers, when things when things would get better along the way. And, you know, he had a lot of things he had been hiding from me about his past. And so I would get information in a slow drip. Sometimes it was things that would come in the mail to him, or some phone call he got where he kind of had to tell me stuff. And it took a while to figure it out. But I discovered he had a he had a criminal past for domestic violence. Oh. And it was just such a shock. And I so I felt very embarrassed. I felt stupid, I felt ashamed. You know, that I gone into this marriage that I had rushed in. And then I'm thinking, oh, wait a minute, God, this was supposed to be a God thing. What's going on here? And so I did what I usually do when I feel traumatized, I kind of froze, I kind of felt paralyzed. And I just doubled down on my prayer. Like, I thought that would be a shield. That was, you know, going to protect me, you know, from it. And, you know, it ended after a very threatening encounter with him, where for my own safety, I had to sneak out and stay with some friends. But while I was did that a couple of days later, he died in our home by suicide. Oh, oh, gosh. Yeah. So you talk about wondering where God was? Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Arline 27:19 Like all all the praying and the waiting and the wandering, and then a traumatic event like that happening. And it's all the questions, you have all the questions. Yeah.
Beth 27:29 And then, of course, I stayed in freeze, because that was a whole new level. It was, it was such, it was such a shock. It was so awful to deal with, it happened in the home we shared. Thankfully, I was with friends. So I wasn't the person who actually discovered, you know, him. It was my friend who told me to go outside when he discovered him. And so it was really, really tough. And, you know, I did get to have some therapy sessions after that about grief and so forth. But I mainly just did what I usually do and just kept going, working. I'm very task oriented. You know, just trying to get my bearings again, in life after going through all of that, and just also was questioning myself like, How in the world did I get here? How to get this situation? Yeah. Yeah, it was really rough. And then I started having strange physical symptoms of a almost feeling paralyzed. I actually landed me in an ER when I got to where I currently stand. And basically, it was my body holding trauma. Yeah, unprocessed trauma. And thankfully, the emergency room I went to it didn't take that long for the doctors and nurses to figure that out. That that's what was going on with me. So, a real a real beginning of healing came for me when I stopped attending church entirely. And I realized, Sunday's Sundays are wonderful, right? I had spent literally my entire life never having just a Sunday for how I wanted to spend it. And so I just got back into my body is what I did, I rested a lot. I went to yoga, all the more I started meditating, you know, I started to then not feel as slowly because I was like, Oh, I'm here for me. Oh, I started enjoying my own company. Yes. And I realized that the relationship that I had neglected my entire life was the one with me.
Arline 29:46 Because you're taught from the time that you're a little bit, especially as a female, you need a man to take care of you and do this for you and do that for you. And, and there's no relationship with yourself. I haven't thought of it that way. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah,
Beth 30:01 yeah, I'm like, I'm actually a person with her own thoughts, needs, wants all of that. And I just started feeling more alive with that realization, and realizing that I had my own inner wisdom, that I've always been intuitive. And, you know, that's why I kind of identify as spiritual because I've always gotten vibes about other people. But I wasn't that great with knowing what my own vibes were. Yeah, which was, which was kind of interesting. But I was just grateful to be alive and to be able to feel safe again. And so I just embraced the personal agency over my life, and felt so free. So I prioritize the relationship with me and I have vowed to never abandon her again. Oh, yeah. And it's, it's been amazing. And I've also had just learned how to set boundaries, because I cannot make that vow to myself if I don't set boundaries.
So I realized I had a dream I had filed way in my brain that someday I wanted to move to Northern California, and live near my daughter in her family. And so I realized, why not? Yeah, so I relocated here six and a half years ago, and I absolutely love it. I haven't, I've never looked back. I've never regretted it. I'm far away from all the rest of my, my family, who all live in the east, but, but this is a place I belong. And I think about it every day, there's so much natural beauty, I love hiking. I love walking I love. I mean, there's such diversity out here among people, people from all over the world. And it's so fun to hear people's stories and build relationships. It's just really an incredible joy. So I'm grateful for my three great kids and my grandchildren. I also have a really good relationship with my first husband. Oh, good. So I don't like to call him my ex, I actually refer to him as my husband. And, you know, he and I are really good friends. I mean, we have a lot of history, right? That goes back to our, our 20s. And we share children and grandchildren. So I'm very grateful that you know, in that sense, we are still a family. It took a lot of doing to get there in my heart, but I got there. And it's been a good thing for our whole family. And then the online communities have been great between podcasts. And like, I'm not a person who posts a lot online. But I'm more stalking on Facebook, even in our deconversion group. I do more reading, they're responding. And I love that I love that opportunity to do that. And so I would say my, my deconstruction could be described as death by 1000 cuts. You know, over time it came became very clear to me that you know, very little in life can be reduced to the binary of any kite that's good or bad, right or wrong. Instead, everything is nuanced and complex, right? Yeah, I mean, so curiosity and ambiguity and just observing, I mean, and letting things be what they are. It's a much more peaceful way to live. And so I'm much less anxious than I used to be. And just more open, and the stories of other people endlessly fascinate me, which is why I absolutely love podcasts like gap, for sure. So I get, you know, I don't like labels, but I guess I am an SB nr spiritual but not religious. Yeah, I don't attend church, although I work for one. I work for a very progressive PCUSA church support staff. And I actually love what they do in social justice, and in the communities out here. They're great, very, very inclusive in every way. It's just a joy to watch that. I have very supportive and loving relationships with some of my nieces and nephews who have D converted. And I treasure our conversations because I can have different conversations with them than they can have with other family
Arline 34:35 members. That makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Beth 34:39 And so my other my siblings are all still, you know, practicing Christianity. And so it's just not a topic any of us ever talks about with one another. Although I'm sure they all talk about me because I've always been in the one in the family who thought otherwise. So like, like when Sharon announced at the age of 60, she was moving to California, I'm sure they all rolled their eyes and said, and who else would do that? And our family? Just staying on brand. I love it. I love it. Yes. So I do want to say that I can't help realizing that over the past few years, it's become super obvious to me, that those that are bent on destroying our democracy, and forcing Christian beliefs on all people are actually a product of the past two generations of evangelicals, especially those of the fundamentalist tight. Yeah, that makes sense. And as I've seen that happening, and unfolding, you know, I didn't see that one coming. I really didn't. Because, you know, back then it seemed fringe. And now it's moved into the mainstream. And so I just thought it would say that, because it's, it's quite startling to me, that that is happening right now. And that it's related to how I was raised.
Arline 35:58 Yeah. Right. Because before the internet, yeah. You know, well, I grew up a generation below you. And it's like, I didn't grow up in the church. So I didn't see all of that. Now, I did still see that because I grew up in the south of the United States. I saw that just cultural version of, you know, patriarchy, white supremacy, all those kinds of things. Like it was just part of our culture. But yeah, seeing now, like, the House of Representatives, like just different people that are that have so much power, so much power, that a long time ago, long time ago, I would have thought, okay, these people are just crazy people that go to my parents to my cousin's church, my parents church, and now it's like, no, these are their children, or these are those same people. And they have power and money and in very, very, they can harm entire groups of people. And it's yeah, it's scary. And like you said, it's a product of those generations. Many generations. It
Beth 37:01 is. Yeah, I mean, they found out that if they played the long game, it was gonna pay off some day. And that's this is this is what's happened. It was the long them playing the long game, and hanging in there and digging in and and indoctrinating their children and the next generation indoctrinating their children.
I wanted to mention a couple of quotes that I really love. One of them is from the late David, Boeing. Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who've already been there.
Arline 37:44 Oh, that's interesting. I like that. I have mixed emotions about the word spirituality, but I can see what he's saying. Yeah,
Beth 37:52 yeah. Yeah. I find it. I mean, that was very resonant. For me. It was something I read online, and I went, wow. And then I know that you and I both. I know you love Mary Oliver. Yes. As do I. And of course, I do love the question. What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Because this is it. This is all we get? Yeah, it's our shot. Yeah. And I believe that and so I want to make the most of it,
Arline 38:20 right. Yes. So yeah, so what does spirituality look for look like for you? Like, what does that look for? For you?
Beth 38:28 For me, it looks like loving kindness. It looks like being open and listening to others and just sitting with being holding space for people to hear their stories. I love it. Yeah, I and, you know, I mean, I I delved a little bit. I mean, I'm, I'm a little hippie dippie. You know, yeah, she's got white sage, she burned some times and crystals that I just love looking at and holding in my hand. Yeah, I don't really think they have powers, but they are of the earth and we are of the earth. So
Arline 39:05 who knows, it's all connected. We're all connected in some kind of, it doesn't have to be supernatural way. But like, I don't know how to, I don't know, science well enough to articulate things like that. But it's like, if, if bad things happen to the insects, us way up here thinking we're above all the rest of the animals will be affected. Like if stuff happens to the soil and stuff happen. I mean, we're just, we're so much more connected than we realize. And you have scientists who make it sound very intellectual. And that's awesome. Please be intellectual. And then you have people that that are called, like, woowoo. But it's like, I don't want to say they're saying the same things. Because you're not saying the same things. And at the same time, we're still all interconnected. And like, I don't know, I don't know. I can't articulate it very well. But, but I understand what you're saying. Yeah, we
Beth 39:56 came from the earth and we're going back to it nobody just getting out of here alive. That just that yeah, that is that is just a fact. And so, you know, I've obviously got more runway behind me than I have ahead of me. So I want to make the most of, of all that is ahead of me. And, and I'm just very grateful to be you know where I am at this point on my journey. Yeah, it's been an interesting one. Yeah. So thank you so much. Yes.
Arline 40:30 Thank you for being willing to tell your story. I have a couple more questions. You mentioned hiking and walking and being able to nature how what any other things that just bring all and wonder and those kinds of experiences for you?
Beth 40:46 Well, I absolutely love reading. And I love documentaries, you know? Oh, yes. Yes. It's really kind of a weird spectrum with me, because I like for example, I can really get into true crime. But then I can switch over to stand up comedy and enjoy it. I can't I love it very, very much as it is. Well, it's well, and also to it's all storytelling, right? Yeah, yeah. We're storytelling, meaning making people. That's what humans are. Yeah. And so I do love that too. I really, you know, I've always enjoyed music very, very much is what my degree was in years and years ago, you know, back in the day, but yeah, I mean, I'm just really well, I can tell you some authors, I'm kind of taken
Arline 41:37 by but I was gonna ask, do you have recommendations, podcasts, books, music, anything that was valuable to you while you're deconstructing or? Yeah, that you just want to share? I'm here for any recommendations.
Beth 41:48 Yeah, it was some of the podcasts that I'm really into right now or we can do hard things which is Conan Doyle's with her wife Abby and her sister Amanda. In fact, she had Nadia bolts Webber on
Arline 42:00 today. I haven't
Beth 42:01 listened to the episode. Is that to get up stone such good episode, and I love one called indoctrination, because it's by a psychologist named Rachel Bernstein. So she has most most of her guests have been in cults of sorts. But she also has included a lot of evangelical Christians in store. She even had Marlene when Nell from leaving the fold, you know, on there, and marlenas book was very helpful to me. Then there's one called trust me, which is also about being in cults. And the two hosts of that one of them was raised in an evangelical group. And then there's one called a little bit culty. Yes.
Arline 42:40 Is that Amanda monto? No, that's,
Beth 42:43 that's Sarah Edmonds and Nikki Russell who were in Nexium. Okay, they live in Atlanta. Oh, okay. Yeah, and then straight white American Jesus. They just do such a good job with that weekly roundup of connecting the dots back to evangelical Christianity with all the all the things happening in the world. I find that really interesting. So a loved one and Doyle and untamed in particular, I I've read all her books, okay. In fact, the first one I read was when she was still a Christian.
Arline 43:19 Oh, it's some love book. I felt like she had a book about love whenever she was where
Beth 43:23 she had one about, about marriage. Yeah, about marriage. And then that was just for her marriage ballparks. Right?
Arline 43:29 I've only read untamed I, I have confession. I don't love memoirs. Like I like podcasts where someone's telling their story, but I don't want to read 500 pages of their story. But somehow I read untamed and I loved it. I was like, this. Yes. It was spoke to me. I guess that's the phrase people use.
Beth 43:49 Yeah. Oh, but it really I mean, it's so affirming. Yes. So women. Yes. Yeah. So that really? I mean, that's kind of how I was born was untamed, I guess, in anything by Annie Lamott. Anne Lamott, girl,
Arline 44:03 oh, she's just I've read, I've read all of her books as well. And she, yes. All things in the mind. Go ahead.
Beth 44:11 Yeah, I mean, I reread her books. I've read every one as well. And I, I agree, read them. I mean, she's just incredible. And she lives like 30 minutes from where I live. I would love to see her someday. That's on my list.
Arline 44:24 I know, she still goes to church, just show up at our church and be like, hey, oh,
Beth 44:28 yeah. Yeah, that's tricky to do. Yeah. And then Nadia Bolz Weber I love her. Now her book on I think it was called shame about sex. It's really, really good. Big. Yeah, because she really wrote it for those raised in purity culture. And even though nobody called it purity culture. When I was a teenager, it was still purity culture. It was this. There was a lot of taboo around sex. Yeah. You know, outside of marriage, for sure. And then a Jamie Lee Finch wrote a book called you are your own. And that was really a helpful book for me too. Super, super encouraging. And I really, she used to have a podcast that I listened to, I don't think her podcast is still going on. But those were all things. I mean, there's a lot, but I did try to curate down a few to share, thank you for sharing, but I just appreciate so much, you know, the format of this podcast, and, you know, the the spirit that it is done in because it's not about us and them.
Arline 45:40 No, it's just people's stories. It's about
Beth 45:43 stories. So that's the best. And I really, really love that. So I really appreciate the opportunity. I feel very honored. So thank you.
Arline 45:53 I'm honored that you one of the most beautiful things about doing podcasts like this is people honor you with their stories like, and so thank you for doing this. Thank you for being willing to tell your story. And I know, people will relate to it. And you'll find information in the deconversion anonymous Facebook group because people already know you're gonna be like, yay. So yeah, thank you so much, Beth, for telling your story. Yeah,
Beth 46:17 thank you, Arline. I really appreciate it.
Arline 46:25 My final thoughts on the episode. I love hearing people's stories that span multiple decades, like people who've, I don't know, it just shows no matter how long you've lived. What you've been convinced is true. For however long like things can change. People can stay open to changing when there's new information. Beth tried for years and years and years to make the God thing work. And it didn't work. She did all the right things. She said all the right prayers. She participated in the right activities. She was super conservative. She was super liberal. And just all the cognitive dissonance little thing after a little thing like she said death by 1000 cuts. Over time you just realized like it doesn't work. And she was willing to be okay with that and deal with whatever grief or sadness or loss of community that came out of that. And now she's in a place where she knows her own thoughts. She knows her own desires, hopes, dreams. She's living in embodied life. She has her Sunday's free like there's just so much freedom. So much joy and happiness that she's been able to find without religion without God. And her spirituality is good for her. And it's good for others. Loving Kindness, inner connectedness and holding space for people to exist without judgment. Like those are all good things. Oh, good things to bear. Thank you again for being on the podcast. I really appreciate your your authenticity, and your willingness to like, just tell so much of your story. I appreciate it.
David Ames 48:18 The secular Grace Thought of the Week is pluralism. Best story reminded me and and current headlines have reinforced how much we need pluralism. Contra, what Mike Johnson current speaker of the House says the separation of church and state is both good for the church and good for the state. And whenever those two things begin to mix with one another, bad things happen. I grew up in the 80s and saw the Moral Majority begin to acquire political power. At the time, it seemed somewhat innocuous. Today I have a completely different view. The Christian nationalism that is apparent within the politics of government is dangerous and needs to be called out. pluralism is hard though, pluralism means we do accept other people's voices. But we run into the problem of the paradox of tolerance. The only thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance. Until next time, my name is David and I'm trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and graceful human. 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 eight This podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network
Arline interviews this week’s guest, Andy Neal of Andy Films And Hikes fame. He is self described as a “plus size hiking influencer.”
Andy tells his story of deconstruction, acceptance of his body and his joy in nature. He is an inspiration to all to get outdoors and experience nature.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. We do have our merchandise store on T public you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items the link will be in the show notes. If you are in the middle of doubt deconstruction of 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 Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, our Lean interviews today's guest Andy Neal and Neal is a self described plus size hiking influencer. He is on Instagram. You can find him at Andy films hikes. He is an inspiration to everyone to get outdoors and experience nature. He tells his story of deconstruction, his acceptance of His body and His joy and nature. Here is our Lean interviewing Andy.
Arline 1:45
Andy Neal, welcome to the graceful atheists podcast.
Andy Neal 1:48
Arline, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you inviting me on the show and talk about my story.
Arline 1:53
Yes, I'm excited. I think I've just stumbled upon you in my reels. One day, your your hiking stuff came up, and it was just fantastic. So I started following you. And then one day you just posted, maybe it was a part of the caption. I can't remember something about just leaving religion. And I was like, Wait, there's a whole other story here that I want to know. So yes, there is. Well, thank you for being here. And usually we just begin tell us the spiritual environment or religious environment you grew up in. Oh,
Andy Neal 2:24
wow. So it's long and complicated. I grew up the the son of two disillusioned Baptist preacher kids. So Wow. Both my parents were very disillusioned by religion. They never really like. Called it also like Christmases and Easter's we were always always there. In church, always with that pressure from grandparents who needed to get the kids in church, you need to get the kids in church ended up going to a Christian school, a very, very conservative Christian School in Southern California. That also was big. And it was it was weird. It was Southern Baptists, but the Patrick pastor at the church that was attached to the school was Pentecostal. So he had a lot of Southern Baptists, very conservative things, but then they would take a whole week off of classes because there was an out feeling of the Holy Spirit. And we needed all the kids in the school to speak in tongues, crazy stuff that, you know, Department of Education ever found out, it would have been big trouble. So I grew up in that and then around age of gosh, well 1112 My mother started getting into drug use mostly pills, prescription pills and my parents divorce once California tropic services got involved, and so my dad was like, We need to get the kids back in the church, started going to church really consistently. Age 12 on we moved from Southern California to Las Vegas, where we joined a huge mega Southern Baptist, it was a megachurch, five 6000 members, you know, four or five services. And I got very, very involved in youth group there. And I was there every time the doors are opened. And during this whole time, my family was a wreck. Honestly. My mom was in and out of rehab not been able to stay sober. My parents are just divorced. My dad married someone new, we weren't getting along. And the only family I really had during this whole time was the church. For better or worse. They were there were positive adults there for me a youth group. So every time there was something I would be there every time there was a lock in or whatever I was in the church. I ended up working in the church. My senior year of high school is a janitor helping clean up after services. It's a big mega church. So it's like, oh, just clean up all the bulletins in the pews. Now this will take like two hours if you had to go down like two miles abuse, no joke. So this was a huge church. And then, you know, right out of right out of high school, I decided you know what, you know, actually during high school. Church camps are funny. I had We responded to the call to ministry. And even before that is when I had my conversion experience of something called the choir the fire, which is very problematic that conference. But then I got called in the ministry and high school church camp. And from that point is I'm gonna be a pastor, I'm gonna be a missionary. And you know, from age 16 on that's what I pursued, and right out of high school, went on a mission trip, came back home, my parents said, the parents danced up, Mom basically kicked me out the house. I was on my own, got on my feet real quick. No College, no education. Started working at a southern First Baptist Church, Las Vegas, started working there. quickly went from a youth helper to part time, paid volunteer ish to their youth pastor at age 19. With no formal theological education with kids, I'm literally pastoring who are a year younger than me. I'm only here at a high school that went back quick and often. I went from a very large Southern Baptist mega church to First Baptist Church, Las Vegas, despite people from the South first Baptist, I think huge bills is very small under 500 people. I didn't know the rules about really conservative small Southern Baptist churches. And at that point, you know, I bounced around. I did that for a while and then I bounced around different churches doing children's ministry, worship ministry, I play guitar, you know, so, which was the result of my youth group days, and really just went full fledge into full time ministry. By the time I was 23. I got licensed as a pastor. And my wife shortly after that, who's from Oregon, she moved here are moved to Las Vegas from Oregon to find a job. We met got married, she kind of later in life conversion experience at 1920 in college, and things Las Vegas at that point were very. The economy was crap is 2000 6007 We got married. And so I thought, hey, let's move to Oregon, and Oregon. And I was working at Starbucks, volunteering at churches, churches taking everything they could for me, I was writing children's ministry, I was wearing worship ministry all volunteer doing and then my life is like you need to do something with this. So I decided to go into multiple Bible College in Portland. And did that graduated with a degree of church leadership and ministry. And from there, I went into full time vocational ministry like I actually be paid full time, worked on the coast as a youth pastor for a while. And then things were there's a small Baptist Church there and things weren't going great. So I moved back to Oregon with my wife. We adopted that point, we adopted three kids from foster care to a special needs and worked at a non denominational church here in Southern Oregon. And that was, it was bad. I thought it was because I thought it'd be good because the pastor had tattoos, skinny jeans, like okay, it's a cool hip shirt. They're not there were more to the social justice stuff. I can jive with this. They have a they have a community garden in the back. And it was it was just this. I tell people it was the same theology I was dealing with before, especially with the LGBTQ community. It was just in tattoos and skinny jeans with all of us.
At that point, I remember very clearly my wife was struggling there. My wife was struggling period, she actually went on staff, as a children's director, was struggling. She has a bachelor's and master's degree in education. The pastor was actually younger than me. He was constantly threatened by me and my wife when we were just trying to work with the kids and students. The youth that had come into my youth group at that church were and that happened to my last church to all LGBT, not all but a good amount of LGBTQ students coming and feeling safe there. The elders in the church were getting back as kids weren't coming. On Sunday morning. They come the Wednesday night youth group, so they wouldn't come on Sunday mornings. And I asked a few of them, why aren't you guys coming from the mornings like we don't feel safe Sunday mornings, straight up, don't feel safe. Okay, I can I get that I get that. And there's tons of stories behind that. But yeah, eventually my wife we were at dinner at Red Robin here in Medford, Oregon. And she's like, I'm, I don't believe in God anymore. Like we will but will will, will will. What do you mean, at this point, things were really things were tough with our kids with special needs. We were being told by the church. They didn't need therapy. She prayed away, which seems to be their answer for everything from being gay to having mental health issues.
Arline 10:00
Question. Did your wife say that? Or did you say that?
Andy Neal 10:02
My wife said that she has I don't believe in God anymore. And I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm struggling. I wasn't I wasn't there. I don't even think I'm still. I wouldn't necessarily call myself an atheist. But it's like, I don't believe in God, I believe any of this. And I thought, Okay, our marriage is over. I can't keep doing this. And I understand. It was just like, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? And then I was just looking around like, this isn't right. What's going on? Isn't right here. This isn't me. It's the same stuff I was dealing with at the baptist church out on the coast and Southern Baptist churches. It's just, I don't, why am I holding on to this and I, through therapy and counseling. I discovered I was holding on to it because during my very traumatic time in my formative years, that was my family. So I had a sense of loyalty there to a fault. Like, I was loyal to this organization to the church, because they had worked. They were there for me when no one else was. And so I felt I needed to do the same for the church to give the church chance, even though they had screwed me over so many times. And then within the next few months, I had started coming to the same conclusion I had talked with the leadership was like, hey, I want to start transitioning out of youth ministry. At this point, I'm doing youth ministry full time, I'm doing worship ministry full time, because they fired the the worship pastor. So I'm working 6070 hours a week for $30,000 a year. So it's, it's it was it was bad trying to trying to get, you know, things don't try to keep my family together. They weren't supportive with our kids or adopted kids. So actually, I told her what are transitioning out of youth ministry, when you start looking for another youth minister, I want to focus on the music and technology. You know, I was always the guy on staff like, hey, we need a video made Andy, can you make a video and go get camera equipment, make a video, make it funny, get the youth together, do a skit put it on screen. And eventually someone that actually in the church had said, Hey, we're starting a small production company, and he would like to work 510 hours a week for us to consult do social media. And I was starving for anything like I need. I just I can't do church stuff anymore. I'm like, Yeah, I can do that. Let's keep it on the download, though. Eventually, the church found out even though come to find out later, the guy who asked me actually asked for the permission first. And they use that as leverage against me. Like, he took another job that permission. I'm like, No, actually, I've come to find out. That permission was asked. And things were getting really bad. And I was I was trying to slowly transition out and just try to take care of my family. And then one day, they're like, oh, no, you're, you're, you're fired, basically. And here is a non if you want to if you want a severance package, here's a nondisclosure agreement. As far as you're concerned, you are leaving to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, and your six months average sufferance, and at time, it came to a shock. It was all like boom week, my wife, our lives were turned upside down. And I was like, Okay, I sign it. I, on one hand, I regret citing because I had to say something that wasn't true. They were firing me. Let's say times, like I need to provide for my family. And they're offering severance. So yeah, I'm gonna take it
and so I did, and then I started just working, you know, in the production industry as much as I could locally in Southern Oregon, which is really huge. And then decided, You know what, I'm gonna go to film school. And the day literally, the day I signed the nondisclosure agreement, I contacted Southern Oregon University, the new film program, their digital cinema, like, hey, you know, I'm 36 years old. I already have a bachelor's degree, I'd like to meet with some people there about, you know, what would it take to get a second bachelor's degree? Because I didn't really at that point, I'm realizing my Bible degrees, not going to be a whole lot of good. Even though it was accredited. It is an accredited Bachelors of Science, it was going to be a lot of good, like, okay, that's why I'm talking to counselors there. I met with the program director, because I found that I can do this in two years, just basically taking all my prerequisites and let's do everything, and went to film school and started working. Every little thing I could do in production and social media and in Ashland, Oregon, which is an amazing town. I love fashion so much. And from that point, I was taken from a very religious, Christian evangelical world. Everyone surrounding me was Christian Evangelical, to a world of Southern Oregon University to Ashland, Oregon national Oregon is home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, largest Repertory Theater outside of New York, on the side of the Mississippi, so that Oregon University is renowned. A liberal liberal school is constantly being recognized by advocate Magazine as one of the most LGBTQ friendly schools in the nation, and littles Ashland Oregon. So very, very conservative. Here then plopped into a film program, with all kinds of people I have no never met, you know, I've never been around before, very diverse and I'm like, I like them better, like, this is this is more, this is more me and just fell in love. And at that point my wife and I were, we're going to, we're going to therapy, we're working through things and, you know, today we're still married 17 years later I, you know, part of me this out of you know, I have so I know so many people who've left their faith and even but you know, their partner and then both at the faith but they found out how different people they really were. And they weren't there wasn't animosity or anything, they're just like, you know, we're both very conservative Christians then and we've left the faith and with different people now and they didn't stay together I don't know how we managed to work it out, but we did. And that's not for everybody. I think we were just ultimately compatible on an interpersonal level our faith and our religion isn't what brought us together. So we just were able to work things out and yeah graduated 2018 with a film degree and from Southern Oregon University have been trying to figure out different ways to tell the story of mine tell story of those who lost their faith I was working on documentary for a while did a few short documentaries about that got involved with the you know x evangelical groups for awhile on Twitter that was that that that that rebel Twitter, Dallas, toxic, but in that realm of the internet was very toxic. And just trying to find my footing until I discovered the outdoors at the at the behest of my therapist, I was literally talking with their therapist about just having existential dread and struggle and having something bigger than myself to rely on my whole life. Like it just you know, something bad was happening, like it depend on Jesus, or there's a plan or this bad things happening. It's because of sin. Like, I just feel like there's this big hole in my life. And she said, Go for a hike, go into the outdoors, we're in one of most beautiful places in the world. I didn't instantly fall in love with hiking, and it just became Wow, my thing. I just started posting about it. And started like realizing I am I'm a plus size person. I'm personally bigger body realizing, oh, you know, more serious, I got into hiking or there's not backpacks. I mean, there's not clothes, if any, oh, here's one company, Columbia Sportswear, they do it. So I just started buying their stuff and just tagging them and then eventually Columbia reaches out I have like maybe 4000 followers on Instagram. Hey, you'd love to come to do some modeling for us and other companies are reaching out and then slowly start building this platform and then I one day i i went viral. You're going for a stupid hike for my stupid mental health.
Arline 17:38
I think that's what I saw. I think that's what I first saw of yours you
Andy Neal 17:43
know 37 million views and I've had over a dozen more videos go viral since then. And this is what I do full time. Advocate for people to get in the outdoors for their mental health advocate for the plus size, body positive or body confidence community. And I do post often about me leaving my faith you know, I was very vocal about while I was in university I was very vocal about it and almost very bitter and mad about the church and I just found out that wasn't doing me a whole lot of good and surrounding myself with a bunch of people who were also mad and angry wasn't doing me personally a lot of good. And so I really toned back you know, my vitriol towards the church even though it's deserved I was deeply hurt and scarred by the church. But for me dwelling on that just wasn't wasn't positive. So when I stood back and got to the outdoors I discovered a new side of myself I didn't know existed
now whenever I share about you know about my about my former faith and my former career I'm very I try to be I try to be as non confrontational as possible I try to be like you know, this was my experience never tried to demonize anyone for their deeply held spiritual beliefs because you have those for whatever reason. I think issue when those deeply held spiritual beliefs turn into policy turn into actions where you say someone is less than like if you want to believe Jesus is Lord, great, great for you. But you say because of that, you have the right to legislate someone's morality or you know, say someone can't do something with their body or say these people who love each other can't get married. That's where it's like, no, no, no, no, that's not cool. And since then, what I call myself an atheist, no, but I wouldn't call myself the surly a theist or I, the outdoors for me has kind of become what my religion is what I don't even call it religion. I even like that. This what I, I find meaning and purpose. And I've talked to some people, the best way described is I'm a bit of a pantheist, you know, believe that everything is God or the divine. Some people, I've described my theology as some people that say that's very close to Druidism. And I don't like putting a label on it. And that could just be my way, my way. evolutionary sense of coping with what I've been through and dealing with things, I don't know. But that's just where I'm at. That's the very, very short version of, you know, 20 years of history there. But that's, yeah.
Arline 20:37
Yeah, you go from this here, all the answers, you have to have all the answers. This is the correct way. This is your morality, this these are your ethics, this is literally brought down from heaven and told you what you're supposed to believe and how you're supposed to behave. And yeah, in 20 years, you find that like, you don't have to have all the answers. Like, like, you're like, I don't have to have a label and I love the outdoors has become not your God. I don't know how to say that. But like has, where you go to find meaning and like purpose in life and whatever that feeling is that you get when you're out in in nature. Absolutely.
Andy Neal 21:14
Yeah. The Stingley feelings used to get in the worship service, I feel those on the outdoors now. And I realized it's more of a biological response to to grandeur and bigness or community. It's not the Holy Spirit filling you because I get the same thing. When I climb up a mountain, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, look at this view. You know, it's discovered that's the same thing, a lot of its emotions, and adrenaline and chemicals and just things that your, your body is wired to do by evolution or by whatever. However, that's supposed to work.
Arline 21:44
Yeah, for me, that was part of me leaving Christianity was starting to realize that a lot of the things that I used to think were sinful problems, were just like physiological stuff that I could deal with, with eating differently, or doing yoga or doing calming my nervous system. Whereas like, like you were saying, with your kids, the church spiritualize is everything. So then when they're actually biological things that can help or pharmacological I'm not even sure I'm saying that word, right? Like these things that can be helpful. They're not even options for us. Yep.
So you go hiking, like what? Yeah, I guess what are some of the things that that evokes inside of you, like you were saying, with the biological where some of your places you'd like to go, and,
Andy Neal 22:35
gosh, I love to go anywhere, where I feel smaller. Oh, wow, I live I live two hours from the Redwood National Park. In Northern California, I'm in Southern Oregon, with two hours in there, you know, seven of the 10 largest trees in the world are there and I'm just to go and stand in front of a tree that's like, you know, this, this this tree, he was supposed to be here when Jesus was here, like, and it's the size of a house, you know, just width wise, and then it goes up and you can't see the top of it, or, you know, go to the from there you go to the ocean from climb up to the top of a platen, you know, we have the Taylor rock plateaus here or, you know, any of the mountains or peaks, bodies, a lover I just love like hiking by the Rogue River here in Southern Oregon, or go north to the Willamette River or the Columbia River Gorge. Those places where I'm just like, wow, like, and as a part of that, as this as a plus sized person, you know, dealing with you know, things like fatphobia and size discrimination. And being an advocate for that, for so many people is realizing, you know, the outdoors, bigger is better. And, you know, it's okay to take up space. And then, you know, for the first time in my life, having been big my whole life, having you know, dealt with eating disorders have been diagnosed with an eating disorder having found out because part of that eating disorder was because of toxic weight, my family dealt with food, but also, I had celiac disease, and I was undiagnosed for 34 years. So my body the way my body treated food, my mind was just messed up because it was food was literally killing me. But I was always hungry. That's a whole other story. But having though that my whole life and going out and feeling small sense of smallness. For me, it's just like, wow. And just in the grand scheme of the universe, like I'm significant, but same time. Look at all this. This is just epic and amazing and feeling that feeling of feeling small for me is just it's like none other
Arline 24:41
is hiking and being out in nature. Like is that into like more of an independent thing or have you found like in real life community to share it with or
Andy Neal 24:50
I have and I've been very, honestly very hesitant to get too plugged in into communities. There's one group that I'm friends with the founder unlikely hikers, which is anti, anti anti racist, pro, LGBTQ pro size organization that encourages everybody to get outdoors photogenic Rousseau. She's amazing. We become close friends and that group we've done we've done group hikes together here in southern Oregon and Portland and Salt Lake. And to get with other people who don't look like typical hikers, which, you know, when you think of hikers, you think of, you know, the dude in the Mountain Dew commercial, you know, he's rip doesn't wear shirt, you know, he's, he jumps off a cliff catches the Mountain Dew in midair, you know, that's what you think of, whereas the outdoors are for everybody in the outdoors, have healing properties for every person, you know, not just, you know, white dudes with ripped abs, white straight dudes with ripped abs. And so the unlikely hacker has been a huge community, my online community has been great. But I have been honestly hesitant to get involved with communities just because, you know, being burned by the church and then getting caught involved in the X Evangelical community for a while. And that was just found out how toxic that was for me. I'm very, I'm very hesitant of community. You know, like, what I do is also very lonely because now having this platform, you know, I can't in the outdoor spaces, or even Northwest and parks California, I can't go anywhere without like someone recognizing me. It's like, okay, does this person want to genuinely want to be my friend? Or are they just like me? Because I'm that dude, the dude from the hiking video? Yeah, you know, I've had issues where people have gone on a hiking trail. And people saw me and they took my video on picture and posted it without me knowing, like, Oh, I saw the hiking guide. And my kids are with me, and I'm like, That's not cool. You know, so don't post don't post my location too long gone. Stuff like that. Safety stuff that you'd have to think about, you know, when you're just you know, on Instagram, you're looking waterfall cool snapping, posted, it's like, No, we got to wait hold hours before we post this. So I've been very hesitant. You know, a lot of it because I was really burned by, by the church community, I'm still, it's very lonely. It's a, what I do, what I do is a very lonely job. You know, I have people who follow me who helped me, help me manage things. But it's it's been hard. Trying to find community is difficult, especially knowing you don't want to live in a big town, I don't want to live in a big town. I grew up in Southern California, Las Vegas, I love where I live. Now. I love the community here. But I know for me, that's something that I have to work through and find people I trust. Because when you leave the church, you have always this built in community. So I go from church, to church to church, you know, in ministry, you go the church, everybody want you know, we have this built in automatic community, like people are just there. And they're automatically your friends, because you're both Baptist or evangelical Christian. There, you're just supposed to be friends. And that isn't always great, because you have people who not necessarily are compatible, you know, trying to force relationships or friendships and no work. And the second I left, you know, after being burned so hard. All those friends, lifelong friends, friends from high school, who, you know, I surrounded myself with Christians in high school and college years, they're gone. Like, I can count the number of people who still have contact with me, hundreds of people on one hand, and it's very, it's very just cordial contact. It's not like, you know, deep, lasting friendships. So it's just been it's been difficult, you know, 40 years old now. And it's like, how do you make friends when all the friendships you grew and cultivated with in high school and college and through your 20s? And 30s? You know, you're an apostate. Now, they want nothing to do with you. And they're taught that, you know, you know, I came from a bit of a little bit of a reformed culture, you know, Calvinistic, so either they're like, Well, he was never really Christian, he was a liar, or, you know, he'll eventually come back. So either people are just, you know, an apostate or any conversation they have with me is trying to win me back to the Lord, which just, you know, my DMs are filled with that right now. So I don't want to deal with that. Oh,
Arline 29:23
no, not at all. At least for me, it often feels dismissive. I'm like, You're not even hearing what I'm saying. You're not even seeing the person in front of you. You're seeing the person I used to be or the person you hope I'm going to be. And I'm like, no, like, just, let's just have a conversation. And I have a few, one or two friends that you know, I have very, like some super progressive Christian friends that back when I was a good Calvinist would not believe that they were actual Christians. But those kinds of people, I can keep those in my life. Our values are still similar, you know that. And then I have one or two gets more conservative, theologically friends, theologically conservative friends that I can talk to a little bit. But yeah, it's like, just talk to me, like, just hear me just hear my story. And then it's, it's extra icky. If you're in, you know, your DMS are filled with people who don't know you at all, and are trying to like, yeah, tell you what you need to believe. Yeah,
Andy Neal 30:22
one real I posted in July just about I'm walking towards the ocean, just talking about talking about the subject about the loneliness of not having friends. Somehow, in the last three weeks that real has hit the Christian Instagram, from months ago. It's gone from like, 100,000, to USD almost a million in DM, after DM requests of, you know, three, three basic responses. Hey, you know, don't give up the Lord. Hey, I'd love to chat with you sometime to you're going, you're going to hell to you and never really a Christian, you know? And it's like, wow, how loving like really, and your posts wasn't even for them. It was just me expressing where I was, you know, and hoping to encourage others, which it has. I've gotten plenty of DMS from people said, Yeah, I love I left, I'm deconstructing I'm dealing with the same thing. But I'm just either someone to be shunned or someone to be one to them. And I hate that because I actively tried to not be that way for so long. In the evangelical church, I didn't want I wanted to see people for who they were, I didn't want to see people as a prize to be won. I didn't want to close the deal to get to say a prayer to except to use in their heart. That's why I think my youth groups were filled with such a variety of teenagers because they just felt welcomed and valued. And that's what I wanted. My accidentals, like if they choose, you know, if I'm really gonna stick my theology at the time very, somewhat Calvinistic. If Jesus so chooses to impress on the heart Hill, when I when that was just my attitude, I'm just gonna love people for who they are, and let Jesus do what Jesus does, which I think actually served me in realizing like, oh, wow, I'm missing a whole lot here. I'm missing a whole lot different experiences of my lived experiences, you know, straight cisgendered, white, you know, Protestant, Pastor, kid, a Protestant pastor, kids male privileged, is totally different from what all these kids are experiencing is, you know, they're coming to youth group and their parents, you know, have kicked them out of the house, because they came out, they're dealing with gender issues, they're dealing with, you know, economic issues, you know, mom can't pay the rent and things like that, you know, dad left. I'm like, wow, the eyes were just open to so many different experiences. And yeah, I just, it's eye opening. And it was very, I don't know, it's been it's been a journey. Yeah.
Arline 33:03
Do you have advice for people who are like, I need all in wonder, and I need I want that the feeling that I used to have in church like, not, how did you get that in nature? Because then you're just like, trying to make nature do a thing for you. But like, how do people get started just like, being free like that? I guess?
Andy Neal 33:21
Therapy? I mean, Oh,
Arline 33:24
nice. Yes, no, no, please, therapy? Yes.
Andy Neal 33:27
I I am a huge advocate for mental health and huge part of my platform. I had to really kind of look at myself. And therapy, forced me to do that. And a good therapist is not going to give you the answers. A good therapist is going to ask you the right questions about yourself and going to therapy, you know, in dealing with these questions of, you know, existential dread and, you know, dealing with questions of having to forgive myself for things I said and preach from the pulpit that weren't just wrong and horrendous and homophobic and chauvinistic, and borderline racists, if not full on race, like it's just like, oh my god, I used to see these things. I used to believe these things. Or even when times where I didn't necessarily believe them as I was slowly deconstructing, which was a slow process. I would say I'm just to make the church happy because like, Oh, I know that this line is a crowd pleaser. I'll say that and everybody will, you know, I'll preach on hell. And even though I was really kind of on the fence about what hell was in this and half the time, I'll preach on it. And I'll get a lot of amens and whoops and hollers and I did just because I want to keep my job, you know. And so therapy really was helpful in finding that, you know, the outdoors may not be that thing for you. It could be you know, another aspect for me is creativity, you know, going out, you know, movies, film cinema, it's a huge part storytelling that could be what it is for you that's kind of secondary for me and I've definitely my username on online as Andy films and hikes for a reason. I love those two things. So but really discovering who you are who, you know, you peel back, you know, all the religion, all those old experiences, what's left, and then you got to rebuild that. That's why the term deconstructing has been has been termed your, your deconstructing your faith, and who am I and what is it, I believe, and then you can begin to build that back up, you know, whatever that looks like for you.
Arline 35:33
Yeah, getting to do this, interviewing people hearing people's stories, like, it's amazing how people find meaning and purpose and love and all in wandering community. Like all the things that the Church teaches us, they have cornered the market, this is where you get these things. And then people leave. And they're like, actually, yeah, it takes some work to find some of these things, but like, actually, it's just people helping and loving other people and creating the spaces to find these things and, and nature. Oof, yes. I don't know. I guess I was just trying to say that, like, it's beautiful. Seeing how many different ways people are able to find all the things that we were once told, you can only find this in church. Yeah.
Andy Neal 36:16
And the church doesn't have a monopoly on truth. The church doesn't have a monopoly on community or big life changing experiences, but they'd like to, from my experience, that's what they told me. I I've, in deconstructing I definitely I visited some more liberal churches, some Universalist, Unitarian, and some UCC churches, which were great in the sense that there were there were Christians who, you know, they they did the traditional Christian things, you know, Sung hymns to the stuff, but then like to hear like the pastor from the pulpit. Say, Yeah, this part of the story, David, you know, when David best she got Bathsheba, you know, the Bible doesn't address the fact that best David was basically a murderer and a rapist, and he was actually kind of a bad guy. And he probably had homosexual relationships, too. And this is all stuff that they don't teach you. And we need to look at this for what it is. And realize that, you know, David wasn't perfect. He wasn't the we say he's a man after God's own heart. And just things I never heard like, what David was probably gateway, you're talking about, Jonathan, wait, what about but he had to do that with Bathsheba? And what is this all this like, wow, like, and just hear people say I believe in the Bible, but the Bible is inerrant. Like, okay, and use like literary criticism and things like that. Look at the Bible critically in the time it was written and who wrote it, and that the person we even like, Did Moses really write the Torah? No, probably not. It was mostly even real, we don't know. And just like to hear those things like, oh my gosh, and you know, for me, I can't be you know, liberal UCC Christian just because there's just so much triggering stuff in there. And for me, I was taught for so long, the Bible is inerrant. And then to go to a point where I'm like, this is true, like, these concepts are true, but this isn't true. The Bible says, you know, homosexuality is an abomination, but not really are things like that. I just can't, I can't split those hairs. So for me, it was just like, I can't do it. You guys are awesome. I love that you're loving people. I love that like church, I was going to for a few months, you know, they're they're marching in the Pride Parade. This is great. I love that you're doing this. I love that you're, there's moms out there since I'm a church mom, who has a gay son and I'm wanting to give you a hug. If your mom's stuff like that, like that's great. I love what you're doing. I just can't do because it's just, it's too difficult for me to make those theological leaps and to be constantly triggered. You know, they'll they'll be singing hymns and hymns. I know, but they changed the words which is great, but still, for me, that him old rugged cross, and you've changed the lyrics. It's still it's, it means something else to me. There's other there's time there's there's times where they did invitationals and you'll walk down the aisles and repentance things, and myself about church really saying that song and I'm like you a bad stuff. Can't do it. Yeah, that's a whole other tangent. Sorry.
Arline 39:12
No, that's a great tangent. Because, you know, lots of people are still in the church. Lots of people are still like, like, there's Tim Whitaker of the new evangelicals. They're still marches but you know, these different people who are like trying to help white evangelicalism stop being the most terrible thing that it is, you know, like trying to help one of my best friend's very liberal church, they they were in the Pride Parade, they had a booth at the festival. They are trying to make their religion as kind and loving and good and like all the things as possible. I'm with you though. I'm I'm all the way to the point where I really don't think they're gods and goddesses like I don't think any of that stuff is real. However, unlike if you're if you're doing that, that's fabulous. I can't I got tired of being the being the light A person who had to decide whether this in the Bible was true, or is it an allegory or I was just like I can't and either you take all of it or it just, it just got to be too much. So I would very much understand that feeling of like, especially like you talked about literary criticism, like, okay, it's a poem, but that that poem in Psalms was the reason I was pro life and pro like birthday content, or like life at conception for so long. And I'm like, Okay, I can't I can't do this anymore.
Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I haven't asked? Like you? You did fantastic with your story. And I'm like, what else do we have?
