Mormon Stories #1129: Amber Scorah - Leaving the Witness: Exiting Religion and Finding a Life

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delenn it is June 6 2019 and I could not be more excited to have with us today another epic amazing phenomenal authoring guests those of you who are followers of Mormon stories podcasts will remember a few epic interviews that we've had over the past couple of years with with never Mormons we call them never moze in our community one is Tove emeritus who wrote that amazing book the book of separation about being an Orthodox Jew losing your faith being in a mixed faith marriage leaving her husband that was an amazing book we brought her to Salt Lake City we also had the privilege of interviewing taro Westover about her amazing book educated brought her to Salt Lake City as well and now we have the chance to interview Amber skoura about her brand new book hot-off-the-press leaving the witness exiting a religion and finding a life we interviewed lloyd-evans a couple weeks ago about his jehovah's witness experience but Amber's book is going to take our understanding of the Java's witness move it to a new level so we're thrilled to have her today we're thrilled to have several many many people joining us live on Facebook and so without any further ado amber score a welcome to Mormon stories podcast thanks John I'm really happy to be here we had a false start so thanks for your patience all right so many of our listeners will have had a bit of an introduction to the Javas witness movement through the lloyd-evans do you know lloyd oh yeah we've talked online at met him in person once when he came to new york yeah super cool well every experience is different and there's so much that your book adds we're just thrilled to have you so thanks for joining us and where do you want to begin with your story there's so much to talk about and so such a little time yeah I was just thinking how the one thing that really overlaps that might be interesting to Mormons they're excellent is that my story involves a mission in China and it's funny because when I was in China I do remember seeing other Mormons there especially in Taiwan I think in Taiwan I was a little more obvious because we didn't have to be a secretive in Taiwan and in the book it's funny because there is this scene where I talk about how sometimes the people we talked to would mistake us for Mormons finally and I loved and I loved it but the last thing you guys wanted to be identified as it was Mormons which was totally I've got a I've got a friend of the family who served a Mormon mission in Taiwan and so I told him you got to read this book just because it talks about being a missionary in Taiwan but let's go back just a tiny bit amber tell us about your your parents and your upbringing just briefly in the job as with this movement how did your parents or in this case I think your grandparents kind of get into the movement yeah I'm third-generation Jehovah's Witness or I was and my grandparents on both sides converted and probably much like Mormons there's not a lot of intermarry like there's not a lot of external marrying most when you're Jonas you're pretty much supposed to marry another Jehovah's Witness so that's how it came down the family money my grandparents are from Canada and they were they were studied as adults and converted baptized so my mom she was raised in it as of the age around 14 on my dad's side I think he started a little I think his parents converted a little earlier but by the time my parents had me they had becoming active in the face do you know why I don't really know why and I can't say it's strange but they didn't really tell me a lot of things but basically I can sort of imagine the reasons I'm not sure how many meanings that weak form is have but Jonas is at that time had three meetings a week technically five but two of them were on the same day preaching all the time and there's a lot of pressure to be perform as a witness like if you don't preach and if you don't you're not regular at the meetings you'll start to get elders visits so I can imagine you know my parents whatever the reason the two little kids by that point they just stopped going for a while however they still took us to the main meetings like the biggest meetings of the years like the memorial we call it is sort of like feels like if you're Jonas and you don't go to the memorial which is like basically the anniversary of Jesus death and you know you're getting definitely gonna die Armageddon however most of the means we didn't go to however as a child I don't know I think it was a very introspective child maybe I don't know but I would listen at these few meetings we did go to and hear what they were saying and it really had an impact on me I started to have a lot of fear and like worried that if my family didn't go start going back to the Kingdom Hall that we would all be destroyed because Jonas is out there meanings like every meeting and talk about how arm again it is gonna happen like at any moment and they they've been talking that way for 100 years but when you're a child and that's your first introduction to it it has a big effect on you tell us since we're there I know this is really hard but in a few minutes and your in your book has a chapter on this or to give us just an overview of the main you know doctrinal or theological tenants of the Jobos witness movement so we can frame that as we talk about your upbringing in your story yeah so they were founded in the late 1800s and they kind of came out of that Second Great Awakening in the eastern United States where like seventh-day adventists came I think maybe I don't forget Mormons and they sort of you know morphed and managed to be one of those religions sects sects really at the time that evolved into the surface larger mainstream proselytizing religion their core beliefs are basically they feel that they are the only true Christian religion on earth today that they are basically an extension of first century Christianity