Andy Neal 40:43
I think, for me, I want to touch on just being the slow process of me, converting, not converting D converting whatever you want to call it. It was, it was so gradual that I didn't even see it was happening. And it started. Before I was even like, a full time at a church. I was in Las Vegas. And I was working part time at a church as a children's pastor. And this was back in 2000. I want to say five, very much for the Lord. But I was also working part time at Starbucks, because I needed health insurance. And I remember I was close, I was closing the store with another two other Starbucks employees, one of them had I had a car. Other one had a car and the supervisor didn't have a car and he was going to take the bus home. It was raining in Las Vegas, which doesn't happen. It was pouring. And it was probably like, it was probably late winter. And he's about to get on the bus. And I'm like, dude, I'll take you home. Sweet name was Jamar. And he knew I was a children's pastor, and he was an openly, openly gay black dude. And, you know, at this point, I'm just like, I'm gonna love him to Jesus, you know, and he'll, he'll turn upon, he'll turn away from his gateways and all this crap, you know, that trying to be, you know, a liberal Christian, you know, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna engage with the gay community and they're gonna, they're gonna see their ways and he's just gonna love women, you know, stupid stuff. And I remember we're driving and he said, Hey, can you see my Carl's Jr? Real quick, like, get some dinner, broke into my apartment. His apartment was not in a great part of town. I'm like, Hey, can you take the bus here everyday, please take the bus before I had a car. Like that's like an hour and a half to our bus. Right? You know, one way every day is like, yeah, man. Okay, that sucks, dude. So we get to the parking lot. It's raining. He's like, hey, you know, Andy, I used to be like you. And like, we couldn't be any different. This is a black dude who lives in, you know? Not so good part of town. He's gay. Like, we couldn't be any more different. And I'm like, What do you mean? He's like, so I wanted to be a pastor. For a long time. I'm like, wait, what? He's like, Yeah, I grew up in the black church. I grew up in church. I was like an intern. For a pastor. He was training me up. I was learning all kinds of stuff. But I was dealing with what I call a time you know, same sex attraction. That's what he called it the time. Yeah, that was the only thing so extraction. And, you know, I tried everything. I read all the books, I tried to pray it away, and it wouldn't go away. So I went to my pastor, and his pastor, essentially, shunned him said you are an abomination. You are not allowed here. His family shunned him, said, No, we only party you come back when you're not gay anymore. And he's like, I so badly just wanting to serve God serve Jesus. I wanted to do this. But I couldn't because of who I was. And for the first time in my life, I realized oh my gosh, like, he's not he's not choosing to be gay, or he's doesn't need to just repressed you know, same sex attraction. Like this is a part of who he is. And you saw the, the tears in his eyes and like, I was like, Oh my gosh, and from that point forward, it was just this. Okay, I need to keep more of an open mind about things. And slow like, I'm seeing things for other perspectives. You know, when the church champions like bathroom bills and stuff like that, I'm like, is that really the best thing we like? Should we be worrying about that? Like, and so much of my my deconstruction, I take back to that that car ride in Las Vegas with Jamar and just and just to see see humanity in someone's face, who wanted to be a part of the church who wanted to serve God, but was told you are an abomination. And that really set me on a path, you know, for the next you know, 15 years of really kind of looking at my, my faith and the way I treated people very critically and realizing, okay, the Bible says this, but practically that doesn't work out. Are these two these two things the Bible as much as you try with hermeneutics and other things to make them work together, they just don't. I'm putting one on one together and I keep getting three and that doesn't work. That can't be true. And it was that point in my life where, you know, I'm learning I'm growing and I'm reading start reading, you know, more liberal Christians like, oh my gosh, I got a Rob Bell book people are freaking out like crazy. Yeah, back on, you know, after Rob Bell said there was no hell and everybody through it burned his books. And just that that path I was on, you know, to where it's like, you know, I I voted for Obama, like the first time he ran, didn't tell anybody on the download. Second time, I voted for him in that I had posted online after he clearly one on my Facebook page I posted, you know, all people, my church, follow me, said, You know, it doesn't matter who the president is, you know, Jesus is still king basically saying, You guys quit it, don't worry about it. The church was the church was angry, because they thought that was a blatant like, he did he vote for Obama. So I wasn't, I was in my pastor's office for two hours, the day after the election, him trying to get me to say who I voted for it, I wouldn't say it. And a few weeks prior Well, he was out of town I had actually preached, I had actually preached about, you know, us loving the community and loving others and showing love to everyone. And I had said a statement in that sermon, I'm all about social justice. Meaning that you know, we need to clothe the naked for you the hung up stuff that Jesus in the gospels clearly say you're supposed to do. These are good things. Yeah, I use that word, social justice. And the deacons were up in arms, like, so you voted for Obama, and he's all about, you know, social justice. And I tried to explain what that meant. And, you know, and slowly this, that reaction I got, and then, you know, I go to the church, you know, back in Oregon, and it's like, you know, oh, you know, skinny jeans, tattoos, we accept everybody, except my children who have adopted from foster care who have been abused in every way possible for coming into our home. They have these mental health issues, which we're still dealing with today are still trying to get them treatment for. And they're saying we need to pray it away. And slowly, it was a slow, slow process of, and then I'll just, you know, crap hit the fan eventually. And then I was like, I'm out. I can't do this anymore. I say all that is to say, you know, it's, it's, it really is a process. Because I was in that community. And there was so much trauma bonding for me with the church, because that's what got me through a very traumatic childhood, that I had to really see for what it was. And that's not to say, you know, I always tell people, I'm never going to down on you for your deeply held spiritual beliefs. I am not going to tolerate if those deeply held spiritual beliefs impede on the rights or humanity of somebody else. And that's where I draw the line like, No, it's not gonna happen. You believe in Jesus. Great. You believe in the literal resurrection. You believe the Bible is in Aaron. Great. Don't put that on me or anyone else? Yes.
Arline 48:20
David, is the main host. He just talks about like its death by 1000 cuts. Like there's rarely in a story where it's like, here, sometimes there's this big thing that happens, and you're like, I'm done. But usually you look back and you're like, there's a little bit here, a little bit here a little bit here. And yeah, it's slowly just, people have often said, they just came to realize, I don't think I believe this stuff anymore. And if it flies in the face with an I don't know, if I, you may have had this where people are like, you set out to leave? And it's like, no, like, I was just either living life or trying to make this work for me. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, actually, this isn't working for me.
Andy Neal 49:05
Yeah, I've had the same thing happened where I people say, Oh, Andy left to pursue a career in your teen ministry because he was lured away by the Civil War. You know, he loved to go back to school and he went to Southern here, Southern Oregon University is seen as like Satan. You know, he got he got, you know, he went to a Bible college, but then he went to a liberal atheist college and then he got pulled away that way or now because, you know, I'm a full time influencer, and he just wants fame and fortune. And, you know, he's was lured away by the things of social media and things of this world. And I'm like, That which would make excuses I mean, no, you know, it was, it was death by 1000 cuts. It was a slow, just like I can't you get the point. You're like, I just, I just, I just don't believe this anymore. And that was a strange realization being being at being at Southern Oregon University being in a film class where I am in a group of, you know, students, you know, some of my first interactions with the trans community was at Southern Oregon University, I had never had interactions with having people in my group were making fun together who are trans, who are LGBTQ who are black, who are people I just I just didn't normally rub shoulders with and having a great time doing it. And I just realized, like, I'm not a Christian. Like, it just this realization is like sitting in this group, and we're filming stuff, and I'm just looking around, I'm like, I'm not a Christian. Like I wouldn't. It wasn't it wasn't this grand, huge theological realization. This was like, Yep, I, I can't do it. And this isn't me. It's just can't be true. And you know, I know, the theologian, and we haven't gone to Bible College. I'm always trying to figure out more things. And I'm reading things and discovering more things like oh, yeah, this is where this lineup. And I think the biggest thing for me was the realization that if Jesus, you know, Jesus had Jesus's death had enough power to save me, but doesn't have the power to save everybody. Like, that doesn't work for me, like, if Jesus, if Jesus can, Jesus's death, blood and Resurrection can save me. And I can choose to reject that. That means I have more power than Jesus, if that makes any sense. It's like, that doesn't compute. Like, or just like, if you like, if Jesus, Jesus is all powerful, and his death is Endo. Why could Why couldn't he just saved me? I'm choosing to reject that. So. And then it's gonna count things about freewill. And I'm like, it was just like, no, this doesn't work. And I'm getting off on a tangent here.
Arline 51:49
Well, I mean, it takes so many like mental gymnastics to Yes, all of the things work. And it's just like, at some point, it's like, one of the women who've been on the podcast before. She's in our Facebook group, and she said, I was Calvinists. Apparently, God never chose to save me. So now I'm just gonna, you know, like, I don't have a choice in this. Like, I'll just continue with that. When people asked, he's like, Well, there's nothing I can do about it.
Andy Neal 52:14
Yeah. Yeah. Was Calvinists really, truly aren't Calvinists? in and of themselves? They are. It's yeah. Oh, so was marked down for a while. So which is also also part of my, when he went down with the whole William Wallace a second thing that was also part of my deconstruction, like, Oh, this guy idolized who had been to the Axway nines conferences and like, oh, gosh, that's not very Christian. You know, he's in Seattle. We were thinking like, Oh, he's more of a liberal Christian. No, he wasn't. He was the ESV, toting, you know, hellfire and brimstone guy who's still preaching though. And Scottsdale. Great.
Arline 52:55
Yep. Yeah, my little feminist heart starts the my blood starts to boil, because I just think about the pastors who can do pretty much anything and they'll just find a different pastor. They'll just go somewhere else, and they will get hired again.
Andy Neal 53:09
That's one of those instances, I wish I would have listened to my wife because I was going to be a church planter next 29. And my wife went to the pastor's wife thing, and she's like, This isn't good. And I'm like, Oh, you just need to learn to be, I'll set an ass. Listen to those other pastors wives and, and be more submissive, and this and that, which, you know, my wife and I, we've never had a traditional gender role relationship she's always taken. She's always taken more than more male traditional role in our marriage and relationship and our parenting and I've always taken more of the female traditional role in our marriage, parenting relationship. It's just how it's worked for us. And that's how our attitudes are, you know, we did like the love and respect marriage conference thing and say, No, I actually require more love and she requires more respect. This doesn't work like this gender doesn't compete with us. So yeah.
Arline 53:57
Well, yes, love and respect is a book we will but we will use that as a segue into Do you have any not that recommendations that have been helpful to you and your deconstruction, books, podcasts, YouTube, anything?
Andy Neal 54:14
Gosh, there really it's been a bit of a struggle, I've only found one book, there's been so many just different resources and things that I've turned to and looked at but I find myself going down a rabbit hole because the algorithms are going at this up just watching getting myself more depressed and getting myself more anxious and angry. I just I just don't want to I don't want to I don't want to be the angry even ex angelical I don't want to be that guy. And I understand that for so many people that is a stage you have to go through it's a stage of grieving you're gonna be a I was that guy for a long time. And that's fine. I just don't want to be anymore cuz I didn't like who I was becoming. But one book I got to write here. This is why A hiker friend of mine has hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. I hope I was wrong about trail damnation, a true memoir. Tim Mathis is a friend of mine, hiker. He's also written a book about hiking the dirt bags guide to the life, eternal truth. Riker trash, ski, bums and vagabonds, this has been very helpful just telling his story as another outdoors person. Yeah, it's been it's been great. He's been on my podcast, the hacker podcast, which is now the venture is out there podcast. And we just taught we Co Co misery about our experiences in the evangelical world. And that has been been super, super helpful. But yeah, there hasn't, you know, I've listened to a lot of other podcasts and other things. And really, you know, the most, the most help, this is gonna sound so weird, the most helpful piece of media and my deconstruction construction, has actually been the movie version of Donald Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz.
Arline 56:03
I didn't know there was a movie. I knew the book. But it was off limits because I was a good Calvinists and didn't see those crazy liberals.
Andy Neal 56:10
Yes, he talked about Mark Driscoll, the cussing pastor and all that, but there was a movie, which was taped, and it talks about how really how Donald came from a, you know, Southern Baptist, Texas upbringing, and he goes up to Portland, Oregon, goes to our liberal school, after suffering some trauma from his church, and the process of deconstruction and kind of kind of leaves you hanging whether or not he's really a Christian at the end or not. But just for me, that piece of media does seem that and you know, from my own experience, leaving Southern Baptist, you know, yeah, sure, some more little liberal trips going to Oregon, it was very helpful to seeing this the struggle on the in the, the existential dread, and I go back to that movie a lot. I don't know why I just I find comfort in it. And I relate a lot with that story. The movie has changed a lot from the book, the book isn't, it's really a series of blue light, as is really a series of essays, whereas the book is the books really series of essays, whereas the movie is more of one continual memoir or narrative, so that he takes from those a lot, a lot of liberties are taken. But yeah, that piece, I don't know what it is. And this is hard to find, I actually ended up buying a copy just because it's really hard to find now on streaming or anything else, but and I wouldn't endorse Donald Miller as an author or person at this point in my life, based on what I've seen from him online. Also, there's another another person, who I've just, even though, can be very problematic, Joshua Harris. And when he posts online, he's one of the few like, ex Christians I follow. Back in my very active Twitter days, we actually had some dialogue. He started following me for a while. And even though he's done some pretty problematic things, you know, about trying to monetize deconstructing, like, if you're here. But just think, seeing this person who I held on a pedestal at age 19 when he was only like, 21. And you hear a story, it's like he was, he was thrust into this, and not minimizing the responsibility he needs to take for his own actions, but just seeing what he went through a huge grand scale. I'd seen him speak probably a dozen times. He was a Southern Baptist darling. And, you know, he's doing his thing now trying to, you know, figure out, you know, him and his wife separated amicably. And he just tried to ease up in Canada trying to do his thing, the thing that like, wow, someone like him, who I held on this pedestal, who I based my entire pre marriage relationship with my wife upon his teachings. And he couldn't do it. It just gives me comfort. A lot. And I'm not saying like both Donald Miller and Joshua Harris, there's some problematic things. Yeah, there's there's definitely trigger warning there and other things, but just I relate a lot of ways, knowing these guys, these champions of evangelicalism, they fell hard in the eyes of the church, and makes me feel like wow, they really don't have it figured out. And that gives me comfort, if that makes any sense.
Arline 59:38
No, it does. There's some times that I'm like, I would love to just sit down with Beth Moore, Jen Hatmaker just different women who've just been like, you know, butchered all over the place, and just be like, how are you doing? What's going on? Like, you know, like, how are you? What's life like these days, you know, so I get it.
Andy Neal 59:58
That's more he's one of the nicest people you ever meet. You've met Beth Moore. Oh, I'm jealous. We were I was at a conference and we are Turfan got stuck in the mud after a rainstorm, bunch of a slug and she came out there and start talking. How can I help you all? The nicest person I literally have ever met. Like, and yeah, I've watched has been through what she's had to go through. I'm like, wow, that's uh, you know, this was back in like 2003. But it was hard to find me. Follow me on Instagram or Tiktok at Andy films and hikes or on YouTube at any function hikes, mostly outdoor, and body confidence content I do occasionally post about. Well, I'm in the mental state to do a post about my journey and faith, I try to be very careful about it. Because it invites a lot of a lot of conflict and invites, a lot of people just want to argue if I turn the comments off on those kinds of posts, the DMS are even more so. So I'm just like, yeah. My hope is with this particular podcast that I can share my story and be like, because I get asked all the time. Oh, you know, watch. Tell me your story. I'd like to hear you. Listen, listen to this. And you can hear my story. Yeah. And yeah, that's the best way to find me. Instagram, Tik Tok or YouTube at Auntie films and hikes.
Arline 1:01:15
Yay. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed this. This was wonderful.
Andy Neal 1:01:20
Thank you for having me.
Arline 1:01:28
My final thoughts on the episode. I've been following Andy. Since I think since I got back on Instagram, like he just popped up in my reels. It was his going for stupid hike for my stupid mental health reel. And it was just fantastic. And his body positivity, his anti diet, culture stuff, like all these different things, just getting out in nature. And nature's for everyone. Like all these things. I was like, Wow, this all this resonates with my little my little heart. And then to know, where he's had to come from, to get to where he is now, in terms of loving himself, seeing nature and being able to just have the all and wonder and that whatever that experience is that you get whenever you're out in nature when you're like he said, when you're around something that's so much bigger than yourself. You don't have to go into the supernatural world to find it. Like it's really, it's right here on this planet. Oh, I just love it. I just love it all. One of the things that stood out to me, is y'all, us in the x, then Jellicle X religious world. We've got to have our feelings, because that's reality. We've got to like go through whatever parts of that, I guess stages of grief that we need to whenever we've lost something. We've got to have the feelings, yes. But we cannot be like a toxic community where people can't come and where it's just anger and meanness, anger and meanness. I'm very thankful for the Facebook group. Because it is it isn't like that. But yeah, there's a lot of just anger at the church. And when you find your people online to be angry with it can it can keep going, it can escalate. But yeah, we can't be that because not everybody needs that. We've got to figure out how to deal with our junk and make space for anger. Because yes, we have to have it. But I guess not just sit there and stew. Andy, I'm so glad that you're You're out. You're finding finding all the things that you needed to find you're able to find it in nature and your life now. It's fabulous. Y'all like getting out of religion. They told us all that they told us that these things can only be found in religion. It's not true. Just flat out not true. Community, love, solid relationships, all wonder, like all of these things. All of these things can be found outside of religion, history.
David Ames 1:04:11
The second is a great start of the week, inspired by Andy is accepting your body. Within the Christian bubble, the idea of the flesh being evil, I think extends to the rejection of our bodies, whichever shape, size, or form it takes. A part of secular grace is accepting oneself and that includes our humanity, as well as our physicality who we are embodied. And what is inspiring about Andy's story is not being limited by our bodies, but experiencing nature being outdoors. Until next time, 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 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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Natalie from New Zealand tells Arlene here story. She grew up Pentecostal participating in church. In her young adulthood she converted to Mormonism.
She saw that as woman her role was limited and was finding it difficult to accept the church’s perspective on LGBQT issues.
Eventually Natalie deconverted. She is thankful for her kids’ sake who later came out as queer. Natalie now finds time in nature and the forest life giving.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I'm trying to be a graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, right the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe wherever you are listening. 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 Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline interviews our guests this week, Natalie Natalie is from New Zealand. Natalie's family was Catholic but converted to a evangelical Pentecostalism at her birth in a harrowing story that she will tell Natalie grew up then in in the Pentecostal environments and Natalie was always fascinated with various other religions and she eventually converted to Mormonism. She is now an atheist after deconstructing her faith. Here is our lien to interview.
Unknown Speaker 1:49
Natalie, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Hi, thank you for having me.
Arline 1:53
Yeah, you and I have just recently connected through email and this. This works out perfectly. I'm excited to hear your story. We usually begin just tell us about your religious upbringing.
Natalie 2:04
So I grew up in a home where my dad wasn't really religious. He grew up Catholic. My mom did as well. But she became a born again Christian when a couple of years before I was born. But she was really really devout. Me My, my younger years was spent in Baptist churches. And then my teenage years were in Pentecostal churches, evangelical. Yeah, those happy clappy type of churches. Yeah, and then as an adult, my husband and I were Mormons for a short little bit. And now I'm gonna Yes, yeah. So
Arline 2:48
fun journey. Okay, so yeah, you grew up, you said Baptist and Pentecostal, those were your formative years. Good experiences bad. Yes, a little bit of everything.
Natalie 3:00
A little bit of, of, of it all. So a little bit of backstory is I was born quite premature. So my mum loves to tell the story of how I medically died when I was a few days old and then rushed. Catholic priests didn't to come and baptize me. But at the time, the pope at the time was in town. And the priests wanted to go and see the pope more than he wanted to baptize a little baby. So he only did like a little blessing sprinkle type thing and went on his way. So my mum always used to talk a lot about how I was her only child that was born once she was a Christian, and I was lucky because I wasn't baptized properly into the Catholic church like my siblings were. So that kind of set the tone for my childhood. A lot like my mom took me to a lot of healing meetings. Because I was born so early. I have chronic lung disease like my lungs never developed as they should have. So yeah, I was in hospital really regularly as a kid and yeah, my mum would just take me to these healing meetings and claim that God healed me and I was the little kid that would go to Show and Tell at school and everyone else would bring a book or a toy or something. They've gone on holiday and I would bring nothing except I went to a healing meeting last night you need to believe in God so that he can save you and you can be healed if you need. That was at a really young age like eight I want to say yeah, so yeah, very not sure how to win it like my mum was was very, very A devout, like, everything was about God. Everything at home. When when Mum was around, it was very, we had to be careful what music we listened to what movies we watched, like my kids now think it's funny because I wasn't allowed to watch Mary Poppins because it had magic in it. But yeah, mum would go out and just be at home with dad and we'd watch Die Hard. And that was okay. But Mary Poppins wasn't it. So?
Arline 5:30
Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, I knew Christian family. I did not grow up Christian. So I missed a lot of that. Yeah, so yeah, I know, right. But as an adult, we knew Christian families in the church who could watch like, gory horror movies at Halloween, because like, Halloween wasn't weird for us. But then they wouldn't watch anything with sexual stuff. And we were like, I mean, like, is any of it super helpful, but yeah, that's Wow, that's fascinating. So diehard at Christmas or just whenever because, you know, that's a big thing. Whenever that hurts Christmas, whenever, okay, just carried that wanted
Natalie 6:05
to watch it. It was over. I love it.
Arline 6:17
So then high school, you said as an adult, you guys were Mormon. Because we were taught, you know, Mormons are like a cult. So how do you
Natalie 6:24
guys jump to that? So as a teenager, I Yeah. So like, grew up in Baptist churches like as a child. My dad left my mom and we moved to city. And that's when we got heavily involved in Pentecostal churches. So I was a youth group leader. I was a Sunday school, like a children's church leader at, I think I was 11. That really is just a child myself. I'm not sure why they made me a leader. But that's alright. So I was super like, five, six days a week at church doing stuff. At 16, I felt like God was telling me to go on a missions trip. Except I had left school, because I wanted to devote more of my time to the church. So other sports 16 was volunteering, like not being paid at all. Never. Yeah, no. I mean, why would they write? And, yeah, my mum had gone to this conference. And I went along, but purely because the conference was at the beach, and I wanted to go to the beach. Thought that was more fun than going home at 16. And but there were these woman there who had come from Namibia, which is it's just up from South Africa a little bit. And they ran a couple of homes like for, there was a woman's home and a children's home. And I loved working with kids. So I was like, Okay, well, I'll come and work in the children's home. And then reality set in of I don't have the money to fly from New Zealand, to Namibia. But then, these women that ran these homes, they went and spoke to my mom, and they will I think God is leading you to go as well. You should sell your home. And you should pay for you and Natalie to come over. And so my mom did, which horrifies me as an adult now. But at 16, I was like, oh, cool, I don't have to pay for it.
Arline 8:35
Or their siblings is you said your dad had left. So like, what are the dynamics of just you and your mom dipping out and heading to a different continent?
Natalie 8:43
Yes. So I'm, so I have an older sister. She's five years older than me. So at that point, she had a family of her own. My brother is three years older than me. He was still living at home, but my mum was like you can go find somewhere else to live. Gave him a little bit of money from selling her house to like set himself up. And we just went literally within within about three months mum had sold her house. We've gotten all the vaccinations we needed to get and off we went and I need to preface that with my mum had undiagnosed bipolar. So I really truly looking back now think she was an A, as kids, we call it like a bipolar high. And as soon as we got to Namibia, she went into a low. And I didn't see her for a couple of weeks. Really. Yeah, so we did that. And that was interesting to say the least. It was a very traumatic religious experience like within 24 hours of us being there. These women were telling In the people in the homes that we were prophets, and that everything we said was directly from God. And like I just said, like my mum went into a bipolar low. So she was literally in her room. It must have been for about the first three weeks, we were there, and I was 16 sitting there going, I don't know what to do. Like, these people are making me feel special. They're treating me really well. All of that type of stuff, like it was really, really messed up and probably meets all the criteria for a cult. But I didn't have that knowledge at the time. So yeah, there was that experience. And Mum actually left the home because the people were the people who ran it, were trying to get me to stay in Namibia, by myself, like that even taken me into the immigration office. And thankfully, the immigration officer was like, um, you're only 16 Were your parents. So that didn't go ahead, thankfully. And that was a bit of a wake up call for me of like, because at that point, mom had left the home and was living with some friends that she'd made over there. So I was by myself and the situation trying to navigate it. And they used they would always tell me that God was telling them things that I should be doing. And I had, I've been taught a lot, you know, you don't question if people say that God's time or something, who are you to question that that's between them and God and, and maybe that's God giving you a bit of a nudge, a bit of direction, that type of stuff. So it was it was really, really messy. And I ended up literally escaping, like secretly packing my bag and the friends that mum had made, came and picked me up, and I'd chucked my my massive backpack into the back of this tiny car. And there was a guy there, his name was Seth, he, he was the son of the woman who ran the homes. And he was, I think he he thought he was like Jesus, like he grew his hair out. So it was really long grew the beard wore a white robe all the time. And sandals, and he was a really strange man. I laugh now at the time, it wasn't funny. But I remember him literally chasing the car telling, like yelling that we're going to hell for leaving. And we ended up back in New Zealand after that, but I didn't have anyone I could talk to about it. Because I'd gone on this missions trip. And felt so special. And like I was doing this amazing thing for God. And then it all went to I don't know if I can curse on this. You can curse Yeah, winter shamrock went to shit. And I was still involved in church and stuff when we came back to New Zealand, but it just never felt the same. Like there was a lot of a lot of questions on my end of what the heck is going on.
I came back and we moved to city at that point, both mom and I and I got involved in another Pentecostal church like like, within weeks, I was a youth leader. I was preaching. Like, there was no pause to deal with what had happened. And I, I still didn't go back to school. I still wanted to just devote my time to the church because I think that's where I found because my home life was quite unsettled. That's true. It was where I found validation. It was where I found family community. All of that. So I never wanted to say no to anything. I wanted to. Yeah, I just wanted to be there all the time. I wanted them to see, hey, I'm doing this and maybe eventually they they can pay me to do cash. I'm sure it would have been about 60 hours a week worth of work like Oh, yeah. Yeah. And keeping in mind, I was only 17 at that point. Still a baby. Like I have teenagers myself who are close to that age. And I'm just like, I'm horrified at the thought of them being in that position. But yeah, I met my husband at 17. So he was we were both youth leaders. And he was on worship team. He was the drummer so that was cool. Yeah, we got married 10 months later. Very, very quick because we were in the thick of purity culture, and it was you get married because God forbid you live together or have sex or anything like that before marriage. Yeah. And then we, we made the decision to take a year off leadership. And we spoke to our pastor about it. And we were like, look, we need to do this for our relationship. I mean, we'd only been together for 10 months, we needed to get to know each other like. But I was told that I was leading my husband astray. Because I was the one who had suggested it. Oh, wow. Oh, so to backtrack a little bit as well, at the time, I had a full time job. Because my mum had kicked me out of home. And that's a whole other story. But um, yeah, I had a full time job. But I was working 60 hours a week. And I'd gone to our senior pastor and to our youth pastor, because I was I was a youth leader, I was on the welcome team, I was on clean up, set up all of this stuff, like it was really intense. And I said, I can't work, my 50 hour job that I'm being paid for and do the amount of stuff that I'm doing. At church, like I just, I'm not stepping back entirely, but I need to just dial it down a little bit. And that just resulted in people not talking to me. And you know, they would talk to my I mean, he was my fiancee at the time, but they would, they would talk to Steve and they would happily welcome him to gatherings and stuff, like I lost friends. And that really started like, I didn't have the language for it at the time. But I'd have really bad panic attacks at church, where I'd have to go sit in my car just to try and breathe through it. And I would try getting pray for it. Because mental health wasn't a real thing. It was just you pray, and God will make it better and read your Bible a bit more, and you'll be awkward. And that just wasn't the case. So we got married, and we ended up leaving that church and we tried to do it. And as healthy away as we could we tried to make the senior pastor and just say, Look, we're going to find another space for us. Thank you for X, Y, and Zed. And then they started rumors that we were going and starting our own church. And it just it was a shit show. And we tried other churches, but I would have panic attacks, even just hearing the worship music. Because I'm not sure what Pentecostal evangelical churches listen to in America, but here it was heavily Hillsong based at the time, and yes, saying yes. Okay. I would hear it at because you know how, at church, right? Like, it's, you go in and straight away. So worship service, and you will sing songs. And then you have the preaching, they have
Arline 18:29
to prime you. Yeah, they have to prime you to be able to hear the foolishness, they're about to spit out.
Natalie 18:37
But straightaway, like within five minutes of being there, I would have a panic attack. And I'm so thankful that my husband was understanding and that we communicated as much as we could at the time, given. I think I was maybe 19 By that point. So he was what like 21, like we were babies trying to navigate all of this.
And then, we had children, young, like I was 21 when I had my eldest and then 22. And we tried going to church with them. But honestly, trying to go to church with two babies is just, I spent my whole time in the crash part. And I was like, this is doing nothing for me. I could just be doing this at home. So there were a couple of years where we we would try that then I'd have a panic attack and then be dealing with the kids and I'm like, I just want to go home. But once our kids went to kindergarten, they started making friends and their friends, parents were mostly Mormons. So that's how we got into that. So that was a very long explanation to get to
Arline 19:57
know thank you because that's a lot to have. I feel like being young parents being just married when you're still a teenager trying to navigate that, realizing that the church environment you're in when you say, Hey, this is overwhelming and too much, they're like, Oh, well, like just so that's, that's those are big parts of your story. So, Mormonism, so how to desk. I'm like, it's it's funny even now, you know, I'm an atheist I don't believe in any of this stuff. But Mormonism is like this far fetched crazy thing way over there that I don't know anything about, even though the more I do learn about these more, I guess on the fringes, versions of Christianity, they all sound very similar and have lots of the same things. So anyway, tell, tell me, yeah. Tell me about Mormonism. How'd that
Natalie 20:48
go? Yeah. So I, because my friends were Mormons, I would occasionally take the kids to events that they would have. And I missed that feeling of community. I missed that feeling of belonging. And I was, I can look back now and go, it was love bombing, really. And that's what they're taught to do. You're taught to bring people into the church. It's not, I thought they just wanted to, they just liked our company and wanted us to join it. And I don't I mean, I'm sure it was a mixture of both, but I definitely do think there was very much wanting to get brownie points for getting us into the church, essentially. But I, my friend gave me a Book of Mormon, and I started reading it. And I'm an avid reader, like, I love books. And I only got maybe 10 pages. And because this is so poorly written, I don't know if you've ever tried reading
Arline 21:48
any of it. I have not we've had a copy because we've been gifted one before, but we never I never.
Natalie 21:56
I mean, if you want to contrive, but it's not an easy read. Because it Yeah, for many reasons. But I met with some missionaries, which felt really weird, because at the time, I think I was 25. And these missionaries were 18 year old boys. And I was like you're making me really uncomfortable. I didn't understand the in that a big part of the Mormon church is modesty. And I didn't feel like I was a modest, right. I had been taught to cover my body, you know, you shouldn't be tempting anyone that type of stuff. But I was like, we're in my own home at some time. I was wearing a singlet. I didn't think anything of it. And they would just be steering inappropriately. And where we had to get some of the bishop involved where I was like, I don't want to meet with these ones. Can you send some other ones over? Which is tricky, because it's all very it's not like Pentecostal churches where anyone can go to that physical church. And Mormonism, you have wards. So if you live in a geographical area, that's the building you have to go to. And it's the same missionaries they sit to. Yeah, so it was a little bit tricky, and I feel kind of bad because they were kids themselves, but it was just open. But um, my husband is very much a free thinker and likes to question people that he not in a rude way, but that he likes to push people as well. Why do you believe that? Even though we were Christians, he would still do that. Like he? I think he found it kind of funny. But um, we met with the bishop, because so the bishop is like the pastor of the church. Yeah, yes. I'm trying to figure it. Yeah. And he was like, Natalie, I don't think you should get baptized because Steve's not on board. And I was like, I can do what I want. Like, I'm, we're not like, we don't have to do this together. And he's like, no, no, that's not okay. And now I understand the church is so patriarchal. And if you're a woman, you do what your husband says, and that really threw me so. And I try not to live through regrets, but I do regret the fact that I, I spent weeks hounding Steve, I was like, just reading, doesn't just watch this documentary watch, read this book. And he was amazing. And he read it and he was like, Look, this is obviously something he wants to do. I don't want you going to church without me. So I'll just join two. And he did it. And he was honest with the missionaries. He was honest with the bishop and he was like, Look, what did he say? He said, If I grew up believing that Jonah could be swallowed by a whale and survive And that, you know, if I can believe that then I can believe this. And I really think for him, that was the start of him going, this is a load of shit. I don't believe. I mean, he even got out and they asked him to speak at a they call it a steak meeting. So it's a bunch of not like sta K, not the meat. Okay, a steak meeting. So it's a bunch of awards get together. And it's like a big deal to be asked to speak at one of those. And they asked Steve and he got up and said this, he was like, Well, if I can believe this, why wouldn't I believe this? And there was no, God has told me since he was, and but they loved it. Oh, like, yeah, that's okay. And I was like, what? Like, they were talking about him being on track to be a bishop one day. And we'd only been members for like six months.
We went through the temple. We went through the endowment ceremony, we got sealed as a family. So my kids were at the time, I think, five and six. So they still talk about our sealing ceremony. Do you know what that is? Is it like, what happens if you didn't get married in that church? So that you have it like now? Yeah, so whatever thing Okay, yeah. So if we had actually gotten married in that church, we would have been sealed, then. And then our children would just be automatically sealed. But because because we were converts, we had to get sealed. And then our children had to come in and get sealed to us. And that meant that we could be together forever in the celestial kingdom. Because you know, how there's like three degrees of heaven. No, no, go for it. Tell us all the things. It's complicated. I feel like I'm not going to get it completely right. Because a lot of it turned out and I was like, Yeah, whatever. But it's so you've got the celestial, and I get these two mixed up. Go celestial, celestial, terrestrial. So the celestial kingdom is the one where you're closest to God. Okay, as a Mormon man, you have your own planet. And family. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So actually, a lot of that family. Even when I wasn't Mormon, I learned by watching the Book of Mormon musical.
Arline 27:39
The musical. Yes.
Natalie 27:42
Which is? It's funny, but for it's for people.
Arline 27:47
Yes. For people who don't know, it's created by the guys who did South Park. So just think how wonderful and I have not seen it. We've listened to the soundtrack 1000 times, but we've not we have not seen it yet. But anyway, continue on. Yeah.
Natalie 28:02
So yeah, we will sail together in the celestial kingdom. So the next kingdom down is for people who believe in God, but aren't Mormons or aren't sealed or haven't gone through the temple? So there's that realm. And then the third one is for people who are a good people, but don't believe in God. They're kind of at the bottom. And then hell is for apostate. So for people who leave the church, so who, who had that understanding? So how isn't really a place for like, we would like like I was taught and Christianity where if you don't accept God, then you're going to hell. They, you can not believe in God, and you still go to some form of heaven, but you won't be as close to God. But how was reserved for apostates and
Arline 29:00
people who were Mormon? Yeah, then left. Wow, that's so specific.
Natalie 29:09
It's very detailed. And I love having information. I love the intricacies of religion. But it was it was a lot. Like I remember and we had some lessons before we've gone through the temple. And I asked our friend, I was like, because a big thing in the temple is you do baptisms for the dead? So yes, I didn't know about that. Yeah, yes. So he was talking about how you can have a loved one who who isn't a member of the church, but when they die, you could do a baptism for the dead for them and in in the afterlife. They can make that choice whether or not to believe and then they can go to the celestial kingdom. But I had some family that had I thought were complete assholes. And I was like, I don't want them having that opportunity. I don't want to spend eternity with them. They are their people. And he was like, Oh, well, you know. And he actually said, if you're a duck in this life, you probably going to be a different than next life. So don't worry about it. But I was always like, there's always that possibility. Like, it just didn't make a lot of sense. But they had an answer for most things. But yeah, we we went through the temple that was a whole experience in itself was very, very elaborate. Yeah, like, being told, I had a name that was given to me that I would have to give my husband so that he could pull me into heaven. And I remember saying, I can get myself into heaven. What are you talking about? Like, that was a very foreign concept to me. And it was quite amusing. Because after our endowment, and after giving my husband my secret temple name, we've got him because he's not supposed to tell me his. I'm not supposed to know his, but that's just not how we operate. So I asked him when we got home, I was like, so what's your what's your tempo now? And he was like, I actually forgot. And he was like, I was too embarrassed to stick my hand up and ask for it again. So you don't know your name that's supposed to?
Arline 31:31
Yeah, yes. Like, well, now we understand why he is where he is. Because he forgot that name that his magical ceremony. All right. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so, so this last, how long did this last? And how did you? How did you guys get out of it? So
Natalie 31:47
we were only in the church for 18 months. So Oh, wow, you have to be a member, like a baptized member for 12 months before you can go through the temple. So we had done it very, okay, bang on that 12 months. Partly because, you know, it's like the secret club that I wanted to see what happens, I wanted to be a part of it. And then I was a part of it. And I was like, What the hell is this. But for us, it came down to, we were having to unteach at home, what our kids were learning at church, specifically around gender around being queer. Because that's a big, there are very, very defined lines for that in the church. And I'm so glad that we left and that we taught our kids love who you want, be who you are, because our eldest is non binary, and our youngest is gender fluid. And they both queer, and the damage that could have been done if we had stayed. Like, I'm just I'm so relieved that we got out when we did, because for them, there wasn't a lasting. I mean, they walk around telling us proudly that their little heathens kids have a good sense of humor, but the religious stuff that they were exposed to, hasn't affected them, which I'm so grateful for.
We then whittled our beliefs down to so we left that church. And then we said, right, examining a lot of the Bible, I don't agree with that anymore. But I still believe in God, I still felt it was important to believe in a higher being. So we want to hold our beliefs down to love the Lord your God fully mind heart and soul and love others as you love yourself, and that's how we tried to operate for a few years. And then we were out for a drive one evening and my husband said to me, he was I don't believe in God. And I panicked and expected there to be like lightning hitting our power going, you're gonna make God angry. Like let's not do this and I mean, come on. Believing in a being that's going to be angry at you for having free will and saying, Look, I don't believe this is probably not a being I want to believe in. So for me, it definitely made me think and it made me go well, I don't believe 99.9% of what's in the Bible anymore. I definitely disagree with organized religion, or just religion in general. It's not not my cup of tea. It's been nothing but damage to me, personally, and yeah, they were It was about a year of conversations back and forth. So Steve listening to your podcast listening to the Thinking Atheist, and him sending me episodes going, Hey, I think you might want to listen to this. And I was like, No, I really don't want to. That's, that's pushing it. But I did start to and I was like, Oh, this actually makes sense. This is not just me that has these doubts and these concerns, and I was able to start verbalizing what I had been thinking internally for quite a long time. Like, probably since I was about 16. And Africa. When all of that happens, I was able to talk about it and talk about the harm that religion had caused for me. And I understand it's not that way for everybody. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then I think it I can't even remember when it was, but just one day, I was like, Look, so it started off. I think I'm agnostic. I think there could be a possibility that God exists. And if someone could really prove to me, then sure. But now I'm just like, that's not a being I want to believe in or would ever even if someone could come to me and say, Hey, this does exist, I'd still be like, No, I'm good. Thank you. So yeah, now very proudly, an atheist and you rebel. Yeah. Yeah. So how long ago was that? Oh. About four years ago? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Just before, just before the pandemic. Yeah, so I ran four years ago. Yeah.
Arline 36:49
So what does life look like now?
Natalie 36:52
So it's, it's complicated. It's, I mean, we lost friends. When we left Pentecostal churches, we lost friends. When we became Mormons, we lost friends when we left the Mormon church, and we've lost friends since being atheist. It's quite a lonely journey. There's not many people that get it.
So that's been hard. I mean, for me, one of the biggest things was in
2020. In New Zealand, we'd gone into lockdown for I think it was about three months. And at the end of it, my father in law passed away. And it was the first time I had to deal with death. Why while being an atheist, and hearing people say, Well, we'll see him again. He's in a better place, like I've really had to sit with that uncomfortable feeling. And go, Well, I don't believe I'm going to see him again. I don't believe there is anything after this life, personally. And that was really hard to work through and to help my husband through and to help our kids through because, for me growing up, I had people that died, but it was, well, they had a relationship with God. So we'll see them again. They're in a better place there with God. I didn't have that reassurance for my kids. So we, we did things like that was just joking one night because my kids called their grandfather, grandpa. But their cousins call him pop pop. And he had originally wanted to be called that with our kids. This is an important part of the story. But I had told him I said, if you use that name, I'm gonna make fun of you because it sounds like you're passing wind. But so when he died, the cousins were talking about pop pop and stuff. And I just joked, well, you know, you can look at the stars. And if there's one that's kind of shooting by it's it's Pop Pop being powered by his guest. So our kids then develop, and it was a joke, but it was almost like a comfort to them that we can look up the stars and we can just imagine that that's Grandpa, you know, but not in essence, that we actually think he's up there. I mean, one night, we had something shot through the sky and it wasn't a plane. Turned out it was like a satellite thing, which we don't get in New Zealand. So everybody was like, What the heck is that? And my first thought was because I'd been outside putting the rubbish out and my 14 year old was was with me, and they were like, grandpa. It's like grandpa. We were joking when we told you that. But that was is a way for us to deal with that uncertainty and to provide a little bit of comfort for them. And I mean, yeah, it's that that really cemented for me though. I don't believe in God, and I'm okay with that.
For now, I've even had conversations with my mum, who is still very much a Christian, where I've told her, I don't believe in God, I don't believe in prayer. And she's been horrified and being like, well, how can you live your life without that, and I'm like, I can live my life quite happily, I feel more peace. Now, without that constant thinking of. If I swear, I'm gonna go to hell, or God's going to be angry with me, and I'm gonna have to repent. Or nevermind those, the bigger things that they tell you about that, you know, are going to affect your life. Like I can just, I can be myself, I can think for myself like I've really had to. But because my husband and I got married so young, and because we were in such a patriarchal religion, there were things even like, I was taught to vote for who my husband was voting for. Yeah. So at the moment in New Zealand, it's election time. And having discussions with my kids about the deadline might not be voting for the same people. And that's okay. But for me, that's still a bit of a novelty. And that there wasn't anything that my husband and forced that was just what I was taught through different mediums, whether from the pulpit or from books or that type of stuff. I, I've really had to develop an opinion. And which I find really hard because my people, please, and I don't want to upset anyone, but my opinions don't have to align with my husband's. I mean, obviously, they're to be in a healthy relationship. For us, there are just foundational things that we need to agree on. But there are other things where I'm like, I even like picking bedding 15 years ago, I would have just been like, Oh, will you choose because you need to be comfortable, because this is your space as well, which is somewhat understand. But it meant I ended up hating all the furniture, we had all the all the bedding, all that type of stuff. And now I'm like, give me all the stuff that I like. And I've found a joy in decorating. How I like and obviously there are compromises because it's more than just me living in our home. But my opinion matters, too. Yeah, absolutely. And I really don't mean that in. Like that was never anything my husband said to me that he actually didn't grow up knowing that. And I think that is the differences between being an assigned female at birth in this particular religion and being an assigned male at birth. It's just very different. Very different experiences. And we've had to work through that a lot. Yeah, but yeah, I definitely feel a lot more. A lot more peace now a lot more. I'm comfortable within myself. And obviously that still work in progress. But yeah, like I find a lot of comfort and peace and being out in nature. We go hiking a lot. And like we're really lucky here in New Zealand, we we have bush tracks, like five minutes away from our house type of thing. But for all of us, I don't know if you've heard of like forest bathing. And I don't mean that in the sense that we go into the forest and have a bath.
Arline 44:12
No, no, no, no, like just being in like fully full immersion into the forest. Yeah. Just
Natalie 44:18
just being able to, I guess disconnect from the busyness of life and just breathe, and just be and maybe it's because we're focusing so much on just trying to breathe climbing up a mountain or whatever it might be. But it's, it's really good for us. We all notice. As soon as we get into the forest, we're all much calmer. We're much happier. And so that's been really good and a good coping strategy for us to replace things like prayer or hopping on worship music or whatever it would have been at that time.
Arline 45:07
So how do you find meaning? Like? What are the things that make your life meaningful now that you don't have religion?
Natalie 45:14
That's a tricky question. How do I find meaning? Or G you?
Arline 45:20
Like, for me, the things that used to that I used to struggle thinking they were idols, like my family, my personal time, novels, like the things I love. Those things don't necessarily give me meaning. But those are the things now that I can just love without feeling like they're vying for my worship. Because I used to get all worried that I was worshiping my family, worshiping my kids worshiping myself instead of like, just letting those things
Natalie 45:46
be what they are. Yeah, yeah, so probably much the same. I guess, I I've had to learn how to relax and rest, because that was not okay. That was. I mean, when you're doing stuff five or six days a week for church and being made to feel bad, if you're not there, that's been a really hard thing for both my husband and I to learn to just sit our butts down and just enjoy relaxing, I'm still not very good at it. But I want to set that example for my kids. That's important for your mental, physical and emotional well being to sometimes just relax, you don't have to actively be doing stuff all the time. I find a lot of meaning. And I probably annoy our family and friends. By I talk a lot about social issues. Who so because our kids queer. And we've had to have a lot of difficult conversations with family and with friends, and it's weeded a lot of them out. That's I just I have no time or patience for people that don't accept my kids for who they are. But also being like, this isn't just our kids. It's Yes, you know, you need to be loving and accepting of everyone. Things like talking about race, because we are a mixed race family. Obviously, I'm a Paki house. So I'm New Zealand, European, but my husband is Malaysian. And our kids are Malaysian and Sorry, I keep I keep forgetting that not everyone knows to do with so go to us. And then I'm like. Yeah, so just talking about hate that that matters. And yes, we are a family where we talk a lot about politics. We talk a lot about different religions. I love reading about different religions and cults. And sometimes I think they must be really weird to other people. That I know. So I'm, I haven't been diagnosed yet, but I'm feeling I'm 99% Certain I'm autistic. So I get hyper focused on things. And I'm partly saying that because our youngest has been diagnosed with autism, and a lot of those traits that they had, I just thought were things that weren't for me. And now I'm going Oh, that makes sense. Where I had like a year or two, where I just devoured every book I could about Scientology which I understand to some people would be really, really weird. But I loved learning about it. I loved I learned a ton about the Amish community. About, like, when I was a Christian, it was learning about Mormonism. Which is weird considering I became a woman, but I wanted to know all about it. It's fascinated me I find a lot of enjoyment and learning. And I think part of that is because because I left school, to devote all my time to the church. I didn't leave because of a lack of intelligence I left because of that. What's the word? fervent devotion to church? Yeah, and I'm currently in the process of applying to go to university, which feels really scary. But I want to do that because I've been a stay at home mom for 15 years, and that's what our family has needed given. There are some higher needs there but I just I love learning like the amount of books we've got. I just said that ridiculous and we live in a tiny house. Um, yeah, I don't know. I think that's probably the place where I found a lot of meaning for me outside of religion is educating myself about social justice issues and learning about the world outside of Christianity. Because I wasn't allowed to for a long time that wasn't okay. It wasn't you should be off the world but not in the world, that type of stuff. Yeah,
Arline 50:28
I am self diagnose inattentive, ADHD. And so I'm like, ooh, rambling and hyper fixation. Yes, I am. Here. Let's get it. Yeah, that's good. And for me, I'm not formally diagnosed, but it was watching my older son struggle with things I struggled with as a kid that I thought were just like, oh, this is just like a thing. And it was like, yeah, actually, this looks like inattentive ADHD. And then a friend of mine. She said, she leaned over my shoulder one day, and um, she's already HD. So she, she, she knows she was paying attention. And she said, you know, neurotypical people don't have 36 reminders on their phone for stuff they do every day. And I was like, they don't. And that was the first that was like, a year or so ago. And I was like, Oh, wow.
Natalie 51:16
Yeah.
Arline 51:26
So speaking of recommendations, books, podcasts, anything and I know, I'm sure you have plenty. So yeah. Do you have any recommendations, things that were helpful on your journey out? Or something you're just loving right now or something? Yeah, whatever you want to recommend.
Natalie 51:40
So I did read a Dan Barker book. God, the most unpleasant character in all fiction, who didn't read that was interesting. It's very. I actually read it, my husband and I read it out loud to each other. And our kids were coming in and out of the room while we were reading it. And they will have just the Bible actually say that type of stuff. And I was like, yeah. But I found that quite validating, to ask not just me that just thinks these things about the Bible. Actually, a book written about it, like that was quite eye opening. I was going to say, Richard Dawkins, but I feel a little conflicted. about recommending, just given what he has said about trans people recently, I'm, yes, I'm just,
Arline 52:39
it's like, when you're a Christian, and you realize a lot of the dead guys that you thought were super fantastic, like enslaved people, and like, harmed entire groups of people, and it was perfectly okay. And then here's this living guy who's like, here's some great information. And here's some other things that I believe in. It's like, I yeah, it gets it gets real complex, real quick. Yeah, it's
Natalie 53:03
a little murky. Like, I I found the content of some of his books helpful. But I don't know. It just it hits something. In Me, I think because my children are identify as trans. I just I mean, just like with JK Rowling, right? Yeah. My kids loved Harry Potter. We were obsessed with it. And now there's nothing Harry Potter in our house.
We ran into the same thing. Yeah, you did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, with with Harry Potter, and then yeah, that's a whole other episode discussing like whiteness in the atheist world, and misogyny in the atheist world. And like, all these things that like, they don't magically disappear. When you leave religion. They're just tweaked. And the wording might be a little bit different. But it's a de homophobia, like all the things. So go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, it just it surprised me and shocked me. And his books were ones that even our kids had started to read. So yeah, but a couple of his books have been good. But probably for me more podcasts because I can put it on and do other stuff at the same time. Like I'm not good at.
I'm good at reading fiction, and just getting immersed and lost in those books. But often with nonfiction, I have to do it in little bits. So I find podcasts for me are just better for me to get that information in because I can do it while I work out or do the dishes or whatever it might be. So your podcast has been really good to hear other people's stories. Like for me having lost a lot of that community. It feels really lonely, but then thank God for technology that we have this and I can feel somewhat can added to other people because I don't know if it's different being in like living somewhere like America where it's just a bigger country, there's more people if it's easier to connect with people who've been through similar things or have similar beliefs, because it's not easy here. Yeah. So your podcast, Mormon Stories, I actually, I haven't listened to it in a little while. But there was a period of time where I avidly listen to that because he doesn't just interview ex Mormons, he interviews, people from all religions, and I found it really educational and really helpful. And especially being in a little bit of a unique position of having grown up Pentecostal evangelical to being a Mormon for a little bit less. There's not many people that have done that. Which is good. I'm glad they haven't. But yeah, it's just a unique experience. So being able to learn about both on the same platform has been really helpful. The Thinking Atheist, really like that podcast, the deconversion therapy podcast with Bonnie and I want to say, Karen, but I don't know that's her name, my memories. But I just I find them really funny. It's a little bit more of a light hearted take sometimes Oh, listen to quite a serious one where I have to think quite hard. And then I'll listen to that one. And I can just laugh. And that's also that one's also been quite good for my kids. Like, if they're around, I can put that one on. And they can see some of the humor and what their dad and I grew up with, because sometimes we have to explain why we're reacting a certain way to something because it's because of our religious upbringing. And our kids are going what? Like, they don't understand it, which is great. Yeah, but there sometimes is that disconnect of, we're not like, we sometimes have to pause a little bit to think about something and work through quickly work through, well, hold on, why am I reacting to this this way. And then we can move through it. But we've tried our best to communicate that with our kids, but sometimes just having these podcasts on when they're around, helps them to know as not just their dad and I that have these things that we have to work through or because to them, it's they they don't get why people are transphobic and homophobic and racist, and I have to go well, when you're indoctrinated your whole life,
Arline 58:03
that it's only one way? Yeah.
Natalie 58:07
Yeah, um, I've also found just different accounts, like on Instagram, especially. Just getting those little snippets have, you know, they, they'll share a post and I can just quickly read it and then sit with it for a little bit and think about it and go, Okay, that, that makes a lot of sense. But I didn't say before it as well, though. I've actually been diagnosed with complex PTSD, and PTSD, in large part because of religious trauma. So that's been a whole other thing to navigate as well. Yeah. Yeah. Can't remember that. Probably. Sorry.
Arline 58:53
You did. You gave me books and podcasts? Yes. And Instagram accounts. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you telling your story.
Natalie 59:03
Thank you so much for having me. Really, really.
Arline 59:12
My final thoughts on the episode, y'all, the church will just not pay people. Volunteer work is wonderful. It's great to be involved in things. But it seems like I keep hearing on episodes like churches will just exploit their people. They will just keep using their congregation members and just completely burn them out and fill them with Bible verses about how God will renew them. And then keep burning them out. And it breaks my heart like Natalie was 11 and 12 and 16 and 17 like in leadership and would have stayed in leadership as a young married mom if they hadn't changed to a different church. Young Parents need like a whole two or three years off of having to do anything more than take care of their kids. Maybe go to work depends on that situation. But like, just trying to exist with little tiny people in your home and sleep. It breaks my heart. And it makes me angry. Thinking of how, how often this happens to people. Another thing that stood out to me is Natalie's willingness to see the things in the church that she knows is not going to work for how they're going to parent their kids. So they have little tiny kids there in the Mormon church. And there's these strict rules and roles and genders. And it's a binary, and there's no nuance. And she's like, I can't do this, I can't do this to my children, I'm not going to put them in boxes. And the freedom that her kids as teenagers now, and as they grow into adults have to just be themselves like that as a beautiful, good, wonderful gift for her kids. Even though, you know, we want our kids to understand other people's perspectives. Her kids not like having a hard time understanding why her parents are having a hard time with certain things from religion, it's probably good for them, because they haven't had to endure the trauma and the suffering. They can grow in empathy, and figure that kind of stuff out. But they didn't have to have personal experience or knowledge of some of those beliefs and practices. And that's a good thing. That's a next generation of kids growing up without religious trauma. So Natalie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed this conversation.
David Ames 1:01:49
The secular Grace Thought of the Week is embrace your irreverence. I was listening to a comedy podcast recently. And they were talking about how successive generations have become more irreverent. But what came out of that was the ability to have a sense of humor about the religious contexts in which they grew up. Now that you have deconstructed, maybe D converted, you have more space from the religious context you grew up in, and you can see the comedy of it all. irreverence no longer has eternal consequences. So embrace your irreverence. Until next time, 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 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 the atheists United studios Podcast Network
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Jeff grew up in his words “a very religious household.” He attended a large Southern Baptist church.
In college he fell in love with the seriousness of Calvinism after reading John Piper’s Desiring God. He left seminary early to become a minster because he felt time pressure to be “on mission” for God.
After three pastors he knew died by suicide in one year, Jeff began deconstructing his faith.
Today, he is agnostic and finds therapy and mindfulness helpful in his life.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheists podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Check out our merch store on T public you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. You can find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show.
Jeff 1:12
On today's show, our Lean interviews
David Ames 1:15
today's guest Jeff, Jeff grew up in his words a very religious household. He was a part of a very large Southern Baptist Church. In college he fell in love with the seriousness of Calvinism. After having read John Piper's book desiring God. Jeff went into the ministry, he was very serious about it. And it wasn't until several pastors that he knew committed suicide that he began to ask deep, deep questions. Eventually, he deconstructed his Christianity and now calls himself agnostic. Here is our Lean interviewing Jeff.
Arline 1:59
Hi, Jeff, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Jeff 2:02
Hey, Arline. Thanks for having me. I've listened to a lot of episodes, and have enjoyed it immensely. So I'm honored and thrilled to be on the show.
Arline 2:12
Yes, I'm excited to hear your story. And I'm glad to have met you recently. We're both part of the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. And yeah, it's been good times. So the way we normally start is tell us about the religious environment you grew up in?
Jeff 2:27
Yeah, so that is the that's the big question, isn't it? Um, I definitely grew up in a very religious home. My parents were nominal Christians growing up. My dad was raised sort of Methodist, my mom was raised Roman Catholic. She's Italian from Long Island. And so both of them definitely grew up. In Christian homes, more or less, neither of them, what you would call Evangelical, they were converted later in life, and made sure that we were basically in church every time the doors were open. So I grew up in large Southern Baptist Church, and Carolina. You know, our pastor was the president of the SBC. At one point, it was a very large and influential church. And we did everything that there was to do my parents were both Sunday school teachers. You know, I was in Mission friends as a little kid, and royal ambassadors, Vacation Bible School, I mean, you name it, if they had a program we were doing. I was a very sensitive child to all these things. And I remember, I think I was probably about 789 years old, somewhere in there when I first was baptized. You know, I first told my mom and dad like, this is something that I really want to do. And I did, and there was there was even I think, I think there was a second baptism
Arline 4:15
me to Southern Baptist Church in two baptisms. Um, I understand.
Jeff 4:19
Yeah, so you know how in some of your Southern Baptist churches you they have like the altar call, and folks can go down front and like kneel down on the stairs to pray like it's some special sanctuary. So I was a teenager. Probably like, 13. If I had to guess 12, something like that. And my best friend Joel and I were sitting next to each other, and we're like, we're gonna go down front and pray today after service. So we make our way down the front aisle, and Joe breaks to the right to go pray, and I get intercepted by the pastor. Oh, no. He grabs my hand and it's like You know, what do you want to what are you coming down front today for and I'm, like, get saved. And I'm full blown panic because we're playing around in church and I knew my found out that they were going to be various. And so rather than ever admit to it, I went through with the entire thing from my heavenly man to counseling, to getting baptized, just so I didn't have to tell my parents that I was actually playing around in church. So obviously very, very much in in the church, you know, grew up in youth group. A lot of fun stories, you know, I could tell about that it was, there was there was a lot of good times, it wasn't all bad or anything like that. There was also a lot of turmoil in that youth group. I mean, we went through at one point, I counted, I think we went through six youth pastors and about eight years. Wow, yeah, there was just some was our fault. Some was their fault some folks never needed to be working with to begin with. I understand that. But you know, and then larger church scandals that went down that I was too young to really understand at the time, but it was just a very, very large church and a very kind of traditional, but also chaotic experience in a lot of ways. I was saved again, or for the real, you know, whatever you want to say, when I was probably about 15, I was dealing with a lot of depression, and a lot of suicidal ideation. And it was a youth group night one time. And it's like, everybody's eyes closed, you know, if you want to get saved, stand up and leave the room, or whatever. And so I did out and youth pastor came and found me. From that point on, I took things very personally and very seriously. You know, I wasn't just a cultural, you know, like, youth group kid after that point. It was very, very important to me. And, you know, if you could go back and read my journals from that time, you know, I did the one I'll never forget, it was like, it was a black book. It was like David Nasser, I think was the guy's name.
Arline 7:31
The missionary guy. Yes.
Jeff 7:36
And that was like, hardcore. Hardcore self introspection, and like, living off for Jesus type thing. You know, I definitely like DC talk Jesus freaks, I had that book and read it and was like, no, these people, they, they did their best, they gave their all, blah. And so, but all of that with typical high school kids stuff, you know, I transitioned out of a public high school to a private Christian high school when I was a sophomore. And so there was a lot of upheaval over that, you know, losing a lot of friends back from my regular school. And finding out that in a private Christian school, it's a lot of the same stuff. It's just, they had more money, and they were a lot more intelligent about hiding their offenses. So things didn't necessarily change in that way. But because it was a Christian high school, there was like a whole nother layer on the cake. You know, it was just one more filter for everything to go through. And it was, it was, again, good times balanced with a lot of turmoil. And, but being a Christian high school, you know, we had chapel every week, twice a week. I can't really remember now. But, you know, I took these things so very personally, and so seriously, that I always had this kind of inner guilt and inner turmoil of repentance and wanting to come back to the Lord every time I strayed, you know, type thing, and it was just over and over and over and over and over again. And this desire of wanting to just return to the Lord, you know, very seriously after every offense, kind of, I think that's probably when I really dealt with depression for the first time. In a really dark and despairing kind of way. So much to the point that I was writing poetry about Suicide and I left a journal out one night, and my parents found it. And they brought it to me in the next the next morning. And we're like, What the hell is this, like, what is going on. And I couldn't tell them the fullness of it because I felt all this pressure to be a certain way and to not own types of things. So I got whisked away to the doctor, and you know, they they prescribed me with Zoloft or something like that. And that helped for a while, but it didn't really deal with that, that perpetual cycle of, you know, straying from the Lord wandering, you know, getting into just normal high school stuff, like, I wasn't doing anything excessive or weird. It was growing up, and tremendous guilt over and all these other things. And so you take that, and then you combine all that guilt with all that religious upbringing and all that language. And just this idea that this is deadly serious, this is life or death stuff on the line on a day to day basis that you get the recipe for for college, and really the next probably 15 years of my life.
So I went to a small Christian school, just north of Greenville, South Carolina. And I majored in Christian studies. I was, I sort of had that, you know, call from God type experience, like you need to go study the Bible. And at the time, I wanted to be a New Testament teacher, professor, whatever. But that was a that was a big transition as well, that was a big culture shock, a shock to the system to go from this nominal Christian High School, and mega church that had all these issues to go then to a Christian university, that for all appearances, had its act together. Later, things would come out that they weren't all what they seemed. And there was other scandals and stuff that I could tell you about. And I could tell story after story after story after story from all of these places from all these years. But as I was thinking about it, and preparing for this, I realized none of my stories are really unique. They're just representative of the broader Christian movement, right all day, different manifestations of that. So I get to my, my college, North Greenville University, that's where I live. And for the first time, discovered these Christian celebrities, you know, these pastors, other than, you know, like your typical Southern Baptists, like John Piper, like, Sinclair. You know, these various folks discovered Calvinism in the, in the cafeteria, no less.
Arline 13:41
Huh, me too. It was a camp, campus ministry, people sharing the gospel and like, doing all the things Yeah.
Jeff 13:49
Yeah, exactly. And that, for me was like, you know, red meat, too. I was just starving for something serious. I remember being upset when I first read desiring God, not because of the content, but because I felt like this type of Christianity had been withheld from me. That's a cue mean that there is this superficial, like Southern Baptist existence that I've been living. And all the while like this book was came out. I think, maybe I was three or four years old. So this has been around my entire life. And I never knew that there were people that took it like this did seriously. I felt like I'd been shortchanged by the church. And so I really dive head over heels into this. You know, at that time, there was a there was a student at Bob Jones. I can't remember his name, but he had his own CD ministry called desiring God audio. And he went to his website, you could fill out a form and he would make you copies of John Piper's sermons and mail them are free that now this is like pre big internet pre superfast Wi Fi. He distributed more sermons more of John Piper sermons than desiring God did. And actually had an agreement for a long time that he was allowed to do this. And then he outpaced them to the point they're like, Hey, we never thought you're gonna get this big. We wouldn't really like to be the primary distributor.
Arline 15:27
Yes, that's, wow. That's fascinating.
Jeff 15:31
I listened to that's all I listened to in the car. For three and a half hours of school. I listen to John Piper, on Romans on Hebrews.
Arline 15:39
Oh, yep. Eight years enrollment, I think eight or nine years it took them to go through Romans. Oh,
Jeff 15:45
and I took these guys seriously. Whether it was Piper sprawl or Ferguson or da Carson. Call washer. I'll never forget the first time I heard the shocking youth message. Paul Washer, I'm driving down the road. I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. You know, I almost lost it. I was like that. Here's someone that gets it. This man. He sees I
Arline 16:11
missed that one. Oh, no, I missed that one. My big one was the message of John Piper's and Beth Moore's that passion whatever year that was, that was the big like, Oh, these young people are wasting Oh, I guess it would have been his wasting. Don't waste your life before the book came out. Yes.
Jeff 16:28
Don't waste your life. Yeah, there's a you don't need to know a lot of things you only need to know.
Arline 16:34
Yes. Do not pick up seashells. Yeah. Oh,
Jeff 16:39
Lord. So I took these guys dead seriously. You know, I thought they were they were genuine. I thought that they were serious. I'll never forget listening to this sermon on John Piper, in which he's encouraging people not to waste their lives. And he gives the example of his ideal retirement. When I finished pastoring, Bethlehem This is Piper saying, I'm going to buy a one way ticket to a closed country in the Middle East, get up on a street corner and preach. What's the worst that can happen? They kill you. And you're over 65. So you get a discount on your airfare. I really thought that he was, you know, serious. Like I'm still waiting on Piper to buy that one way ticket and go be martyred for Christ because you say this to impressionable. And they then follow your example and go devote themselves to some missions work or to you know, inner city work or whatever it is and give up on you know, basic life needs, like health care and like and all these other things. Where's your where's your ministry? Eyebrow, you know, your seemed like, kind of forgot about that. But so I took this very seriously. And unfortunately, along with Calvinism and with with these heady teachers came a lot of arrogance. I'll never forget being in my my advisors office. And we were talking about NT, right? The bishop of Durham NT, right. And I said, You mean NT wrong. My professor was actually a he had actually applied to be NT rights doctoral student and basically like his personal assistant, so that joke went over like a lead balloon.
Arline 18:46
Yeah. Yeah. I remember in t right. There was the whole like, he and John Piper, like, wrote about the same. I don't even remember what it was. But yes, he was on the list of, you know, theologians you do not read. You don't take seriously, they're not, you know, whatever. So he was definitely one of the ones I learned a lot from when I was on my way out, even though I didn't know I was on my way out. But I was like, if John Piper kept telling me no, and now I don't know that. I love John Piper. Who should I go read? Rachel Held Evans into you? Right? Like, there was a list? Yep.
Jeff 19:21
Yeah. So but back then, you know, we looked at if you didn't have that endorsement from these together for the gospel, you must be a heretic, right? Yes.
Arline 19:33
But you're leading people astray. You're you're not quite teaching the Bible properly, you know, fill in the blank with all these different things that they would say. And really, it was like, it didn't feel culty at the time, but looking back, I'm like, they were literally telling us who we can listen to, and who we can't listen to or read or, you know, whatever it
Jeff 19:51
is. Yeah, and, you know, with eternity hanging in the balance. Yes, exactly. This isn't child's play. They, you know, they made it seem like they were so serious and so invested in these things. And I'm not calling into question their, their integrity on that regard. Those guys they are, you know, I've met some of these folks in person. And um, yeah, it's just crazy because it leaves you with all this mental baggage. Yes. And it's hard to untangle these things, especially when it starts when you're so young. And it's reinforced for so many years.
So I graduated and went to the seminary. By this point, I had decided that I was going to be a pastor. So I graduated, graduated college, and headed off to seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And at that time, I don't know what it's like today. But at that time, it was just still on the heels of the conservative resurgence. There were still faculty members that, that were kind of grandfathered in, that were vastly different positions. Not necessarily teachers, but I worked in the library. And you know, there was folks that worked in the back offices of the library that were what we would call liberals, you know, liberal Baptists, not conservative evangelicals. So it was a very different experience. Working for the school, I saw some of the behind the scenes stuff. And some of the, you know, I could tell stories from from churches and from universities and colleges that would just make your head spin. But it was, it was around that time that I started to see some of these things were in congruence. And you could say a lot of things. And you could preach a lot of things. And you could purport to believe a lot of things. But when the rubber met the road, where was What were you really doing? What were you really upholding? And it seems in a lot of ways, it was the status quo that was being upheld. It was a religious culture that was being upheld. And it was, I just couldn't put up with it. I ended up quitting after one year of seminary and just like, this is just, I'm just spinning my wheels, I'm wasting my time. Oh, wow. There's there's stuff to do. There's, I have to be on mission, right? I've got to go do all these things. And so I stepped out and began looking for a church to take on. And it was around this time, it was around 2008 2009, something like that when the first person that I knew D converted deconstructors wasn't even a term that. Yeah, it was just a friend from church, who admitted to, you know, our small group that he was having a lot of doubts and a lot of questions. And he was he sort of filled us in at the tail end of it, he was a very personal, very private individual. And so he didn't share a lot of this with us. On the lead up to it, it was more like we kind of caught him at the tail end. And I was very concerned for him, and really wanted to understand what was going on with him. And so I tried to set up a meeting, hey, let's get coffee and, and talk about what's going on. I really want to kind of get my head around this. And I remember that the morning that we were supposed to me. I had envisioned it would just be he and I and we could sit down and kind of work through some of this stuff. And I could really get his perspective. And an ended up in probably five other men from the church showed up. And it just kind of was like, we're not going to discuss this. We're just going to grill you on everything. And I was like, Guys, this is this is not helpful. Like we're not at all getting at what's going on. And we're not really understanding his side of the story or really, and so I never did circle back around to that. And I never did figure out what was it that motivated it. What were the things that he was dealing with, and I really regretted that in a lot of ways that I never was able to at least hear him Give his side of things without an entire panel of other guys, you know, coming out and saying, Yeah, offering them all the counter arguments or whatever.
So fast forward a couple years, and I find myself at the church that I ended up pastoring for about seven years. When we first got there, I went through sort of an elder training program, you know, at this church was about a year long and kind of got to know the pastures and got to know the people and, and came up to make sure that I was a good fit, et cetera. You know, it wasn't it was very different than just being hired on and, and saying, you know, here, come on board, it was, again, you know, I wanted to keep finding folks that were very serious about these things that were very intentional about these things that weren't just playing around and weren't just culturally engaged in on Sunday mornings, and not throughout the rest of the week, like I wanted to find, you know, that kernel that remnant that true, you know, true. So I completed that elder training, and I was ordained in 2012. And the week after I was installed as one of the new elders who was five of us at the time, four or five, the head, lead pastor stepped down, admitted to some personal failings. And in order for him and his family to heal, he had to take a step back. And he made it very clear, he wasn't leaving the church, he was just stepping down from ministry for a season. And then less than a week later, he left the church.
Arline 26:52
How could you stay at a church like that, without knowing everyone is talking about you, everyone wants to know all your business, not in any kind of way that might be kind or helpful, but just the gossip and the unkind words, oof, I couldn't do it,
Jeff 27:06
ya know, and it's, it wasn't tenable. I mean, there was no way to really do it, we all kind of believe that, that's what was going to happen. So really, I should have read the room, I should have looked at what was going on. And just, I should have just been like, this is not a healthy place, when, you know, as soon as you install a new elder, your lead pastor steps down and leaves. And not just that, but then in like the fallout, and in the following weeks and months, I bet the church probably lost 30% of its membership. And I really think that there was so many people who were terrified of that man to do anything. They knew that if they tried to leave, if they tried to resign their membership, that they were gonna get blacklisted they were gonna get, you know, all these arguments, you know, there's there was never a rational, there was never a good reason to leave the church. Never. I never saw it one time, everybody was always treated in such a way as this is not right for you. This is not right for your family, we are telling you, you need to stay you need to work through these things, whatever it was. And so I think that when he left, folks finally, so, you know, the door was was a jar, and they ran. And I was blind as I was just so I was so hopeful. I was sighted, you know, I thought, here's a place that I can really put into practice all these things that I've learned over the years. And so there was no way that I was going to leave at that point. Although looking back hindsight being 2020, that was exactly what I should have left. Yeah. So we worked through those issues. And we, we moved on. I shouldn't say we worked through those issues. We swept all those issues under the rug, and on. And I kind of got into the rhythm of preaching on Sundays and counseling folks, and you know, just doing things that pastors do and a small church started a family. We now have five kids. And so you know, there was if that tells you anything, there was a strong type of Quiverfull mentality amongst some people that certainly wasn't the overall position of the church, but there was definitely a very strong more as better. There was a very strong drive for a family integrated church, right. We didn't have Sunday school for kids. We didn't have youth programs. It was it was a family integrated church. It was basically it was one step above a house church and So, oddly enough, you would think that a church like that would be someplace where you would get a lot of support. With someone with young children, it was just the opposite. We were almost totally on our own. We didn't have anyone to help us with the kids. Even during and we had, you know, some of our kids were were difficult when they were real little. And the trope that we always heard was, well, we don't want to make it worse, you know, something's happening. We don't want to make it worse. We don't want to intervene, you know, we went to, and they were trying to respect our parenting, which I guess in one sense is good. But when you're already overwhelmed with a ministry, family and other stuff, we were just kind of really looking for help and not finding anything. And add on to this, that ever since the beginning of the church, we just kept shrinking, right, we just kept losing folks left and right. And all of this really compounded to make my mental health much, much worse. And the depression that I dealt with, back in high school, really came back in full force. Most notably, right after we lost our son, James, my wife was 22 weeks pregnant, and we went in for a checkup. And it's hard, it's stopped, and never did find out why I'm so sorry. Yeah, so we went through through that. And that was probably where my mental health really took a turn for the worse. And we, we were granted a sort of a mini sabbatical to recover from that we went to this place in Tennessee called chalet retreat ministries. I think they're out of business now. But it was a place where you could go and very cheap housing, and it was a beautiful part of the mountains of Tennessee, and they had a counsel their own staff. And we have one counseling session. With this gentleman, that was the only time we ever talked to anybody about this whole process of of losing a child, which, you know, for something so monumental, that takes a lot of work to get through. And we didn't have really any support through that time of you know, other than folks bringing us a meal or two or saying that they're praying for us, we had nobody to really help us.
And it was during that time, I really discovered Martyn Lloyd Jones. Spiritual depression. So you can see I'm constantly trying to like how do I get back right? I'm, I've reached this this low point, either, you know, in high school, or in college, or now in ministry. And it's always like, alright, Lord, like, bring me back. Like, let's this is, you know, this is all that man, we've got to return, we've got to get back to that stasis. And so I'm, I'm not just doubling down, tripling down, I'm quadrupling down, like every time something happens, I am coming back, you know, hands out, arms open, like, Lord, please, please help bring me through this. help my family etc. But so that's, that's kind of up to where things got real difficult. So that was 2015. So for the next four years, my mental health just really tanked. And all the while dealing with this in a in the environment of this, this ministry. I can tell so many horror stories from that time, but none of them are overly unique to me. But suffice to say, after another three, four years, the church ended up closing. And from the very beginning, it wasn't never a large church. It was I think the largest set ever was was about 120 folks. And from the time that I got there, when when it began hemorrhaging members, it never grew again, it just shrink, shrink and shrink shrink. Until finally in July of 2019, we had our last meeting. And it was a it was an odd time I was I was so ready to be done. That I was excited. I was glad that it had closed and that I had kind of fulfilled my obligation. It was like, I didn't let anybody down. I didn't quit. I didn't resign, I didn't have some great moral failure or whatever disqualify myself. Yeah. But I was, I wasn't in a good place at all. And it was, it was shortly after the church closed in October of 2019, that the third pastor I knew, in the year committed suicide. Oh, my gosh, there was two in the spring and then one in October. And the gentleman in October, he left behind a wife and two young kids. And one of the focuses of His ministry was mental health and suicide prevention. And that hit me like a sledgehammer. Yeah, I, I had dealt with these things for so long, when when this gentleman took his own life, left behind his family. It was just, I could not any longer find within myself, that desire to come back. I remember praying, you know, maybe not praying, but I remember telling God, essentially, I'm done like I have, I've looked for help for so many years. And I know that that these gentlemen did as well for so many years. And it's, it's just not coming. Where is it? Right? Why am I here? Again, since I was 15, dealing with this stuff. And here's one more guy that didn't make it. And this was, you know, this, yeah, this was definitely the first crisis, that I did not reach bottom, and then say something to the effect of like, I'm really, like, we're gonna double down, we're gonna really put our nose to the grindstone and do this, again, I just said, I'm done. I'm done. I can't, I can't do more, I can't keep going through this cycle. And so I would say, that's when my deconstruction really began in earnest. And at first, it felt like, you know, a huge weight had been lifted. It was very much a feeling of peace and calm. And this is, this is wonderful, this is the best thing I've ever done. And I think it's, you know, just that sort of any big change in life can bring about that sense of newness or whatever. You know, it's not the kind of honeymoon phase. And that was good. That was cathartic in a lot of ways. But it also didn't really help address the root issues. And in a lot of ways, you know, it kind of cut me off from any sub type of foundation or mooring that I had at that point. And I, I just began to drift I was after a lifetime of having all the right answers. Yes. Now, I don't even know what the questions are. Right. You know, I was, I was talking to my therapist the other day, actually, which I highly recommend and find a good therapist. Don't talk to your family, about all this stuff. I mean, sure, talk to your family, but don't don't use them as your only source of of help. So I was talking to my therapist the other day, and he was we were talking about a was a story about a gentleman who had been released from prison. I think he was overseas. And he had been been held in solitary confinement, and for whatever reason, he was allowed out and was allowed to come back to America. And he was talking about how prison and all this time had taken from him. Not just his freedom, but it had taken away his mental agency, and and couldn't think for himself anymore. He was told what to do and what to think, you know, all the time. It took away his bodily autonomy, because here he is trapped in this so he can't get out. He can't do what what he wants. And it took away years of his life, right as he was in confinement. And no, I'm not saying that, that being a pastor in a church is anything like being in prison overseas or anything like that. But it immediately flashed across my mind when I heard this, that this is in in a lot of ways what a high control religious environment does to you. It takes away your mental agency, it tells you what to think about everything. It takes away your bodily autonomy because it tells you how to live in in every respect. And when you get out you look back and realize that it took away a lot of years of your life to and not only that, but when you do get out especially If it was from a place that was very controlling, or a group that was very exclusive, you lose all your relationships. You lose all of your community. You know, if you're a pastor like I was you lose your employment. You lose all your cultural markers, right? What are you going to do on? On every Sunday? You know, we were in church, Sunday, Wednesday, Tuesday nights, sometimes on Thursdays, and then I was preparing to preach, you know, every day, otherwise. And so it takes away holidays, right? What do you do with Christmas? What are you going to do with Easter? What are you going to do with all these other things. And it can really erode your sense of purpose. And so going through all of this, you know, I was just adrift. I didn't know what to do or what to think. And for a long time, I didn't want to think about anything. I didn't want to deal with these hard questions anymore. I just needed to give them a break. So I spent at least a year, year and a half, just sort of coasting through life, just doing whatever, and not thinking too much about anything, but I have a very overactive mind. And it would not let me rest in that way for very long. I could not stop thinking about these things. But what about eternity? What about heaven? And hell? What about, you know, you name it. And so I tried finding other ways to think about these things, you know, I tried reading philosophy. But my honestly, I'm not smart enough. And my brain was just too exhausted. I just couldn't. I tried reading, self help books, like from a stoic perspective. You know, Marcus really is simply things that you kind of popular. And that never really did it for me. I wanted to for that to work, you know, I wanted to have that sort of Mana, right? Take these things by the horns. And that was appealing to me, but it never brought any sense of peace, it never, never really helped me. get over that hump.
I will say one good thing about that time, was it, it really gave me a chance to step back and assess who I wanted to be, and what my own values were. Right, because after a lifetime, in church, I was told, these are what thing these are the things that are important is your position on abortion, right? This is your position on whatever, you know, everything was given to you. This is what you're to believe. This is what makes a good person, this is what makes a bad person etc. And so for the first time, I really was able to sit down and think like, what do I value? What is What do I think is important in in life in general, but but interpersonally right, what are what character traits do I esteem, you know, kindness, and creativity and intelligence and thoughtfulness and all these other things? More so than being right, you know? Or having all the answers or being righteous or holy, or whatever, you know, it was, it was definitely a time for me to kind of consider what was important to me, what mattered under my evaluation. And it was, so this that's probably about 2000. This probably about 2021. I'm dealing with these things and kind of trying to figure out what is what's important to me. And I was at a used bookstore one day in town. And I just kind of meandered over to the poetry aisle, and found of this book on the shelf was called a book of luminous things. And she says love Milosz was a Polish poet. And he edited this book, an international anthology of poetry going all the way back to like 500 bc of the current day. Oh, wow. And I paid $1.54 It is the best money I've ever spent. It certainly wasn't an immediate fix. It wasn't a cure or anything like that. But that book exposed me to all of these people, all of these authors, these poets and writers from you know, literally spanning centuries, from all over the world from different backgrounds and walks of life. expose me to these people. That that showed me that dead white men theologians weren't the only folks that had ideas worth listening to.
Arline 45:04
Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. 100% Everything you're saying, yes,
Jeff 45:08
that's really obvious to some folks. And that was totally revolutionary to me. I had been so indoctrinated to think that if you weren't a dead white Puritan, or a living white theologian, or you know, someone you didn't have anything to say, Yeah, you had, maybe well, we'll give you your token black guy here there, you know, but otherwise, you better toe the line, these are the folks that have the answers. And expose me to the fact that these questions, folks in China, in 500 BC, you were thinking more clearly and better about them than I was today? And like, what, what is going on? And it really just, the main question was, as I read these different authors, as I saw, in their writing, these folks encountered the big questions of life, they encountered the natural world, they encountered relationships with one another, they encountered that inner dialogue, the relationship of their own mind, if you will. And they did it in a way that expose more of the loveliness of the beauty of the world, and of kind of the wonder of the just the fact that we're alive, and get to experience any of these things than any theologian I've ever read or met. And what really was so shocking to me, you know, as I'm trying to get my head around this stuff that some of these folks are gay, some of them are lesbians, some of them are Buddhist, or Muslim, or whatever. And they're, they're not Christians. They're not southern white evangelicals. Like, how does this work? How do these unbelievers look at the world with more of a sense of wonder, then the preachers and professors and writers that I've been in reading and listening to for so many years, he says, the editor explains it. Yeah. Just very concisely, in the introduction to this book. He says, in a way, poetry is an attempt to break through the density of reality into a zone where the simplest things are, again, as fresh as if they were being seen by a child. I love it. Yes, these will say about entering the kingdom. They like little children. Right? And that's what what that book and what that mindset showed me. And that was utterly transformative for me. One of the folks that I encountered in that book was Mary Oliver,
Arline 48:03
when you were talking about books that were life changing. I was like, my new Bible. This is what a covenant is devotions. Like, I just have it that's my Mary Oliver's Yes, devotions. It's just so many years of the most beautiful poetry she and Billy Collins are my two go to heavy people that are that are good, good for me, good for my soul that don't know what the right word would be. But yes, they're just good for me.
Jeff 48:29
The first time I read Mary, I was in love. I mean, yes, she had a better understanding and a better way of showing the glory of of the world and the being and of the human experience. And just the natural world than than any theologian I've ever met. Any young earth creationist I've ever encountered. You know, you think about like, Mary Oliver, in one of her books, she wrote an entire essay about a spider that lived in the corner of a stairwell in a house that they rented for the summer. And all of the different cycles and the things that it did during the weeks that they rented this house. And I remember sitting there reading that book, and just being utterly floored at how much attention and awareness she brought to a simple little house spider. And like, one hand, you've got this lady that's, you know, she's from from the perspective that I was brought up with. She's lost, right? She's got a depraved mind. Yes, He's incapable of seeing the glory of God. And yet if you believe in God, she's describing his glory and creation better than anyone I've ever heard or seen. Yes, something did not compute Right. And, and reading her. It really changed the way I looked at the world the way I looked at other people. And it's funny that you said that was that's like your new Bible, because I literally I wrote down while I was preparing this. I imagined that the way that her works spoke to me is the way that the Psalms speak to a lot of people.
Arline 50:17
Yes, absolutely, yes, I can see that.
Jeff 50:21
And as a result, you know, I so wanted to see, like she saw, I wanted to be able to sit down and look at the little spider in the corner and just be, you know, in, in, in wonder of this little creature, doing its thing.
Arline 50:46
So where are you now? Like, what do you have a label, you don't have a label?
Jeff 50:50
I would call myself an agnostic. Yeah, I'm definitely not an atheist. I heard a fun illustration the other day that someone said, you know, the looking for life in the universe. It's like going out into the ocean and filling up a cup of water. And looking in the cup and saying, oh, there's no fish in the ocean. Yeah, universe is like the ocean. Right? It's so expansive, that our minds are so limited. And our experience is so limited that to grab a cup of water out of it and say, Well, this is all there is, you know, I'm very cautious to because I was so convinced that I had all the facts for so many years, because I was so arrogant. And knowing that I was right. I'm just not interested in that anymore. Like, Mary Oliver, she says something like, I have a lot of perhapses and a lot of what ifs. You know, and that's, that speaks to me. And this, this idea of, you know, for so many years, being in church for so many years. feeling like I was trying to squeeze myself into those confines, like, you know, a tight shoe. You know, relaxing out of that, and relaxing into uncertainty. It felt like being in a warm bath. Right? It was, it was just for the first time I was at peace, I was at ease, I have to have all the answers. I didn't need to know even what all the questions were. Yeah, and just discovering these folks, these authors I wanted to see like they saw I wanted to, to have that sense of wonder in the world again. You know, I think she says there was a poem that she wrote that was instructions for living a life. Pay attention. be astonished. Tell about?
Arline 52:55
Yes. Yeah. Like, that's exactly what she's done and what we can do.
Jeff 53:01
Right. And so, another happy Providence, I was in that same used bookstore. And from that, that book of luminous things, and the International anthology, and then from Mary's writing, I kind of gotten exposed to, you know, this idea of awareness, this idea of just really paying attention to what's around you, not being so distracted by things. And I wandered over into another section and I discovered another book about mindfulness meditation called wherever you go, there you are by Jon Kabat Zinn. And that exposed me to meditation into mindfulness practice. And that gentleman, Jon Kabat Zinn, he has been teaching this since like the mid 1980s, in clinical settings, and in hospitals, and in prisons, and doctor's office type settings, to help people reduce stress, dealing with anxiety to deal with chronic pain. And it was, that was the next step in my journey was was beginning to sort of practice mindfulness. And that was really the key that unlocked the door for me to get out of my head, right. Past and to get on with life. Because I mean, up to that point, I was I was very bitter. I was very angry with God in a lot of ways. And it was it was getting out of that stream. I think he says at one point in the book, he says, mindfulness doesn't stop the water from flowing. But it allows you to sit on the bank and observe it, right? Yes, you're not being carried downstream anymore. You're able to just sit and say like, oh, this is what's going on. And and he's especially non religious, at least in the beginning of the book, he definitely does get more into the Buddhist philosophy as the book progresses, but at the very beginning, he shows how like this can apply to any worldview, it doesn't matter. This isn't shutting things out, it's not shutting things off. It's trying to see very clearly and deliberately, it's trying to change your position towards yourself and to others and, and really bringing an intentionality to things. And it was, it was realizing that that's what I've been doing for so long are trying to do, right, trying to find some sort of peace of mind. Whether it was through all the religious cycles, whether it was rigorous prayer, whether it was constant. Bible study, right? journals, books, you know, you name it, listen into every Piper sermon, you can get your hands on, you know, that's really what I was looking for. Was something to quiet that inner turmoil, something that say that this is okay, that you're okay. And that that life is gonna be okay. And I never could find that in religion. I never could find that that sense of peace in in evangelical Christianity. And, and really, the more I thought about it, the more I'm convinced that, that the modern evangelical movements greatest failure is the way it disconnects us from our body and disconnects us from our mind. Right? You've got purity culture, like when I was when I was in youth group, right? We did all the things I hadn't the purity, we'd had the ceremony, we were gonna save ourselves from marriage, blah, blah, blah. And so you're disconnected from your body, even as you're developing even as you're going through adolescence. You're not taught to understand even what's happening, that rigorous self denial that comes with that in the rigorous pursuit of holiness. You know, I talked earlier about how I control religion takes away your mental agency, it takes away your bodily autonomy, it tells you what you're supposed to think and what you're supposed to do, and, and we're taught not to trust ourselves. Right, we're taught not to trust our body, you know, you hear about, and thank God, I'm, you know, really grateful that I didn't have it any worse that I didn't have to go through any of these, you know, real traumatic events, like sexual abuse or anything like that. Survivors do with but you know, you hear those stories, and how much of that could have been prevented? If folks would have just listened to their gut, right? As a creep. He's doing whatever around my kids, this is wrong. And we need to find something, you know, we didn't get out of the situation. But we're, we're trained for so many years. Don't trust your instincts. Right? Don't trust your gut feeling. Don't trust your mind. Right Question everything. Don't don't trust anything but what the Bible says or your pastor, right? He buffets his body to make it a slave, right to bring it in. And yeah, so yeah, putting that all together the. So Mary, you know, and these poets showed me that there was a better way to see the world. Mindfulness Meditation, started to show me how I could sort of enter into that world. And the first time I ever sat down and tried writing a poem was probably probably last fall last November, I think it was. And I realized that if I was going to sit down and write anything, honestly, if I was going to try to replicate what I had read in these books, and had read of various folks, if I was going to enter into that, it required me to be really vulnerable, right? Because that's what we love about these, what we love about Mary or whoever is the way they look at the human condition as they're experiencing it. And they tell us about it very plainly. They tell us very honestly about what is going on, and what they're dealing with. And, you know, a lifetime and church had taught me that. That's a really dangerous thing to do. That is a very dangerous thing to do, because not every time and there were some good experiences over the years, but for the vast majority of times when when I opened myself up to folks, it backfired big time. So that was very, very difficult for me to to be honest with myself and to be honest with others. And but I was able to say like if I'm going to write something if I'm going to try my hand at this Then I've got to be willing to at least be real with myself. And then with whoever reads
that connected me with other folks. I know you interviewed grace from hyssop and Laurel, Oh, yes. I submitted some stuff to there and got in that magazine and connected with some of those folks and just seeing that, here's this community of people. Really, the thing that's, that continually strikes me as I've, as I've moved out of those spaces, is my whole life I was brought up with this mindset that, that we're the in group and everything out of this is not right, it's not these aren't good people. We have the right answers, we have the truth. They are lost their their their minds are depraved, you know, radical depravity, etcetera, however you want to say yeah. And the more I've, I've moved out of those religious spaces, the more I have seen that, actually, those folks, the world, quote, unquote, does relationships. They do honestly, they do integrity, they do all of these things, in a lot of ways better than any church I was ever a part of. Yeah. Yeah. The way that that high control, religion isolates you, and dis embodies you, and causes you to question your own mental faculties causes you to question your own worth and goodness, in order to you're making a really big exchange, you're trading off everything about yourself for acceptance into this community. And the more you do that, the harder it is to break free from it. The more you're in that system, the more you fear, people who are outside of it, the more you are, you know, you add in a healthy dose of persecution complex, right? We're told that we're gonna be persecuted for Christ. Blessing Are you and you're persecuted. And when folks say all sorts of nasty things about you. So it's like you're priming this pump for thinking like, Oh, we're going to be oppressed, we're going to be oppressed, whatever. You throw in fear of how conviction about end times things, right? We could go on and on. It's no wonder the modern church is imploding. I mean, because folks are starting to see that, wait a second, things really aren't that bad, right? We'd really have it that but so they've either got to manufacture things and make them bad. Or they've got to see that maybe things aren't quite what we've been told.
Arline 1:03:06
And used to, you know, the next generation could be like, you know, they could be homeschooled, they could be kept within the church, they never had to interact with anybody outside, like in the world, Quick Quote. But now, parents have to work really hard to keep their children away from the internet, their children away from, like, there's just it's information is so much more accessible, that I wonder how you know, how it'll go with each generation, to just be able to know, okay, this stuff my parents grew up with just isn't true. Like, I can just Google this and know that this isn't true. And each generation seems to not buy into the fear mongering of a lot of the older generations. And I think it's great. I think it's great,
Jeff 1:03:55
I think our hope is really in in the next generation is in the folks who are teens right now, and maybe a little younger, who are going to grow up without these cultural blinders on? Yes, and they are going to see that, you know, the, the world is getting hotter. And that a lot of the systems that we have in place that privilege the few at the expense of the many are not in everyone's best interest, that religious dogmatism is almost never helpful or healthy. And you know, that just a sense of, of awe and wonder at the world and that this, this experience of being alive is too precious to trade for fitting into some very strict and rigid culture of the 19 and 20th century The Evangelical Church I mean, it's just not going to survive with the amount of information that we have. Like you said, the the ready access to it. You know, it's when you can get on Netflix and watch multiple documentaries about the damage that high control religion does. Yes, what's on your phone and watch it. I mean, I don't know what kids are gonna be watching this thing, they probably don't care too much,
Arline 1:05:29
probably more teenagers, but still, like, they have access to all the things. And they have different values. The next generation has different values, like the things that are important to them, or, you know, equity and everybody having the things that they need. And I feel like the next generation also knows they have a voice. Whereas in the past children and young people weren't necessarily listened to. And now it's like they can get on Tik Tok, and influence millions of people in a way that some young people used to not be able to do.
Jeff 1:05:58
Yeah, it's, it's amazing. And so I am, you know, kind of land the plane, if it were, I'm hopeful for for my kids. You know, there'll be going to church later today. We could we could have a whole long discussion about that. But oh, yeah. Yeah, it's not what it was. Right. It's different. And I think they're seeing that there's options, right, they're seeing that it doesn't have to be the way it used to be. And that's true for for all of us. Right. That's, that's one of the biggest takeaways from this whole deconversion deconstructing experience is that we can expand our horizons, right, we can look out ahead and see that this way isn't so good, you know, maybe, maybe we need to correct course, we can see that there. There are better ways of engaging with with one another and with the world. And with ourselves, right? That's one of the biggest takeaways for me is I started buying that book that Jon Kabat Zinn, wherever you go, there you are. Every time I see it in the US bookstore, I just grab a copy, you know, dollar, $2, whatever, and then just give it away, because it's not the panacea, right? It's not going to solve everyone's problems or anything. And it's not going to be a great fit for every individual. But the more we recover our own agency, the more we recover our own inherent worth, the more we sever those, those chords that kind of hold us back, right? That's what they that's what high control religion wants you to think, is that you don't have any inherent worth. Right? You're a radically depraved Senator, that God had to murder his own Son to save that you don't have any inherent goodness, that you can't trust yourself that you can't trust, your intuition, your instincts. You can't listen to your body, right? It's all these things. Yes, everything. And the more you experiment with that, the more you realize that that's just not true. It's just simply not true. We have an amazing power within us to to heal ourselves. Not talking, you know, like woowoo, Crystal rubbing or anything. I have been brought back from the brink of a full blown panic attack by sitting down and watching my breath for five minutes.
Arline 1:08:45
Yes, yes. Coming back into your body. Yep.
Jeff 1:08:48
It didn't take anything special. There was nothing supernatural about it. It was just getting out of my head for a second. And being passive observer realizing what was happening, not investing in it, and moving on from it. No, God involved.
Arline 1:09:08
I know. That's, that's the huge thing is you realize, like all the supernatural stuff that's unnecessary. We have. There's so much that we can just do inside our bodies. And yep. Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for the beautiful recommendations from Jon Kabat Zinn and Mary Oliver to poetry from 5000 years ago. I really appreciate you being on the podcast today.
Jeff 1:09:30
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Arline 1:09:39
My final thoughts on the episode. He and I had a lot in common. Like I knew there were other people in the world who listened to way too many John Piper sermons in their lives. But I didn't realize how many of us there are in learning that there was some guys selling CDs Nice to people to listen to John Piper sermons. Oh heavens, I just, it's amazing how the small number of white male American Christian pastors can have so much influence. Even before the internet, like so much influence all over the United States. I guess there was radio, I kind of forget about radio. But I loved hearing Jeff's story, all the different things we had in common. And I can understand them being agnostic and open to possibilities. I think for me, the idea that there are gods and goddesses at least the way I've ever been taught about Gods and Goddesses, just seems like a big jump. But when you're out of high control religion, you can think about the world however, fits best for you. And if it's not harming you, it's not harming others. And it seems when people get out of religion more often than not, at least in my limited experience, people's lives get better. And the way they treat people in their lives get better. So maybe that'll have a ripple effect. Also, Mary Oliver, Jon Kabat Zinn, any type of book, like a book of luminous things that he recommended, where you can just get beautiful words inside of you like, yes, that was something I missed after it converted. I didn't know the word daybook. I didn't know you could buy books that were just like short little readings. I just knew the word devotional, but just Oh, getting beautiful words inside of you. It's just, it's just wonderful. So I'm glad Jeff has found all these different sets of beautiful words that are able to change his life without having to have some kind of supernet natural entity, be part of that. And no kind of high control religion. Oh, anyway, Jeff, thank you again, for being on the podcast. This was wonderful. I'm really glad we were able to do this.
David Ames 1:12:07
The secular Grace Thought of the Week is embrace the mundane. As Jeff talked about, within Christianity, every decision that you make every choice, every action seems to have eternal consequences. And the weight of that can be exhausting. We are human beings and our decisions, of course have consequences but not the eternal time. They are mundane human. Embrace that mundanity. Until next time, 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 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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s guest is Kris. Kris grew up in a home with much wounding and suffering, an irreligious home that would shape her desire for God as a young adult. She became a christian when she was 22—a “poor, broken young mom.”
For years, Christianity worked well for her. She found community, built a family, made friends. Church gave her a place to use her abilities and passions, but there was always a glass ceiling.
In 2017, she and a friend went to a “biblical archeology” seminar. For the first time, Kris was learning from professors, not pastors, and the questions started coming. It wasn’t long before Kris realized she couldn’t go to church or be in a home group. She didn’t have the language for what was happening, but now she knows it was the beginning of her deconstruction.
A strong leader with a kind and compassionate heart—and a love for Ozzy Osbourne—Kris is enjoying the life she’s found beyond religion.