the only the only sort of like ten US line from Jesus followers to the present day there is a governing body that was in Brooklyn for a hundred years and just recently moved to upstate New York and the governing body is this group of I think eight men who write a lot of the literature making a lot of the doctrinal decisions and basically run the show from the very beginning they were very apocalyptic they they believed in Armageddon that the world was going to end we were living in the last days as of 1914 which is a date that they kicked out calculating the using certain like mysterious calculations from the Book of Daniel and it is wasn't their temple kind of Egyptian numerology stuff yeah like going further backward a lot of Genesis don't know is that Charles taze Russell Russell the original founder when he was really on his search for truth he even traveled to the pyramids in Egypt and was looking for answers there because I think that you know when people have this preset idea that the world's ending they're looking for some formula that can confirm that that's gonna happen and that's I think what he was doing so eventually he found through this you know math in the scriptures a way to pinpoint 1914 as the beginning of the last days originally they thought that was going to be Armageddon but when Armageddon didn't count they they realized oh no no it's just the last days so over the you know ensuing a hundred years they've just over and over predicted they used to pick dates up to 1975 and then when finally and I think 75 Armageddon to top they kind of stopped doing that because they realize a lot of people left what it didn't happen so now they just talk about how that Armageddon is imminent some tech like sort of notable thing is what witnesses that most people know is they're preaching of course and that preaching is informed by the idea that they think the world is going to end and that makes them as zealous as they are also they don't celebrate birthdays Christmas funnily enough because most people think about as a really Christian holiday they don't celebrate it because of the pagan roots so they basically essentially they take a very literal translation of the Bible and they they view themselves as pure Christianity that hasn't been adulterated by these sort of other pagan traditions that most they say most other churches have and do you have a sense and we'll get into this but how how is it different from just Presbyterianism Lutheranism have you thought about ways key ways that it kind of is set apart for mainstream Protestant your sanity I mean I don't know if I would call this religion is fundamentalist but Joe's Witnesses are definitely fundamentalist religion sorry meaning what distantly she was like studying isn't religious religion class just this semester I'm trying to like define the definition but I think it's basically like religion that adheres to a doctor and it's like the pure face and muscle doesn't have a lot of evolution in their teachings so for example the Josephus's have one of the main things to know about this is - is that they don't believe in taking blood blood transfusions and that's sort of what I would consider a really fundamentalist doctrine in the sense that they don't revise someone you know I think it was the 50s they decided that and no matter how much evidence is produced that you know perhaps we should you know evolve the church reform the church they don't they were like what was proclaimed in is the truth and we can't change it no matter what happens similar with their policy on reporting child abuse which we can get into later so there's that doctrinally they're different than other churches in that they don't believe in the Trinity the Trinity is almost a feature universally of Christian churches and Josephus believes it there's God Jehovah Jesus as the intermediary between God and man and the Savior and that's that's quite different they also pride themselves on being preachers because most of those Christian churches don't actually fulfill that command of Jesus to go and preach the good news in the entire inhabited earth and that's something that Jehovah's Witnesses often use to point to themselves as evidence of being the true religion they're also neutral they don't get involved in politics Jonas's don't vote and they all this comes from the scripture they pull out where Jesus said that we shouldn't get involved in the affairs of the world or we should be you know suffer from the world right um okay so towards the end of your book you talk after leaving you talk about all the things you were able to do for the first time I think you mentioned eating Lucky Charms was it you should know you might know our movies for the first time like behaviorally what are the things that Jobos witnesses aren't aren't generally allowed to do what are the things that are frowned upon well it's funny because um that thing about the Lucky Charms or like Smurfs there was a big thing about sports and people thought Smurfs suddenly were demonized some of these things don't come necessarily from the leaders but you know how like you've got this culture a sort of an insular culture and I don't know if this happens with the Mormons but like some of these things will sort of arise that are just working and weird to like totally like formas Mormons for the longest time wouldn't drink Coca Cola because it had caffeine because coffee and tea were forbidden right yeah so many charms was to do with the fact that luck was satanic so anything that was related to the occult you know psychics all of these things are satanic so anything that is considered satanic is you can't participate in so as a child like there's some things were allowed to do as you say we could watch some of these but not Armenian movies I can watch cartoons when I was a kid but we weren't allowed to watch Scooby Doo because there was ghosts in it it's just a thing okay and what about like purity morality you know you talked about wearing a miniskirt at the end yeah what about