Quotes
“I started reading this Bible, and I didn’t have any bias. I didn’t have anybody telling me what it meant…so I could just read it as a text and take it at face value or what I thought it meant, which was great.”
“I learned that I was a Big Time People Pleaser…whatever it took to fit in, I was going to try to do that.”
“Everything began to feel really corporate in this church.”
“I had this intense fear of pride.”
“I had this duel belief of ‘God is this good, kind, loving god,’ and ‘But what if I piss Him off, and He’s not that nice?!’”
“I realized that my image of God was basically my senior pastor from the church I was at, and if I tried to imagine God…I would hear this guy’s voice.”
“…everything just started unraveling in my faith. I realized I couldn’t read the Bible anymore. I couldn’t listen to any Jesus music anymore…I would get uncomfortable. I would feel anxious. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t ever think that this could be considered religious trauma.”
“Coming out is hard, no matter what you’re coming out with.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 atheists. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. Remember, we have a merchandise store on T public to get all your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items, you can find the link in the show notes. Recently, I was on harmonic atheists YouTube channel, I'm gonna have the link for that interview in the show notes. I'd love to have Tim on here at some point in time, but it was really wide ranging, very interesting conversation. Love for you guys to check that out. On today's show, my guest today is Chris. Chris became a mom very young. There were mental health issues in her birth family, and she experienced some mental health issues. She then had a fairly dramatic turn towards Christianity, and threw herself into it wanted to become a leader went through theological training, and started at a mega church, where the reality of women and leadership began to suppress what she was able to do. She did have opportunities to reach the least of these the people that she cared about the underdogs in her terms. But there were things she knew she could not tell her Christian colleagues and friends. Eventually she went on a trip with a focus on biblical archaeology. And she was learning things about the Bible for the first time. And that began her deconstruction process. Today, Chris experiences a lot of freedom on the other side of deconstruction. Here is Chris, to tell our story. Chris, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Thank you. So I was just looking at our email it took us since August to make this happen. So I'm really glad that you're here. I understand you've been a part of the Facebook group as well. So I'm excited to hear your story.
Kris 2:25
Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's really been helpful being on that Facebook group. And you know, just seeing other people that have gone through similar things. And very grateful for that. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, I guess I'll just start. You know, unlike a lot of people on the Facebook group, or some of the stories we've heard, I didn't grow up in the church. And, you know, had no, really no basis of religion. My family didn't do anything. I think the only time I was ever in a church was when my mom got married when I was 10. And so, didn't really know much. But for some reason, as a kid, I was always drawn to like, like, I played a little toy organ. And it had somebody gave me a like a book with hymns in it. And I loved playing the hymns. And, you know, there were things like that, that I was drawn to. So I really didn't become a Christian until 1993. I was 22. And kind of want to talk about that. But I have to give a little bit of history. Sure. So when I was when I was a kid, I was my mom was a single mom. And we were poor. We lived in West Texas, and I live in Oregon now. But when I was 11, my mom took her life and I got bounced around from family member to family member and I ended up with my grandmother, who I lived with till I was 16 and moved out with my boyfriend then. So that's kind of a little brief. Background while I'm
David Ames 4:07
very sorry, it's been very difficult.
Kris 4:09
Thank you. I appreciate that. It was and my family. We dysfunctional family. You know, we didn't talk about it. Being an only child, it was very lonely. My mom was kind of neglectful of me. You know, I don't think anybody knew if she was depressed or had bipolar or anything like that, you know, this was the this was 81 When she died, but you know, and our family wouldn't have talked about in any way you know, we just a lot of alcoholism and you know, later found out mental health struggles and so whenever my mom died, I you know, as a teenager, I was 11 and then you know, living in I moved to this new mexico town with my grandmother, but you know, I didn't know how to deal with anything, and didn't really have any help. I think my grandmother tried to take me to counseling one time, and that was the only time I went, and, and she never really wanted to talk about it, you know, she had lost her child and probably didn't know how to grieve that as well. So so there was just no healthy outlets there. And so when I was about 14, I just started acting out, you know, partying, and, you know, sleeping around, doing all the things, and moved out at 16. And, you know, still graduated high school with honors, and, you know, started college and you know, tried to do the things. But I ended up getting pregnant. And so, my first year of college, and I ended up marrying, the guy that I'd moved out with, you know, had a baby quit college, all these things ended up just being this, this very poor, broken, single mom, and I didn't really want to be a mom. So anyway, all that that was, you know, I got a job and just ended up divorcing the guy after 11 months, but you know, had the baby and all that.
So 1993 rolls around, you know, I'd been, I had a three year old, I'd been, you know, partying for a long time, I'd been just, you know, doing all the kind of same stuff my mom had done, you know, leaving my child at random babysitters, and just, I was pretty miserable. I was very depressed, and I didn't want to live anymore. And so I just, you know, decided to take my kid to my daughter to daycare, and then come home and just, you know, take all the stuff I had, and, and end it all. Oh, wow. And. And, as I was contemplating that, I looked up on the wall and saw a picture of me and her and just, I guess, heard this voice in my mind saying, you know, do you want her to grow up to be like you. And that was a really pivotal moment for me. And, you know, at that time, it was a God moment I attributed to. And that's what kind of changed my life and toward, towards spirituality toward faith. And so, I decided not to take my life that day, which was great. And I started going to, I started well, I actually I pulled out a Bible and started reading a Bible. You know, that I'd gotten, I think, when I was in junior high, my grandmother took me to some youth groups, you know, and dropped me off hoping that would help me not be a messed up, kid. And so fix them. Yeah. And it actually was a good experience. You know, it was, you know, I met some other kids. And, you know, it just, it was a good experience for me, and, but I still had a Bible that they had given me that I never opened. And so I started reading this Bible. And, you know, I didn't, I didn't have any bias. I didn't have anybody telling me what it meant, or anything like that. So I could just read it as a text and take it for face value are what I thought it meant, which was great. I'd like to be able to go back and do that again. Just just, you know, like, reading any book. But no. So anyway, that's kind of where I started. And, you know, I started trying to find churches to go to and just because the words in the Bible, I think, I didn't know, you know, I didn't understand, you know, people would always say, Jesus died for your sins. I was like, I know what that means. You know, and, and for some reason is, I started thinking about that. And didn't understand the whole sin thing. But I knew that I was, I was feeling like something in this God thing cared about me. And that's what I needed most of all in my life, because I had, you know, just, I had abandonment issues. I'd been neglected I, you know, was seeking love and all the wrong places. And you know, so it's like, oh, wow, if, if, if I could be loved that would fix everything. And so, so yeah, so that was what I did. And like, six months after that, I answered an ad in the newspaper back in the olden days before online dating. And I met this super guy, and he was a new Christian. And so we kind of started our lives together, and we've been married 27 years now. But it was, you know, it was it was kind of how we started out and we lived in at that time, we lived in Lubbock, Texas. West Texas bible belt, you know, every if everybody's a Christian pretty much, or at least it feels that way. But we ended up moving two hours north to Amarillo, which is same thing, you know. And so we were looking for a church and we tried a couple places. And we went to this one church and went there for a little while, and we wanted to get involved, you know, we just wanted to, you know, we didn't know anybody, we needed to get involved, and we liked kids. So there's they said, Okay, well, we'll do an interview to see if you could, you know, help with the youth or help something. And one of the questions, they had us fill out this questionnaire, and one of the questions was, how many people have you led to Christ? And we were like, I guess? You know, that's not something we really think about much, you know, and that, for some reason, I felt so guilty. I was like, Oh, I haven't done this thing. This, I should be doing this. This is something I should be doing for God. And I think part of it was because the interview with the guy was like, you know, if you're not doing that, are you really a Christian? You know, that kind of thing. Right? We didn't end up getting involved at that church, we're gonna be going to a different church that didn't quizzes so much about, you know, how we did all that. But we did get involved in and, you know, we taught, you know, Sunday school and stuff like that. And my husband is, he's just this playful, wonderful guy that, you know, I would be like, Okay, I want to sit down and read you this Bible story. And he's like, I got a cool game. Let's do that. And so, you know, he was popular. And I was like, alright, you know, maybe I should try. We're adults. So I did. Yeah. So yeah, so I started just getting involved and went through kind of a program. That was like a lay ministry program. And it was really great. I learned a lot about myself learn some counseling skills, even though that's not what it was. And, and, you know, learned how to be a little bit more assertive, a little less passive aggressive, but also learned that I was a big time people pleaser, and no surprise, I mean, you know, I just, all my life just wanted somebody to, you know, just to love me and to accept me, I think, as I was. And I think even though I thought God did, I still was like, not sure, like, I probably need to be a certain way, you know, for anybody to like me, I found that I was the kind of person that would just kind of blend in, do whatever was expected in that circle, whether it was with friends, or any social environmental work, or church, whatever it took to fit in, I was going to try to do that. But I was just really like, you know, I just addict, this Christianity stuff. And, you know, want to commit my life to it. And so that church, they advertise that they were going to partner with Dallas Christian college to get, you know, if people wanted to go there and get a degree in ministry, and I was like, Oh, yes, that's exactly what I want to do. And so by that time, I had another child, two girls, nine years apart, and, but they had it set up where it was a program that, you know, it's like a two year program. And you know, it's our first online program. So you're gonna go to eight week class, and then another eight week class, another eight week class. And so it was lined out where you had to do it a certain way to graduate in this program, and I didn't have enough credits. So I started, I started the program, but also had to take, like some online classes or some, whatever you call it, when they send you the books. Anyway, I don't know how to take some correspondence classes, and also was attending class at our local community college. So I was taking tons of hours of school, I was working full time had this little kid, you know, husband, who was great with kids, thankfully, and really supportive. And so, you know, I was working my ass off. Because I wanted this degree so bad. And, I mean, I remember there was one term one semester when I took 21 hours, and I was so depressed and so apathetic and so depleted, you know, and never thought twice about, you know, what am I doing this for right now, but I was like, you know, I have to do this I have to push through because this is, this is going to, I think, what I thought is it would give me value and, you know, identity maybe, you know, and, and, and I was just passionate, I loved it. You know, I just, I loved to study and And to learn and just eat it up
so I ended up getting to that point. So it's like my last couple of classes, I think I started emailing the church that we'd been going to and that we'd been involved with. And I was like, got any positions open? I'd really like to work there. Yeah. So I did, yeah. Did that for, I don't know, maybe about six months. Finally. They called and they said, we do have a position open for an assistant. And would you like an interview? I'm like, Yeah, sure. And that was fine. You know, I didn't want to be an assistant. I wanted to be in like, you know, right. Big Dog School, like, you know, yeah. But, you know, I'm, like, foot in the door, saw good. And I did not understand the whole patriarchal thing. You know, and I guess I just thought, hey, you know, what, I'm a smart, strong woman. I was that strong. I was just headstrong. But, you know, had these ideals, you know, and I'm thinking, I'll get in there, they'll see how great I am. I'll be doing ministry and doesn't work that way. Although it worked out. But um, so I got the job. And I was excited. And you know, it was really fun. And it was, it was a church, it was a nondenominational church. And in Texas, there's a lot of those and some of them are, you know, like, holy, rollin, and some aren't, and some are kind of in the middle, and we were some than in the middle. But the year that I started working, there was in 2003. And then in 2005, we got a new pastor, new senior pastor, a man of Big Vision. Okay, and so our church was we had about like, maybe 1800 people, members, and sidenote, church membership annoys the hell out of me stupidest thing ever. You know? What, you have to be a member who is so special now I'm expected to type.
David Ames 17:08
That's exactly what it is. It is it's expected.
Kris 17:12
Yeah, that's like, okay, and I didn't like it back then. Never liked it when I worked there. But what do you get to do? So anyway, so this, this guy that comes in our church had bought some land out, like in the southwest of town that we were going to eventually move to when we had the money. And because we were really landlocked where we were. And when, when he came in, that became his primary focus, you know, we're gonna build the church out there, it's going to be huge. You know, we're going to be growing, growing, growing, we're going to change all kinds of things. And it was scary. It was exciting. A lot of people left the church because they were not comfortable with that kind of change. And totally understandable. There was another church similar to ours, so they went there, you know, and, but we also, as we built and started sending out flyers and rebranding, and all that, you know, got a whole bunch of new people coming in. And, and it was a neat place. It was huge. It was beautiful. He started hiring more people. And the idea was that everything would be done with excellence. Everything was about how good it looked. And how I don't know. Perfect. It was right. Right. Yeah. And it, you know, at the time, I was like, That's really nice. I mean, that's, that's really pretty. And, you know, I'm glad that you know, it's not junky and cluttered, because I like things organized, but at the same time, you know, we started to have our own communications team where we couldn't create our own fliers or signs for the door, things like that, because, you know, no, clipart Yeah, I get that. But, and that was fine. But there was he had this vision and he had a brand in mind. And he was he was a guy with the his father was a business owner, he grew up rich, he grew up with a business mindset. Which, fine, whatever, that's great. But everything started to feel really corporate. Yeah, in in this church, and like, everything had to grow everything had to it was all about image, you know, and there's some churches that are like that, I think. You know, there's a humility in some of them. And this one, there wasn't, although I defended him and the church, you know, to everybody who came down on it. I'm like, no, there. He is humble. He just wants more for Jesus. You know, And, you know, I was bought in. There was one time when we had a staff meeting, when we first moved down into that building. And he gave us a while he was always preaching at us, and he also bragged about how he talked a lot. And he does, he did talk nonstop. And he, he would talk to us about things, and he was very good at compelling you, you know, a very convincing person and saying, you know, if you're not 100%, bought into our vision, and our mindset and our plan, I want you to quit today. And, you know, we'll support you for the next month trying to find another job. But if you're not bought in, you need to leave. Which, in some ways is great, you know, because then, you know, you get everybody who's on board, everybody's on the same page, we're like, rah, rah, you know, but also, at the same time, you're kind of creating clones in a way. And, you know, there's no thinking for yourself, or having that creative, you know, thought process of your own. And I didn't understand that at the time, you know, and so I was like, Yes, I'm bought in, you know, go, go go, of course, I'm doing the thing I always did just blend in fit in, you know, be the be the same as everyone else. So that, you know, everybody likes you and things work out,
David Ames 21:24
which is perfectly normal, by the way. Yeah. I talk a lot about that. I think beliefs are tied to community. And that was an explicit call to that, you know, if you want to be a part of this, you have to be 100%. And or you need to leave now, it's not always explicit like that. Sometimes it's much more implicit. But, you know, if I don't uphold these particular beliefs, or these standards, or these behaviors, then I'm no longer part of that community and riots really threaten.
Kris 21:50
Yeah, exactly. And maybe the words don't sound threatening, but it feels that way. Now these obviously, we're, you know, hey, if you're not bought in, you know, you need to quit, because pretty much will probably fire you. But we we were also told not around that same time. You know, we don't put up with gossip, you know, it's wrong, it's sinful. And he didn't define gossip. You know, a lot of people have different definitions, but he's like, if you get caught gossiping, you're gonna be fired.
So that started this fearful mentality of not being able to vent to your co worker or to question something, you know, you got it was like, you couldn't talk basically about things without having to have your church face on. And, you know, be like, Well, praise God, everything's great. You know, and which that really wasn't true. But that's, that's how it felt like, you know, suddenly, I'm not allowed to think to speak out loud of some things that I might be thinking about that can be contradictory to anything. So kept it inside. And, sidenote, I did have to keep things inside because, you know, we're southwest Texas. This is a mega church, by this time. Everybody, and I'm saying everybody, and I know that's a big word, but it's pretty much true is conservative, and, you know, doesn't approve of many things. And so I was a Democrat, couldn't tell anybody. Some things came out later that, you know, definitely couldn't tell anybody but you know, I want to, by the time I left the church, it was there was a staff of 100. And there were three Democrats on staff and we knew it, the three of us we didn't tell anybody because we knew we would get backlash, a lot of guys with guns and not shy about telling everybody that they bring them to church every every Sunday, you know, and that kind of thing, even talking about it openly on staff. But there was a time when I was just happily doing my job and walk into the break room and senior pastor, I keep keep debating fresh, his name. Senior Pastor walks in behind me, we're the only people in there and he says, So I hear you're a Democrat. And my editor inside self was like, oh shit. I mean, you know, what do I say? And, um, you know, my stomach's clenching, and I'm getting a nervous and I'm like, and he goes, Well, I tend to, you know, I'm an independent, you know, and blah, blah, blah. He's like, but you know, I'm just curious. And I knew the question was coming, why are you a Democrat? You know, and, and I'd, you know, kind of him hot and I'm like, Well, you know, human rights, things like that, you know, care about people kind of don't, don't want to go the other direction because it's Usually not caring about people. And but I was nervous, you know, this guy's so above me and influential and I loved my job and yeah, he's like, Okay, well, I was just wondering and you know, it never, it didn't occur to me to think about why is he asking me, you know, what does he care? What's he afraid of? You know, I mean, but that's just how the culture in Texas is, you know, or at least, you know, that area of Texas for sure that it is so far fetched for anybody to be Christian and Democrat, they just the two don't go together.
David Ames 25:34
And that's a heavy power imbalance there wasn't, you know, it wasn't actually threatening your job or something. There's an implied threat. Exactly. Yeah.
Kris 25:43
Yeah. And, and I wasn't sure what direction that could go, you know, and so, I was, I was nervous, I was uncomfortable. And it's something that now I'm like, I don't have to defend myself to you, I can believe anything I want, you know, and you can believe what you want to, and that's fine. We can just go about our business. But at the time, I was, Oh, I was just easily intimidated. But eventually, prior to that, you know, I'd been working at that church for quite a while. And they finally said, you know, we're going to take three of our assistants that have really been, you know, instrumental in ministry, and we're going to basically give us a promotion. And so I'm like, Yeah, finally, get to be, you know, an ordained pastor or whatever. Now, they just called us associates. And they told us, we couldn't be ordained because we weren't men. But we could be licensed because we're women. And we couldn't be pastors, because we weren't men, but we could be ministers. Not sure what the difference is something they made happen, wrote into some bylaws and did some things, but it made me feel good. And, you know, they, you know, basically, we ended up being able to file clergy taxes. So we're, we're filing the same tax status, we're doing the same jobs. You know, we're not getting paid the same. We're not getting the same respect or recognition. I did get an office, but I later had to give up that office because they hired a man, pastor that needed an office. So you know, wow, go back to the cubicle girl. You know, yeah, stupid, you know, and trying to, you know, I don't know, trying to do things in a cubicle when you're trying to pay attention, and you're writing, you know, teaching and stuff. Like, that's hard. But
David Ames 27:37
you don't have to, you don't have to defend. Sir, it's totally absurd.
Kris 27:42
Well, it is. And, you know, at the time, I mean, they were like, oh, Chris, you are so good. You are so kind to do that, you know, thank you for giving up your office, you know, and, and I remember even one time the pastor I had offered to help. My boss, even though I was not an assistant anymore, we didn't really have an assistant. So I'd offered to help her in some assistant roles. And he brought me up in front of the whole staff and went on and on and on. Look at this humility, look how kind she is, look at how great she is. And, you know, that was really uncomfortable. But it also during this whole period of my church life, I had this intense fear of pride. And, and I think that was built into me in from the church, from whatever scriptures are read, I don't know. But there was this intense fear that something I do is going to be considered prideful by God. And, you know, that would be really bad. And so I was always trying not to be proud of myself or, you know, be a leader, even though I'm a natural leader. I mean, I would be, like, just repress a lot of things in me. Because, you know, I don't want to be proud. I don't want to be full of myself. I don't want to be arrogant or anything like that, you know, God might do whatever God does strike me down or something which I, you know, had this, this dual belief of, you know, God as a gracious, good, kind, loving God. But also, what if I piss him off? And he's not that nice, you know? So, you know, it's like, there's this idea of grace that we would preach about, but I don't know. It never really made sense to say that God is love, but if you do something wrong, they send you to hell and you know, or not really, if you do something wrong, if you don't, you know, follow his son and you're going to hell and these two things don't jive. But you know, at the time, I was very fearful and you know, you can You can always find a way to explain things to yourself. That makes sense.
David Ames 30:03
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, with hindsight, it's it's super pain it is. And
Kris 30:08
it's kind of like you were saying about community being, you know, what you're around is what you believe in. And so if you don't have anything around you to challenge those beliefs, then sometimes you just stay that way, and you're happy, and you're just trucking along. And I think that's, you know, that's the big thing about what did challenge my beliefs was that we ended up moving
some of the things that really, I had a hard time with, that kind of just go along again, with this idea of controlling what we believe and what we think, what we say how we act? Well, two things, one of the things was when the new pastor came, he immediately told us, we are no longer going to say these words, we're going to say these words. So no longer do we have a stage, we had a platform, we didn't have a church bulletin, it was a program. You didn't have a sanctuary, it was the auditorium. A minister was now a pastor. People walking in the front door were guests and it very, very strict. These are the things we say. And we don't deviate from that. Because we need to all look like we're on the same page, we're all together a consistency. We also had to had very strict rules, which I guess some churches do, most churches do, but about the opposite sex, we couldn't be alone in a room with the opposite sex, we couldn't be alone in a car with a member of the opposite sex. If you're going to hug somebody, you can do a side hug nothing else, you know, didn't want anybody to get the impression that you, you know, could be doing something immoral or wrong. And that was so ingrained in me that even now, I haven't worked there and nine years, 10 years, almost 10 Even now, if I go to give a guy a hug, I feel uncomfortable, you know, coming in farther than a side hug, you know, or being alone in a car with a guy. And, you know, my husband trusts me, I trust me. I mean, you know, and I have male friends. So but it's still like this ingrained thing that and that was the thing about this guy, he was just so good at convincing you of stuff, you know, and I was easily swayed. Just it's it's like a, you know, an a narcissistic relationship with someone who's, you know, but I wouldn't. He's not clinically narcissist. But it'd be fun to call him that. But anyway, he's not.
David Ames 32:48
I think it was just safe to say that he's very charismatic and a leader in the sense of potentially manipulating people around him.
Kris 32:56
Yes, I'm used to getting his way. And yeah, exactly. Yeah, he very much wanted our church to be one of the biggies, you know. And there were there were certain people that he would follow that we would go to their, whatever big conferences they'd have, and stuff like that. And he would, you know, imitate our church to look like theirs. We also we expanded our campuses. And so Supposedly, the small churches in small towns would come to us for advice. It started in our own town, but then it branched out to small towns around us, and come to us for advice or come to him for advice. And he would tell them how to make their church, you know, get more people and stuff like that. But it would get to the point where we would take over their church, and they would have to brand everything exactly like us had to look exactly the same have the same fonts and all the things and we would he would preach on the weekend and it would be by video in their church. So it's like, okay, if you want to, if you want your church to get help from our church, you better be ready pastor not to be preaching anymore. Because, yeah, hope that's not your passion. So it was we did that with, I don't know, seven or eight other churches. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at the time. But one of the things that got to me about it was so our church was in an affluent part of town and I was never that way but it that's just kind of, we catered to the rich. I remember having a conversation with one of the pastors one time had been there a long time. And when I first started working there, he's like, he's like, Well, what do you feel like God, you know, calls you Who do you feel like God calls you to minister to and I'm like, the underdog. I'm always about the underdog, the defenseless the helpless, the homeless, you know, the Poor. And he's like, you know, I'm called to preach to the rich. And I'm like, oh, okay, let's go. Just, I mean, just yet loud. That's fine. I mean, I guess rich people needed Jesus too. But anyway, but that's how it felt at this church for so long. And we finally ended up getting this campus in the northeast side of town, which was a very poor part of town. And there was a lot of refugees and immigrants. And this campus, when I heard about it, I was like, I want to go work there. I still want to be a part of that, you know, because that was where my heart was. And they're like, no, no, you need to stay here. You're doing things. I'm like, all right. But none of our campuses, except that one ever really did anything for like, you know, the helpless and the homeless and the helpless in the filming. Just, you know, it was weird, and, you know,
David Ames 35:53
people Jesus talks about, yes,
Kris 35:56
exactly. You know, and so, had I been really pushed to keep the status quo, then that would have been hard, but I think I was lucky. And because I think they knew that I wasn't like everybody else at our campus. So I got to, you know, I had opportunities to do great things. And I was really grateful at the time because I got to start up, suicide Grief Support System, started as a group, and it became a whole thing where we were, you know, helping a lot of communities across, like about a 200 mile span, and that, that I kept doing after I left the church, and that was really a passion of mine, but also got to, like, they let me use the bus barn, you know, an old kind of warehouse thing that we had, and, and I got some people to donate clothing and furniture, and all this, and I worked with Catholic Charities in town to furnish apartments for refugees. And so just got a bunch of buddies, that church, and we'd go do that on the weekends, and it was just a great thing. And then I also got to work in recovery and oversee our, you know, Celebrate Recovery. And so at least I had the opportunity to be with the people that I wanted to be with, you know, the, you know, people that are just stopped on the street, you know, and it was, I'm very grateful for those years.
David Ames 37:29
You know, I think it's important to say, as well, that people like yourself, who you genuinely care about people, the church is your opportunity to actually, you know, help people. Yeah, and it gives you a platform to do that. Right. You know, I'm sure there's rest of the story, and it's too bad there is but like, your natural desire to care for people is good. And, you know, I'm glad to hear that you had opportunities to actually execute on that.
Kris 37:56
Yeah, and I think you're right, you know, and I think a lot of people I've known, you know, that's, that's part of what they've loved about going to church is having the opportunity to do good for others, you know, get involved in whatever way and, and, you know, when we moved here, we started going to a church that was very community oriented, they cared a lot about the homeless, and you know, they didn't spend money on carpet. They, you know, their building was old and running down, but they spent all their money on like the community and what they could do to help other people and I was really a nice change. I loved it, you know.
One last thing about the, that church and the senior pastor was that everything was trendy, you know, name brand, everything, spend lots of money on things, you know, and then all the people I worked with, it felt like all the guys they had to dress just like him, you know, read the same books, you know, try to impress them. Everybody on staff, it felt like we were always competing for his favor. We have to be the funniest the trendiest the coolest, you know, the wittiest the smartest, oh, I've been studying blah, blah, you know, well, I read Socrates or whatever, you know, and it was always things like that. And that was an area in which I felt so insecure. Because, you know, I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm all those things, but I, I definitely am not trendy. I can name drop brands. And he's talking, you know, on Sunday morning about, oh, well, you know, get your call Hans and your blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't even know what you're saying. But that was just a common thing. And it was all always about image and always about impressing him, you know, and, and so, I lived with this For years, and this will come into play in a minute when want to talk about why I had to start deconstructing. So in 2014, we, my husband and I, we had talked about moving to Oregon before, and we thought, well, we might retire there because we love it, you know, and rural West Coast kind of people. And but our kiddo, in 2013, we went through some really tough times with our youngest child, and in 2014, or maybe 2013, they came out as gay. And, and, you know, my husband's first thing to them was you couldn't have picked a better family to be gay. And you know, and so there was never any issue with that for us. But that was another area at that time where I'm like, I can't tell anybody at church, I can't tell anybody I work with, I might lose my job, because they had already, like, they hadn't fired anybody for something like that. They had taken this, there was an instance of a young man, I knew who was working in the children's area, and they thought he was gay. Nobody knew he was gay. And they removed him from there, because they were afraid he was gay. And you know, if you're gay, you're gonna corrupt children. Right? So, you know, you gotta turn everybody gay. Yeah, exactly. And, and so gay will rub off on people. Yeah, right. You know. And so, knowing that that had happened, I'm like, I tell anybody, something's gonna happen. I can't say anything, you know, which is terrible, you know, and it's not like, I was gonna go tell anybody anyway, it's, you know, my kids pleased to come out. But you know, worrying, okay, now who's going to find out? What are they going to do? You know, things like that. And, and at the same time, getting all these, this preaching about homosexuality, getting taught to and a huge staff meeting about homosexuality and how we've got to, you know, what can we do to fight this beast or whatever it is. And, you know, so I'm getting all this all the same time, and it was really hard to. I felt like, like, while I loved and accepted my kid and had no problem with it, I felt terrible on the inside, because I'm like, I am not pleasing God, you know. So there was that whole thing, but But in 2014, we decided to move to Oregon. And my kid was in my oldest had already graduated, moved away. And graduated college, and my youngest was a junior in high school. And at that time, Sam was female. He's, he's trans. And so he's since you know, transitioned. And so and we didn't, we didn't really know everything, but he was we were like, you know, we'll stay here until you graduate, whatever you need to do. He's like, You know what, let's just go. Let's just see what it has has to offer, you know, we're not going to know if we like it till we get there. And like, wow, genius kid, let's do that. You know, and so we did. And that's when he came out to us once we moved here that he was trans. And so we were like, Okay, this is new. And at the time, he used the pronouns, I'd never heard that before. And, you know, it's like, okay, you're gonna have to teach me some things because that all Yeah, that's plural. Of course, I've learned a lot since then, you know, but yeah, it felt good that we could just be open about it as a family, and we didn't have to be afraid of who might find out anything. You know, and we started going to church, we joined a home group because we hosted a small group in our house for like, seven years and loved that environment, you know, and so we joined a home group so we could get to know people and, and that was all good for the first two years. It was it was good. We had fun. It was, you know, it was what we needed at the time, and it helped us transition to a new city. I when we first moved here, I I tried to find a job as a pastor somewhere. And, you know, they just don't hire a lot of pastors in Portland. I don't know what's up with that. Not a very religious city. It isn't. But I ended up getting a job with the Department of Human Services working with people with disabilities. And, you know, and I've been there ever since. And I love it. And I'm an assistant and I'm happy and I don't care. And I just love it, you know, work with like minded people that want to do good for others, and so it's great.
After we'd lived here a couple of years, a friend of mine in Texas, who was also a Democrat, and, you know, didn't tell anybody She was a big time Bible teacher at that church, and she ended up moving to a different church. But anyway, she told me, Hey, there's going to be this biblical archaeology seminar in Minnesota. Over the summer, you want to go like, yeah, that'd be awesome. So we went, and this was 2017. And, you know, it's led by Bible dudes, you know, but they, they're, you know, professors. And so they have a little bit of different mindset. And so in this teaching, that whole week, I heard things about different Bible stories, that were also in other cultures and way prior to the Bible and all this stuff. And I was like, what? You mean, the Bible is not inerrant and perfect and original and written by God and all this stuff? It just, I mean, it just blew my mind.
David Ames 45:57
I couldn't imagine. Yeah, I think the the bubble, like the the limitation that has been within churches, leads to people deconstructing, because then when they just they encounter even the barest of facts.
Kris 46:12
It's like, there's, there's something out there. That's not what we're being taught. And maybe I knew it prior to being a Christian, but it didn't matter, then, you know, and it was really mind blowing, and it planted a seed in my brain. And my friends said, okay, so no one that said, Change your faith. I'm like, no, no, I'm still hardcore Christian, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, but we got back, or I got back home and, and I was fine. I was going to my home group going to church for about three months or four months. And then one day, suddenly, I just couldn't do it anymore. I told my husband, and this is how I felt at the time that I realized that my image of God was basically my senior pastor from the church I was at. And if I tried to imagine God, or anything, I would hear this guy's voice. I couldn't read the Bible without hearing his sermons. You know, and so I didn't have my own concept of Christianity anymore. It was everything I'd been taught at that church. And, and that really bothered me. And so I told my husband, I don't want to go to church anymore. I don't want to go to our home group anymore. I need to like back off and figure out who God is in my own self because I'm, I'm losing, you know, touch with what I was doing. And he was kind of glad about the church thing. He never liked organized religion, but he was very patient. For many years, like decades,
David Ames 47:52
while you were working, yeah, you
Kris 47:54
know, but it's such a sweet man. And, you know, like, they would tell us, you know, be careful what you put on social media. And if you're, if your family posts anything, we're gonna let you know. And you're gonna have to tell them to take it down. And I mean, I'm lucky they never found stuff he posted, because he's always been very bold and outspoken. But anyway, I told him, You You be bold and outspoken. You say what you want, I don't care. But anyway, so this is that's that was in the winter of 2017 2018. Everything just started unraveling in my faith. And I realized I couldn't read the Bible anymore. I couldn't listen to any Jesus music anymore. Which is fine. I wasn't big on it. Because it all sounded like country to me and not like country. Like you know, but, but just everything just like, started, I would, I would get uncomfortable, I would feel anxious. I didn't understand what was happening. You know, I didn't ever think that this could be considered religious trauma. Because, you know, in my idea, trauma was, you know, like, some of the stuff that happened to me as a kid, it's blatant, it's, you know, super harmful and all that and, and I didn't know anybody who had like, wasn't going to church anymore, you know. So, I also had this layer of guilt of like, I'm not going to church. I'm not pleasing God. And then I had a person call me from Texas that I don't know how they found out, but they call me crying and like, I just heard that your son is gay and yell or go into hell, and I'm just so sad for you like, Oh my God. Yeah, so I had a couple of those kinds of conversations with people that I had to block out of my life. You know, things like that. Were just, it was a really tough time because all of my identity was wrapped up in being a Christian. You know, I didn't know anything else. And I also you know, the deep feelings of guilt around not pleasing God were just huge, but at the same time, there was just, I could not open that Bible, I could not do any of those things. You know, I had always listened to podcasts and this and that and couldn't do any of that. And, and the only person I knew to talk about it was my husband, because, you know, he was sweet, very understanding, always been very supportive, no matter what I'm thinking, and, but there was no one I could talk to about it. And suddenly, I realized, I can't talk to my Christian friends, I can't talk to my non Christian friends that I have here, because they don't have any frame of reference. There's just nobody there. And so it was a really lonely couple of years, where I was starting to deconstruct and didn't know, that's what I was doing. I started going to counseling for some of my childhood traumas. And, you know, that's, I think, when I realized, Okay, I am experiencing the effects of religious trauma as well, this has to be something else I work on, because, you know, but I didn't really know how. But you know, during counseling it, it was helpful, it, you know, at least brought things to light that where I was being given unhealthy, outside stressors, indoctrination, things like that. And even though my counselor was not, she didn't know much about religious trauma, and it wasn't her expertise, she was still helpful in that. And so I just started trying to, well, basically, I was like, Okay, well, if I'm not going to go to church, I need to explore other areas of spirituality, you know, so I started, like, looking into other things. I'm like, Okay, what about Buddhism, and, you know, the, all kinds of stuff that, you know, could replace that empty God hole, you know, whatever, you know, getting into crystals, getting into energy medicine, getting into, you know, just just reading different things, you know, comparing religions, I started watching, you know, documentaries, on cults and starting to understand, you know, the, all the things they have in common and seeing where, you know, things that have been done to me. Maybe not intentionally, or whatever, but they were still really hurtful. And similar to cults, you know? Yeah.
David Ames 52:35
You may not know, but my wife is still a believer. So every once in a while, I find myself back back in a church. And even, you know, the sweetest nicest people, you know, and I like, I like the people at her church. I can't unhear the manipulation. Yeah. Right. It just screams in my ear. And so even though I know, they have the best of intentions, and you know, they have no, no sense of the manipulation that's happening, like is just like screaming. Yeah. And, you know, you can't, you can't unlearn that or unhear it once you recognize
Kris 53:10
Yeah, exactly. And that. That's been interesting, you know, because I see it in different areas, because, you know, I'm still really close friends with the people that were in my home group in Texas, although all of them have left the church. You know, which I find interesting. And they all did it on their own, they didn't even know I was doing it. So like, interesting.
You know, I talked about the fear of pride, and the people pleasing and things like that. Those are some of the biggest things that came out of this for me was, you know, who am I without the church? Who am I without my Christian identity? And if I, and I'll be honest, I don't, I don't really know what I believe, you know, I think I might still believe in some sort of God. I don't know. I mean, I'm not atheist, I'm agnostic. But, you know, as I started to realize that, okay, I've decided I'm not following these rules, any more than what, what direction am I following? You know, what defines who I am? You know, and, of course, that's a big rabbit hole to go down. But, you know, I started realizing that I had suppressed so much of myself, or suppressed so much of myself that I don't really know who I am or what I believe, and I'm still trying to figure those things out. And I'm sure I'll do that the rest of my life. But, you know, I had always tried to suppress this strong woman leader tendency that I had, you know, because I wanted to be the perfect Christian wife, even though my husband was all about, you know, we're eek Well, and all that, I'll be like, well, but you're gonna get the final say on everything and I'm going to cook you dinner and I'm going to be subservient, blah, blah, blah, you know, and we laugh about it now. I try to be a control freak now and just be like, no. But I love it. You know, it's, it's so much easier than it used to be. But now it's like I've realized, you know, I can be proud of myself. Like I learned, I taught myself how to paint like landscapes when I was still a Christian, and it was 2013 when we were going through tough times with my kid. And it was something that brought me peace, and but, you know, people would say, Oh, that's really good. I'm like, Oh, well, you know, it's God, you know, bah, bah, you know, that kind of thing, you know, could never accept any compliments, you know, and now I'm like, Yeah, I'm pretty good painter. That's fun. I like it, you know, go Chris, you know, or whatever it is, you know, and being able to accept myself, you know, I never was able to accept me as me, I thought, you know, I had to be somebody else, just to make everybody happy. You know, and I'm learning that I can just make myself happy. And it's fine. You know, and learning what it takes to make myself happy. You know, that's been the last few years of being okay, with the way I look, the way I feel the things that think, you know, one of the really great things about not ascribing to the religion I was involved with was that when I first became a Christian, I threw away all of my hard rock CDs, because I thought that was probably pretty bad. But now I'm like, Hey, I forgot how much I like Ozzy?
David Ames 56:50
Yeah, just fun. You know, that is that's the best transition, which we should just make drop right there.
Kris 56:58
Makes me laugh, you know, the things that, you know, you think you you need to sacrifice for God or for whatever it is, and I don't feel like I'm, I don't know, I don't even know how to express this, like, I'm the same person. You know, I've just, you know, stopped listening to rock for a long time, but it doesn't matter. I can listen to what I want. You know, it shouldn't be so mind blowing. But it is a profound moment.
David Ames 57:31
Yeah, I totally get it. And, you know, I think what you said earlier was really important as well, that, you know, you can't talk about it with your Christian friends, and you really can't talk about it with your secular friends, either, because they're not going to get it. I think that's why the deconstruction community is so important. It is we get it,
Kris 57:50
it is, and that is part that has really been a huge help for me, you know, just reading other people's posts. And, you know, I think I went to an online support group, but just, you know, being around people who are have experienced the same thing in their own way, you know, regardless of what type of religion it was, or whatever, but just knowing that we've we've all got some really common themes. And I mean, it's just like any of the support groups I used to teach, you know, people would be like, Oh, thank you so much. This is greatest thing. I'm like, you know, really, it's that you came together with other people that were like you and realize that you're not alone. You know, and you don't have to do this alone. And I think, for me, that's been, you know, very important. You know, and I see that in other people's posts, too, that, you know, we're, we're in this together, even though we're miles and miles apart, we can still support each other. And I appreciate that about, you know, this podcast and about the Facebook page that there's a lot of support, you know, you get involved in some groups are pages, and there's a lot of, you know, some negative comments, and I just haven't seen any of that everybody is like, oh, no, you can do this, or I feel for you, or whatever it is, you know, and being a part of that kind of community is really powerful and valuable.
David Ames 59:11
Well, I have to give credit to our Lean Community Manager for that. She's She's amazing. And I do think that the community is amazing itself. So I'm glad you're a part of it.
As we wrap up, Chris, we've hinted at a few things, but do you have any recommendations for things that were helpful for you along the way, either books or podcasts or groups, anything like that?
Kris 59:39
I think, not really. I do think that it's, if a person's really having a hard time, I think it would be wise to have you know, therapy or a support group. I'm a huge proponent of those and being able to work through it with someone and, but it's like anything, you know, come hanging out is hard, no matter what you're coming out with. And so having, you know, finding, if it's if it's this podcast or the Facebook page or another one that's similar, I think that's really important. It's just not something that's easily done alone. You know, for me, I, I want to grow as a person throughout my life, you know, I want to work on things that I struggle with and be a better person than I was yesterday. And so I don't if I, if I just sit there and try to deconstruct by myself, I'm just gonna get stuck, and I'm going to be stagnant. And so, you know. So I really highly encourage people just to, you know, find that community. There's a lot of good books out there that I've heard of, but I haven't read them yet.
David Ames 1:00:51
Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Definitely a plus one to being a coming on part of a community whether that's our deconversion anonymous or any others, I think, I think that's it. That is the power of humans coming together to care for each other. I think that's what will get us through all this. Absolutely. Chris, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Kris 1:01:11
Thank you. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity.
David Ames 1:01:19
Final thoughts on the episode. I wish we could say that Chris's story was unusual or rare. And yet, there's just a common theme of strong leadership. Women who want to be a part of ministry wants to be a part of helping people and being limited and held down and told what they can and cannot do. This always strikes me as a tactically Bad mistake on the church's part, in that they are suppressing 50% of their population from actually participating. I really appreciated Chris's compassion and desire to help people that was real and came across in her interview so so strongly, it's just clear that she cares for people. And that is secular grace. I'm very glad to hear the freedom that Chris experiences on this side of deconstruction being out from underneath the limitations and the restrictions within Christianity, where she can love people unconditionally without reservation. I want to thank Chris for being on the podcast for telling her story with vulnerability and compassion. Thank you so much, Chris, for telling your story. Secular Grace Thought of the Week inspired by Chris is care for people. It never ceases to amaze me that the most compassionate, loving, caring people within the church are limited in how they can care for people or meet real human needs because of who they are allowed to care for and who they are not allowed to care for this side of deconstruction, deconversion those shackles are off. And you can just love people, even people who are radically different than yourself. That is secular grace. Next week, Arleen interviews Megan, you're not gonna 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 human. 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
This week’s guest is Nora. Nora grew up in Argentina, the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and Argentina still has her heart.
When Nora was in middle school, her father believed God wanted him to become a missionary to the US. The family’s move to California was all loss, culture shock, and homesickness for Nora.
Between church doctrine on divorce, enduring an abusive marriage, Christian Nationalism, and questions that kept coming, Nora stayed in Christianity as long as she could stand it. She truly tried to make it all work.
“I did it on my own…I can say, for sure, God was not there for me, not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously not practically.”
Nora is now “allergic to spirituality.” She’s an atheist, no longer needing any god or religion to dictate her life. She lives out secular grace, aligning her life with her deepest values.
“I spend the next ten years praying for my marriage. I’m begging God and begging God…trying everything.”
“I laid hands on people, and I felt things. I will admit it. I felt things. I think the brain’s a powerful thing, and when you’re in the midst of that environment, you get sucked in.”
“The crazier it got, the more skeptical I got.”
“This time, is God there for me? No. I had to save myself.”
“I did it on my own…I can say, for sure, God was not there for me, not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously not practically.”
“You cry, and you feel feelings [in a worship service], and you think that’s the presence of God. You tell yourself that that’s God’s presence.”
“The first thing that went for me was Hell. I just couldn’t believe in Hell anymore.”
“You start asking questions, and then one question leads to another question.”
“2016…it was horrific to me, watching the Church. I felt betrayed. I felt lied to. I felt like everything they told me that they stood for didn’t matter. They were willing to throw it all away.”
“I used to think people were bad Christians because they had bad theology, not that the whole system was bad. Now I feel like the whole system is bad. It’s not just theology; it’s all of it.”
“I’m actually making a difference in people’s lives. It’s very fulfilling and God has nothing to do with it.”
“Nobody needs to hear about Jesus. They’ve all heard about him.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. If you're going through 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 Remember, we have a T public merch site. If you want your graceful atheists or secular Grace themed items, you can find them there and you can find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline inner interviews community member Nora Nora grew up in Argentina until her father felt called to be a missionary to the United States of America. This was incredibly disruptive for Nora. Later due to purity culture, she got married very young had children relatively young, in a marriage that ultimately ended. She was part of very charismatic environments. And she says that the crazier things got, the more skeptical she got, eventually the Christian nationalism and the questions piled up and was too much as she could no longer believe. Here is our lien interviewing Nora.
Arline 1:59
Nora, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Nora 2:02
Thank you so much for having me. Yes, I'm
Arline 2:04
excited. We have finally connected and we're gonna make it work. Yes, you are a member of our private Facebook group, the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. And you have been a listener for how long?
Nora 2:18
I'm gonna guess. 2019 I think is when I started listening. Yes,
Arline 2:23
that's fabulous. Well, I'm so excited that you are ready to tell your story and how we always begin, tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in.
Nora 2:32
Okay, so I am Argentinian. I was born and raised in Argentina. My background is a little bit different than most people's. My parents let me go a little bit about my parents because it does affect my faith journey as well. My mom is the daughter of Italian immigrants. Like a lot of Argentinian czar. And yeah, where 85% European people don't know that. So my mom was Baptist, her father when he moved to Argentina and the I believe it's the 1930s he right off the boat. There was a Baptist pastor Italian Baptist pastor and he would welcome the immigrants in. And that's how he got him into the church. Okay. So because most Italians are Catholic, but he converted when he moved to Argentina, and he had a girlfriend behind who was my grandmother. And she somehow converted at the same time as him in Italy. So he brought her to Argentina, and then they had their kids so they raise their kids in a very, very strict, legalistic, Baptist environment. My mom wasn't allowed to wear pants. She wasn't allowed to listen to secular music. She can watch TV, she can watch movies, you can listen to secular music. So she grows up in this environment, right? And she's not happy about it. And she's the fifth child. Her siblings were all 1015 years older than her. Her parents were much older when they had her. They basically told her if she they hadn't been Christians, they wouldn't have had her so she has all this trauma. Yeah, she has all this trauma growing up. My dad on the other hand, he his mother was Italian as well, his father English, but he grew up in a non Christian home, just not religious home. He grew up speaking English bilingual in his own house. But somehow when he's a teenager, his parents sent him to church camp. I don't know why. They just do and that's where he meets my mom. So my mom is attracted to my dad because he is more free spirited, right he's he doesn't have this religiously. realistic. My dad went to the movies. He went to the theater he, we grew up in Argentina, okay, it's a big cities. I grew up in New York. He went to the opera he went to, he did all these fun things. So my mom wanting to get out of that environment. Mary's my dad. Yeah, of course. And so my parents were in a Baptist church together. But my dad was very open minded, wanting to explore things. So apparently, I was born, you know, within a year. Apparently, when I was a baby, they got kicked out of the Baptist Church, because my dad dared to pray for someone's healing. And the pastor pulled him aside and said, you don't have the authority to do that. You're not a pastor. We don't believe in that. They got kicked out. Oh, wow. Okay. So they spent three years not going to church. I'm a baby, so I don't remember. So when they went back to the church, they got invited by a friend to go back. They didn't kind of want to, they spent a lot at they spent three years just my mom was loving it, you know, going to the theater, doing all the things she couldn't do as a as a child. So they got back into church, and now it's a charismatic church. So I have spend most of my Christian life in charismatic circles. So I even though my mom was Baptist, I did not grow up in a Baptist church. I was always in a charismatic church. It started with some home church. And then my parents were very, very, you know, they dove right back in they're totally, totally dedicated to the church, but my dad is able to explore the spiritual side are things which he loves, is speaking in tongues, the laying on hands, he he's always been just a curious person, he still is. The cool thing my parents did, is that they did not indoctrinate me as a child at all. Because my mom's background, they did not want me to grow up as a kid. Knowing about how, you know the things that are the guests talk about, I had an amazing childhood, I was just a kid I, I didn't know about hell, I didn't, no one forced me to do the sinners prayer. Nobody. You know, my parents took me to church, but I actually could do whatever I wanted. I remember reading comic books, or they didn't want me to make that decision as a kid. They didn't think children should. That's also kind of typical in Argentina and in Argentina. In evangelical circles. They're they're not really about, you know, homeschooling is not a thing. You know, there are Christian schools, but it's rare. They don't need it don't indoctrinate their children from the very beginning. They believe that that's something you do later, right, as a teenager.
So have an amazing childhood. In the last couple years in Argentina, my parents, through some context, join the Catholic Charismatic Movement, which was a big thing in the late 70s. I'm older. I'm in my 50s. And that was also an amazing experience. Because Catholics are not as legalistic either, especially when they've been, you know, in a traditional Catholic Church. And now they come into the charismatic side of things. It's like they're discovering Jesus, and they like the praise and worship, and they're happy people, but they still drink and they swear, and they're normal people. And my brother, and I loved being part of that. It was a real community. And again, as kids, the parents are doing their thing, we're running around playing, we're not in kids church. But my dad in that movement of the last couple years, he started preaching a lot on the weekends. Okay, so he had a business. He had a company that recorded cassettes and tapes a long time ago, very successful. And on the weekends he would do, he would preach, so he fell in love with preaching, right. And then he met American missionaries, and he met people and prophetic people, and they told him that he had to come to America to be a missionary here.
Arline 9:31
Ah, that's interesting.
Nora 9:35
Ridiculous. But just as a background, my dad because of his company used to go to America all the time. And he loved it, right. He just loved it here. He bought a lot of equipment for his company. So how much was God? How much was his own life for
Arline 9:53
America? Interesting.
Nora 9:56
I think it's his love for America, but it's So one day we were going to move to the US and give up everything to be missionaries. So at the age of 12, I was 19. At my parents sold everything, everything. He sold his business house, I don't even have anything for my childhood. And that's when my life turned upside down. So they took us to America. I was 12 years old, we moved to California. I don't recommend it to anyone moving to another country, not knowing anyone. It was the hardest thing. Yeah. My dad didn't have the support of a church. He went on his own. Like he just did it on his own dime. Right. And we had a tourist visa. And he just thought God would work it out. Yeah. Yeah. So we land in the only place he knows, which is California, because he's digital, our business there. His business context, said, you're on your own buddy, right? We don't have a church or anything. So he tries to figure it out. And he tries to go where he was comfortable, which is the, the Catholic charismatic thing. He found a couple churches, they were mostly Mexican. I hated it. I, I wanted nothing to do at church at this point. The Culture Shock was so hard, you know, our family just, it was a hard time for our family. My mom fell into a deep depression. She didn't speak the language. I'm thrown into, you know, going to school, trying to adapt while my parents are basically checked out because their entire life was about the ministry and trying to figure that out, get that off the ground, right. And because he doesn't know anything about immigration, he just overstayed our visa. So we were undocumented, essentially. Yeah. Because he sold everything we can go back. And once you're undocumented, you can't go back either, because you cannot come back in. So we're stuck in limbo. We don't have you know, the, the ministry is not working great for him. And somehow, a couple years into it, he hooks up with a church and American church, where the senior pastor had been a missionary to Argentina, through a friend. So they welcomed us in. So this age, I'm I think I'm around like, 14 or so. So, um, I'm still trying to adopt to middle school in America, you know, trying to make friends, seeing my country missing my huge Italian family that was really loving, you know, my entire life back there, I missed everything about it. So my dad through this church, got a bit of sponsorship, not financial. Apparently, my dad made a lot of money because he lived off of his savings for a good 10 years. I don't even know, anyone that I just knew, you know, we had a place to live. So he gets support from this church. Okay. And what I what I mean by that is that they give them the fellowship hall to start his own ministry. So this is what he thinks he's being called to. Right. So he starts a Hispanic ministry in Spanish. He's still there. It's been 40 years. Yeah, he's still there. And aside from that, this entire ministry that he'd built is really, like 30 people, like it's been. It's really ironic that he turned our entire lives upside down for like a little group of people, that 30 people, you know, our lives upside down
so I didn't want to go to church, I was not into it, you know, I guess, at the time, I was kind of resentful about, you know, the move and just having a tough time. So he introduces me to the youth pastor, and the American Christian, you know, on the English side, and tells my brother and I just go to this youth group here, you know, not gonna force you to go to church, but try the youth group. And they got me that they got me that's when I got totally, like, totally indoctrinated. And I started going to, you know, youth camps and retreats and, and I got deep deep into it. And I think part of it looking back is that I just wanted to fit in, you know, I just wanted a group of people to accept me, because I'm new to the country still. And they were pretty accepting but like in most American churches, they really like talk down to us, you know, because we're not an American. And I always like to joke that they treat me like a like a pagan peasant. Because they think I live in the countryside because it's Latin America. Even though I lived in a big city, like New York, a big city with like 30 million people, and, you know, I took the subways. And they think that I'm a pagan, because I'm from a Latin American country, you know, even though grew up surrounded, surrounded by Christians and Protestants, you know. So they talked down to me, they tried to do save me, you know, all that stuff. But I, I dove deep into it. And I liked having a community. But what happened when I was 15? is a one of the guys in the youth group, he was 24. And he wanted to date me. And my parents said, Yes. And I was 15 years old.
Arline 15:46
Oh, my heavens, Nora, that's, it's wrong. Yeah.
Nora 15:52
Yeah. I would never allow my kids to do that. And I looked at my parents, and my parents were like, well, he's a Christian. So we trust him. But he's 24 When I'm 15. So that made me grow up too fast and put me in a position that I shouldn't have been in. I dated that guy for a year. And then I dated the next guy who ended up I ended up marrying eventually. And he was also older than me. So I was 16. And he was 21. And he was in the worship team. And he was cool. And he was fun and talented. And he was interested in learning Spanish. So I ended up dating him. And things were not great. From the beginning. He he pressured me into having sex right away. So I'm 16 years old. I'm having sex with an older man in church. The guilt is killing me. Yes, killing me. I mean, my entire life revolved around me repenting and crying to God, and saying, it's not going to happen again. But you know, looking back, I'm a child. I mean, how can I blame myself, I'm a child. He's much older than me. And I have to keep this big secret, right? And I can't tell anybody at church can tell my parents come to find out many years later, this was a pattern for him. And he, yeah, he had done it to other women. And the senior pastor knew, and he had told my dad, and my dad did not do anything about it either. So I don't want to bash my dad, my dad's a great guy, my dad really, really practices. What we the best of Christianity, you know, he truly does love people. He truly cares about people. He's generally a really great guy. But during these years, I think is my parents were having their own troubles, you know, being new to the country, and and they just, I don't know, I don't know what to say. They just, were not parenting me. So I can say. So, obviously, I'm still in the church. I'm dealing with all this guilt and shame. And it's just such a huge problem. So how do we solve that we get married, right? Soccer player 20. And I didn't go to college, because again, my parents didn't know what to do. I was totally alone in high school, managing High School in America, which is a cultural shock High School in America is completely different than other countries. But I mean, I am a deep, devout believer, I, you know, the guilt kill me. So we get married. I'm 20. I think he was 25 or something. Marriage is bad from the beginning. Bad, bad, but I felt like I had to marry him. I already already sins, right? I gotta make it right. So it's bad from the beginning. We had our first child, four years later, I to remember when I got pregnant thinking, oh my gosh, I am stuck with this man now. Yeah. So I had my doubts even then, but he turned out to be verbally abusive, sexually abusive, controlling. What I thought he was, you know, he thought I thought he was a good Christian. But he was kind of faking it. He was very cruel to me. A few years. Then he told me he didn't love me anymore that he had marry me because it was his obligation, because everybody at church was pressuring him. But of course, I'm married for life. You know, I'm a Christian. I am They don't
Arline 20:00
feel lonely options are sinful.
Nora 20:03
Yeah, exactly. Divorce is sinful. I'm committed, I'm going to make it work. So I spend the next like 10 years, just praying for my marriage, right. So I'm like, begging God and begging God. And I mean, I would get up every morning and just pray and listen to my worship music and trying everything.
And then we got involved, we're still going to church. He's he kind of pretends he's the perfect Christian man and very charismatic person. So everybody loves him. Extremely talented. So everybody loves them. So pastors overlook any flaws because he's an amazing guitar player. So we're in this church. And at this time, through a long series, I, I left that church where I was a teenager, where we met and we went to a bigger charismatic church. And then we ended up in a church where we were out for about seven years. And in this church, he's in the worship team. I am too. We have another kid, I'm a stay at home mom, because you know, that's the right thing to do. And your Christian woman my mom went back to school. And she actually has two degrees and she became a teacher. So she finally pulled herself out of the depression and made a life in America. And she's she's done very well, my dad, you know, still same church. My dad was not traditional, you know, my dad did not raise me to be a stay at home mom and all that he he actually is a feminist. He's also very liberal. So I'm getting this you know, I'm as I'm getting deeper into this church, I'm getting the Christian nationalism and the you know, you got to be a Republican and all this and I didn't like that because first of all, I was an American, so I didn't get it. Even though it's been years, I didn't agree with any of that. But I kept my mouth shut. I did my duty. I was a stay at home mom, I tried to be the best submissive wife. I truly thought that if I submitted more, you know, God would bless me, my marriage would get better. Of course, it got worse and worse and worse. So we're in this church and this church is extremely charismatic. It became like cultish. Okay, we're like, rolling in the river. We are it's like rolling. You know. We're getting eggs. We get the we get all out. Oh, yeah. Falling in the spirit that people with the sheets, raising, you know, I even tried it. I laid hands on people and I felt things. Okay. I will admit it. I felt things. I don't know what. I think the brain is a powerful thing. Yes. Yeah. And you're in the midst of that. Environment. Right. You get sucked in. I heard people talking like chickens barking like dogs laughing uncontrollably, you name it. I've experienced it. Oh, yeah. The whole spirit. The whole fun stuff. Oh, yeah. And I thought it was fun, right? Like churches boring. At least this makes it fun. That's what I like. And then like my dad, I want you to explore like, what's out there. And when you're charismatic, you absolutely think that other denominations just don't have the whole picture. Right? They're missing out. It's not that they are not true believers, but they don't have the Holy Spirit. They don't have the power. They can't pray in tongues.
Arline 23:42
And then I'm over here like, Yeah, we were in the Calvinists world where, like, we we weren't cessationists like, there were still miracles. We just didn't see them. But we thought you guys had gone off. Yeah, gone off the deep end and believe we were things that weren't that weren't biblical. We, we had our own versions of very, like terrible doctrines that just looked completely different, you know,
Nora 24:09
phrase, yeah, no, we thought that everybody's just needed to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and then their life would be transformed. And then you'd have miracles. The thing is, the longer you're in that, you don't really see those miracles, right? People fall under the Spirit and they cry, and they have this moment, but their life is still crap. Like, things don't get solved. And that's what I was experiencing. My marriage wasn't getting any better. My problems were not being solved. I could, you know, have these amazing, emotional experiences. But I started to question them. So I started to say, Well, God, why? Why am I why am I feeling these things? But it's not making any difference. It's not really working. And the crazy we got the more skeptical I got. So some things I wouldn't try like they were At the time, when the church everybody was rolling down the aisle, for healing for emotional healing, it's all about emotional healing, right? It's all about emotional healing. And there's a lot of pressure to confess things and pressure to confess your emotional problems and, you know, emotional, spiritual healing. And none of that works. None of it works. But I tried it. So, so what happened is we're in this church, it was my life, this church was my life. I, there was a time we went for seven weeks, every single night, to church for seven weeks. Oh, my gosh. And they're, of course, constantly beating us up that we're not doing enough for God, we're not giving God enough. If only we just did more. And I remember thinking at the time, what more could I possibly give? I am here every day, I am sacrificing my family life. I'm doing nothing by being at church. And all I'm getting is a preacher telling me, I'm not doing enough. If I wasn't given God enough, then I don't know what giving enough is. I gave everything I possibly could my time, my money, all my emotions, you know, I closed myself off from the rest of the world. I was deep into it. But yet my life was still not great. I'm still in this terrible marriage.
So it all blows up. When my husband, my then husband, has an affair with my best friend. Yeah. And I find out, I have this feeling, right, I have this feeling. But again, you're told to ignore your feelings, right? ignore your intuition. Ignore what your inner self is telling you. For some reason, I decided to give in and listen to that. And I had him followed. And I found him in my friend's house. This friend was using all the information that I was given her about my marriage and using it to get to him. And they were just so I would complain about how sad it was, how sad I was how my husband didn't love me, she go to him. Anyways, they had this secret relationship, which wasn't the worst pandemic, actually. In a way it was. It was the way I got out of that, you know, we're going on with about marriage. So she kind of did me a favor, in a way but going through was horrible. So you can imagine the church, what do they do? Obviously, the worst they could possibly do. They call me in for counseling. And they told me I have to stick stick it out with him, because it's the right thing to do. And they called him in and he was in the worship team, right. So they called him in and the discipline was, while you're going to be off the worship team for a couple of weeks. Couple of weeks.
Arline 27:59
That's like, like at school, you, you just get in a little bit of trouble for this huge thing that like I don't even
Nora 28:07
Yeah, and the worst part is they told me not to tell my parents because they didn't want me to taint my parents relationship with my husband. So I can't tell anybody. The penile UI through. I cannot explain. It's physical, like you feel like your stomach hurts. I'm just a broken, messed up. And by then I've been taking so much verbal abuse from him that I I was a beat down. I was a doormat. I was a doormat I had been. They also involve me that church and you know, discipleship, where you're discipling with an older woman. And she gave me again, the worst advice and they were always telling me, Well, he doesn't love you, because you're just not doing this, you're not doing that. You're not submissive enough? Well, I have a strong personality, you know, I try my best to squash it down. I was a doormat and I had zero self esteem at that point. So I was willing to stay with him. Even if he didn't love me, even if he treated me badly. I didn't have the strength to stand up for myself. And the church of course said okay, they all covered him because he's a man and he's gonna get punished for a couple of weeks and, and the church told me we're gonna have your friend not attend church, so you don't have to deal with that. Because they were her parents were big, big donors in the church gave a lot of money. So yes, so she was in one of that. You know how there's always a hierarchy in the church and the people that give a lot of money are close to this pastor. She was one of those people. She was married by the way and had kids our kids were friends. It was a mess. So as I'm trying to go through this, you know, they told me to just not they told me not to bring it up to him. because if I, if I accused him or brought him any pain, he would just bolt because he was there just because he was doing the right thing for God. And he didn't really want to be with me. So I had to shove it all inside, shove it on inside. I had one friend that stayed with me, and she's still my friend to this day. But basically church, of course, did the worst thing they could do, which is covered up. Let's forget it happened. Deal with it. Stay with him a few weeks later, my and then I lost my best friend to the same some betrayed by two people. Couple couple weeks later, my my, my husband is back on the worship team. I was on the worship team too. And I was singing and I look out and she's there. The best friend, and I went to the pastor and said, you told me you're going to protect me. You told me that I didn't have to deal with seeing her. And I said this quote, This is a free country. She can come whenever she wants to. Yep. Wow. That's when I left that church.
Arline 31:06
Yeah, that like, the basic like minimum shepherding ability of a pastor. Yeah, not done. Like,
Nora 31:14
they just did not take care of me. I was the last person everyone else got taken care of. But not me. Still, I believed still I you know clung to God. So my ex and I told him at that time, I'll give you a year. Or know where I got that from, I'll give you a year. I want things to improve with us. I want to have a real marriage. And I I said one of the conditions is I want to move to another city because I don't want to be around these people. I don't want to be around the church. I don't want to be around people that know everything that know all our dirty business, right? I don't want to know, my parents still don't know.
So we moved to Colorado. So this whole time I still live in California, right? We moved to Colorado, and we bought a big house. And I kind of kept myself busy with his house, getting my kids in schools and kind of distracting myself. Again, I'm not dealing with it, I'm just shoving it under the rug. Right. And, you know, we went to church, we never got as involved as before, but we would go I still 100% was clinging to God. And you know, he was everything to me. So the year passes and nothing really changes. My, my husband and I are just he's just distant. He's working from home. And I noticed that he was spending all his time online, you know, after work all night, all night. And so I started investigating. And that's when I found out that so we're talking three years later. So instead of a year, game three, I found out that he was involved with women online. So he was doing horrible things, with cameras with women who got really ugly. And that's when I discovered a whole world that didn't even know existed out there. And yeah, I kind of became a private investigator. I got to, I guess I started to feel stronger, you know, and I got to a woman to spy on him. I got him to admit all kinds of things. And I found out that this problem had, I knew the tip of the iceberg. He had been doing this kind of stuff for ever. He had been with other women, I mean, just a huge mess. And I went I went to New York with a couple girlfriends and I remember being there and thinking, I can't do this anymore. I just can't be married to this man anymore. And my plan all along because I felt so bad. Divorce was so wrong right to sin. I just my plan all along was I was gonna wait till my kids were grown and out of the house. And then I was gonna leave. Take my chances with God, right? If he hates me, he hates me. But my kids at the time were like seven and 11. I believe. That's a long time to wait. So I stayed in the marriage about 16 years really bad, right? It was a long time to wait. I can't make it. I can't and I really truly felt like I am going to lose my mind. I'm going to be my kids are not going to have a mother either. Because I really felt like I'm going to have a psychological breakdown. I just can't take any more of this. I can't can't do it. So I decided to tell him I want a divorce. took every bit of strength in me again at this time. Is God there for me? No I had to save myself. Right? And the Christian friends that I still had, were like, Don't divorce him, God can heal your marriage don't give up. And at this point, I just said, You know what, I rather be divorced and be in sin. I just I decided that that's what I was going to do. I'm just gonna be insane and deal with it. So I asked him for divorce. His reaction was, okay. Okay. Didn't try to fight for it and care. I mean, long he'd long been checked out of the marriage. And he denied everything. I had proof. I had printed scripts of what he had done. I had proof. That's it, you know? So he goes, Okay, so we actually had to live together for a whole year he lived in the basement, we had to sell the house, I decided I wanted to move back to California to be near some kind of family. You know, my brother, my, my parents were in California and like, I'm not going to be stuck here in Colorado or have no support. Being a divorced single mom and I hadn't gone to college. I hadn't worked in years, I had no income. So had to figure all that stuff out. And I don't know how but I did it on my own. I pulled up the strength. I did it 100% I can save for for sure. God was not there for me. Not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously, not practically, I had to somehow pull it together. So we sold the house, I moved back to California, I took my kids with me, he actually followed me to California. And then I spent the next 10 years being a single mom. And working bike back to work. I was a retail manager. I went back to college. I had to deal with my ex and the kids and life. It was rough. It was rough. But But I made it. I'm still believing at this point. 100% Believing but I was uncomfortable going to church. And the reason for that is because I attempted it a few times. And when you're a single mother, when you're divorced woman going to church, all the crap you get from people, people would pray for me that my marriage would be restored. I'm like, no, no, thank you. Don't pray for me. Do not pray for me. I told multiple people that then you know the divorce men were interested in dating. I was just just Yeah, it was icky. I'm like, Pina divorce woman in church. I don't recommend it either. So I didn't feel comfortable. So I kind of stopped going I still believe still 100% believed in God. 100% believed in everything. Jesus everything. I just felt like, I felt like I couldn't ask God for anything, because I was already divorced and insane. So he didn't you know, God was not on my side. So I stopped asking for things. I would pray for other people. But I wouldn't pray for myself anymore. Plus, it didn't work. And I didn't put those two together, right. So I would pray for people I would believe but I just could not be in church number one, and then I could not ask for me because I felt like well, God doesn't love me. I'm insane. Anyways, so I'm a divorced woman. So I'm no intention of getting married again. But I reconnected with somebody from that church where the whole mess happen where where we were where my ex husband was all that I reconnected with a worship leader who was divorced himself. And we had a lot in common, right, because we both gone through that crazy cultish church. And he had been the worship pastor and I'm like, watch your divorce. We met up. So 15 years later, we struck up a friendship. And then we got married nine months later. Oh, yeah. So married to an ex pastor. So we're married 11 years.
At the time, he had like a home church. And so of course, he wanted me to go with him. I was very hesitant. They're not gonna like me, I'm, you know, second marriage. How are they going to deal with that? So we had to struggle through all that, right. And at this, so this was the been like, 2012 are in there. But at this time, so we're going to his, we're gonna his home church. Like he's the he's the pastor. It's just a group of people. They're really warm. They're really nice. But I had such a hard time at this point with theology. I started to question everything. Because I hadn't been in a church where I was getting preached at in a While I was kind of just living my own faith, but not listening to it day in and day out, not listening to Christian music not listening to sermons, right. So when you get out of it, you'll go back in. Right?
Arline 40:16
Yes, yes, you can see and hear things. So
Nora 40:19
still be like, Wait a minute. That doesn't sound right. So I'm struggling, so I'm going to church with him, but it privately I'm like, I am struggling with the theology. I can't even sing the songs. Some of them. I have a problem with theology in the songs. Yeah, I don't like this. It makes me uncomfortable.
Arline 40:36
Singing is a big way to like indoctrinate people because you memorize that stuff. And it stays
Nora 40:42
and singing. We both were in worship teams, right? And we were in for worship teams together. We know the emotion that worship brings out in you, and you cry and you feel feelings and you feel that's the presence of God. That you tell yourself, that's God's presence. So I can't deny it. I? Yeah, I have my doubts about God. But I feel His presence. charismatics are all about the presence and the feelings are still like, wow, okay, I have my doubts, but I feel it. So must be true still. But I started questioning things. And as we were in that church, I just really started diving into what do I believe? And why do I believe it. And the first thing that went for me was how I just couldn't believe in Hell anymore. And I never spoke about this out loud in this home church, but I can no longer believe in hell. And I started thinking about, Well, I'm a parent, and my children have their moments of teenagers. I would never send them to hell no matter what they did. And I started thinking if I'm a better parent than God, right, yes, yes, that was a big for me, how can I be a better parent than God? That's not doesn't make sense. And of course, you start asking one question, and then leads to another question. So for the first time in my life, you know, I'm married again, my life is more stable. I'm not dealing with a bad marriage anymore. I'm not in survival mode, because so much of my life was survival mode. And I think that allowed me the space to start really questioning things. And luckily, I'm married to someone who also was questioning things. So we absolutely went on this journey together.
Arline 42:22
Oh, that's wonderful. It does not happen often. So I
Nora 42:26
know. It was. So we start I mean, we're each other's best friend. We start bouncing off each other. And he'd been a pastor me, he went to seminary, he, I would question him about the Bible. And like, did you learn about this in seminary? Did they tell you that? So we really, really deconstruct it together. Okay. He basically, I'm going to say from 2012. I'm gonna say, by 2016 or so he was, he's fully atheist. Atheist, I know. And I had a harder time getting to that point. It was slower for me. But I started reading books I started reading, Rachel Held Evans was a huge influence on me.
Arline 43:08
Yes, yes. She was part of my, my deconstruction. I didn't know it at the time. But yeah, me
Nora 43:12
neither. I started reading the book, because for me, it was a matter of, I can't believe American evangelicalism the way it's presented to me anymore. Yes, I got to that point. Right. So I guess I did go through the progressive Christian. Right. And, and I wanted to find a faith that I could work with that I, you know, that was accepting of, you know, queer people that was open to women being in leadership positions. I'd always been a feminist secretly in church, which was hard. Always. I've always been a feminist. I remember fighting with God that like, I don't want to be a housewife. Why did you give me a brain? If I have to just change diapers like I want to do with my life? Why this is unfair? Why do I care about other things? You know, I always was curious, I wanted to learn it was so hard for me. Anyways, I saw this time i Rachel Held Evans was great. I mean, there was a book where she talked about how come where she thought it was unfair for God to send a little girl that was born in a Muslim country then ever heard about Jesus, and if she and she got bombed, and she died, and she's supposed to go to hell. And that's not fair. That just, again, blew my mind. So from there, I went to Rob Bell, you know, to book after book after book. And in 2003. So, of course, 2016 happens, Trump. Yep. And that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I really was watching to see how Christians were going to react to it. I was appalled. The whole time. I was just appalled. And I still have friends from church at this time. And of course, I got into those Facebook fights and I was like, I can't believe You can support this man, I cannot believe it. And that's when I lost the other half of the friends that I hadn't lost the divorce. I lost the remaining Christian friends because I still believed 2016 I just could not support that. It couldn't. And my parents are liberals. My parents are Democrats. My parents didn't raise me that way. This is the one thing I have in common with my parents still, even though I'm not a believer. We talk about how can the church do this? You know, my father as a pastor, his he lost his pasture friends over it. Yeah, yeah. Thank God, my parents are liberal because I don't know how I would have done. I would have lost them probably.
Arline 45:44
Yes, that's incredibly difficult. I have found my family is not super devoutly religious. They're just kind of like go to church religious. But when we were Christians and voting Democrat and being very, like, anti police brutality, anti whites party, that was much more difficult for them, than when we became atheist and agnostic. I was like, well, at least I can see the true God here. Like the real the real thing that's worshipped. But continue.
Nora 46:17
Yes. So. So my parents, you know, my husband, my kids, my kids, by the way, tangent, I send them to Christian schools, and neither one of them is a believer. Oh, wow. My older one literally lost her faith in Christian High School. She is very smart, very analytical, very logical. And she, the more she got into Bible study, she was like, i This doesn't make sense to me. I can't believe it anymore. Both my kids stopped believing before I did. And I remember feeling like oh, no, my children are gonna go to hell. And then I stopped believing and help. But yeah, 2016 was a final I. It was horrific to me. Just this watching the church, I felt betrayed. I felt lied to I felt like everything they told me that they stood for didn't matter. They were willing to throw it all away. And I felt like deceived. And for me, it was the last, the last straw. You know, it's just, I can't believe in a God that would allow his people who are supposed to represent him, who's supposed to especially the Holy Spirit is supposed to convict you of sin, the Holy Spirit supposed to God, you're supposed to be the best people on Earth, because you have the Holy Spirit. And at the same I saw my old pastors, I saw old friends just totally turn and go down this rabbit hole. And I'm like, Okay, I can't believe in God.
But it took me a few, you know, took me until probably two or three years ago to really fully accept that I don't believe in God at all. First of all, let go of angry Old Testament God. Which I always had a hard time with. A hard time. Always I always felt like there were two different gods, you know, and I'm like, I kind of tried to ignore the Old Testament because I really like it. You know, I'll focus on Jesus. He was a cool guy. I was all about Jesus. I thought people were bad Christians, because they were they had bad theology. But no, because the whole system is bad. And now I feel like the whole system is bad. Yes, yes. It's not just the ology all of it. I can't solve. I couldn't salvage any of it at that point. And of course, I got into Bart Ehrman. Right. I started like, because I'm the kind of person that needs to figure out why I believed what I believed. Even though I no longer believe I still reading those things. I want to know where it came from. I want to know where that theology came from. It's fascinating it is. And I started to read the history of the Church of the Catholic Church. I swallowed a book of like, to me your 1000 years of church history. Wow. History of evangelicals in America. Ooh, that was something then, of course, I got into Jesus on John Wayne, power worshipers, all of that stuff. And how did I find that stuff? I found it by first Twitter. I got into extra angelical Twitter and I think that's where I found this podcast. I mean, David, they're just in conversations, and that really helped me. And then I started listening to this podcast and I have to say that when I started listening, I was still probably believed in God, but I wasn't sure anymore. So we moved to Las Vegas in 2019. We moved here just to just for economic reasons. You know, I love California. My family's still there, but Our kids are everywhere. We have six kids in there all over the country. So yeah, everywhere. At that point, it didn't matter where we live. So we moved to I live in Henderson, which is south of Las Vegas, very quiet community. My husband's a teacher now he's been teaching for 10 years. He teaches science. So that so he had to, like rethink everything that he used to believe to write, he went back to college, learn, you know, got a master's in education. I work in I have a great job. I work in a nonprofit that helps people with vocational training so that they can get jobs and we work with like the poorest of the poor and immigrants and people who come out of prison and who've come out of drug addiction. And like, I feel like I'm actually doing what I wanted to do. When I was a church, and it's much more effective. Church never did what we're doing. I'm actually making a different people's lives. And it's very fulfilling, and God has nothing to do with it. Crazy, amazing. You can actually help people without God. Because I had all these crazy beliefs. My mom had completely told me that good things happen to you because you follow God, bad things happen to you because you don't. Right. And that means, like, why, like so like and why she still believes that way. She still does. And it's really hard. I still have can have conversations with her about it. But anyways, I started listening to this podcast. And I have to say it helped me so much. Every peep, I love the stories. I love people's stories. I love them. And the more I listen to it, the more so when I moved to Vegas, I started listening to my commute to work. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's how I feel. Oh, wow. That's how I feel. Oh, so little by little by little. I lost all of it. I've given up all of it. We are not out to our family. Oh, my dad, it would break his heart. He's 81 years old. You know, we've been in America 43 years, he's still clinging to his. God brought me here. I have a hard time with that because I didn't want to come here. Obviously, it can't leave now have American children have a whole life here. But I still, especially now that I don't believe in God anymore. He turned our lives upside down to bring us to a country I didn't want to be in because of a prophecy. Right. And it didn't even turn out that great for him. He lost everything. He's 81 years old, he still has to pasture because he needs the income. My mom had to support them teaching. We lost all our family. You know, we don't have a family. We came from a big family. We don't go back there very often. My heart's still in Argentina. I do not appreciate the Christian nationalism here at all. I grew up in a pretty secular country where your faith was your faith. But it didn't it didn't mix in politics. I missed that. Yes. There are a lot of things I don't like about the way things have turned out, especially since Trump. And but yeah, we are not out to our family. So I have not told my family not planning on it. My parents, however, because they are very liberal on all that we discuss church issues day and night. And they don't have a clue that I don't believe it. And I don't even have to lie. It just I'm honest. They think I go to church, because I just don't like to be around Republicans. And that's true, too. So there you go.
Arline 53:38
That was something that we were surprised about when we stopped believing was how much our values stayed the same things that had already that were already important to us. We're still like there are certain black Christians that I follow on Instagram that I can talk to, like our our values align. Our beliefs are very different. But I just saw someone shared in the deconversion anonymous group, a woman whose name I can't remember from the Baptists, like some kind of something. She's basically trying to get white Christians to stop following Christian nationalism. Well, she was on the atheist the Thinking Atheist podcast I follow. Yeah, talking to Seth Andrews. And I haven't listened yet. But I just it's like, when people's values align like it's, it's fabulous. It's people helping people and people changing the world. Yeah, like you said, Without God, and without all the foolishness that goes along with it.
Nora 54:33
Yes. And obviously after I after I fully just embrace being an atheist, and I don't believe there's a God, I don't believe in any gods. I don't believe in anything spiritual. I am allergic to spirituality things you know, and other people go to those things. And the crystals on this and that I was so deep into the Holy Spirit BS that I can't even touch any of that, you know, I just can't It turns me off because I knew how manipulative it was. So I don't like any of it. I don't want any spiritual. I don't want to try to align my chakras or anything, I'm just not into any of it. If that's what your thing great, enjoy it, but I just I just don't believe in any of it. I'm just so turned off by the Uber spiritualization of everything you know, and the charismatic everything is the devil if it's not the devil, it's not God's timing. If it's, you know, God's testing your it's the devil, everything's the devil, right? Or everything is God, you know, you find a penny on the ground. And it was God planting that penny to, you know, I mean, I heard some testimonies that I was like, Are you kidding me? But my life now doesn't have all that guilt and shame. And yes, I still have the same values. Like you said, I still believe in goodness, and I still want to help people. And I still care about people. And I did when I was in church, and it broke my heart all the time that I saw people's lives not get better. I saw the church fail, I guess recently said that the church failing people. I saw that for 40 years. I saw it as a pastor's kid. I saw the dirty stuff that happened behind the scenes. People were horrible. I'm I'm surprised my dad's still a pastor. People betrayed, I'm left to church members, gossips. It is ugly back there. Behind the scenes, if you're, of course, married to my husband, he tells me these horrific stories. You got fired for preaching about love, you know, he get fired for wanting to have black kids in his church, you know, he get fired for good stuff all the time. And he hung on forever. And now he can't, he can't. One of his gets a pastor. I mean, we don't tell her I just don't.
I no longer have any church friends, except for the one that stayed with me through that divorce. And everybody else has gone from my life. And then I've had to make new friends, you know, and, again, I've helped people outside the church to be kinder. I hated that idea of the unchurched, the, the unsaved, or the last I hate calling people have lost their last or no loss. And nobody needs to hear about Jesus. Everybody's heard about him. I just laugh at that
Arline 57:38
point. Yes. in some form, or fashion. People have heard about Jesus the entire way, especially in the United States,
Nora 57:44
Thai Western Hemisphere. By the way, Latin America, they've all heard about Jesus, we don't need one thing I have to say I I do not like mission trips. The irony of my father bringing me here as a missionary, right. But my brother says he's a missionary kid, I guess I am. But I don't like mission trips. I think it's insulting to the locals. I was involved in a couple of times with people that went to Argentina and two people are in Argentina as well, Christians, there's so many churches, they have their own pastors there. They don't You don't need to go. You don't need to go. We also went to Rome a few years ago, and we're blown away by the Catholic Church and where all the theology comes from, right? It was like eye opening. You know how my dad likes to say my dad's funny. My dad likes to say that American Christians think there are two countries in the Bible, America and Israel and nobody else exists. And then America is like literally come descends from Israel. We have nothing to do with Israel. Nothing, nothing in common with that country.
Arline 58:56
Nora, thank you so much for sharing your stories. This has been so much fun. You told it so beautifully. Oh, thank you. Is there anything? Yes. Anything I should have asked that I haven't wanted to talk about. We have a few more minutes?
Nora 59:08
I don't think so. I mean, I just I just wanted to say about the missionaries. I know. It's just a big pet peeve of mine, especially short term missions, I really feel that people do it to make themselves feel better and think that they're doing something. But it's really hurting locals. It's really disrespectful to other cultures. I experienced it myself, you know, or Christians would talk down to me in America. You know, they look at me and they think that I'm magically brown because I come from another country, you know, and I'm, I'm 75% Italian. But I'm Latin American, so I must be brown and I must be indigenous and I must be you know, ignorant of Jesus and all this stuff. And I've had that kind of prejudice happen to me a lot. So, you know, I know the people that listen to this podcast are all cool and understand On the very first anything I want him to know, is if you meet people from other countries talk to them. Don't assume they don't talk down to them. Just talk. Don't talk down to them, please, if they don't speak English to them. Well, it's because we're bilingual. Okay? It's not because we can't hear you. Let's because we're bilingual. I am a hardest for immigrants. Because I went through it, I went through a horrific immigration story, and that's a whole other story. But be kind to immigrants, most of them and I work with them every day. Most of them are normal people who just want to have a life and that also disgusts me about the church, the treatment of immigrants just even when I was in it, just disgusting. We're not stupid or less intelligent or backwards. We do have toilet paper, you know, in our countries. I've been asked a million TV. I was asked if I DB I was asked if I lived in Eagle who I was asked all kinds of things by Christians up anyways,
Arline 1:01:03
even though I'm no longer part of American Christian white American Christianity, I'm like I am so sorry that the Sikh
Nora 1:01:09
continue to do that. Yeah, continue to do that. Yeah.
Arline 1:01:14
Okay, have recommendations, any you've mentioned multiple books,
Nora 1:01:18
but like, yeah, so, right now, our ermine is my life. I need someone to explain to me why believe what I believed I know. Why should I care at this point, but I do it. I need my brain needs it. Yeah, I love his books. I feel like they're understandable even though he's so smart and educated. Love his books. This podcast of course, I've been thanks to this podcast. I've recently gotten into mega that comedy one. And I'm yeah, I'm laughing so hard. It's so good for the soul.
Arline 1:01:50
I'm glad I'm glad that my husband
Nora 1:01:52
and I have both been in church. You know, ministries we love so hard. We love that. Yeah, just a lot of I would say I guess Bart Ehrman is my main. My main guy and I listened to Seth Andrews, too. And I've read his books as well. And I've gotten a lot from the people in this community. You know, anytime somebody suggests something. Thank you, everyone. And thank you to everyone, because your stories did make a difference in my life. And I am free now. And life making more makes more sense outside the church. Yeah, all the bad people, the good people, human behavior, all of it makes more sense. Because I used to be like, Why, why? Why? It makes more sense.
Arline 1:02:40
I love it. No one again. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you.
My final thoughts on the episode. It breaks my heart, thinking about the way Christianity forces people to stay in marriages, especially women forces them to stay in marriages, where there is overt abuse happening. Even just having in some churches to like, define what that abuse is, in order to possibly find a way out. Or as a Norris case, like just continuously being told you have to stay in this marriage, God can redeem it, God can do this, God can do that. And like there isn't a god, he's not doing a thing. And yet, you have to stay, you stay stuck. And it's just heartbreaking. So many marriages are like that so many marriages, where people are just having to continue to stay in an abusive place. Because they're convinced that the God of the universe wants this for them, or that he's going to do something about it. And when a God has said something, you're not supposed to argue with it, and there's just that breaks my heart. Another thing that she mentioned, that I had not thought about until she said it she talked about how like being part of the charismatic church, it's all about feelings, but having that experience with God, the music, the emotion. And at the same time, you don't trust your feelings. You don't trust your intuition. You don't. You don't trust that gut feeling that tells you something's not right. So out of one side of their mouth to use a little Bible phrase. They're like, it's all about emotion. It's all about that experience. And on the other side, it's like, but if this feeling perhaps causes any doubt, then don't trust it. And like how do you live in that? How do you live in my religion is telling me but it's all about experience and emotion. And at the same time, I should not trust my emotions. It's just, it's just thing after thing of cognitive dissonance that we have to figure out how it works. And I'm, yeah, I'm so thankful, Nora that you told your story, that you're willing to come on here and share everything, and you told it so beautifully. And I'm glad we made it work. Thanks so much for being on the podcast again.
David Ames 1:05:34
The secular great start of the week is, Trust yourself, trust your instincts. This theme has come up with a few guests recently, including Nora, maybe, particularly for women. But all of us who lived in the bubble of Christianity were taught to not trust ourselves to not trust our gut instincts, that somehow trusting our intellect and our instincts would lead us astray. And that is hard to get over. But on this side of deconstruction and deconversion, to trust your instincts to trust your your own intellect, even when there are those who disagreed with mitre church experience was similar to Nora's and that it was very charismatic. And that the more that things were emotional and demonstrative, the more doubt that I had. But it took me years to trust that instinct, and to recognize that it was because it was just humans being humans, and not because of some spiritual entity. Trust yourself. Next week, I interviewed community member Jordan, you won't want to miss that conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and graceful The beat is called waves by MCI beats that 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
This week’s guest is Tracey. Tracey spent her childhood in a white American Christian home where Focus on the Family reigned and “Obey right away” was the expectation.
She was a believer as an adolescent but began asking hard questions in high school. As a young adult, she saw how prideful the leaders were and how easily Christians were pulled in.
“That’s a theme through my whole experience of Christianity…Christians are actually attracted to narcissists…People are drawn to or encouraged to seek answers from narcissists.”
As an adult, Tracey became Catholic, only to see the same threads running through—narcissism, misogyny, racism, abuse and more.
In the past few years, Tracey’s found solace in yoga, meditation and nature. She’s grown and been changed, not through the religious beliefs she’d had as a child or as an adult, but through experiencing the real and tangible world.
“The mountain of evidence, learned throughout my training and experiences as a physician and a mental health professional, that church teachings do not lead to emotional well being and human flourishing, my coping with the cognitive dissonance and eventually being unable to live a double life as an evidence based professional on the weekdays and devout follower of church teachings at home and on the weekend.”
“As someone who’s come out of this now, I see how performative Christian parenting is…There’s a lot of pressure in Christianity to make sure everything looks good.”
“…a lot of interviewees have Hell Anxiety. I had the opposite. I had like, Hell Skepticism.”
“That’s a theme through my whole experience of Christianity…Christians are actually attracted to narcissists…People are drawn to or encouraged to seek answers from narcissists.”
“I saw how my psychological agency was taken away by this idea that women are supposed to be the ‘followers,’ and not initiate things [romantically].”
“I was still going to an evangelical church…I started to see that their prayer life is just magical thinking.”
“I look back at…confession. It’s very problematic. There’s secrecy involved; whatever happens in the confessional stays secret…There’s a power dynamic there, as well.”
“They really promoted these ideas, like ‘wanting to have other things in your life besides having kids is selfish.’ Even things like, ‘wanting time to rest or wanting your own hobbies’; that’s selfish. All you were supposed to be doing was having children.”
“I think the church encourages men to have narcissistic traits.”
“I was now trying to be a progressive Christian but I still saw so many things…I just couldn’t get over.”
“The Catholic Church was really making women reproductive objects.”
“…trying to discover these answers to my questions? It all just started to fall apart.”
“I had done all this work on myself, for my own personal spiritual wellness—my yoga, meditation, just being silent, being out in nature. Christians will say, ‘When hard times come, you have to lean on your faith,’ and a hard time had come, and I really saw that faith was superfluous. It wasn’t doing anything for me. I didn’t need it.”
“The mountain of evidence, learned throughout my training and experiences as a physician and a mental health professional, that church teachings do not lead to emotional well being and human flourishing, my coping with the cognitive dissonance and eventually being unable to live a double life as an evidence based professional on the weekdays and devout follower of church teachings at home and on the weekend.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 Network. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I are trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcasts on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. 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 group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, we have a merchandise shop on T public where you can get your graceful atheist podcast and secular Grace themed items. You'll find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, my guest today is Tracy Tracy grew up in a Focus on the Family obey at all costs, family environment. She started off in a Presbyterian Church, she experienced evangelical churches, she eventually got married to a Catholic man and became Catholic. During medical school, she began to deconstruct and ultimately her being a psychiatrist and relying on science began to conflict with her faith. She now calls herself a nun and o n e. Here is Tracy, to tell her story. Tracy, welcome to the grateful atheist podcast.
Tracey 1:52
Oh, thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I've been listening for really only a couple of months. But it's been a joy to listen to the podcast. And I'm really excited to get to tell my story.
David Ames 2:04
Yeah, and I'm excited to have you it sounds like you've got some unique perspective as well as some unique expertise that you bring to the table. So I'm really glad to get into it. But we'll begin with where we always do, what was the faith tradition that you grew up with?
Tracey 2:19
Sure. Um, so I guess my story of how I relate to religion starts maybe a couple years before I was born, that my parents both had grown up in a Presbyterian Church that became part of the Evangelical revival that was going on in the 1970s. And so they met after college and got married. In the mid 1970s, when all of this Evangelical revival was going on, they had this charismatic pastor at their church. So, so this church I grew up in was was like a mainstream, or like mainline Protestant Presbyterian Church. But I would say it tended more like towards the evangelical the, or the conservative side of things. So you know, I look at I look back at my life as a young child, and I see, you know, my parents were, they had good intentions, they, they meant, well, they were loving people. But they were probably also, you know, people were very young, starting their family, not really having a lot of confidence, or a lot of, you know, like that, like they really needed some sort of outside source to tell them what to do. And so that became evangelical Christianity and for, for you for their parenting and their family decisions, they really relied on an organization called Focus on the Family, which I think a lot of listeners, if they've had a background in Christianity, they know what that organization is. For any listeners who don't know, what Focus on the Family is, or what I've come to understand it to be is Austin, it's ostensibly are like superficially, just an organization that helps with like Christian parenting, Christian marriage, just giving advice, the person who runs it is named James Dobson. He's been around since like, the mid 70s. And he is a psychologist. Um, but if you really dig into what this organization is about, there's a lot of political ties to white Christian nationalism to the religious right. There's really a lot more to it than what it looks like on the surface. So my parents follow this parenting philosophy and it's, you know, based on this Christian idea that we're all sinners and so that means that children are sinful to children who kind of have to have their will broken or be trained through discipline, how to be obedient, and so that training included some spanking and corporal punishment. It also includes the idea which I think is a little bit more insidious but also important that children need to be instantly compliant or that obedience means obeying right away like the child is not supposed to have time. Um, to process their emotions, to be able to shift from what they're doing, they just need to comply right away. And, you know, it really the model is emphasizing obedience compliance, not emphasizing emotional well being regulation and understanding of emotions, mental health, those things were not emphasized. So, you know, I have one memory of being spanked as a child. And I could tell you know, that we talked so much about cognitive dissonance, and I could tell my parents had that cognitive dissonance too, you know, they would say things like, I don't really want to do this, but I have to do it out of love. This isn't pleasant, but I'm doing it because I love you. And you can see, like, we all know as human beings, that hitting someone as the opposite of love, but but we're all in this. We're all in this distorted world, right. And so So, you know, I, my parents were kind people, they weren't doing this in a cruel or repetitive way. But, but and I look at myself and I would not that I look back labeled myself as a highly sensitive person, or maybe an empath is like a label that some people use. And so it didn't, it didn't take very much for me to get in line. And, you know, I really learned very quickly to be sensitive to my parents moves or to what they wanted. And as I, as I look back on that, that kind of discipline, it really robbed me of my own agency of my own sense of personal autonomy, and instead was replaced with like an outward compliance, a fear based compliance. And so I look at my family life as a lot of good things happening. My parents were kind people, they wanted me to get a good education, we had nice times walking to the park, having a pet dogs going on vacation. But I always see like, there was this overlaying sense of fear, or like, I wasn't totally safe to be myself, you know, I think my parents probably didn't have some of their own emotional issues dealt with. And so it was hard for them to like validate or empathize with my emotions, it was really more an outward focus on behaving yourself, keeping yourself under control. And you know, when unfortunately, the result of that is that outward outwardly other people would see my family and say, oh, what good children you have, and your children are so obedient. And so then my parents are getting this positive feedback, like overdoing it a really good job. And I see, as someone who's come out of this now, how performative Christian parenting is, I saw my parents judge what was going on in other people's families, what was going on in other people's lives and how they were raising their children. It's there's a lot of pressure in Christianity, I think, to make everything look good look like it's working, living up to expectations. So I'll come back to that. Because that, that comes back in my life as an adult in my parenting.
David Ames 8:07
When you were young, was this something that you personally took on? Or were you just following along with your parents? In
Tracey 8:13
terms of my, my faith or my Christian belief?
David Ames 8:17
Correct? Yes.
Tracey 8:18
Yeah, I was so good. So getting into some of that, you know, so we went to this Presbyterian Church. And I do remember, like, when I was seven years old, and there was like, a really nice Sunday school teacher. And there was a little boy in the class who had said, he asked Jesus into his heart to be his savior. We're all about seven at this age. And, and the teacher was the Sunday School teacher was so happy and all this is so wonderful. So I'm like, oh, I should ask Jesus into my heart, too. And so I did, whatever that involves saying a prayer or something. And I remember telling my parents, and they're like, Well, you already did that when you were four. And they told me, they explained the whole story to me, and, and I'm like, I don't even remember that. So So I look at that now, like, you know, we were just these really tiny children, whether I was four or whether I was seven. Like we didn't really understand we were just doing what the adults told us to do. But, um, you know, like that, that Presbyterian Church, I really don't see anything there being like, like traumatic or abusive, it was a pretty nice place. I had some good memories. But I never, you know, for my parents, that was like their community, that's where they belonged. And I never really felt that either. I was just kind of there. Because that's what we did every week as a family. And I didn't really ask a lot of questions as a child, really not until high school. Did I, you know, look at things on a deeper level. Did that answer your question?
David Ames 9:42
Yes, it does. And then going into like, The Age of Reason, and maybe into high school, where you're part of youth groups and things like that. Were there things for you to participate in, in that church?
Tracey 9:53
I did. I did like a youth choir in high school, but I even know part of my experience. Who was that? I didn't always feel like I fit in socially at the church. I didn't really have any close friends there. My close friends were at school and I went to public school, or other kids in the neighborhood, but it just I never really like clicked with that whole church community. Okay. There is another brief period of time, and I don't really know why. But it was around middle school age, like maybe 1011 12 years old that my parents left that Presbyterian Church and instead, we went to a fundamentalist Bible Church for a couple years, I think maybe there was a pastor they didn't like at the Presbyterian Church. And so that was a different experience. And we're like, the women would wear these little like lace doilies on their head, and I'm like, What's that all about? And they sit, oh, that's how they showed their submission to their husband, because there's a Bible verse about women covering their heads or something, and my mom, to her credit, would not wear it, which, you know, I appreciate that now, um, but you know, it, this was a lot more, you know, like sitting and listening to an hour long sermon, and, you know, just a lot more hardcore teachings. And I just remember, like, Oh, I just hated going to that church. Yeah, and this is where, you know, like, there was nothing very traumatic at the Presbyterian Church, but at this at this church, I remember in Sunday school, they taught us about hell, and so we're, like, 1011 12 years old. And I really think it's interesting looking back, that you have a lot of interviewees who have held anxiety. And so I had the opposite. I had like, held skepticism or how,
David Ames 11:30
okay, yeah. What's the
Tracey 11:34
word I'm looking for? Nevermind, I can't think of it. So I remember, like we had to, we had to look at these Bible verses that are about like, people burning in the lakes of fire and all that. And I'm just sitting there, like, 11 years old. Like, they want me to be scared by all of this, but it just, This just can't be true. Like this is this. And I don't know what it was. But it just, it just never sank in with me or I just never
David Ames 11:56
good for you, Tracy. Yeah, I think skepticism is the right word for that. Good for you. Yeah,
Tracey 12:01
yeah. Yeah. So then, you know, by high school, we were back at the Presbyterian Church. And another interesting thing I saw is that when my parents chose to leave that fundamentalist Bible Church, there was a family that we'd been, we'd been really close with there, like, we have dinner at their house all the time, we would spend time with their family, their kids were the same age as my brother and I, we it seemed like we were very close. And when we went back to the other church, this family just stopped speaking to us completely. Okay. And that, you know, that was really eye opening for me too. And I asked my parents, like, why don't they invite us over anymore? Or why don't they speak with us? And my parents said, Oh, well, they're angry that we stopped going to their church. And it was just interesting to see that it looked like this was a close and trusting friendship. And then it was really contingent on us believing what they believed going to their church, and it wasn't really a mutual friendship.
Yeah, so moving into high school. So going back to this Focus on the Family organization, so they really emphasize adolescence is like it's a really dangerous time. People, there's sexual temptation, people stray from the faith, they ask too many questions, sex, drugs, rock and roll all that and so, so I could, you know, again, as a highly sensitive person could feel my parents anxiety about this period of time, even though I was a good kid, they really didn't have anything to worry about. But they were, they had that anxiety, there was a lot more control. You know, the other thing that happens in adolescence, I think, is there's a lot of, you know, pigeonholing people into gender roles. And so there was a lot more control about what I was wearing, you know, who I was spending time with, my parents had the idea No, none of my friends at this public school, we're like, good enough people for me to spend time with. And, you know, that was difficult for me that there were times that I, I wanted to date somebody. And I just didn't really pursue that because of the negative attention and the the control and anxiety that would have been happening at home. And that's something I had to grieve later on that I didn't really get an opportunity to, to have some relationships that would have been nice relationships to have, right? Yeah. And so like to my parents, I was appearing very compliant, very well behaved. But, you know, like going to public high school was really an exposure to a lot of other things. And I really loved public high school, you know, that I had this whole variety of friends who were Catholic, Jewish, atheist, agnostic. And there's were some more cognitive dissonance came in like, especially my Jewish friends who were very devout, a lot of them in their own faith and very lovely people and doing a lot of good through their synagogue or through their own community. And saying, Well, you know, why would my church say these people go to hell or the you know, Like, like they don't believe in Jesus yet they have this really good life. It just it just didn't fit. And then just learning from my public school teachers, just all these views of all these intellectual pursuits, science literature, I was interested in like, like theater, and I'm a musician. So I did a lot of like with the orchestra, the musicals, I really loved psychology. That had always been fascinating to me. And so, so, you know, I really saw from my parents more, trying to control that intellectual control at home, like when our biology class did the unit on evolution, my dad wanted me to read some other stuff about like, creationism and like, Oh, this is a other point of view, you should believe. And I had an American history teacher who was like, very, very avant garde, in terms of like, not teaching us the sanitized version of American history. And I could see how uncomfortable that made my parents that I was learning some of this information in psychology was something that was fascinating to me. And then my, you know, my parents want mostly my dad was like, Well, you know, that's like those social sciences aren't really like serious sciences. And you see now like, like, Christians have a hard time with psychology, because it doesn't lead to the same conclusions about what makes us happy. And what's healthy for us.
David Ames 16:23
Well, neither neither do the harder sciences. But yes.
Tracey 16:29
Yes, yes, that is true. So then it was time to go to college. So it's so you know, another thing that had happened to me through adolescence is I hadn't because of that intellectual control, I haven't really had the opportunity to figure out what I wanted, or how to make my own independent decisions. And so, you know, it's time to go to college. And I'm like, I don't know how to choose something. So my parents, so you know, they, they picked a couple of different conservative Christian colleges for me to look at. And, you know, I picked the one where I felt the most comfortable and I got a scholarship there. And so, so that's where I see like, the religious trauma became more where religious trauma came into play, or where things became really intense. So theory, the culture was not I just got like purity cultural light in high school, nothing that was really that traumatic. But in college, there was really a heavy emphasis here that you were supposed to marry young, you had to marry somebody from the college, you had to be engaged. By the time you were graduating at age 22 A lot of stuff on gender roles, modesty, that really came some of that coming from the college, some of it coming from the students who brought their own baggage with them. So I saw my peers, you know, like, like, either dating or the more conservative ones having a courtship being engaged by age 1920 21. Yeah, a lot of other a lot of other sort of, you know, heavy religious concepts of like sacrificing your own happiness for God's will. A lot of pressure to go into the ministry and missions and everything was very performative. You know, a lot of like, these student led worship services, where everybody, you know, all these, like, very heartfelt, dramatic stories. And, you know, I just kind of felt inadequate, because I wasn't a very dramatic or attention seeking person, and I didn't have anything real profound going on in my life. So and then the same, the same issue came up here that I still never really dated. Because I think deep down, I knew, you know, I'm 20 years old, I'm not ready to get married. And if you start dating somebody here, you're going to be pressured to marry them. There was one guy who was really interested in me, and he pursued me and it just scared me to death. And I just kind of like, you know, held him at arm's length. And, you know, I still kind of he was a good person, I just wasn't,
David Ames 18:49
I think this is really important. What you're describing. Yeah, part of part of adolescence and dating, is finding what you like and what you don't like. And if the, if they're the heavy expectations that this is courtship, leading to potential marriage, it just completely removes your ability to learn what it is that you like, and a potential partner.
Tracey 19:12
Right. Right. And that will that will come in later for me but yes, I had I had a close friend who she started dating somebody and like, you know, like the night they decided they were going to start dating. They said it was a courtship and it was like, they were on the path towards marriage from like, like the day they decided they wanted a relationship together. And that, you know, that was really, that's really a lot you know, we'd our brains aren't even fully formed at age 19 or 28 to make those decisions
and I was a really good student I majored in microbiology and knew I wanted to go into health professions and you know, as college is progressing, I'm still single I have my whole life ahead. To me, so I decided to apply to medical school and I got accepted. And so I look at that now like how warps was that, that I thought going to Meadows medical school is like, that's my plan B, or that's my backup plan if I don't get to be a Christian wife and mother. No, I think like, like, like, you know, you're you're 22 years old, you've been accepted to professional school, you have your whole life ahead of you. Like, that's, that's a wonderful thing. That's like, that's great. It's not a problem. But but you know, this environment I was in was warped, where it was hard to even see that. And you know, and then the other really significant aspect of this Christian college experience was there was a professor there and I don't know if you'd call this exactly sexual harassment. Was it spiritual abuse? Was it on a narcissist. So there was this professor who he had this like reputation around campus as having this spiritually powerful aura, he is very charismatic. He, but he was a biology professor. But he was always really weaving all this religious stuff into the classes. And he told these stories about himself. Like he's got some special spiritual, spiritual abilities, or like, he could like Intuit things about people. And, you know, and so it didn't take long to see what was really happening was his, his special interest was only in the young single women.
David Ames 21:21
The shocking,
Tracey 21:22
I am shocked, attractive young woman. Yeah, so he would, so he would encourage some of these students and sometimes it was me, oh, you're not understanding that come to my come to my office hours, and we'll go over this one on one. And so so like, there was nothing that was overtly sexual, or that was, you know, like assault or anything like that. But he would just, you know, get very intrusive, very personal about, like, tell me about your spiritual life? Are you dating anyone? You know, lots of way would you like me to pray for you, let's, uh, you need a hug. And so, um, you know, eventually I mentioned some of these things to my parents. And so my mother, despite her evangelical Christian part of her, she's still a human woman, who has been through some of these things themselves as herself and was like, you know, this is not okay. And that was just devastating for me, you know, like to, to, you know, to be in this, like, these rose colored glasses about religion, and then in this huge loss of innocence to see like, this person is using religion, and using God for their own narcissistic supply. And then a couple years later, it came to light that there were a couple other students who had reported this kind of thing. It was ongoing, and the school didn't really do anything about it. So look at the irony here that my parents sent me to this Christian College to keep me safe. From the problems of the world that then this is, this is what you get at a Christian institution.
David Ames 22:47
Yeah, I mean, clearly ironic. The thing I wanted to mention is, you know, if you felt like, you know, there was some grooming activity happening with you that maybe wasn't, you know, aggressive. You can imagine that somebody with maybe a less strong personality than yourself, or born who would be pushed around by that. Yes, sort of. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So clearly, that person was preying on people on
Tracey 23:09
Yeah, yeah. And so I mean, I think that's really a theme that I see through my whole experience with Christianity, too, is that there's this Christians are actually attracted to narcissists. And, you know, they don't get that information about personality disorders, about coercive control, psychological manipulation, people are actually like, encouraged to be like, drawn to or trust or seeking answers from narcissists. And, you know, with, we see plenty of that going on. So So then my next step was medical school. And so that I my deconstruction from evangelical Christianity happened fairly quickly in medical school. So I'm finally exposed to all these things that I'd been protected, protected in quotes from, you know, may like meeting a lot, lots of people from all different religions, atheists, secular humanists, queer people, just like everybody who I was told to kind of keep it arm's length. You know, now I'm interacting with all these people in medical school and they're all lovely people, none of the things I had been taught about them were true. But you know, I did still kind of at first stick to my Christian roots. And Elena like, went to the the other evangelical or Christian students as my friend so I started dating a man in that social group. And we, you know, this relationship was like, it was just fraught with poor communication. Like I'd say, we probably dated for five months, but I can't even tell you exactly how many months it was because the communication was so poor about like, are we friends who are interested in each other? Are we actually dating Are we in a relationship? And so this is where I see like, where purity culture hit hard for me that you know, for me that like the physical, the stuff about my body, like I was kind of spared that part, but I saw my psychologic To go agency was really taken away by this idea that women are supposed to be like the followers and not initiate things. And I realized, like, I didn't even feel like I get asked this man like, like, What are your intentions? are? Are you attracted to me? Or are we dating or not? You know, unfortunately, fortunately, he was a nice person, he just didn't have good communication skills. And so I was, it wasn't like a severe harm when we broke up, but I thought like, how vulnerable that could leave me to not be able to speak up for myself to not be able to plan my life, get my needs met, speak up for what I needed in a relationship. You know, when I saw to how like that, like that whole dynamic that puts an unfair burden on the male to if he's supposed to, like, take all these risks and make all these decisions. without really any input from the person that he's dating. You know, that's, that's really, that's really a lot to put on anyone. So you can see all the reasons this relationship failed. I also saw like purity culture, had taught me to look for external qualities, performative qualities, you know, treating a person, like a commodity, like this person is my means to the end of a Christian marriage. Instead of, you know, I didn't ask the questions like, Is this person kind does this person communicate? Well, does this person honest, is this person authentic? You know, I didn't. I didn't learn until I gone through that experience, that that's really what I needed to be looking for.
Yeah, so So then, you know, as medical school progresses, I started spending time working with patients. And you know, not just the classroom learning. And so I saw like, all these politically conservative theories about social problems about poverty, about single mothers, all these things, it was all wrong, like, all these conservative theories are totally off base. And I seeing I'm seeing all these things, like how hard the working poor have to work, and they can never get ahead. This is in the early 2000s, before Obamacare. So some people like they just can't get health insurance, and they can never get ahead because of that, you know, I met the obstetricians who were actually the ones going to Planned Parenthood and doing work there. And I'm like, you know, these people aren't greedy, these people aren't getting any money for doing this. They're just, you know, trying to help these underserved people. You know, seeing how what we call poor life choices are what Christians would call sin, I'm like, these people are just having like mental health problems, and they're dealing with trauma. And this is about psychological distress, or they're just doing these things because they have to, to survive. And so but also, like, learning all the science of, of medicine, and so I was still going to an evangelical church at the time. And I'm just realizing, like, you know, they would have all these prayer requests for all these people who are sick. And I started to see like, like this, their prayer life is like magical thinking, like, they don't even understand the science of this, or they're praying for things that are like, wow, that, you know, that wouldn't really be a safe outcome. If that happened. It just, and then I saw how they, you know, they didn't credit the work of the health care providers, when something went well, they would just say, Oh, God works in miracle. And I also saw how selective they were with like, if someone had cancer, or someone had heart problems, they would get surrounded with love and attention, and they'd come to the front of the church, so everyone could pray for them. But then there's people with mental health struggles, people whose children were having behavior problems, like those people were hidden. We don't we don't talk about those people. And I even like, like, David, just like, a couple years ago, found out that a couple of those my peers, like young women in that church had had a teenage pregnancy and it was so well hidden, I didn't even know for like 20 years. And then I saw, you know, I saw two there they had while I was there a whole political dispute over half the people loved the head pastor, and half of the people didn't like him. And there was all kinds of bad behavior about that, where I was just kind of like, you know, I can't I can't do this anymore. And so I was kind of out of the evangelical church after that, but wasn't ready to leave my whole religion. So at the same time, you know, I'm in medical school and I decided to specialize in psychiatry. So I still always been fascinated by Psychology found out as I'm going through medical school I'm much more interested in this person's story than I am in like, what is their lab work look like? Or you know, what are their what is their heart sounds like and so that's kind of going against that Christian culture where people saw Christian saw me know mental health and psychiatry is kind of like like scary are those people are all atheists are they're gonna like, like, convince you that your faith is wrong and so so I really he kind of had to go against the grain with that too. And I remember my mother saying, Oh, I'm kind of disappointed, I thought you'd be a real doctor with a white coat and a stethoscope. Fortunately, by that time, I had enough confidence in myself that I'm just like, Well, no, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, another sidebar that was interesting, as I well, you know, when I worked on the inpatient psychiatric units a couple of times, people who had attended my childhood church showed up having a psychiatric admission, and I'm like, wow, you know, like these, you know, these problems are there that people never really talked about. And so like, while all this is going on, you know, I've gotten over a purity culture, I've started taking a different approach to dating and yeah, just in found that went so much better to just appreciate the person for who they are. Just take it one day at a time, don't plan your whole future out, I, you know, I was starting to speak up for what I needed in the relationships, set boundaries, you know, and finding out like, those relationships ended, and then I would just feel sad and move on, I didn't feel like I was ruined, or anything was ruined, or God was disappointed, just like, well, you know, that wasn't the right person, or the chemistry was off, or, you know, this, he didn't respect me about this issue, so and so so and eventually, I met the man who ended up becoming my husband. So he was a medical school classmate. And he was Catholic. Not like a super serious Catholic, but attended a Catholic church. And so by this point, I was open minded enough, I thought, well, you know, like any Christian is a real Christian and a good person. So. So sometimes I would go to his Catholic Church. And this was not a typical Catholic Church. So this was the church that was like, like the student, parish, on the campus of where we were going to medical school. So it was run by this hippie Franciscan priest who what didn't have to answer to the whole church, government structure, and he just kind of did his own thing. So it was a very progressive search. And so that was that was really appealing to me, but the progressive part, but also like, the things that didn't exist in Protestantism with like, you know, there's a whole you have a whole season, a liturgical season where the calendar moves around like Christmas, and lent and Easter, and there's all these different feast days to celebrate, and all the feed all the physical aspect that wasn't there. Or like the sensory aspects, that's a better way to say it, right? There's not there in Protestantism with the candles and the, you know, the way the music was just kind of more like more rich, or the bells and the incense and all those things. And so I was kind of intrigued by Catholicism, but I didn't want to convert yet. And so we ended up going to an Episcopal church that had some of that, you know, formal and liturgical aspect, but there wasn't this pressure to conform. And that was a really good time in my life, you know, like, like, I was falling in love with the person I wanted to marry, I wasn't taking religion so seriously. I would, you know, I was enjoying what I was studying, like, by that time, we graduated from medical school, and we were doing our training. And so I so I went into a psychiatry residency and loved learning all the psychology about that. You know, my husband and I did not wait until we were married to have sex. And so that was another thing where purity culture was disproven. You know, like, I remember, I remember waking up and going into work the morning after I lost my virginity and just being like, I don't feel any different. I'm still he told me that I was going to be a completely different person. And I'm not and
David Ames 33:37
the only difference between you your husband and Christian couples who say they didn't is that you're telling the truth?
Tracey 33:45
Yeah. Oh, man. Yes. So and then, but one interesting thing I found out is that, you know, when my husband decided to propose, he took my parents out to lunch to ask them for their blessing. And he told he didn't tell me right away. But he told me later on that my parents were really pretty hard on him. And, you know, they really interrogated him about his theology, and like, kind of questioning if he was really a Christian. And then it had a lot of questions for him about is he going to be complementarian enough for them? Like, was he going to be the spiritual leader of the family? And how was he going to do this? And would he and how, and if we didn't agree, was he going to be the one to make these difficult decisions was I going to submit to Him and you know, he said, that really weighed heavy on him for many years and you know, he felt a lot of pressure then to like prove, hey, I can do this I can be a good Christian husband and father and so he started to get more religious especially after our first child was born.
And so then my after my oldest child was born, we finished our training program. So now we have to find a place to work with long term and so and we and our baby was one so and we decided to move back to my husband's hometown. And so he came from a small town like in a rural farming community in the Midwest. So, so it was at that point, you know, we had our child baptized, and then I'm like, this is kind of weird that we're all you know, kind of, like from different church traditions. And I decided then to join the Catholic Church, sort of based on what I knew from the Catholic church in the city. Okay, but then the Catholic Church and my husband, small rural town was quite different. So and then at first, you know, I probably, I've probably maintained a healthy skepticism about some things like, you know, the, this was, you know, like, maybe five years after the, the pre sexual abuse scandal had really hit the mainstream media. One thing we decided to do then, too, is, you know, the Catholic Church has this issue about contraception, and you're not supposed to use contraception. They have an alternative thing called natural family planning. And so what that that really is, is like, and if the if the background on this is like, when contraception became mainstream in the 1960s, the Catholic Church had to make a decision about are we going to say, this is okay or not, and it's a very controversial decision that they decided no, but they said, people can use fertility awareness methods, to they said, postpone, like not to prevent, but to postpone to space, your births. And so, so we decided to go that route after our first child was born. And you think like, Okay, you're 30, you're healthy, you know, your life is kind of together, you know, you want to have more kids, like, that's not that terrible of a decision at that point in your life. But it could, it could be later on, but we went with that. And so now we're in this more conservative community. You know, but I was kind of focused on, we had two more children getting my career established. And it was really, by the time my third and my youngest child was born, things started to get more difficult. So my husband, you know, and he has this pressure on him to be a good provider, and to be this Christian husband and all these things. And he was getting very focused on his job. He was having a hard time saying no to work demands. He put a lot of identity into his career. And so then I'm trying to maintain my career too. And I'm raising three young kids. And I really found that a lot of those in almost unconscious Christian beliefs came back to really haunt me a lot of stuff about like, good mothers don't send their children to daycare, or you know, like, when I was growing up in the 80s, and there's like, the Satanic Panic of like, like, you know, the people who work at daycares are all child abusers, and Satanists, and you know, you, good mothers stay at home with their kids. And so I was really having a hard time with anxiety about my children's health and safety, I was having a hard time trusting other people to take care of my kids. And I really see, like we were getting drawn into those traditional Christian family stereotypes, you know, my husband has to be the provider. And you know, and then I'm, I'm feeling like, I have to be this perfect mother. And so it gets back to, you know, what I was talking about before with his performance, and my Christian family is his performance. And we have to live up to these role expectations. And we were really getting drawn into that. And that was having an impact on our marriage, where my husband and I were kind of getting emotionally detached from one another, and not really being our real selves anymore. And unfortunately, everybody in our church would reinforce that and praise that, Oh, you're such a good family, your children are so well behaved. And, you know, you said the sexism in the church, too, that my husband and I had gone to the same medical school, we have the exact same knowledge of that same training, exact same degree. But they said he's such a wonderful doctor, and they told me she's such a wonderful mother.
David Ames 38:59
Wow. Yeah.
Tracey 39:02
And what I was really finding was, I liked my career, in a lot of ways better than I liked being a parent, at least have young children. You know, I'm going to work and I either like, like, using my intellect, working with other adults being professional, it's very rewarding. And so so that was, that was not what the expectation was supposed to be that I like my job more than I think, you know, I think a lot of women feel guilty to admit something like that, like I don't I always enjoy being a mother. I like being at work more. Yeah, but I also started to see in this small town, this small town, there was just so much misogyny, so much sexism built into this rural culture. And so some of it was at the hospital like in my mental health practice, I felt very comfortable but the larger medical staff had a lot of older male doctors and you know, they'd go to meetings and just like speak over people and act intimidating and hijack the meeting with their Gender, they made a lot of sexist comments. So it was that was sort of a hostile environment. But then in my work, I worked with a lot of women patients who had been then they've grown up in that community and been survivors of childhood sexual abuse or other sexual violence, there's a lot of domestic violence. And I just saw like misogyny and abuse of women and children, it was just epidemic in this community. And it's so ironic that you, when you drive into the town, on a certain highway, there's a road sign, and it says, Welcome to, in the name of the town, see you in church. And then it's got a list of all the churches. And so it's supposed to be like this model, religious farming community. But then I saw the underground of that of like, like these women and children who had just been abused, and like all of this underbelly of this community. And that was really hard for me. The I Am a sensitive person. But I see too, that in my Christian upbringing, I wasn't really taught how to set boundaries, and to keep myself separate. And and you think about what, what happens in Christianity is you're supposed to spend all your time helping other people worrying about other people, you're supposed to go up to total strangers and ask them about their beliefs, and you're supposed to insert yourself in other people's personal decisions. And so I had never learned boundaries, and I was really overwhelmed. And unfortunately, I kind of looked to religion, to the Catholic religion to help me with that anxiety. So something else is unique to Catholicism is confession. And the idea that, you know, you don't just confess your sins to God, that you go to the priests, and you have this little private meeting with the priest, and then the priest tells you that God forgives your sins. And, you know, I think I've just really needed someone to talk to, and I was going to confess things that weren't really sins, you know, just like, I felt irritated with somebody or, you know, I noticed somebody who's not my husband, who I think is attractive, you know, like, those aren't really sins, that's just part of being human. But by this time, we had a new priest, and when he heard these confessions, he kind of encouraged me to think about myself that way, and to be hard on myself that way, and to come back and kind of, and, you know, I look back at that the whole process of confession is very problematic. There's a there's secrecy involved, that whatever happens in the confessional state secret, and we see and you know, that's there's a public discussion about that in terms of if somebody confesses something like abuse of a child, and then the priest doesn't report that because it's part of it's part of this secrecy, but there's a power dynamic there that sets up a lot of unhealthy situations. And what I also saw is how it created this cycle of shame, you know, like, the Church teaches you that you these things you do are sinful, so then you feel shame. And then you need some relief from your shame. So you go to confession, and then you feel this wonderful relief that you've been forgiven. And then your life goes on, and you make mistakes, because you're human. And then the cycle repeats. And I started to see, you know, looking at my professional life, you see that like their cycles of domestic violence, their cycles of addiction, and I'm like, oh, you know, this, this cycle of shame and going to confession, it doesn't really look that different from these other cycles of pathological behavior.
But then, so this priest, it got to know my husband and I, he encouraged us to get much more involved with natural family planning, not just to practice it in our private lives, but to be involved in the community and to become teachers. And he thought it would be a great look for his church, if he had two physicians who could also teach this natural family planning method. Yeah. So. So we joined an organization and got their literature, we started taking some classes. So like, this developed a new anxiety for me, because my youngest child was about one. And I knew I never wanted more than three kids. Like if you would ask me at age 1415, I would say, Oh, I probably want three kids. Like I always knew I wanted three kids. But But this but this organization, was really promoting the idea that like you're not supposed to put a limit on it or you're not supposed to have that much control over your life. God's supposed to decide how many kids you're gonna have.
David Ames 44:31
Can we just say three is a lot? A lot.
Tracey 44:35
Yeah, to to the world, but like in this in this organization, they would say that's a small family and a lot of these people have 6789 kids and, and, you know, they really promoted these ideas, like wanting other things in your life, besides having kids was selfish. Or just things like wanting time to rest wanting time for your own hobbies, like that selfish, like all you were supposed to be doing was having children. And so I started to feel this guilt about like I knew knew I didn't want a fourth child. And like, is that wrong. And it's just like really getting caught up and anxiety about that. And so this preset also befriended my husband. So my husband had finally gotten to a healthier place with his work where he had cut back on his work as a doctor. But now this priest was encouraging him to like, like, join the school board for the Catholic school and start a Men's Ministry at the church. And I was really jealous about that, because I wanted to do a lot of things for the church. But nobody ever asked me because I'm a woman. But all these people look up, they looked up to my husband, they admired him. And so they you know, that's where the narcissism comes back in that I think the church encourages men to have narcissistic traits. And I saw, like my husband, he was not like that at all, when I met him and fell in love with him, but you know, this whole system and what this priests was encouraging him to do, got him like, very caught up in his image and feeling like he was a community influencer. And again, just like really getting drawn into the church and to being this model family. And not really being happy on the inside. But every blood looking good to everybody else.
David Ames 46:13
The fact that you both went to the same medical school at the exact same training is just such a painful example. Yes, of that different standards.
Tracey 46:22
It's right. And we and we get mail all the time that's addressed to Dr. and Mrs. Yeah, and I think in our entire 20 years of marriage, we've had one piece of mail that's addressed to Dr. And Mr. Right, right. And that's just not religion, that's all of society.
Yeah, so 2015 was the year everything fell apart. So I had to, you know, I've been getting more and more strict with myself. And so lent came around. And then that's, that's also a unique sort of Catholic thing, maybe not just for Catholics, but like giving something up. And that can become very performative, or they're like suffering is encouraged or being hard on yourself. And so I decided to not eat any snacks. And you know, I started losing weight, and I was hungry all the time. Interestingly, in the middle of all this, I got called into jury duty. And this was like a really serious case, where there was a serious crime that had been committed, and the defendant was facing a life sentence. And I remember, like, I wanted to go to church and talk to this priest, I needed advice, I was overwhelmed. And he just wasn't there. Thank God, he wasn't there. So I went in. So this whole week, I was on jury duty, I was just left alone with my own thoughts. And I had to make this momentous decision. And I came away with that with like, I am perfectly capable of discerning the facts, I'm perfectly capable of making my own informed decision, I can be at peace with the decision I made, I didn't need any help from anybody. And that was really like this little, you know, this, this event that just kind of like broke up, this thinking pattern had been stuck in with the person, we decided the person was guilty, and he went to prison for life. And I was just like, really at peace with that, like, I know, that was the right decision. The other thing that was going on then as my hospital was, had been bought out by a bigger healthcare company, and I would have had to renegotiate my contract. And I was very stressed about that. So you know, like, I'm not eating properly. I'm all stressed about all these things. And so I started having chronic digestive problems. My My body was saying, you have to stop this, you have to stop all the stress, you have to stop putting yourself through all this guilt, stop beating yourself up. I was talking with my lawyer about these contract negotiations. And he said, you know, Tracy, you're a really talented psychiatrist, your work is valuable to the community, you can do everything you want. You don't have to sign this contract. You don't have to work for this company. And I think that was the first time somebody in the community said, like, you have value, you have power, you can do what you want to do. And I also saw at the same time, like, like, I'd like to working at this hospital for quite some time, but I thought people were taking advantage of my empathy. They were taking advantage of my leadership, my responsibility, they were piling too much work on me. So I started seeing a therapist, a secular psychotherapist, and I decided to quit that job. And so my therapist really introduced me to this concept of scrupulosity. You know, like call it like, like you're a normal human being. And you're, you know, there's all these things that you're saying are sinful, and they're not sinful, and you need to stop beating yourself up. She encouraged me to use yoga and meditation to calm my body down. I finally had a moment of clarity where I was like, why would God want me to have all these children? And like, why am I feeling guilty about not wanting to have more kids? And I realized, like, that idea wasn't even coming from my concept of God. All it was was worrying about what religious authorities and church people would think of me was like, oh, you know, like, that's not even, like, why do I care that much with those people? will think of me. So I was starting to find my voice. And so this priests that was at our church, I started to push back and ask him some really hard questions about like, Why can't women be priests, and the financial scandals in the church, and then most importantly, the sex abuse scandal. And he got very upset and very defensive. When I was asking those questions, especially about child sex abuse scandals, and, and he actually started yelling at me after church, and I surprised myself that I just stood my ground, I didn't fall apart, I didn't burst into tears. But I just walked out and I was I left. But then I emailed him and said, I want another meeting with you about this. And you know, that was a very strange meeting, like where he said he was more concerned about the reputation of the good priests. He didn't say a word about the effects on the victims or like children being harmed, right. And so I, you know, I disagreed with him, like, I'm a medical professional, I think we should be subject to higher scrutiny. If we if we do something that breaches trust, that should be public knowledge. And I can't remember what he said, but he got so upset that he likes got out of his chair and stood over me. So that was just like a very strange reaction. I got there. And I had also said, like, Why does my husband get to lead a men's group and the women don't have anything, and I want to lead a women's group? And, and he said, Well, you can only do that if I oversee everything, and I approve all your material. And I'm like, oh, forget that. So this really like this whole, you know, this whole situation, I just really, that relationship with that priest was kind of broken after that. So then I kind of started over, I found a different job. I've joined it. There's like a liberal Catholic justice can't sorry, Catholic Social Justice group, and I joined the town's NAACP chapter. And I decided, since I couldn't do my women's group, we just met privately and did a book group that we just met in people's homes. And so I kind of found like, this small town had this liberal underground. And so you know, I found some different people, I started doing yoga regularly, all my digestive symptoms, and my health issues went away, you know, I gain back the weight, I lost from the anxiety, so I was doing better. But I, you know, I'm still trying to be a now a progressive Christian. And I just saw so many things with the cognitive dissonance, they just couldn't get over with, you know, and one was the church teaching on LGBT people. And I saw, you know, of all my patients, my LGBT patients were the ones that I loved the most. And were just like, they were just like good people who were stressed out by the discrimination around them. None of the people at church were really like, close friends to us. They were friendly, but they weren't close friends. And our closest friends were our next door neighbors who were a married gay couple, and they were just, like, kinder and better to us than any of the church people. Yeah. So you know, like, the Church says these things like, oh, LGBT people have disordered lives. And I'm, like, you know, how can this be possible? You know, when I saw that, I was still seeing the same patient population of these women who had been abused, and they're like downtrodden, by family life, and, and I saw in my own life, like, you're gonna feel better, if you stand up for yourself, you're gonna feel better if you find your voice. And none of these women really wanted that. And they wanted me to just just prescribe me some medication. So I can live this submissive Christian life and not feel any anxiety about it. Just seeing all these other ways, people were downtrodden in this small town, like with, you know, like factory work, and just not really being happy with themselves not accepting their emotions, they just kind of wanted to erase their real selves, and just live the way the society here wanted them to be. And I just saw, like, you know, this just isn't, this just isn't right. And you know, the church has encouraged these dysfunctional beliefs that are making people miserable. And nobody here really wants to change. You know, I thought yoga and meditation had saved my health, and had reduced my anxiety, but most of my patients would reject that, because it's not, is not a Christian belief. So it was it was just hard to continue practicing in that situation. And at the same time, I'm doing a lot of reading on my own. And so now I'm reading like very liberal Catholic theologians. So reading a lot of feminist theologians. So John Chen Duster is one who is really interesting to me, as he was talking about how like feminist theology or like a, like a feminist society is one that's shaped like a circle, you know, everybody's equal, everybody has a seat around the table. And a patriarchal society is shaped like a pyramid with the most important person at the top and then, you know, like, the structure trickling down to the people at the bottom and I'm like, Oh, shit, you know, that's exactly what the Catholic church looks like. The Pope is vicious. And I'm like, Oh, how can I? How could I be a Catholic and a feminist? I don't Um, if this is gonna work
you know, I really wanted to dig into why does the church say that women can't be priests? And when you really dig into that theology, what it says, is that because women don't have a body like Jesus, women are less like Jesus than men, and only males could be priests, because Jesus is male. And it's in really, when you get into it, it's like they're saying that men are more like God than women.
David Ames 55:42
What I'm seeing heavily implying that yes,
Tracey 55:44
yes, yeah. And so you see the flaw in the theology there that there's there's saying God is about power and authority. So the people with power and authority must be more like God. And the people who are more like God are the ones who should be given power and authority, and it's like a circle. But what I'm seeing at work is 90% of the people who inflict abuse and trauma are men. Like, how can you say that those people are more like God. And so it's so there's like that complete disconnect to there. You know, my husband and I gave up on the whole natural family planning thing. In I really saw, I really saw as a result of that, that. Like, the Catholic Church was really making women reproductive objects, like everything was about like, Oh, you don't need to be a priest, because you could be a mother. And then your job is to like, like, pass on the faith to your children. And, you know, all this theology kind of ties into like, like gender roles, and that the church is supposed to be like a woman and that Jesus was like the leader of the church. And so I really started to ask like, well, how is a reproductive object different from a sex object? Like they say it's wrong to sexually objectify women? But if I'm a reproductive object, how is that any different? Right. So and then another really interesting thing, and this was like the huge chunk This is, like the, or the huge link in the chain, there really unraveled my Christian faith was reading Walter wink. And his book is called The powers that be so he was like a non violence theologian. And he said, we can't believe the atonement theory. Because that's been complicit invite in violence, like why would we worship a God who demands a violent human sacrifice to appease his own wrath for creating us being able to send but now he's so angry that we're just doing what he we, He created us to do, that he has to violently kill his own son. So God like that would be aligned with all the dictators, all the conquerors, all the abusers of history? Like, why would and I'm like, oh, no, you know, like, the whole, the whole faith is built on this. And he's right. I can't believe this. So So reading all those theologians try, you know, just like trying to discover all these answers to my questions, it all just started to fall apart. You know, the other thing was that Catholicism Catholics will say, like, Catholicism has the fullness of truth like these other religions have some truth, but the fullness of truth is only found in Catholicism. But what I saw is like when I started doing yoga, that gave me something that Christianity never gave me that it reconnected me with the goodness of my own body. And I learned to find like self esteem, and peace in myself. And I had never found that Christianity elite alienates you from your body, and I had to find that in another religion. So I'm like, Well, how can Catholicism have the fullness of truth? If this other religion gave me something that Christianity overlooks?
David Ames 58:53
I think you've just put your finger on the most dangerous thing about traditional religion in general, is that they each claim exclusive access to the fullness of truth, right, like each each church will say to themselves, that they're the one true church and then out is whether that's formally doctrinal lay or just implicit. That's the danger that can be so devastating. Yeah.
Tracey 59:19
Yeah. And so, so at the same time, you know, my, so things were starting to unravel for me. My husband was really still a believer at the time. But he started to see like all the stuff he was doing for the church unraveling. So he had been president of this Catholic school board for a couple of years, and they were really taking advantage of him. Like this was like a second job that he wasn't getting paid for. And like he was taking care of his patients at work and the school principal would call him and he'd get like, pulled out of the healthcare he was doing, to try to solve some kind of crisis for the school and he was like constantly responding to complaint letters, resolving conflicts, spending our own money on like, material rules for board meetings. This man's group that he was in, he found out like nobody there really wanted to work on themselves, they just kind of wanted to complain about all the young people and complain about politics. And so he dropped out of a lot of a lot of stuff that he was doing. And so this is by like, 2016. And so the, like, Donald Trump is running for president at this point. And I saw the impact on that small community, where I was never, I was never shocked. The way people in the mainstream media were because I had seen that how Christians embrace this, you know, like these narcissistic leaders and Christians are really like, the theology is more about power than it is about love. But it was still, you know, like, like, it's some of these things that happened during this campaign were just really atrocious. And I saw like, the signs still went up, all over the community bumper stickers on cars in the church parking lot. And I was just kind of like, we've had enough like, we can't live in this situation anymore. So we moved back to the larger metropolitan area where I grew up and where we'd met in medical school.
So we weren't ready to completely leave Catholicism. And in a large city, you can find more like a wide variety. That's an interesting thing about the Catholic churches that there's kind of more room for different, you know, different cultures and different politics. And so we found a more progressive Catholic Church. And so we had about like a year and a half to get settled in. And then the pandemic happened. And so the pandemic for me was, like, really, it all unraveled for me with the pandemic. And so another thing with Catholicism is that the belief is more more involved with the sacraments and the idea that receiving these different sacraments like baptism, and confession and all these things that you're getting grace from those sacraments, and the most important one
David Ames 1:01:59
is in physically physically being there to receive sacraments, right.
Tracey 1:02:03
And so the so the, so the Eucharist being the most important one was so communion, and the Catholic Church does communion every single week. And the idea is you need to go and they believe that that's like, Jesus was fully present. And it's not just bread and wine. And then you get grace from receiving that, like you're receiving Jesus every week, and that makes you a better person. Okay, but then the pandemic happens, and it's like, like six months that we can't go to church. And this all happens in the springtime during Lent and Easter and these, like, most sacred times of year. And, you know, I really saw absolutely no difference in my life from not doing that
David Ames 1:02:43
practice, right.
Tracey 1:02:47
And in you know, what I, what I saw too, was that I really, I really did okay with the lockdown the big the beginning part from March 2020. And that, you know, like six to eight weeks after that, and like every human being on the planet, I had anxiety about like, am I going to get sick or what's going to happen in the future. But I had done all this work on myself with you know, like, with from my own personal spiritual wellness, my yoga meditation, just like being silent, being out in nature. In You know, I think like, like Christians will say, when hard times come, you have to lean on your faith. And a hard time had come. And I really saw that faith was superfluous. It wasn't doing anything for me, I didn't need it. And I was doing fine. Like, I had learned how to manage my worries and and so when I, when I saw other people, like, they didn't know how to do that, and they're like, oh, everything's gonna fall apart if we don't go to church, or I don't know what to do with myself when I don't go to church and like, I just wasn't having any trouble with that. So and, you know, and then and then I was really disappointed with how a lot of Christians responded to the pandemic, like I think it was the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, sued and went all the way to the Supreme Court saying that it was a violation of religious freedom to have to follow the state's social distancing laws, and they won that case. But to say like, we need to be in charge more than we need to protect vulnerable people from getting was just really just it was just really strange to me, or like the the debates about the masks and so so people would say, like, oh, the mask doesn't work. It doesn't protect me. But the idea of the point isn't to protect yourself. It's like if you wear the mask, that's going to protect somebody else. And so then if everybody wears the mask, we all protect ourselves, we all protect everybody and we're all in this together. And it was like that frame of reference didn't even make sense. Christians in it, the religion is supposed to be founded on love of neighbor on Do unto others as you would do unto yourself. And it's like this when the rubber hits the road, people don't even care about that.
David Ames 1:05:11
I was profoundly surprised by that. I really I really was like, you know, I even having lived through the, the Trump era, I thought that Christians would want to care for people's health. And I was truly surprised yet again. Yeah, the reaction that came out of that.
Tracey 1:05:30
Yeah. And then seeing, you know, like, as the vaccines are developed, or people, Christian saying faith over fear, and they meant like, oh, I don't need the vaccine, or I don't need to wear a mask, or I don't like like God is going to magically protect me. And I kind of took me back to my medical school days and seeing this, like, relying on magical thinking instead of and like rejecting the science. So then, in August of 2020, the news broke that this priest who had been having such a heavy influence over my husband and I, during those years on the small town, he was arrested on Federal sex trafficking charges. And so you open up this whole story and it like it was it was this very disturbing story, like there was no doubt that he was guilty. Like there were tapes, confessions, he made videos of some of his crimes. Yeah, I mean, it was it was disgusting. So it and as we absorbed the shock of all that, we realized, like everything we'd experienced in the relationship with this person who we kind of thought was our friend or somebody who cared about us, it was all spiritual abuse. And my two, and so he was attracted to teenage boys. And my two younger children are boys, who were very young at the time. But I saw like, he could have had a long term goal of like grooming our family to get access to our two young sons as they were growing older. And seeing how like, he had encouraged that script velocity in me because it kind of kept me preoccupied with myself. And he kept my husband busy being like, dependent on by all these committees, so that my husband was too busy to notice. And, but then I also saw that when I woke up, and I started challenging this priest, he just like, he dropped me, like a hot potato, and I and like, at the time, it was really hurtful. But then I think, you know, standing up for myself, thinking for myself thinking critically, that probably saved my two sons from becoming abuse victims, it probably saved my kids lives. Yeah. And so since then, he's been found guilty. So he's gone to prison for the rest of his life. But what we're still kind of working through that how that is affected our ability to trust people.
David Ames 1:07:35
Sure, yeah. That would be devastating, even if there were no direct physical abuse or sexual abuse. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Tracey 1:07:53
But, uh, you know, just just reflecting a little bit more on the other things that happened during the pandemic, with the election of 2020, and then the January 6, insurrection, and just seeing that same that same shallowness and in Christians of not being interested in what was really true or not being interested in the long term good of democracy and public order. And, you know, like, I had a devout Catholic friend who gotten a huge Facebook argument with me, basically, just all I said was that January 6, was a bad thing. And just seeing like this, you know, and I didn't realize it until later. But growing up in the 1980s, you know, there was this marriage that developed between Ronald Reagan and American Christianity. And how has that developed over my whole lifetime, most like American Christians were really their religion had really become the Republican Party. So the book Jesus and John Wayne, which is written by Christian Kobus, copes dma's I don't know if I'm saying her name. Right. Like, that's, that's a really good book in terms of like, the overview of that whole process.
David Ames 1:08:54
Yeah, yes.
Tracey 1:08:58
Yeah, so and I got a new job, I started working at the VA Medical Center. And so that was a that was a much better experience for my career. So I have continued to enjoy being a psychiatrist. I'm still there. You know, the I think the pandemic was really a time to pause and reflect about a lot of things. And it really gave my husband and I a chance to reflect on how all those years of our marriage and our family life being a performance how we'd really lost our emotional connection. You know, my husband was starting to question starting to deconstruct, but, but he was like, a couple years behind me in the process, but with the pandemic, he had some time to really think about that more question a lot more. And then between 2019 and 2022, he lost his mother and his three remaining grandparents. And so he and he started to come to grips with the idea that his Catholic faith was really more about pleasing His mother and pleasing His grandparents. And, and pressure from a lot of other people. So things started to unravel for him too. And I, you know, I think we all deal with that, to some extent the idea that, especially when we were kids, these were our attachment figures that people were dependent on for food and for shelter. Like we needed to believe this or we needed to be involved in this church community. So that these people that we depended on for survival could stay connected with us. And you know, there's, there's really so much I'm not sure I'm saying this very well, right now. There's, there's, you know, there's so much pressure that comes from your relationships, being with people who are really invested in their faith and feeling that motivation to also have that faith or appear to have that faith to please those people around you.
David Ames 1:10:52
And parents just have a tremendous impact on your belief systems, your likely belief systems, and it sounds like even for your, for your husband, even as an adult. And yeah, yeah, you have to consciously recognize that you are independent from your parents, and that you have your own beliefs.
Tracey 1:11:10
Yeah, yeah. And then from my husband to the when this priest got arrested, that was just really a bombshell for his faith. And it just really made him question and unravel everything. And so and so during this time, my husband and I also decided, you know, we weren't making enough progress, with our relationship getting better. So my husband got into psychotherapy in against, like secular psychotherapy, if you you're, excuse me, a few years later, I got into individual therapy myself, we did couples counseling, too. And it was really important for me to find couples counseling that was based on like secular or science based evidence, I think there's so much marriage counseling that's based around Christian ideas or religious ideas, and I really didn't want that. So we did find a marriage counselor who's the Gottman method. And so John and Julie Gottman, their researchers, their relationship research researchers, they're in they're out in Seattle. And so they've developed a lot of like behavioral and communication methods that are based on their research, behavioral research on what makes relationships work. So what we so and that was really wonderful for us to, to do that psychotherapy. And it really was, we were able to get back to who we were, before we had kids before we got so entrenched in this church life, and we're just two human beings who loved each other, we didn't have to have all these roles and all these expectations. And just enjoy being with each other. Again, we had to learn a lot of communication skills, we had to work on like emotional regulation, we had to make our relationship feel safe and welcoming again. And, you know, I and I look back on that, like why the church should want people to know those kinds of skills, because the church is so into marriage, but but they don't teach that kind of stuff. It comes from secular research. Yeah. And another thing that had happened during the pandemic is that my oldest child came out to us as bisexual when she was 14. And so So and she's given me permission to talk about this in this interview. And so she had been doing confirmation classes in the church before the pandemic hit, and I could tell something was kind of off. But she didn't want to talk about it then. And then when she came out, I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. So then I asked her about that. And she said, she just couldn't feel accepted in a church that didn't affirm her or allow her to be herself. And she said, and so I asked, like, what do you want to do? And she said, she did not want to go through with the confirmation, which I think is interesting, because you look at confirmation as being sort of like a rite of passage of you're becoming an adult in the church. But her rite of passage, and her understanding of her adult phase was I can't be part of the church.
David Ames 1:13:59
Interesting. Just, just side note, by the time people are hearing this Christian loves Dalton, who is the president of the Norwegian Humanist Association, they have humanist coming of age ceremonies, and most most of Norway does either a religious coming of age or a humanist one. And it really, it's very interesting like that. Those are valuable, it is valuable. But it's, I take your point, that her actual becoming an adult was the rejection of of ritual.
Tracey 1:14:30
And so my husband and I really had to question that too. Why would we want to be a part of this church that excludes someone we love dearly?
A different experience with my youngest child who was only about 10 at the time, and when we had gone back to in person services at church. I remember looking over at him and he looked like he was going to have a panic attack. And so I took him outside and said what's going on? He's like, I just don't like being at church. I don't feel like my real self when I'm here. And I felt like he was articulating to me something that I'd felt all those years ago was just like, I don't belong here. I'm only here because my family is making me come, this isn't me. So after that, we decided, you know, we would give our children the choice if they wanted to go to church or not. And interestingly, so the oldest and the youngest don't want to the middle child likes being an altar server, and he still goes, and so we want to respect that too. So you know, as as my faith is kind of unraveling during the pandemic, another book that I read that was really helpful was Brian McLaren's book, Why stay Christian. And so he has a the beginning section of all the reasons not to be Christian. And then the middle section of why to stay Christian. And then the last section is, whatever you choose, this is how to take care of yourself. And I you know, and I recall, like, like, none of the reasons to say Christian resonated with me at all. A year ago, I guess, reading this, yeah, and all of the reasons not to be Christian, but the one that was most compelling to me, there was a chapter titled, because Christianity is a failed religion. And what he meant, and what he meant by that was, Christianity does not change people's lives. It doesn't have any real. It doesn't do what it advertises that it does. And, you know, that just nailed it. For me. Like I said, I've been trying to do this for 40 years. And it just hasn't transformed my life. It did not help my marriage. It did not help my parenting and actually made those things worse. I didn't see it in transforming individual churches, I certainly I you know, I really saw Christianity making the country worse, making the community that I lived in worse. And then all these things outside of Christianity, like like yoga, like meditation, being in nature, studying all these other disciplines. Psychotherapy had had made me better. And so I just saw, I just started to see like, like, you could be a progressive Christian. And you could try to argue some of these things from Oh, like the Bible says, welcome immigrants and all these things that I'm like, I don't need that. I don't need a Bible verse to tell me that, like, I just know that it's the right thing to do. So why do I need to hold on to all this? So this really, that's where I am now.
David Ames 1:17:24
I think that's a really profound insight. And actually, I was, I read reread your email before we chatted today. And I want to just quote you, because I think you really capture what you just said, in a sentence here. The mountain of evidence learned throughout my training and experience as a physician and mental health professional, that the church teachings do not lead to emotional well being and human flourishing. My coping with the cognitive dissonance and eventually being unable to live the double life as an evidence based professional on the weekend and a devout follower of the church teachings at home and on the weekend. And it reminds me of the quote from Christopher Hitchens, and which I'm going to just paraphrase, in fact, that Christianity can't even satisfy the faithful that it's even the people who are the most dedicated, who are the most committed, find it unsatisfying. So I think you're expressing that. And that's, that's a really interesting thing.
Tracey 1:18:16
And I Yes, I tried so hard for so many years, and it just didn't, it just didn't make me happy. It just didn't give me the life I wanted to have.
David Ames 1:18:25
Right. I want to close with you've given several recommendations that we've gone along, but I understand that you have a Facebook group that's dedicated to recovery, but specifically about Catholicism. Yeah, if you want to talk about that,
Tracey 1:18:36
yeah. So this all started, I was a part of another Facebook group that I would recommend called Raising children on fundamentalist. And that that group was really geared around parenting for people who had left the faith or who want to who wanted to avoid the religious pitfalls of raising children. And so and that is mostly people who have left like your podcast, mostly people who have left evangelicalism, but there were a few Catholics in the group, and I had to kind of, you know, like, made Facebook friends or had private message some of those people and one of them said, why don't we start our own Catholic group? And so we did. And so there are about four of us who, who left and started this new group. And so the name of that Facebook group is Catholic sabbatical. And so that is a group for anybody who is interested in like they've been a part of the Catholic Church and are questioning deconstructing are in the process of leaving or who have already left and and just just need a safe place to process that. Fantastic. Yeah. So and that's something that I you know, anybody who's listening to the podcast, who has been in Catholicism would, we would welcome more members, but I would advertise that. It is for people who have had actual experience in Catholicism. We don't welcome members who are just curious about what Catholicism is or or I just want to see what's going on because we want that to be a safe place for people to process without having to spend a lot of time and energy educating people.
David Ames 1:20:09
That makes total sense. Tracy, thank you so much for being on the podcast and telling your story. Oh, you're welcome.
Final thoughts on the episode. Tracy story covers so many things. It's hard to summarize. I love that she was a precocious child. I love how she said she was hell skeptical. She was recognizing the generals that she was being put into, she experienced the sexual harassment in in Bible college. Down to She says that her medical degree was plan B. It's astonishing to me. I'm very grateful that she went on with her medical education and became a psychiatrist and that science played a role in her deconstruction process. Tracy has a lot of insight for us. From that psychiatric point of view. She talked so much about the magical thinking of prayer, the Christian tendency towards narcissists and cognitive dissonance. I think those are valuable insights that she brings to the table for experiences a psychiatrist also informed her that the conservative political view of poverty was incorrect. Another great insight heartbreaks that the experience with the priests who went on to be discovered to have been abusive to young boys is just tragic and heartbreaking. also appreciate that we get to hear Tracy's experience of autonomy of growing to trust herself, during the jury duty and contract negotiations, recognizing that the support of the church wasn't adding anything to it. Ultimately, she says that faith was superfluous. And I want to end with the quote one more time that Tracy says the mountain of evidence learned throughout my training and experiences as a physician and mental health professional, that church teachings do not lead to emotional well being and human flourishing by coping with the cognitive dissonance and eventually being unable to live a double life as an evidence based professional on the weekdays. And a devout follower of church teachings at home on the weekend. I think that captures everything about Tracy story. I want to thank Tracy for being on the podcast for sharing her story with us. This is It's been amazing. Thank you so much Tracy for being on the podcast. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is you can be good without God. Tracy says this while she's wrapping up she's saying that although there are good things within the Bible, she doesn't need the Bible to tell her how to be a good person. She already knows that she should welcome immigrants. And this is so force fed to us from within the bubble that not only is the only goodness that we might have from God, but that we are ultimately not good at all. None of that is true. You can be good without God, you can be good without the Bible. You do not need a religious tradition to tell you how to be a good person. You can choose to do good for other people to show kindness to give love and show secular grace. Next week Arline interviews Nora Tomlin you're not going to want to miss that one. 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 restful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s guest is MJ, the heart and mind behind the Instagram account, @dissident_daughters
MJ grew up in a conservative evangelical home where Focus on the Family reigned and her whole world consisted of family, church friends, and a few Christian homeschooling families. She believed wholeheartedly, feeling all the existential pressure as a child to “save” everyone around her.
As a young woman, MJ was surrounded by social workers while in college, and these colleagues were curious. They didn’t ask theological questions; they asked political questions, but for MJ it was all connected. She went to her pastor and was dismissed again and again.
“I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are [church leaders] really looking for? They’re looking for somebody who doesn’t question, doesn’t challenge the status quo, doesn’t have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity.”
Now MJ uses her love of books and art to encourage others to hear different perspectives on—the inner life, relationships, systemic injustices, religion, and spirituality. Besides lengthening Arline’s personal To-Be-Read list, MJ’s Instagram has shown her that whatever one is convinced is true, there are other possible ways to view it.
“I always assumed that’s why they yelled in sermons, to wake up anybody who might have fallen asleep.”
“Retreats are what I lived for.”
“I found myself to be like, Is there anybody out there that thinks like me? Is there anybody out there who’s questioning? And I found Rob Bell.”
“Books were always my escape.”
“When I uncovered Velvet Elvis, it gave me permission to ask questions. I think that was the first time in my entire life that I was taught, ‘Questioning is not the same thing as losing your faith.’”
“I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are they really looking for? They’re looking for somebody who doesn’t question, doesn’t challenge the status quo, doesn’t have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity.”
“I kind of think of my deconversion as a series of awakenings.”
“I only referred to God as ‘he’ for thirty years, and that feels really closed-minded now. It definitely feels so much bigger…”
“It hit me hard: I cannot teach my daughter to love herself if I do not learn to love my self.”
“If you see yourself as holy, if you see yourself as being part of god, you have to let all this shame go.”
“…I still adore Jesus, who he was. I don’t even know if he was real anymore. At this point, I don’t think it’s relevant. I don’t think it’s any more or less relevant than learning lessons from the goddess Freya or the goddess Isis or Kali.”
“I wanted my world to get bigger, not smaller…”
“I’ve grown to dislike the word ‘god’ in general. I prefer ‘goddess’ right now…I feel like ‘god’ has so much attached to it already…”
“[In nature,] I feel this awe and wonder and this stirring in me that connects me with everything else…”
“By using the word, ‘witch,’ for me, that’s just reclaiming my power…”
“For my kids, I feel like I have to make the world a better place than when I entered it…”
“I think that you keep searching, and you keep searching and you keep searching, you’ll find your way out of it.”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 on patreon.com. If you would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/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 community deconversion anonymous. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, we have the merch store at T Publix. The link will be in the show notes. Check it out for all your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, our Lean interviews today's guest MJ, MJ has a presence on Instagram at dissident daughters. She grew up evangelical in a Focus on the Family type home. She suffered through purity culture, getting married and having children very early. Later in life, she began to expand her worlds and she began to have her doubts. She asked questions of her pastors, specifically about the last chapter of Mark, culminating in an email to the pastor. As you can imagine, that did not go well. Now MJ considers herself a week in which she recommends books and art on her Instagram page, you can find that at dissident daughters. Here is our Lean interview MJ.
Arline 2:05
Hi, Mia, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Hello, you and I connected over Instagram. I'm pretty sure that algorithm at some point in 2021 or 2022 suggested your account. And like your book recommendations, the different art that you share just your own personal stuff. Like I've loved it so much. So I wanted to hear your whole story. If you would like to tell us just start with what was the religious environment of your childhood?
MJ 2:34
Well, it was evangelical Christian, but I didn't know that. Because my family always called it non denominational. So it wasn't actually until after my deconversion process that I figured out that we were evangelical when I realized that we had mission trips going everywhere, and I was trying to be be the person out there evangelizing. And I'm like, oh, that's what that means. Um, so I was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian atmosphere, in which my parents rejected Catholicism that they had been raised with, moved to Colorado from different parts of the country met each other in Colorado Springs as in the 80s. And I'm sure you probably know what else was happening around that time. So they latched on to focus on the family is how we're going to do our lives. It was Mickey and me it was, you know, homeschooling it was don't be involved in the secular world at all. We had homeschooling circles for each church, we had church on Sundays on Mondays on Wednesdays on Fridays, it was trying to fill up our lives, so that there's nothing that can sneak its way in and kind of detract us from our mission on earth, which is to get as many people to go to heaven with us as possible. So, early off, I felt the pressure of trying to convert all of my friends, anybody in my neighborhood because those are the only friends I was allowed to really have as a homeschooler.
Arline 4:08
So you're homeschooling world. It was these were all other homeschooling Christian families, and I'm assuming they were all white Christian families and focus on the family, Christian families. You weren't exposed to even different kinds of Christianity.
MJ 4:21
Yeah, and we often didn't even meet up with the homeschool circles until the testing we would have to do a test at the end of the year to make sure we were on par. So I would see other other homeschoolers there. About once a month my mom would try to set up some kind of like bowling or different activity with a couple other homeschoolers. And I honestly I only ever remember girls, and I only remember white girls and Christian white girls. And I think that's who my mother was hoping to surround me with. Because she, she also had this idea in her head of turning back time. And so we would watch Little House on the Prairie and talk about the prairie settler days and how beautiful and wonderful it was. And when fully we could go back to courting. And so my whole life, I knew that I was never going to get to date. That was not an option. It didn't matter what age I was, I could move out, they said and date, but it was going to be courting. And it was going to be with the intention of marriage, it's going to be with a chaperone. And so I grew up kind of thinking that was normal, because I watched a Little House on the Prairie. Yeah,
Arline 5:27
wow. So high school did you do like youth group and things like that?
MJ 5:31
I got introduced to youth group in seventh grade. It was through our church, obviously. And as I got into this group of kids, first I realized that I was boy crazy. I think being so isolated, made every boy the most handsome person on the world in the world. So it ended up being kind of a, I'm going to youth group to learn more about God. But I'm also like, more interested in learning about boys. But now the shame of that feeling is destroying my relationship with my parents, because I feel like they would know that I'm a horrible person if they knew my real reasons for wanting to go. So there's just this conflict of I want to do the right thing. I want to be here for the right reasons. But I also want to meet my future husband, was the way we saw this youth group was my release, it became such a important part of my life that my mother actually used it to punish me whenever I would mess up. She didn't really have anything else to like, take from me since I was very isolated. So it would be okay, well, you don't have youth group this week. And then it would be like, Well, I have to wait until church and we can't talk at church. And we have to sit with our parents and I have to wear a dress and all this. It was just a different atmosphere, the adults versus the youth. And I always felt like the youth actually cared about God. It was weird growing up and thinking that, Oh, well, you know, you sit down and you listen to a pastor and half the time the adults fall asleep trying to listen, I assumed that's why they yell and service was a wake up anybody who might have fallen asleep. That's a good time. And and I would just want to be a part of the youth who I thought were being, you know, motivated going on these retreats. retreats were what I lived for. And then by ninth eighth grade, my mother actually sent me to school, she sent us to a private Christian school. I think that if she had known what we were going to get into, she probably would have not made that choice. I'm grateful because my my school was not, was not white, it was very diverse, which was very interesting, because they had different outposts in London, in Liberia. In fact, I would meet my my first husband there who his his dad was from Liberia, her his mother was from here. And they weren't allowed to marry at their church because it was an interracial relationship, and had to go back to Liberia to get married and come back here in the 80s. And so that was my first like, kind of introduction to outside world, but it's only from a Christian perspective, very small classes, you know, 15 to 30 kids per class K through 12. And so it was a great experience to be out and around other kids, but also still closed off from we never learned about evolution. We had Bible class, we didn't have other electives. And so it was kind of the No touching and the purity culture is where that ended up becoming what it means to be a woman and especially a Christian woman for me. So that was a hugely, like, huge change in my life. But it was more of a buckle down on what we already believe a woman's worth is.
So it was it was really intense atmosphere. But I think that that was where I began to distance myself from my parents and realize that Hmm, I think that there, they wanted me to just be a wife and mother. They always talked about college like there was there was the goal of going to college. My mother put me through piano lessons for 10 years in the hopes of getting the scholarship by joining the orchestra, which, as an adult, I would ask her all often why did you pick piano there's only one piano in the orchestra. My sister got violin there are 60 strings in an orchestra. I'm like, I didn't have to be the best if I got violin, I just have to be mediocre. So I did piano lessons for 10 years quit it because or quit because I hated being in front of people. I'm I have stage fright like nobody's business. And so it was watching that their plan for me didn't include anything really outside of the proverbs 31 woman getting up to take care of my family. You can go to college, you can get a degree, but what your ultimate job is going to be is To be taking care of a family, which, as a younger girl, you know, I loved that idea. I had a dream of having six children and I had them on names and my best friend and I wrote letters to our future grooms. And it was just the atmosphere that the homeschoolers were raised. And we kind of all agreed I didn't know that it was different from what other people were getting. I think after my eighth grade year, my mom actually decided that I was not mature enough Emotionally, I think it was because she finally picked up on the boy craziness, and pulled me and my sister back out of school to homeschool us for another year. That was in my freshman year in 99. Enough 8090 98 to 99, which is when Columbine happened. So in Colorado, that kind of like was my 911 event for I think the rest of the world looks at 911 as this like life shaking Oh my god, the world is like bigger than we think it is. And it's more dangerous. And for for me, Columbine was that I think everybody in Colorado knew somebody who had been affected. I personally knew people who had been shot. And it was definitely one of those things where it was like, Well, this is community building thing. We're all coming together now. Like everybody's turning to God like we're it was almost like this religious movement in Colorado, to be like, turned back to Faith, like this will be your way back out. And so I kind of rededicated my life like tried to, like push hard into youth group, it was also all I had at the time, because now I was out of school. And so it became more and more of my passion. Then I went back to school, and in 10th grade back to that same private school where I would meet my first boyfriend, who I would end up marrying, because of purity culture. We were married for about three years and then divorced. So I do have two children from that, that marriage. And that was a such a an enlightening experience of what does it mean to actually encourage your child to marry the first person they sleep with. And so just another like, purity culture slap in the face. Like, this is not like, where it's going for me. But I transition from, from young adult or from child to adult immediately. And it was, oh, now you're a mother. So now you don't get to be kid anymore. You're 18, but you're an adult. And so it was a well, I'll just raise my child the same way I was raised, you know, it worked like churches helpful. Church will keep them out of trouble. It was kind of what I had always been taught is either sports or church, or both, if you want to make sure your kid graduates. And yeah, so it was a learning experience.
Arline 12:46
They make it sound so easy. Just do these things. Everything will turn out great.
MJ 12:50
Oh, absolutely. Um, around the end of that time, or ending high school, I decided I want to be psychologist. And so I went to kind of a liberal school, Metro, Metro State College of Denver, it was at the time is now Metro University. And so I went in for a liberal arts degree and found myself surrounded by people in social works. Settings, being like, why do you vote the way you do? Why do you vote against your own interests? You're a single mother, you're this demographic, you need this assistance from the state? Why? Why are you voting the way you do? Why do you have this certain preferences that you do? And I was always taught that it always came back to abortion. And so in my upbringing, I would be taken to abortion rallies outside of or route pro life rallies outside of abortion clinics, where we would hold signs and I would have nightmares from seeing these fake images of babies mutilated on on people's posters. And so it was a very like, well, it doesn't matter what happens to me, like the children matter, like the children matter. And I it's like, it's really hard to forgive myself for some of the indoctrination I think that I went through. But I spent years and yours just saying, Well, I agree with everything that this party like does for the community. But but the children like I can't I can't justify doing what's right for all these people. While these you know, these innocent people are being hurt. And so it became this is me against everybody else. Everybody hates me and my not hates me it was this perceived outcast, like perspective of myself. I thought that I didn't fit in that I didn't fit in into the social work setting that I was working in. And I didn't fit in into the Christian circles that I found myself in in church, and I found myself to just be like, is there anybody out there that thinks like me? Like, is there anybody out there who's questioning and I found rock Well,
Arline 15:01
that's a big jump from James Stubbs to Rob Bell.
MJ 15:04
I think it was the title that grabbed me. I was like, that sounds different. And I really don't know what made me pick up that book because I was not reading nonfiction at the time, I spent my entire life being drawn to fantasy, wanting to look at books as an escape, I didn't watch a lot of television. So books were always my escape, and I always would tell my kids, you know, it's, it's a much longer escape, because you can be lost for days or weeks in a novel, and you can only be lost in a show for 30 minutes or two hours, you know. So for me, it was I mean, I taught myself how to write and elvish I took it very serious. Yeah, I loved books. And so when I uncovered velvet, Elvis, it gave me permission to ask questions. And I think that was the first time in my entire life, I had been taught that questioning was not the same as losing your faith. And for me, that was huge, because I never wanted to be that person who could be critiqued as not being faithful.
I discovered Brene, Brown a couple of years ago, who is a type one on the Enneagram. And that's how my therapist actually promoted her to me was, she's a type one too. So you would probably like her? Well, the type one is all about reformer and doing what's right being perceived as good, instead of evil, right, instead of wrong. And so I spent my whole life not wanting to look wrong or sound wrong. And, and I remember my best friend crying to me one day and being like, what kind of pressure you must be under, because I'd be like, I'm a reflection of Jesus, like, everything I do is reflection. So people see me and every mistake I make, like, looks bad, like, on my faith, and like on all the people I care about, and my Savior, and like, it was just this, she was just heartbroken for me because she's like, how you're trying to be perfect. I was like, well, as close to it as I can be. Like, I didn't even try to deny it. I'm like, Well, isn't it in the Bible? We're supposed to be perfect. Like Jesus was perfect. Like, yes, yes, that's what I'm trying to do. And so obviously, that's a lot of weight to carry. And over over the course of, of many, many years, and finding my own church and going through divorce and feeling like an outcast once again, because nobody wanted me to volunteer, I wasn't allowed to volunteer for young life, because at the time, I was working at a dispensary, and even though it's legal in Colorado, it was a hard line for churches to draw. So I wasn't allowed to volunteer for young life. I wasn't allowed to be a church leader, for a small group at my church, because they asked five questions, and one of those were what are your opinions on marijuana? And I said, Why aren't you asking me about the Bible? Why? Why does our pastor talk about the bourbon? He drinks every week from the pulpit? Like, why are you asking this question? And then they never responded to me. And I never got asked to come be a leader. Um, I tried to volunteer in every capacity, and just got shut down and shut down and shut down and shut down. And so I started asking myself, What are the criteria, then? What are they really looking for? They're looking for somebody who doesn't question doesn't challenge the status quo doesn't have a viewpoint that kind of encompasses anything that includes the world, along with Christianity. And so it kind of felt like a line was being drawn in the sand. And I was trying to stand across both and be like, Well, no, I see their point. And I see their point. Why can't we just come together and discuss this, like, you know, and so I started emailing my pastor. And they directed me to his son, who was younger than me about 10 years younger than me, for all my theological questions. He had just graduated seminary school, and that was their theologian, Pastor. And so I started asking questions and deep wounds, and probably the most annoying ones, like, you know, why did they stop using incense like incense seemed like it was such a huge factor in the beginning church. It was even around a Jesus's day. And all of a sudden, like, if you missed instances, God would kill you. But then all of a sudden, it doesn't matter anymore. It seems like a God who would have killed for that might have cared about it later on. There was just different like, yeah, he didn't have any answers. I realized quickly that their their response to what they didn't understand or a question that they hadn't heard before, was to point to somebody else who had gotten a similar question and give a similar answer. And so I was constantly being pointed to this theologian or this theologian or this person or this person. And I think the most the last question I ever asked was, why, why were the extra chapters added to the book of Mark and then And, you know, in some in some versions and not other versions, I was like, but still credited to Mark and his his response was something along the lines of, well, I'd agreed with the other gospel slip. So they kept it in there. And I'm like, Wait, so we knowingly plagiarized. That doesn't. That sounds a little off to me like, and that was where it was like, Okay, I don't think I can trust my pastors to leave me, even though they're men. And I'm supposed to defer to men, which ended up being the step into my real deconversion was what I call my sacred feminine awakening, I kind of think of my deconversion as a series of awakenings. And so I feel like that's probably why the, the Conservative Party or the Christian church in general has kind of taken a very negative stance against woke. And so it almost is triggering for me to hear that be referred to in a negative connotation, simply because it was such a positive for me over and over and over again, it was like, you would think that this is the aha moment that changes everything. And then I'd have another one two months later, and I'd be like, but that changes everything. But that changes everything. And so it was just a series of awakenings. And the feminine Awakening was the one where I was like, I have to draw a line in the sand here. Because I'm never going to be able to be a leader in this church, like women are never going to be respected to the extent that men are I'm still being told that my husband is supposed to be my my spiritual leader. He was an atheist when I met him, he is still not a you know, still wasn't a Christian at the time. I'm like, he's, he goes to church with me, but I'm supposed to let Him lead me. Like it was just this. Something doesn't feel right about giving away my intuition and my like, conversations with God to somebody else. And say, you tell me what this is what God is trying to tell me.
After Rob Bell, I found Megan Watterson. She wrote Mary Magdalene Bradfield, which was this, this new approach to praying that I had never heard of, and it was really just meditation. But she calls it the soul voice meditation. And through it was the first time I felt like I was hearing back, I felt like, for 30 years, I had prayed to God and ask God and throw stuff out there. And never felt like I was really getting any kind of response. I was like, I might feel something I think I am getting an idea of what I'm supposed to do. Is this conviction like that. I'm even thinking about it. Like, does that mean it's wrong, like constant like questions, but no answers. And through the Soul voice meditation, I felt like I started to actually hear from God like personally have, no, you're not broken? No, there's nothing wrong with you. No, I love you. In fact, the first time I went inward on a soul voice meditation, and this is going to sound pretty woowoo. Which is funny, because Rob Bell just released an episode on the proper level of Whoo. It was right, that's, he's the best title ever, I need to get out, get a hold of him to title my book when I finished it. But it was trying to visualize God, like go to a safe place in your mind. For me, that was always a cabin, a cabin in the woods that has taken different visualization form over the years, or over every time I go into into my part. And while I was there, God appeared to me in my own face, which was really hard for me. Because it was like, Oh, I can't look at you like me, like I can't. And all I heard back was until you can see me in yourself, I'm going to come to you like this. And it was such a powerful like, mind shifting, life shifting, like, Oh, I am part of God already. Like, and I didn't have to, say a certain magic phrase to get there. I didn't have to be baptized. I didn't have to do a certain amount of things to become perfect. Like God has always been a part of me. And is this like connection that I made to Oh, God isn't everything and everyone and like, it's not like you can take God out of things, or put God into things. God is all encompassing. And so it became this like, much broader picture. And then I found myself trying to explain that to people and feeling like Oh, am I telling people that their idea of God was closed minded? Kind of, um, like, I only refer to God as He for 30 years, and that feels really closed minded now. It definitely feels like God just got So much bigger like I let her out of the box, you know, it was just something that shifted in me that was, well until I can see God in myself, then I'm not seeing God and female in the female body or in women. And then I got pregnant with my daughter. And I found out I was having a girl, I have three older boys. And I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be a boy Mom, this is my fourth boy, my grandma had four boys, I'm excited. That way, when we went in for the ultrasound, it was just shock. I wasn't even excited when she said, Girl, I was just like, you sure. I'm pretty sure I only do boys like this is, this is not a thing for me. But something inside me started changing as she was growing and developing. And I started to come face to face with my own self loathing, and my own. My own internal misogyny honestly, I remember starting to like come up, or remember, like times in my life where I asked my mom, if God liked boys more than girls, I started to come back to like this realization Have you never felt equal in this religion? Is that what you want to do to your daughter, and a part of me feels guilty for never having that like, moment with all three of my boys. My oldest son is now 20. So hidden many years to kind of come to this, but it wasn't until she was developing inside of me that it was like, I want it to be different for her. Like, I don't want to talk about my weight in front of her. I don't want to use Snapchat filters. Because I don't want her looking back for it. It's a weird morbid thought. But I was thinking of the pictures that would be chosen for me, like at my funeral, like, if they would pull them off Instagram or Facebook, Facebook at the time. And if they were all going to have filters on them. And I was like, everybody's gonna be like, she looks like a different person. And each picture. And that hit me hard. I was like, I cannot teach my daughter to love herself if I cannot learn to love myself. And so self love became tied up in this feminine awakening, it became this interconnected. If you see yourself as holy, if you see yourself as being a part of God, you have to let all this shame go. And back to Brene Brown, like thank you, for my therapist, who I also started going to and 2020 like it was it is a great year for me, honestly, left church started over got therapy, but um, when she introduced me to Brene Brown's stuff on shame, I just realized that that's what my whole religion had been. My whole belief system had been based in, I'm worthless in and of myself. But Jesus died for me. If I say these magic words, he will come to live inside of my heart, and all of a sudden, I won't be worthless anymore, not because of me, but because he's in me. So it was still you're still worthless in and of yourself. And I wanted to change that and be like, No, you have worth in and of yourself. It'd be you being born you being taking your first breath like that is valuable in and of itself. And you have a lot to offer. Whether you were born with these genitals or these general rules, or these chromosomes or these chromosomes or how you identify, it has become a it's a really learning journey of knowing how much I didn't know, that I thought I knew. And coming to the end of this quest of the answer is to not have the answers. I feel like my whole life has been about finding the answer the truth. And now it's about well, maybe there are many truths. Maybe there are many paths, maybe there, there isn't one one, just one way and kind of reevaluating just my approach to everything might my holidays that I do with my family, the traditions that we hold the clothing that we wear, from A to Z, it's just now all of a sudden, this reframing and I'm kind of think I'm coming out of my deconversion process I'm well into the reconstruction of like, what do I want my life to look like now? What do I want to incorporate? What of Christmas do we take?
I have a weird, probably perspective that maybe a lot of D D converted people that don't have and that I still adore Jesus who he was. I don't even know if he was real anymore. At this point, I'm like I don't think it's relevant. I don't think is any more or less relevant than learning lessons from the goddess Freya or from the goddess Isis or Kali? I am like it doesn't make any difference to me whether or not he was real who he was. In what he spoke of was justice for the poor and the marginalized and, and not forgetting people. And that was the Jesus that I have fallen in love with. And so a part of me still holds on to that part of my faith, but I don't feel like that came from my faith. I look back at the church and my pastors, and I'm like, they didn't have this idea of Jesus that I met, like, they have like this white Jesus, this, like macho, like, you know, my, my former pastor is all into military and MMA and UFC and has is touted and is very macho Jesus. He talks about not wanting to follow up with the Lord. And, and so it's definitely been one of those things where I had to come to terms with this isn't the Jesus that you were taught, but it is the Jesus you discovered in the Bible. So you can't just say this whole book is evil, and throw it all out, because it introduce you to some really important truths. And that knowledge of being like you can sift through and find truth and claim it and you don't have to take anything at face value. You don't have to say, Well, if you don't believe all of it, then it's you don't believe any of it was so critical. For my I would say my emotional awareness, my development of, or my understanding of myself, my understanding of my relationships with other people, like understanding that nothing is all or nothing. That's a fun one, right?
Arline 31:31
Yes, it is. Because we are taught that everything's black or white, it's either good or evil, it's right or wrong, rather than being able to take from Buddhism, or Shakespeare, or Toni Morrison or great movies, and just find your values and the things that you love and the things that you believe and yeah, piece it together. Because my dad has always been like that my dad's never been a Christian. He's always just kind of, you know, whatever he wanted to believe he kind of pieced together. And I thought, How do you do that? Then you're clearly just creating your own religion. Well, now, where I am now, I'm convinced everyone just creates their own religion. And I'm like, actually, this is a great idea if it you know, not harming people. So no, that's awesome that you're able to Yeah, just find truth wherever truth is found.
MJ 32:17
Yeah. And that was actually in a Rob Bell quote, actually, I don't remember if it's a book or online. But he said once to affirm truth wherever you find it, because all truth is God's truth. And I remember bringing that up with my dad, who was definitely Rush Limbaugh like, Hart, he ran for House of Representatives in the Republican Party, against an incumbent Democrat and actually got like, 35% of the vote in a very democratic area. So it was very much so that our politics and religion went hand in hand. But then it was also like telling him about, hey, you know, we can affirm you all truth is God's truth. Right? If you if you search for the truth, they will find you, right? And he would be like, Well, yeah, I've never really thought about it that way. But that opened the door. So then I can be like, What do you think of this truth? And then tell him where I got it from? And it was like, not necessarily a biblical truth. But he would be like, yeah, yeah, that's true. Like, I can recognize that as, and I've watched him change. And I think that him changing more than any other person in my life has shown me that it's possible that somebody who was the most hardcore, like fundamentalists, like Christian that I could think of, even vocally anti feminist. And, and now today, I would say he's beside me, he still calls himself Christian. But he doesn't go to church. He doesn't he doesn't like to be identified in the group of American church goers. He talks about a different kind of Christianity, the Christianity that follows the real Jesus and it sounds like somewhere in there, he began to see this like, shift in, okay, this isn't right, this isn't right. This isn't right, and actually acted on it instead of just staying in the church, because I would watch my parents stay in a church long after long after it was being abusive to them. One church wouldn't allow women to pray a lead prayer in Bible study, and they would stay through that but then ended up leaving because they got a divorce and my dad was asked to step down from teaching because once you're divorced, you're no longer able to teach. Suddenly, all your Bible knowledge goes out the window. So there was just different in watching him at 65 years old, like twist and change and morph into this beautiful like human being who sees like the need for social justice in addition to love your neighbor and seeing seeing those as being the same really and being one isn't an act of love, and one is not just voicing it. So I definitely, I have hope for society. And so I keep talking to people, even if they think I'm crazy, or I've had most of my Christian friends and family kind of shun me at this point, or tell me I know what side you're on. And I'd be like, Wait, we haven't had this discussion yet. How do you know what side I'm on. But it was just a while we're here, and you're here. And so no matter what the topic is, you've already had your side has already picked, like, you have to pick one of these two. And I just kept rejecting that and rejecting that and rejecting that and being like, no, that's not how this works. I'm a human being. And I get to make a choice every time like, not just I'm pigeon holed into picking one or the other because of my faith. And I wanted my world to get bigger, not smaller. Through my my reconstruction. And it's, it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I holiday scare the crap out of me. It's, I feel like I have nothing to do like when it comes around to we're trying to change Christmas into you'll, and looking what what does that look like? Do we still acknowledge Jesus's birthday? We know it wasn't in December, but we're not celebrating it any other time. Like, do we still acknowledge it? You know, is? Is the Bible, something I do want to read with my kids at some point? Probably not all of it. Like, there's a lot of parts that I'm like, that was not kid appropriate ever. And I'm not sure I was given the Bible reading as punishment. Sometimes it would be like go to your room and read a gospel. So I learned Mark was the shortest possible, which is why I noticed that there was chapters added to it. But yeah, I mean, the reading the Bible was what set me free.
Honestly, it got me asking so many questions that things didn't add up. And I fell in love with history. And I fell in love with like trying to figure out where does this piece in with what was happening in Asia at the time? What was happening in Africa at the time, like, how does it all tie in to the bigger world picture so I can see what was happening instead of narrowing in on, you know, 911 and thinking, you know, what was happening in other parts of the world in 2001? You know, it's just one of those things where we I don't think we do it very often, if we're not taught to do it. And psychology taught me how to think critically, they had a research methods class, it was always about challenge your sources. Where are you getting that from? Did you get it from Wikipedia, because it was right after the internet had come out. Like, you know, you can't just pull things from here or here, we need, you know, peer reviewed articles. So we're gonna do real science. And I began to fall in love with the scientific method, the idea of proving yourself right, by proving yourself wrong by trying to prove yourself wrong. And so I tried to do that with my life and kind of just be like, how sure am I of this? Can I prove it wrong? Because if I can't, then it kind of like confirms my bias, you know, but it's like, there could be something else that comes up later that throws that out. And all of a sudden, you're just like, Well, no, what? Like, no, I don't know what to think anymore. Back to Rob Bell, he actually wants what did he use, he used the metaphor of trampoline versus a brick wall. So he said, you can either build your belief system out of a wall, and you pull out a brick and the whole thing crumbles. Or you can look at it more like a trampoline, and it's springy, and it's adaptable. And you can have fun with it, and you can enjoy the ride. And I just remember thinking I would much rather have the trampoline in the wall. Like I just, I want to have a springy like attitude towards life. I want to be adaptable, and I want to be open minded. And it's something I always thought I was. And even my husband like tells me Yeah, you were really open minded for a Christian. You definitely changed my mind about them. You definitely made me see that I was putting them all in one category and saying they're they're all the same people that you know, were cursing out girl saying they were going to hell for wearing short miniskirts at my college in Florida like, because that was his idea of the Christians are the ones with signs at your college telling all the girls are going to hell. And so when he met me, I spent my you know, first two or three years trying to change his mind about me, and then be like, wait, I think he's kind of right about me and in some ways, like I think that there are certain things that are just very close minded very unadaptable I'm still thinking I write I'm still hoping he's gonna convert. I'm still believing that might influence on him is stronger than his influence on me. So am I really really open minded? Or am I just open enough to make it seem like I'm listening?
Arline 40:07
Who I need to pay attention to that because I can find myself in conversations. Similarly, no longer a Christian no longer a believer in anything supernatural, but wanting to ask questions that maybe can get the other person to think rather than just letting them be where they are. And like still being an Evan Jellicle, just for something completely different. Like, does that make sense? Yeah. The fun, the fundamentalism and the the evangelizing those kinds of behaviors and ways of thinking are hard to kick. Because for you, you were in it way longer than I ever was, like, it's a lot to get rid of.
MJ 40:42
I saw the most convicting meme, I think, were posts on Instagram the other day, and it was about how, how was your fundamentalist upbringing still playing into your deconversion? And so he says, Are you trying to pull people out of the church the same way that you tried to pull them into the church, and I'm not gonna lie, the first year of my deconversion I was, I was tagging my former church and my former pastor, and almost every one of my posts and being like, this is flat tires, this is that this is who they are. This is the man series like this is sexism, this is patriarchy. And just trying to like, convince people that it was a cult. And I'm like, you learn something there, though. You spent nine years and you didn't learn nothing? Like, so you got something out of it? What if they're getting something out of it? And so I'm like, Okay, well, is there a right way to warn people about what they're getting into. So it's kind of a, I started listening to this new podcast sounds like a cult, and they have three cold categories. And one of them is, you know, live your life and then watch your back and then get the f out. And so the beginning of my deconversion was that get the f out and take everybody with you it's dangerous is going to destroy the world. Like they're, they're making these misogynist out of just hold legions of, of young boys in youth group I watched my son get targeted on online by all these like misogynist groups, his whole youth group is is very, I would say the worst like influence on him that I could have probably imagined. But it was just a an anger period that I had to work through a whole lot of anger. And Sue Monk Kidd describes that in the dissonant daughter about years of anger. And, and that is why that book spoke to be so deeply of trying to let yourself like feel angry and allow yourself to feel angry, and then do something about it. And so I loved her approach and being I'm going to surround myself with the sacred feminine kind of try to balance this imbalance. For me, that has been step one of deconversion is like relating to God in the feminine. Before I can go to Goddess genderless, God is bigger. And so it's kind of one of those, I spent 30 years here, like I would like to spend a couple of years loving her getting to know her, and then getting to know something even bigger. The My son is already kind of there my 17 year old, I feel like he like just bypass like all of it. And it kind of makes me jealous sometimes to be like, how did you just know? Like, how did you just know I raised you in the church too? Like, how did you just know this was just lunch, a bunch of crock? Like, it just seems like he knew innately like what was right what was true for him and was just like, I like that, but I don't like that. And I'm just not going to do that. And I don't believe that. But that's okay for you and are just like, well, I did something right, at least you know, like, maybe my kids will do better than I did. I'm still trying to undo all of that here. But he's already got this idea of calling it source or absolute. So so many different names out there. I think I find a different one. And every book I read read whether it's like on Zen or Buddhism or quantum healing, it's just I feel like science has a name for God, like we have a name Allah or Muslims have a name. So it's just all these different names for the same source that is just something other. For me, it is just something other than myself. That has well intentions for me. And I think that that has been the source of my self love healing journey of establishing a sense of worth of rebuilding who I think I am. When I met my husband, I told him if you don't learn anything about God in my face, because I told him how do you have a critique on a book you never read? He said he would never read the Bible. And, and I just told him early on that if you think that you know You cannot without knowing my face, like it is so entwined in who I am that I don't know who I am without it. And so now redefining myself as well, is it still faith? It is in a sense, but is it so core to who you are that you don't know who you are without it? So when I get to the part of supplying a bio to people, or online, or for my literary agents trying to get a book published, it's like, well, I don't want to start with I am this or I am that I'm like, these are just roles I play, like, how do I figure out who I am? Like, you know, Knowledge Seeker, and then I'm like, Well, you know, if you were a part of God, then all the knowledge is already there. So even if that identity was taken from you, if you could not seek Who are you at the core? And that has been what the last like six months has been about just trying to figure that part out and being like, I don't know anymore. But I don't think that that's the answer to, to arrive at a conclusion. Because I think if I concluded who I am at 38, then by the time I'm 58, I'm going to have to undo all that.
Arline 46:05
You'll be a completely different person, then like, there may be like, I think about one of the things that was, I guess, shocking, I don't know if that's the right word for my husband and me, he d converted before I did. And that sent me on a journey to figure out like, Okay, what do I believe? And now we're both in similar places. But it was like, our values didn't change. Like, we were so surprised. They're surprised, because being Christian had been such an integral part of both of our lives for so many years. And then when we realize like, we can't believe this stuff anymore, but it was like, oh, but our values are still the same compassion, empathy, kindness, justice, wisdom.
Where are you now as far as like, what your beliefs are about supernatural like, for me? I've read the Brene. Brown and the Sue Monk Kidd, and like, they were all they've all been so good for me. But I've kind of landed in a place where I don't believe in the supernatural stuff. But what do you believe now about sorcerer universe? Or any of those kinds of words? I guess about God in general, like your definition if you have one?
MJ 47:20
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I have grown to like, dislike the word. God, kind of in general. I prefer goddess right now. Simply because it feels more. I feel like God has so much attached to it already. And when I think the word God, I think, a white man in heaven.
Arline 47:44
It's hard to disconnect that from Yeah, I understand.
MJ 47:48
I think that kind of rings true. Whether you were raised in any faith or not, is kind of you hear the word God and you kind of it's kind of been taken over. And so I try to avoid that word at all costs. I think my journey actually kind of led me full circle. When I was about 1415, I began to explore Wicca and I remember having this falling in love with the idea of God being represented through nature, and feeling like Well, that's the only place I ever feel like there's something bigger than me here. Like, I feel this awe and wonder, and this, this, this stirring in me, that connects me to everything else in nature. And so I go to the mountains on hikes every every month because it's, it's my like, fill back up with with goddess. And so when I was studying Wicca my parents obviously freaked out. Like, oh, my God is our worst nightmare, our daughter is becoming a witch. Um, but there was one hangup for me. And that was in a Wiccan religion, they focus on a goddess instead of a god. Or they focus on the sacred feminine instead of the masculine. And I remember thinking at 1516 years old, well, but I know God is, is Jesus, you know, so I know God is the man. And I could never allow myself to be a part of any ritual or any ceremony that said, Goddess, I would change it to God. And so it was this aversion to seeing God in the feminine. That kind of made me walk away from Wicca for a long time. And in my adult life, I've come across a lot of books that kind of brought me back to, I wouldn't say Wiccan anymore, because I would say that's one, one branch, just like evangelicals, one branch of Christianity. I consider myself an eclectic witch at this point, which in the sense that I didn't necessarily become one so much as remember who I am as a woman, I think which is worth the healers. They were the midwives they were the the wise women and I I feel like that is our birthright as women. And because our stories haven't been told, it's been his story instead of her story for so long, that it's gonna sound like a side by side trail real quick. But have you ever heard the red tent by Anna or Anita Diamont?
Arline 50:17
No, I have lots of people who've loved it, but I've never read it.
MJ 50:21
It's about Dinah, so the only daughter of Jacob and her experience is a woman in the in her culture and the the birth of the Israelites in her perspective of how not great these men were. But it talks about this red tent where women would sit during their cycles. And because it all syncs up in the same village, they would all sit there for a few days and talk to each other. And that was how women's stories were passed down. And so I had this heartbreaking moment. And I think it was in dancer, the dissident dancer, the Dissident Daughter, where I realized there was this break, where women who didn't have daughters had nobody to pass it down to. So there was just storyline last, and last, and last. And last. And so we don't know, the stories of these wise women are these, you know, these these witches that were able to use their power, they're tap into nature, there's own cyclic nature, and be like, Oh, I can read when when this cow was going to give birth, or I can tell you, you know what herbs are going to work for this. And it just became a discrediting of ourselves and the, in the beginning of the taking of our power. And so by using the word witch, for me, that is just Reclaiming my power. So I know it has a lot of connotation to a lot of people. And it can mean a lot of different things. For me, I'm more of the eclectic, which in the sense that I, I take from different ideas. I like the the gardening is like my favorite thing. Mostly retouching nature. I'm also vegan. So I think the connection to nature has always been there. For me, it's been something that I used to beg my church to, like, recognize, like, hey, like, why is he still talking about hunting or eating chicken wings in heaven. I'm like, I'm really hoping that we're not slaughtering animals by the billions and heaven. It's just, I really feel like we'll get past this someday, like if we can start to see all life as as valuable. And so I feel like I was already there. I just didn't know what to call myself. And so I still believe in a supernatural in the sense that I believe that when I use my tarot deck, it's like doing the soul voice meditation, but getting a clear answer, because I can doubt myself, when I do this whole voice meditation, I can be like, was it really me talking to myself? Is this what you said? But was that my intuition? Or was that my head because my head is kind of crazy. Like, I have all sorts of thoughts that go on up here. And so I'm trying to ask, you know, questions and get answers. And I'm like, Well, I got an answer, but I don't trust it. And so I'll pull up my tarot deck, and then I'll get an answer. That's like, yes, trust yourself. And I'm like, Okay, right. Um, so I feel like, I do get answers from something outside of myself. And that's kind of my idea of supernatural at this point, that and I do believe in multiple lives, reincarnation, I don't necessarily believe that they're all human, I don't even necessarily believe they're all on Earth. And I don't believe that time is linear, necessarily, I don't know if you know, some of my past lives are yet to happen. I'm like, I don't think that that's the point. I feel like whatever lessons I've learned here on Earth are lessons that I didn't get to any past life. And so like, when I see somebody struggling with something over and over and over again, the woman who accused Emmett Till of rape passed away today. And my first thought was, she's gonna have to come back and learn that lesson of race racism, like she's going to have to come back as somebody who suffers, you know, or somebody who loses somebody, you know, like, or, or somebody who, you know, has to, like, just face this somehow. Because in in my idea of the afterlife, and a lot of this is formed by a near death experience I had when I was four, and also reading up on other people's near death experiences because of my experience. I watched the show called Life After Death by Tyler Henry on Netflix. And he talks about how people still grow after they're gone. We don't just stop our growth cycle, we're still growing as spirits. And so that to me, was something that I held on to because it was it felt like there's so much that has been passed on and passed on and passed on for people not healing. And you see it in epigenetics with the African Americans holding on to more stress levels in their bodies because of their past. And I feel that women have some reckoning too. To Do With, with the witch burning and and the I mean, kind of genocide on women that was never really talked about or never really like, you know, even reported on like numbers were really not written the people who did write about it were men like, the things that we don't know are what I feel like my new mission in life has become of getting people to tell their stories, I find myself buying people journals all the time of like, Dad, tell me your story, Mom, tell me your story. And it's like, tell us your story. And it has like prompts and everything. But I'm just like, I'm not letting one more person go without hearing what they have to offer. Because I feel like we're missing out on the everyday perspectives, and getting the good writers perspectives. And I just want to have a history that encompasses men and women. And all cultures, and I want it to be moving towards a better Earth. So I feel like my spiritual idea or practice today is is that this earth can become heaven. Here. I don't know if that's something that has already happened in the past and comes back around. And it's a circle, that we just keep repeating. I like to tell people, we are God's evolution. Our evolution is part of God's evolution, as we are growing, God is growing like we are becoming more compassionate than we are caring more about every person, like we're not going back in no matter how much certain groups of people want us to, like, we're not willing to go back to being second class citizens, we're not willing to go back to the way things were We want a world that is more inclusive to everybody. And that I think was is my idea of God and heaven. And this interconnectedness of like realizing that my healing is your healing and that my my hurt is your hurt. And then once that happens, there's no identifying this as right or wrong or good or bad. Or it's just, well, if that hurt you, then it hurt me and I don't want to do that to you. So just a simpler way of living.
And for my kids, I feel like I have to make the world a better place than when I entered it. Just make sure that I am not leaving my daughter in worse hands. After Roe v Wade being overturned, then then she was going into it. Fortunately, I live in Colorado. So I have a lot of protections in place for for me here. But my sister lives in Texas, and I have you know, friends all over the country. And I'm like, I'm not willing to let anyone go. I'm not willing to let anybody be oppressed without saying something about it. And so in I mean, the racial awakening, Awakening was the other, you know, huge part of my deconversion that actually was my nail in the coffin of like, leave this church now and never come back. was right after George Floyd. Our church pretended like they were going to talk about it. They did one sermon on race, and they had their youth pastor, their young pastor, obviously the pastor's son in law off because it's only sees in the family. But they got him to get up there and give a speech about race and how racism has no place in the church and got a huge pushback online. And that was where I got called the terrorists for being a Black Lives Matter protester. And started to hear the words critical race theory and and have people like, come at me with this stuff. And, and my response was, I don't know what that is. But I do know what racism looks like. And I do know what it looks like when people are treated horribly, because I was married to a black man. And I was with him since I was 14 years old. I got pulled over when we were together, and he got a ticket. And I didn't know I was driving. Like there were different things that I would witness personally. And nobody would believe my stories. And it became this like gaslighting scenario, I felt just completely gas lit by the church. Like they're saying, No, we don't see race. No, we don't see race. And so the following week, the main pastor got up and said, We are not going to be that church that talks about race. And he said, and if you think we need to defend that, please read Romans 13. And that was the last sermon I ever listened to. And I was like, I can't be here. My kids depend on me. They depend on me standing up for them, because they are kind of being brainwashed in your youth group to think that they're gonna be treated like all their white peers. But if they get pulled over, guess who's going to jail first, it's my kid, not your kid. And so it was just this kind of heartbreak at realizing that even the people that I grown up with didn't believe me or trust me My opinion or thought that I was making a political statement by saying, you know, black lives matter, because I have been saying it long before, like back when Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012. So I had been saying it for so long, that by the time it like really picked up in the light of Elijah McLean and George, George Floyd in Colorado, it became this. You're just jumping on the bandwagon kind of idea. And I'm like, oh, no, but these are my children. Like I've been saying their lives matter since day one. I've been calling out racist in the parking lot at their schools, like, I have been on this. But I had been alone in this, I thought that the church, if they knew would be like, oh, what? And that's actually what started my page, the dissident daughters page. It was, if people only knew this, like, maybe it would shift a perspective. And and I was like, Well, how do I share that I can't just keep giving our books to people this gift. And 99% of the time, they don't read it, or they get annoyed with me. And I'm like, you don't have to read I'm just giving you a free book. Like, for me, that's like the best gift you could give me. Because like, I didn't realize it would be so offensive or to do lists for people. And so that like became a Okay, so you can't reach out to people to give them stuff, because then you're like, targeting them? What if you created this other page? And I was too worried about my parents finding out that I wasn't Christian anymore. Yeah. So I kind of created an anonymous page that was separate from my personal page that so that it's funny, because everybody had already stopped following my personal page already, because it's black lives matter for four years.
Arline 1:01:43
I totally get it. A few people have asked like, because on Facebook, I'm like, super anti racist, ever anti religious heifer on Facebook. And they're like, how does your family respond to your like, the things that you write about being an atheist, and I'm like, in 2014, when I first started waking up to the racism in the United States, and I attacked whiteness, they quit following me, like, they're not seeing anything that I'm writing. When I attacked, and I attacked the one true God of white Christianity. They stopped paying attention a long time ago, I was like, so they probably don't even see anything that I write. So I understand, yeah,
MJ 1:02:23
they quit ironic, too, because my mother, like grew up, you know, she, we, she bought hook line and sinker, the idea of being submissive to your husband, and, and living under him and you know, quit her job and was taking care of her kids and being a good home housewife. And until she hit her, you know, late 30s, early 40s, and had her. I mean, Brene, Brown calls it her spiritual awakening, and other people call it a breakdown. In my mom's form was definitely the worst way you could do it, you know, turn to alcohol and affair and leave. And so it was kind of a well, it's all or nothing. It's either you're all in or you're all out. And now she's all in again. And so now it's just I'm praying for my grandchildren, please let my you know, please let my grandchildren go to you wouldn't keep them, you know, out of heaven, would you? It was like, Well, Mom, I'm not afraid of hell anymore. I stopped believing in that. So when you're not afraid of something that doesn't work as well. With like, wow, manipulation? 101. Yes.
Arline 1:03:25
Some kids on the playground told my older son that like you put your family's gonna go to hell, if you don't believe in God, he goes, what, but we don't believe in hell. So we don't really care. Like, it's like, whatever. As we wrap up in Jay, is there anything that I did not ask that you that you want to mention?
MJ 1:03:44
Oh, no, I think I kind of went in circles a little bit, I am still writing out my story, because it's hard to tell where it, you know, really starts I feel like I've been on a deconversion program since since I was four and fell out of a window. And, and it's like that near death experience, like convinced me that there is something bigger than me. But it also reminded me that I wasn't going to get answers from the people around me, because they didn't know either. And so that search is where I think that you keep searching and you keep searching and you keep searching, you'll find a way right out of it.
Arline 1:04:22
Yes. And it is wonderful to be in a place where I don't know, is a perfectly acceptable answer. Like there doesn't have to be a right answer. There doesn't have to be a wrong answer. There doesn't even have to be an answer. It can be like, I don't know. And I'll keep looking or I'll stay where I am. But you don't have to have any answers and you don't you don't have anything to prove anybody you have to to make feel a certain way so that they know that you believe this or that and those are good things. Do you have any book podcasts, YouTube, any kind of recommendations that and I know you have book recommendations but like cuz we will direct everyone to your Instagram page. But um, yeah. Any recommendations that have been just just super helpful to you in your in your deconversion journey?
MJ 1:05:11
Absolutely. I would say we can do hard things. By Glennon Doyle Abby Wambach and her sister Amanda Doyle, the podcast, right? It's a podcast. Yeah, the podcast, along with the AI way podcast by Jamila Jaleel. Those two, for the last year, I had been going through my LGBTQ like awareness, like, and realizing that I had no trans friends and being like, I don't understand their perspective in life, I need to know more. And so these podcasts have like, opened my eyes to perspectives I've there are people I don't even know their names. And hearing their perspectives has been so fascinating. And so mind blowing that I'm just like, how did how am I just discovering this now? And how did I think that I had a good idea of from all the books that I've read, have different personalities, when I'm like learning that there's a whole whole group of people out there that have never like shared and their stories are the most fascinating.
Arline 1:06:09
Thank you so much. Where can people find you online if they want to connect with you?
MJ 1:06:14
Right now it's just the Instagram dissident underscore daughters. And from there I am working on finishing up my book this year. We'll see if that ever gets published, I may just publish it myself. We'll see. But that's going to be kind of a just an in depth like story of my life. I feel like I've got a lot of things that I relate to different groups of people that usually are on opposite sides of the aisles. And hoping that my my book brings a perspective that you know, some people see themselves in.
Arline 1:06:47
That's fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing your story. MJ, I really enjoyed this.
MJ 1:06:51
Thank you, Arline Have a great day.
Arline 1:06:58
And final thoughts on the episode in Jays amazing reading life that she shares on her page, dissident daughter's has been highly influential in the things that I've read over the past few years. And I think her story, if we as graceful atheist podcast listeners, if we can not dismiss her story because of words like witch or divine feminine or supernatural source universal that stuff. Her story is so similar to so many other people's stories. We're often raised with this black and white thinking where there's no nuance. There's only good and evil, right and wrong. It's filled with shame and purity culture and an inability to trust ourselves. Because we're explicitly taught, we can't trust ourselves, we cannot trust ourselves. We have to trust people outside of us to interpret what truth is. And I think just realizing how much nuance there is in life, how much we can learn from religions, from spirituality, from rituals, and traditions, what we can learn from women, because the atheist world is not exempt from misogyny, or white supremacy. And so yeah, just being willing to hear her story, and how much it resonated with me because I have read su MK kids, the dance of the Dissident Daughter, I did go through a time where I was like, I don't know if I believe in God. But I want God to be some something more feminine than what I have believed for so long. And I needed to go through that. I feel like I needed to go through that. And now like for me, I'm an atheist. I don't believe there are supernatural things in the world. I need more evidence than people stories. However, there is so much value in people's stories, so much value in the ancient stories, the ancient myths, and I hope we can be open to hear that. And MJ, thank you again for being on the podcast, and keep up all the amazing work that you're doing on Instagram. And I'm excited that you're writing a book I love it's
David Ames 1:09:35
the secular Grace Thought of the Week is about trying to prove yourself wrong. My favorite part about this conversation with MJ was when she talked about the scientific method and attempting to prove yourself wrong. This is so counterintuitive to humans. We want to find corroborating evidence. We want to find things that line up with what we already believe as MJ captured in this quote, I started asking myself, What are the criteria? What are the church leaders really looking for? They're looking for somebody who doesn't question doesn't challenge the status quo doesn't have a viewpoint that encompasses anything that includes the world along with Christianity. We were in such a bubble that had no countervailing information or evidence. And when we come out the other side, and experience the world as it is, we can still take with us that need to only consume information that agrees with our existing opinions. The hard part is reaching out and finding information with which we disagree. It doesn't mean that we accept that entirely, but it does challenge the way we think trying to disprove ourselves or to prove ourselves wrong is healthy and a significant way to grow. Next week, I interview Amanda, that's going to be an amazing conversation. 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 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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s guest is Religious Trauma Life Coach, Mary Burkhart. See her full bio here.
Mary grew up in the Apostolic Pentecostal Church, and her family’s devotion goes back generations.
When she was little, unspeakable things happened to Mary, but their church self-righteously dismissed the situation, forcing her mom and her to move. They found different churches; Mary hoped these would be different.
Between working behind the scenes in another church and seeing the “same ugliness,” she’d seen before and a silly question asked by a college friend, Mary’s uncertainties started to pile up. She was still a believer but she needed sturdier answers than Christianity was giving her.
“It’s not about being hurt or about hurt feelings. You leave [the Church] because things keep compiling, things keep compounding. That’s why.”
After more than fifteen years out of religion, Mary coaches others through their own journeys of religious deconstruction with Religion In Remission. Her work is a grand example of secular grace.
“We really have to take our experience and make it work for us. It’s fuel. We can either let it destroy us, or we can let it make us better.”
“At five and six years old, I was just so moved. In retrospect…I was so moved because I would see everyone else so moved, and I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of the Spirit. I wanted to be part of the environment, and I took it very seriously.”
“When you get…behind the scenes, you start to see a lot more of the ins and outs of how a religion and a church function. You start to see things unravel. You start to see that people are not what they seem like they are.”
“It’s not about being hurt or about hurt feelings. You leave [the Church] because things keep compiling, things keep compounding. That’s why.”
“I never knew that my exit from religion would lead me to atheism. I never knew. I had no idea. When I left the church, I thought I was leaving that church. That was it.”
“It is just as difficult to leave a religion as it is to stay.”
“The compassion that religion is supposedly built on just doesn’t exist. It’s all a business.”
“Everyone has speculations. Even religions have speculations. They’re just going off what they’ve been told!”
“…a lot of people don’t like it when I say this, but religion is for people who are terrified of their own mortality. They have to have some kind of guarantee that there’s ‘something else out there.’”
“Is it really love if you can’t take your love away without consequences?”
“You have to own your own existence. You have to own your own life…You decide how to live your life. You decide what’s important to you…You have to find what you makes you happy, and you have to go after that.”
“If I can help people, steer them away from that ledge and say ‘What you’re feeling is normal. What you’re feeling will get better. What your feeling has a remedy.’ That makes me happy. That gives my life some purpose…”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) 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 my supporters on Patreon if you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you did 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 Remember, there is a merch shop you can get your T shirts and mugs with graceful atheists and secular Grace themed items on it. The links will be in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline interviews this week's guest, Mary Burkhart. Mary is a life coach helping people through deconstruction with her company religion in remission. Mary grew up Apostolic Pentecostal, she had some very traumatic experiences in her young life. Later in life, she began to work in the tech part of the church and saw how the sausage was made behind the scenes. And eventually, her questions piled up beyond her ability to continue to her faith. Today, Mary is helping other people process there deconstructions you can find Mary on Instagram, at religion underscore in underscore revision. And there'll be many links for her work in the show notes. Here is our Lean interviewing Mary Burkhart.
Arline 2:08
Mary Burkhardt Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Mary Burkhart 2:12
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Arline 2:14
I'm sure it's the almighty algorithm of Instagram that said, you may like this account. And so I started following you. And I'm no longer a Christian, no longer believer and I have an okay. religious background. Like I didn't have a whole lot of crazy because I did not grow up in it. But I loved the resources that you were putting out there the the questions you ask you just like curious. And so anyway, I love what you're doing. And I want to hear all about religion in remission. But um, first, Mary, tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in?
Mary Burkhart 2:48
Sure. I grew up Apostolic Pentecostal. And what that is, yeah, that's usually the response that I get. Very, very churchy. Yeah, you know, church, many, many days out of the week. So when I was, I was born into it. My mom, she's been in it since she was 12. And I've been in it because she's still in it. And my dad was also very heavy into it as well. It is later years he's very religious, but he doesn't really go to church anymore. Just because of health reasons. But he's definitely very, very much a believer. But I grew up Apostolic Pentecostal and when you think about the connotations that come along with that, running around the church and Holy Ghost filled and, you know, all kinds of speaking in tongues and what they call crazy cult stuff. It kind of comes along with that, and being at church so much dedicating a lot of your time to the church. My mom was very, very devout and into, you know, us serving in whatever capacity we could. She was very close with the pastor, which was a woman and her daughter. Yeah, right. It was the pastor being a woman who was very rare, because they didn't you know, there was not very big on women pastors back then. And I'm an 80s baby so I mean, it wasn't terribly far away, but it was definitely still close enough to where they didn't think that women should be leaders over a flock. And so we were in church. I mean Monday for I try to remember the order of things but I know Monday was like cleaning the church after Sunday's you know, Tuesday's a prayer meeting. Wednesday's was Bible study. I think we had maybe Thursday was choir rehearsal, and then Fridays we had off and then Saturdays we go clean the church for Sunday. Sunday. We were in church all day. Yeah, it was it was just that deep. Um, And so my devotion to religion and to God to the Christian God, I'll say, came very early in my life. And but I, I don't? Well, it's hard, right? Because indoctrination is definitely it's a difficult being, it's a difficult beast to deal with. I've learned not to live my life with a ton of regrets or resentment towards towards it, because it really did shape me into who I am, you know, we have to take our experiences and make it work for us. It's, it's fuel, like, you know, we can either let it destroy us or we can let it make us better. As I got older, I mean, I, even though I didn't really understand fully the devotion and the things that were happening, the the vows that I was saying, and, you know, the commitments that I was making, I meant them, you know, I didn't know anything with them. But I was still very committed. And I was testifying in church at five and six years old. And I remember, I was just so moved, you know, because, and in retrospect, obviously, because at five years old, six years old, seven years old, well, you really know about this huge system of religion. But I was so moved, because I would see everyone else moved, you know, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be a part of the spirit, I wanted to be a part of the environment. And I take it very seriously, there was just a lot of mimicry. Because I wanted to make sure that I fit into that mold. And so it was around five years old that I started being sexually abused. And it was by my god, brother. His mom had died. And he was in his teens. And it was very, it was difficult, obviously, you know, for the obvious reasons, but it was confusing. And more so when everything came out, because my brother was the one I confided in. And I asked him not to say anything. But of course, he did. And I was very happy that he did, because it stopped everything in its tracks, and come to find out he was also abusing some of my cousins. But what happened with the church at that time was, I was called a liar. And I was completely demonized. And I was shamed. I was I was just talked about so badly as a child, not at all, and had no frame of reference, you know, for where this stuff would even come from. I'm just telling what happened. And yeah, my mom, she asked if we want it if I want it to take it to court. And I told her, yes.
Arline 8:11
So your so your family, your mom believed you? Oh, absolutely not. But not church.
Mary Burkhart 8:17
Yeah, no, my mom 100% believed me. And my it was kind of a split thing. My parents had split by the time everything came out. And my dad was he believed me, but he was of the mindset that he's just a kid. You know, he's a teenager, we don't want to ruin his life. And let's just, you know, do that. That typical church response, you know what I'm saying that typical? Yeah, let's sweep it under the rug, so that it can happen to someone else, essentially, you know. But I told my mom, I wanted to go to court. And we were pretty much excommunicated, and ostracized by our church. It was hard for me because I, because I still didn't understand the the depth and the scope of religion itself. All I knew was what they told me. And that was that God was love and that he was supposed to, you know, his people love us. You know, we were supposed to love each other and believe each other and trust each other. And when that happened, I was totally confused.
We won our case. And I just think that the scars were a little bit too deep for my mom at that point, because, like I said, she's been in it since she was 12. And she loved her church family. So for that to happen, you know? And it's funny because even now, saying it, I don't think I ever really took the time to think about how deeply that part hurt her. You know, she had Been in it way longer than we had? Would that was in New Jersey and we she took us and moved us to North Carolina for a fresh start. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was a few years later. And so I grew up the latter part of my years and for the next 20 years in North Carolina, and we continued going to church we found a church in North Carolina St. Apostolic, Pentecostal very, very traditional churchy running around the church, we couldn't dunk, you know, and she was home, you know, she, so I didn't go back immediately. But I started following her when I was about 16. And it was a few times off and on from like, 14 to 16. And then I committed completely. But even though we were away from the church in that time, we never stopped believing we always had those core beliefs of Jesus Christ is the Savior and, you know, death, burial resurrection, he's got in the flesh and all that. And when I started really committing myself to my religion, I don't do things half assed, so I'm like, I'm gonna commit, you know, and I'm reading and I'm searching, and I'm researching. And I was, I loved it, I found that that same kind of naive love that I had when I was about, you know, five and six again, and with the people that I felt like, we're family, you know, and, you know, spiritual brothers and sisters, and we were able to make friends and, you know, make connections. And then it wasn't, it was proud. I started shortly after I went back to church on the sound ministry. And I completely loved it. I'm very technical, so that that's something that always sticks with me, wherever I go. And, but when you start in the technical aspect of things, and you get behind the scenes, you start to see a lot more of the ins and outs of how a religion and a church functions. And you start to see things unravel, you start to see that people are not what they say they are. They don't believe as heavy as they say that they do. They have flaws and use, you don't think anyone's perfect, but they're not practicing what they preach. And yeah, for me, not, I guess, having that gap between, you know, the adolescent years and the teen years, you know, that those preteen to young teen years, I missed kind of that transition, you know, in church that you get, when you realize these things younger, and you just still go with the flow, you know, you're just like, Okay, well, you know, this is just kind of how it is, right? So I had a naivety as an as an older teenager, almost an adult into my young adult years. Thinking that, well, we're all the same. We're all serving God the way that he wants us to, we're all making the sacrifices, we're all doing the same things and reading our word and going to church. And we all love this, you know, the same God the same way. It was just not the case, you know, and that was a hard realization for me as well. But seeing those same kinds of the same kind of ugliness surface that I noticed when I was younger, and it was I think I was going to college, and I was just talking to this guy who he wasn't a believer at all. And he just asked a really silly question about Can God make up a boulder that's too heavy for him to lift? Yeah. And I was like, No. Yeah. You know, it was just it was a weird question. And I always say it's the dumbest question. But it really did throw a monkey wrench at me and it was it kind of started to chip away at what I now understand is critical thinking. Things are black and white. You know, things are things are not always easily answered. And I don't remember the guy's name, but I'll always be grateful to him for for that simple, little crazy question.
Things to do, once you start to employ certain strategies, critical thinking and, you know, you're, you don't look at things the same way. It's like, well, what if, what if this isn't or what if This is or, you know, how do I go about this in a different way? And so people always ask me, why did you leave the church? That's what they want to know. Why did you leave? Why do you think they just want some really simple answer, like, Oh, I was hurt, you know? No, that's people. Most people don't leave the church because they're hurt. They don't leave because it's like, hurt, okay? You deal with feelings and emotions, like an adult, the same way you do, whether you're in or out of, out of the church. It's not about being hurt. It's not about hurt feelings, you leave, because things keep compiling things keep compounding that's why, because they continue to be unresolved and they keep compiling. And you're trying to resolve inconsistencies. You're trying to resolve the the backbiting that you're seeing, you're trying to resolve the lack of love and compassion that you're seeing, you're trying to resolve these inconsistencies and contradictions in your holy text. And it's like, okay, so you know, if I can't get answers here about this, there's no answers for this. There's no answers for this. There's not you know, and things just really start piling up. You, you don't really have a choice at that point, but to, you know, serve your cognitive dissonance. And one way or the other, right? So you're either going to turn inwardly to your religion, and say, Okay, I'm just going to ignore all of this over here and just continue to trust and have faith. Or you're going to say, No, I need to know. And I feel like I deserve to know if there's more truth out there. So you turn outward, and you say, I'm going, I never knew that my exit from religion would lead me to atheism. I never knew I had no idea. When I left the church. I thought I was leaving that church. That was it. That was it. For me. I was like, Okay, I'm just done. When I left the church, I tried other churches. I didn't try other religions, but I did go non denominational, so that I could you know, I'm just like, Okay, let me see. But it was just more of the same. It was just more and so I left religion altogether. And I didn't even leave God, I was still a believer, you know, and it was just, it took time to really unravel and deconstruct my religious experiences. And the more research that I did, the more of my understanding that came through. That is when I made the decision, that I do not believe in a God in any God. And so it's people always want that simple answer. Why did you leave? Is that simple? You know, it's really not. And you can say, well, I joined the church. And you know, I didn't for this reason, you know, it's not, but it's usually not simple for why you join a church, either, you know, unless you were like, Okay, I was born into it. But why did you stay? Because there's, it's more complicated than that. So a lot of believers, they want to know why you left, right, they want to know, why did you leave? Because they're looking for some hole in why you left? Why did you, you know, you must have been hurt. Someone must have said something. So? No, it's It's, it's just as difficult to leave a religion as it is to stay. Yeah, it's totally difficult, you know, in the little cliched adage, about the road to atheism being littered with Bibles, which I always change to holy texts, because it's true. It doesn't matter where what religion you're coming from. Most people who have been indoctrinated into religion, or have been developed to a religion for a specific number of years, have tried to find answers within their religion first, before them. And it's just, it's not happening. And there's a reason for that, you know, so, in my own coaching, I never tell people you shouldn't believe you know, and I think a lot of people think that's what I do, I don't turn people away from their religion. And as a matter of fact, there have been several potential clients that I have told, you might need to go back to your religion, and see if you can get these answers because you're you seem to be confused about why you don't believe you know, and no one can give you that why you have to figure that out for yourself. So you know, telling people not to believe or to leave religion, that is not what I'm here for you. It's something that we all have to come to on our own.
Arline 19:38
I haven't had a lot of people ask, like, why did we leave? And sometimes I'm like, just ask me, I will talk to you just ask me. Like family family has asked a whole lot. But yeah, you're right. Like, I didn't leave because I wanted to sin or because I was hurt. Like I said earlier, like, our church life was pretty easy, which wasn't too bad. My husband he converted and so that sent me on a job He realized he couldn't believe so I was like, Oh my God, what? What do we do? So then I'm like, reading everybody I had not read yet who was a Christian. I was reading Catholic people I was reading like, these people that used to be off limits. And I was like, No, it's just the, the, the church is getting bigger to me, Holy Spirit's bigger, I was just learning, I had no idea it was going to lead me to be an atheist. And it was it was just a long trail of like, learning and learning and learning and then eventually going, you know, this doesn't, like I thought it did. And the things for me it was there was also a lot of mental health stuff. And so realizing that like, praying was stressing me out because I didn't know if God was going to help me or not, yes, like that anxiety, and finally, just being like, I don't, I'm just not gonna pray about stuff. It was like my brain cleared up a little bit like, it was so bizarre. So yeah, there's no easy answer. And it takes a long time. It's not an end for my husband. It was very emotional. For me. I was just like, I don't think this is true anymore. So then, of course, I get the thing Bush's head knowledge, No, baby, if you saw my journals, it was like the real deal. The whole Yes. Anyway, I've talked a lot but go ahead.
Mary Burkhart 21:10
So no, no, it's, I totally get what you're saying. And you know that that whole spiritual bypassing that they love to do when it comes to you know, your journey, the the No True Scotsman fallacy about you know, you were never really a believer. I'm like, Listen, I don't have anything to prove to anybody. And then that's not why I do what I do, you know, but it's always funny to me when I like, Well, you were just never really a believer. You're never you're never truly a Christian if you if you could leave so easily. I'm like, unfortunately for you, I was more Christian than you were. You know, I mean, I have, I have I've spent so many hours on on my knees praying, I have spent I have gone to so many prayer meetings, so many tears, waiting, just continue fasting, feet washing, okay, like I was, I was in it all the way. And I believed all the way journals thick, you know, notebooks full of knowledge and just studying studying material that I have, I cease to sit at the front, I remember when I was old enough to go to the Adult Bible study, I was so ready. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I can't wait. And I was just, and then the adult Sunday school, because my pastor taught it. And I was just, I'm like, I just want to know, you know, I want to know what's going on, I have to get this information. And I used to look at the Bible as something that was so dynamic. Like, how could you just read one scripture, and then it can be interpreted so many different ways. I thought I loved to read. And then I left religion and I started reading more philosophy and psychology. And I was like, oh, but you can do that with anything, you know.
Arline 23:04
I'm just about to be 40. And it just dawned on me a few months ago that I can highlight other books, and like, take away really great insightful things, right, fiction and nonfiction, with all my little highlighters, like I used to do in my Bible, like, I can learn from all these people. And it never it just, yeah, there's you can get it from so many different
Mary Burkhart 23:27
years. Just like music, right? And that's a big one.
The one thing, big thing that I really try to drive home with a lot of my, my clients, my, my friend, my family, whatever it is, whoever I'm talking to. Music is huge, but it's the psychological tactics of religion, right? They know what they're doing. That's why there's a song for everything music evokes emotion. And when you really start to understand how down to a science religion has it, it's it's really predatory. We are emotional beings. And religion understands that. Think about when you go to the store. We buy with emotions first, and then we rationalize later. Yes, that's, that's how religion is. We will join religion we will you know, we dive in headfirst, and then we rationalize it later. So when we're talking about giving, let's talk about tides, right? There's this music, a tone of music that's played. There's certain scriptures that are used to evoke emotion and say, you know You know, what a man rob God? And are you going to, you know, how are you going to bring in, you know, your, your 10%, or whatever into the storehouse, you know, give until God to God's people. And I remember my pastor used to say, don't give until it hurts, give until it stops hurting. And I always thought that was that was first of all, that was so brilliant. Because you're like, Wait, do I give more? Or do I give? Yeah, I'm like. So, you know, it's really up to your interpretation of what that means. But it was always meant for you to give more essentially, you know, take the sacrifice, take the leap, trust God, you know, and there was always, it never failed, there was always a search situation in the church where I, personally would see and experience people trying to decide between whether to pay their bills, or whether to pay their ties. And I always thought that was so hard. I was one of them. At one point, I was like, man, you know, what do I do? How am I? Because you're supposed to trust it's all about faith. Right? Yeah. And that is one of the most difficult things. It's easy for people who are wealthy, you know, it's okay. Okay, here's my whatever. It's just, but if you're working and trying to make your ends meet, it's tough. It's a tough decision to make. When I was more faithful and devout, it was an easy decision, but I would suffer because of it. And yes, like, I couldn't understand, like, I would see people who needed help from the church, and then they couldn't get it. And like, wait, but wasn't, isn't that what we're here for? To help people? Are we supposed to be, you know, and like I said, being in the background, and behind the scenes and seeing how things work? Then I also started hearing Oh, well, you know, you don't get your jobs, you can't get help. What about the community? What about the, you know, the, the Bible says that we're supposed to help, that's what we're here for. That's what the church is established for, to help the world to help the community. And it just really came out that there was agenda, you know, and then the more that I started going to other churches, the more that I started researching, and even helping people and talking to people, the more I find out, this is a thing. You know, it's not it wasn't just my church. Yeah, it wasn't just my religion. It's, it's a theme throughout religion. And the compassion that religion is supposedly built on just doesn't exist. It's all a business. Yeah. And that's where you know, it. It makes it easier for me, but it also made it more difficult in the beginning, you know, because, my, my soul, I was like, Yeah, my soul is just a business, my soul. What about that? What about that is okay, where I'm really trying to strive and get to, you know, this heaven place. And it doesn't seem like that really, is the goal of church anymore. You know, it just kind of seems like this is all a transaction. And yeah, it was, it was difficult, and it's hard. But I wouldn't change it honestly, just for me, the way that I went about everything, because I honestly, I went with all my heart. And that's one thing I tell my clients, like, your intention matters, because there's always a lot of regret, things that I wish I didn't do. I wish I didn't say places I wish I wouldn't have gone. But intention matters. And it's not your fault that you were exploited. That's not your fault. You have to understand that and it's a difficult time. But if you can push beyond that, that guilt and that shame, and that's what I deal with a lot with people. It gets better, you know, we have to learn to shed that because our intention was not to, you know, exploit others or bring others into a system that we thought was horrible. It was to help people and to really think that when we're bringing them into a system of salvation, that we're this is the only way that they're going to be able to get to, you know, to get to heaven and to save their soul to make their life better. That's that was that intention? And you know, it's, it falls on us because now we are the ones who are deconstructing, and we're the ones who've walked away but we understand better you know, better you do better. That's all you can do. That's all you can do.
Arline 30:02
Yeah, that's very true.
So how did you get from, to, let's say, Christian to not real sure about church to still believe in God, but then started reading, how'd you get into philosophy was that just you just started reading other stuff? Or
Mary Burkhart 30:24
I always loved the concept of philosophy, but I never really was like, Oh, let me just read Nietzsche, you know, let me just open this up, you know, me read a little bit of Aristotle, you know, but honestly, it really was just that. I wanted to understand different schools of thought. I just, I honestly, I've just picked up a book on philosophy one day. And it was the first philosophy book, oh, my gosh, I don't even remember it was it was some existential ism book. epicurean, I think that's actually what it was. But I I was still fascinated, because I was like, Wait, this makes so much sense, you know, and just how, how we view life. Under religion, it's search for the right word. It's so concrete, right? It's like, okay, we have a goal. We have to live like, we have to live every facet of our being around this goal. We are working towards heaven. We're working towards salvation, we're working towards saving souls. That is our goal. Then you start reading, different schools of thought, and philosophy. And it's like, what if life means nothing? Yeah. Well, wait a minute. What of all this actually means shit? What if this means nothing? What if I don't? What if I don't mean anything? You know, it's really mind blowing. And I always, I love that experience that I had, when it came to philosophy. What if none of this matters? What if I die, and there's nothing but void? You know? How does that work? And it's hard, right? It's hard realizations. We don't ever know what's after death. But we have speculations everyone has been even religion has speculation. They don't know for sure they just go on, they're going off of what they've been told. But even in the Bible, it says, like, your people can't come back to you and tell you, they can't warn you. So you know, don't expect that. So what kind of assurity Do you really have that, you know, an afterlife exists? But I think the existential is existential is a part of philosophy has always been the most fascinating part for me, because one of the biggest takeaways was that religion. And a lot of people don't like when I say this, but a religion is for people who are terrified of their own mortality. Hmm, they have to, they have to have some kind of guarantee that there's something else out there, we cannot stand the thought that all of this just ends. And part of part of understanding that all of this just ends is okay. begins with understanding that all of this isn't actually great in the first place. You know, it's like, you know, even if your life is good, that's awesome. But think about the state of the world. Everywhere else, you know, we get so much tunnel vision when we're in religion. And it's, you know, I always use the example of a like a 12 car pileup. Oh, God is so good. There was a 12 car pileup, but I walked away. Every other person involved is gone, but I'm good. So God is good. What?
Arline 34:17
I remember some lady at the library where library frequent tours, and she was talking about how would the storms came through recently, she was like a not a tree fail. Like God was so faithful. And I was like, this was what I was still a Christian. And I just said to trees fell in our yard. Like, what does that mean about our life? Like, and she didn't? Yeah. What did God just like? That sound? It sounds so presumptuous. Right. Like it sounds so presumptuous. It really,
Mary Burkhart 34:47
at its core. That's, that's what it is. I mean, you talk about I remember the Hurricane Katrina and you know, or any hurricane really, they're like, Oh, the cross is still saying anything,
Arline 35:00
or the Bible that survived the fire?
Mary Burkhart 35:03
The fire? Yes. Because if you actually look into it, the Bible is actually made of like flame retardant material and the thickness of it, it's going to take a lot longer to burn. But we don't think about that. We just think, Oh, well, you know, it's something that has God's name on it. So it had to be preserved. And but you know, it's like this hurricane came through this town and killed 1100 people, but the cross is still standing. So God is still good. And it's like, no, definitely not. No, but yeah, if you ever noticed, like a funeral, let's just say, and it happens a lot. That has a lot of funerals. But, you know, I noticed the pattern a lot for people is, when someone dies, we lost three people very close to our family, my uncle, my aunt and my brother. Every single time there was a funeral. Everyone's like, oh, yeah, family is so important. We got to stick together, we got to do more. And you know, this, God is so good. And I'm just like, now at this, at this point, when I, when we lost all three of them, I no longer was a believer. So for me, I'm trying not to be cold. And just tell everybody like you listen, this is going to pass, you're just afraid of your own mortality, this death has just brought your mortality closer to you. And so that's all that's happening is that you're once again, faced with the fact that life ends. That's really all it is, you know, and this is going to pass, you know, right now, you're just speaking from a place of fear. I wish it was, you know, real, I wish that you guys really wanted to stay in contact with family. But you know, this is just really, it's all fear based. And, you know, but these are the most religious people right there. Because they're responding in kind to the way that they serve religion. In fear. They're serving in fear, elaborate, what? Kind of, they're responding in kind to the death of a loved one, the same way that they serve religion, which is fear based. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's consequence, right. So there are a lot of people they, you know, they say, Oh, well, you know, I love my I love God, I love this. I love that. So is it really love? If you can't take your love away without consequence? Mm hmm. You know, are you serving your god seriously, in full truth and love and devotion? Because there's consequences if you don't? Or, you know, it's hard. But that's a difficult question. Because it's hard for people to say, well, yes, I am. But how do you know? Because there are consequences. You know, it's not love. If there's consequences for removing your love away, for taking your side of the equation. Yeah, if we've taken your side of the equation, if you have to burn for, you know, leaving and saying, you know, I'm out of here. This is not for me. Is it really unconditional love? Is it really? You know, is it is it really unconditional love? And can you honestly say that you're serving fearlessly? I couldn't. I mean, some people might be able to say that they are. But I couldn't. I couldn't say that. It was It wasn't fear based for me. I was told it was totally fear based. I was like, Wait a minute. Yeah. This makes total sense to me now, you know, because especially being indoctrinated into it from a child. I had such irrational fears of hell. Such irrational. Yes, yes. And anybody who was brought up Baptist Baptists, any kind of, you know, really like deep Pentecostal roots. You at one point in your life, thought you were left behind. You went to the church, and no one was there, you came home and everybody was gone, or somebody with everybody was asleep or whatever. Nobody was answering your phone. You thought you missed the rapture. You know.
Arline 39:19
We weren't taught the rapture stuff. But I have heard so many people on the podcast talk about that, like, they, yeah, they turned around and target and couldn't find their mom and start panicking. And I'm like, I cannot imagine being the little kid and like, having this experience
Mary Burkhart 39:35
that that that's the first thing that comes to your mind as a child.
Arline 39:38
Yes, rather than like, oh, I stepped away and she's on the toy aisle like, Yeah,
Mary Burkhart 39:44
but um, oh my gosh, God doesn't love me. I left behind
Arline 39:49
my head
so tell me Now that you are a flaming crazy atheist who has you can't you can't have meaning in life, you can't have hope you can't have any note, you're not a moral person. How do you find your hope and your meaning?
Mary Burkhart 40:14
These days? Oh, man, that's good. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I love philosophy. And I'm really, about, you have to own your own life, you have to own your own existence. I mean, I think nihilism to a great extent is blurring the lives of absurdity. Because, you know, you just, yeah, okay, some, a lot of things don't matter, you know, conceptually, but you give your life meaning. You decide what you're living for, you decide what's important to you. You know, I am, I'm married to a wonderful man. I have a daughter who's about to be six years old, and a couple of weeks, I'm pregnant with my second. And, you know, I work very hard to take care of my family, and I relish the time that I get to spend with them, the memories that we make, you know, that is what gives my life meaning, you know, helping people through my coaching is one of the things that gives my life meaning. I can't speak for everyone else, but you have to find what makes you happy. And you have to go after that, you know, it's, it's easy to sit back and say, Well, you know, life doesn't mean anything. So I'm just, I'm not going to do anything about it. But at that point, I mean, you're just resigned to, to just exist. And that's, I mean, if that's what you want, sure. But, you know, for me, I, I feel like, this is the only life that we get, you have to, you have to make it mean, what you want it to mean, you have to yes, there's a system, especially in the United States, this country is not set up for us to win, right. But there are ways to live a great life and to enjoy life, you know, if the homeless person on the street, can have a smile on their face, and be so loving, I know I can too. You know, I have a lot to be grateful for I work hard. And it's about finding your passion, serving in that. Like, my passion is the coaching, you know, I, I didn't have this when I started deconstructing. And I wish that there was something like this available. Because my journey through deconstruction was very dark. In the beginning, I didn't realize that I was lacking a whole lot after I left the church. And I almost took my life. It was it was a very hard time because I just the things that I work to help people recognize on their own journeys, are the things that I wish somebody would have told me, you know, and I've been deconstructing for over 15 years. And it's been, it's been, it's gotten a lot better, but having to do it on my own. And there are people who don't survive it, because religion is so much one of the heaviest pieces of the country here in the United States, and in a lot of other countries, too. So you'll have people who, unfortunately have taken it a step further and have ended their life. Because you get family rejection, you get friend, you get all kinds of self hate, and you don't understand emotions and things you don't understand because of the way that indoctrination and religion weaves itself into your life. It's hard, it's so difficult. So if I can help people, steer them away from that ledge, and say what you're feeling is normal. What you're feeling will get better. You know, what your feeling has a remedy. That's, that makes me happy that that gives my life some purpose, you know, on a certain level because I do enjoy helping people but man, being able to steer people away. That's invaluable, you know, and I I have a heart for that because, again, those psychological tactics, we don't know what's happening to us. When we're indoctrinated. You know, we think we're just serving in religion. We think we're just doing you know, what comes with it. We're being manipulated and it's hard. It's a hard it's a hard thing to unravel. So, you know, as far as, of course, morality I mean, Obviously, we're immoral havens, and there's no there's no basis for morality if you're an atheist. But I always think that's so funny because morality predates Christianity. Yeah. So it's just so funny that they're like, Oh, well, you know, it's you can't have morals if you're not a Christian because God is the ultimate authority of morality. No, not really, though.
Arline 45:26
Yeah. And let's open the Bible and pull out some morality from different aside.
Mary Burkhart 45:33
Yeah, it's like
Arline 45:35
it's perfectly and infanticide. Like all the sides, all the
Mary Burkhart 45:40
rape and yeah, yeah.
Arline 45:53
Well, you were talking about your coaching, so tell us all about religion in remission, tell us what you're doing.
Mary Burkhart 46:00
So, religion, our mission is my coaching program I've been, it's my coaching business, I've been coaching for over two years now. And I absolutely love it. You know, it's helping to see people, you know, helping people to see themselves in a better light. Because we come out of religion with so much darkness and heavy of heart, you know, and just hopelessness sometimes, and think anything from you talking about sexual identity, to, you know, your, your human identity, to family rejection, to, you know, unsure of how to just view the world, where do I fit in, in the world? Now? You know, what, what do I do now that I don't have religion, all of these things, they matter, and they're so downplayed in religion, we get into these little bubbles within our religions. And then when you hit the world, you're like, Shit, no one prepared me for this. I have no frame of reference, I don't know what to do. And so being able to help people understand that one, it's completely normal, it happens, it's fine. But to that, it's, there's another side to it, you know, it gets better. Because I was so heavy, I was just, man. It took a lot for me to get to a place where I wanted to end my life. And so to come from that, and know, like, boom, there's, there's so much better on the other side of it. This is It's okay, you can get through this and your life can be so much better than you think. Because there's endless possibilities. If you decide that you want more, you know, it's about that's what it's about, you know, so you have to make the decision. Like, you know, this is just not my end, you know, I'm not just someone who left religion, I'm actually a human, a whole human. And I can, I can make my life what I want it to be. So I coach people. And I basically the core of it is helping people to transition out of toxic religion environments, toxic religious environments, and toxic mindsets, because that's really, the mind work is what needs to happen before anything else. And one of the things that I definitely harp on is indoctrinate indoctrination. And I coached people who have been in religion few years to, you know, over 30 years or whatever, it doesn't matter. But indoctrination is so subtle, and in harsh, that I really love to help people unwind that. Because it and I, I've said it before, if anyone's heard me that they know I use a rope analogy, you know, it's it's it religion reinforces itself. And it's so that's why you know, people, there's a revolving door, a lot of people will leave religion, but they'll go right back into it, because it really does, it reinforces itself. You know, those the rope is made up of little strands that are woven into fibers that are woven, you know, they're just in there tightened around it, so you cannot just break that that's how indoctrination is in our life. You know, you have to carefully remove these little fibers and strands out from your life because if you try to do it by like chopping the rope in half or just pulling it strands, you can unravel your entire life. So that's why some people just don't make it and so it's important that you be careful. You know, when you're unraveling your religious experiences and unpacking them Um, but the mindset work is so important. And we have to make sure that we're taking the time to do that a lot of times you see people come out and it's just like, one extreme to the next. You know, but if you've been in religion for I usually say about, you know, 10 years or more in your life, especially if you're an adult and you've been indoctrinated, you have to consider that you've been indoctrinated longer than you've been away from religion. Yes. So you, you have to be patient with yourself. And that's, that's really the most important part. You can, you know, get frustrated if you want to, but it's not. You have to take your time. It's a process, you know, and it's a lifelong process that we have to commit to. So don't you know, don't be in a rush because I was indoctrinated. I didn't leave religion until I was 24. I didn't become an atheist until I was 26. Well, I'm 39. So I've still been indoctrinated longer than I've been away from religion. Yeah. So you know, it's, it's a lifelong journey. So you know, you have to be patient with yourself. But, um, yeah, I have a podcast called religion or mission podcast, it's on YouTube, it's on Buzzsprout. And I just, I interview guests, and talk about their own deconstruction and their own religious experiences, or even lack thereof. I am on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you know, it's all over the place for me and I have been on several podcasts and, and it's always been a journey, I'm really grateful for the growth that religion and revision has had. And I, I, there's a big thing coming in the future. And we'll see, you know, I won't release it here. But right now, what's what's happening with religion, and my mission is I have a 12 week coaching program called destination deconstruction. And that is, it's so funny, because I always tell people like there is no destination to deconstruction, right? When you're on that path, there's no destination, don't ever think that you're going to get to a point your deconstruction, you're like, I'm finished, I'm done. I've completed these constructed. No, that's not that's never the case. But when you're leaving religion, the destination is to get healthy on that path to deconstruction. So it's about making your way to that Healthy Start of deconstruction. So in that 12 week, coaching program, it's about transform helping people transform their toxic mindsets, and dismantle them, so that they can start their deconstruction in a healthy way. And, you know, we go into even sexual identity, because it and I, it's funny, because I actually even posted about this today, where sexual identity is a huge part of our human identity. So much so that it colors, our experiences every day, we don't think about it on, you know, on that level every day. But, you know, you see someone you're attracted to. But if you see someone that you're attracted to, and you've spent years and religion, you're probably a year ashamed of that attraction, you're probably beating yourself down. You know, so it's about those nuances of sexual identity, as well as the big parts, you know, as well as, you know, what, I do think that I'm attracted to the same gender, or I do think that I want to explore this more, you know, so, in the 12 weeks, it's intense, but we go through, we go through a lot of what it takes to get a healthy start to, uh, to deconstruction, um, and it's even if you even if you've been away from religion for a while, you know, but you feel like, Man, I'm missing something. I need to figure out where I want to start and what which direction I want to go in, you know, everybody's welcome to to come. So
Arline 53:58
that's awesome. Do you have any recommendations books, podcast, YouTubers, anything that either was helpful on your deconstruction journey, which 10 or 15 years ago, that was long time ago? Or, or just now anything now that
Mary Burkhart 54:13
I'm that you're leaving the fool by Dr. Wintel Dr. Marlene widow, she's awesome. She you know, she coined the term religious trauma syndrome. And thanks to her and her work, it really is getting more attention that it deserves in the mental health space, because for the longest time, I mean, religion just didn't want to acknowledge that there were mental health issues, but neither did the mental health community. And so, you know, now that we're able to get things like religious trauma syndrome in the DSM, you know, it's, that's huge. It to acknowledge and religion may still not acknowledge it fully because it means that they have to acknowledge that there's a problem in the system. But that's, it is definitely worth read podcasts. I love Matt Dillahunty. He's, he's awesome. He and everybody knows him. Black nonbelievers has a podcast called in the cut. And I love black non believers allowed Mandisa Thomas. She's awesome. She's the founder of Black non believers. And I am a part of that. And basically, I mentioned black non believers a lot. Because when being a woman of color being a black woman coming out of religion, well, black people are the most religious denominations, denominations, excuse me. Demographic, not dominant demographic. And so, uh, you know, being a woman of color and not being religious 15 years ago,
Speaker 2 55:50
you know, yes, that's true. Yeah.
Mary Burkhart 55:53
So now it's a lot more it's because becoming more common, but it's, it's difficult to find support, it's difficult to find people who look like you. And it's just like, I don't know what to do. So when I found black non believers about eight years ago, I was very happy. I was very, because I was like, Oh, thank goodness. So I'm not alone in this. You know, it's hard. Because when you're growing up in a black household, that is extremely religious, everything surrounds that everything is about that, you know, whether you're going to church or not, you are a believer, and that's just kind of the end of it. And so, being a non believer in the people of color space, it's been, that helps a lot. It helps when you have that kind of representation and the support, you know, around you, so be black nonbelievers also has a Facebook group, and a podcast and you can always follow them in DC. They're on Instagram and Twitter as well. divorcing religion podcast with Janice Selby. She is. Yeah, she's awesome. I actually interviewed her on her. She's interviewed me as well on her podcast. She came from a very fundamentalist background as well. Very Mennonite. And oh, wow. So yeah, it was her trends. Her story is beautiful. Yeah, I mean, uh, speaking up with Andrew Pledger, who is also a great spin on the podcast. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's awesome. And he has I love his perspective, and how he's definitely, because he's a member of the LGBTQ community as well. And so you know, he definitely promotes that, that angle to help people who are struggling with it in that community. So yeah, some some really great ones out there. And I mean, if I think you have any more, I'll let you know. But yeah.
Arline 58:03
Well, Mary, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was a lovely conversation. Of course,
Mary Burkhart 58:08
thank you so much for having me.
Arline 58:16
My final thoughts on the episode. That was a lovely conversation, I really enjoyed getting to know Mary, I've only been following her a little bit on Instagram. But she asks some of the just most curious questions. Like she really wants to know how people are doing what are the things that they've struggled with since leaving religion? What do they miss from religion? How are they finding meaning and hope? It's neat to watch and to see people respond on Instagram to her questions. And, and I know she really has, oh, I was about to I was about to say she really has a heart for people. But the Christianese runs deep. But yeah, she has a heart for people, she really wants to help others and not to make them into atheist or make them into anything, but to just empower them to become the people that they want to be coming out of toxic religious environment. And so it's wonderful to see the work she's doing and the people that she's helping and thank you again, Mary. It was a fabulous conversation.
David Ames 59:22
The singular Grace Thought of the Week is participation was interesting that we did not plan to have Daniel and Mary back to back both Daniel and Mary talk about the existential dread on this side of deconversion or even the existential dread that drives religion in the first place. But a very insightful thing that Mary mentioned, is giving back as a part of the process of healing as a part of the deconstruction process. Over the years we've tried to provide ways for people to participate, obviously you can join the deacon version anonymous Facebook group and become a part of the community there. We have people like Jimmy who writes for the blog, Arline writes for the blog Arline does interviews, Mike t does the audio editing. There are lots of other things that you could participate in with the podcast if you are interested. If you have any interest on doing website work, marketing, running a group for the community, any of these things can be a way that you could participate and give back. Beyond the podcast, obviously, there are ways in your community as well. Volunteer, do something that you love something that makes you feel like a full human being, and that can absolutely be a significant part of growing as a human being and healing from the deconstruction process. Next week, we have Dr. Darrel Ray of recovering from Religion Foundation, as well as the secular therapy project. Darrell is also written a number of books, including The God virus and sex and God. Darrell is a font of wisdom. I think you're absolutely going to love this conversation. Check it out next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human being. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. Do you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show? Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com Four blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast a part of the ABS United studios Podcast Network
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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