morality purity modesty that's the dress modesty and dress is very important you can't even as a woman you're not supposed to cut your hair short because they might look like a man one thing I always find interesting now having left is that a lot of the parameters for what is considered modest seem to align with the era that the governing body members they're all older men mainly white men this was like the 1950s era version of modesty is the German so-called biblical era modesty for example I just heard of someone who you know so many men these days have a turned beard I know someone who was basically removed as an elder which is like the leader in the congregation because he had beard which really made me laugh because in all the publications when they depict Jesus he has a beard we've got the same thing it's silly I mean and nowadays no one thinks that beard is like bad or like sort of spooky but I think in the 50s it was like if you had a beard that was kind of anti-establishment or something yeah you will die when you learn all the parallels between Mormonism in the parallels independently sprouted up Brigham Young University is named after Brigham Young he had a beard you can't have a beard at BYU that every man looks 33% more handsome when he has a trimmed beard okay so and then of course we'll talk about the shunning and and lloyd talked about that basically don't have non-jews as witnesses as friends and if somebody breaks some of the big rules here to cut them off right yeah there's a shunning is a big thing definitely similar to Mormonism I think I think it's worse I actually think you guys win the prize on shunning yeah but we have soft shunning you guys kind of have hard hard shunning yeah well we've got our other things okay all right so let's talk about now your upbringing so what was it like what was your home like how would you characterize kind of your parents their parenting style and what sort of home life you had as you were approaching teenager hood well that's interesting cuz my parents were an active they were not active in the church but they still taught us that we were Jehovah's Witnesses and you know when you're a child you don't know any different so early on I thought I was a Joe as minute so when I was at school I had to there's a lot of stands you have to make as a child it's really it's really intimidating and difficult but for example if someone was having a birthday and they have cake we weren't allowed to participate you couldn't have the cake we couldn't sing happy birthday at Christmastime and they were singing Christmas carols in the gym we'd have to go outside when they sing the national anthem we'd have to sit down when everyone was standing up so I was adhering to all these things and you know I I didn't have any job as witness friends I only had friends at school because we didn't go to the kingdom hall so it was a weird thing where in a sense I kind of had the worst of both worlds because I didn't really have fit in that school but I also didn't have the community of the church so it was a little weird I think that's why I'm a little weird to this day maybe like I can spend a lot of time alone and be fine but eventually I heard enough at the church that my fear grew and I asked my parents if they could take us back to the meetings so when that happened then I finally realized what it meant to be Joe as - and it's it was a very busy life it meant you know Saturday mornings he didn't get to watch cartoons anymore you had to go up preaching sometimes on Sundays - Sunday we had a meeting we had a meeting on Tuesday night and Thursday night and in between those meetings we had to do a lot of preparations for the meetings which involves looking at the watchtower magazines underlining the answers looking at the scriptures that they were quoting in their articles as I got a little older and I started to have a lot of friends in the congregation moving on to teenage years it was it was fun like we because you're in a community and you have this thing in common and there's other kids your age we had a real bond I mean we did a lot of fun stuff together it wasn't like life wasn't fun but of course we did have our boundaries as you say we didn't go to movies and as far as like dating things like that were pretty forbidden and as we got older so you weren't allowed to date as teens you weren't supposed to you're not supposed to you're only supposed to date when you're with a view to marriage so funnily enough most children assist I don't know about Mormons but get married at like 18 years old because you can't have sex before marriage so yeah that's us yeah so dating where the beauty of marriage would be like I guess you'd start dating at age seventeen and a half and get married by 18 I was a bit different than I kind of I didn't remember IND depth when I did start I started dating a guy seeing a guy's if you can call it that when you're just a bunch of teenagers hanging out together and he was a bit older than me and then we end I'm having a relationship and ended up when I was 18 getting disfellowshipped because we committed immorality that was Thomas right yeah yeah so you had you you you Thomas became a kind of your boyfriend and you had you had sex but it wasn't just sex it was as I read that part of the book I'm like what a beautiful time of like connection of intimacy of exploring the world what's that it was so great yeah I was like I everyone should have that little period in their life where they're just young and adults and in love and exploring the world right and I think because we got just fellowshipped or you know kicked out of the church I mean I was I was still a true believer but of course Mike you know immortal or carnal sins you know a Hitler brought me to the outside and I knew I was always going to come back in because I was fully indoctrinated but all the same it was such a magical time and then I think because we were so on our own having being shunned by everyone we knew and we didn't have friends in sight were like why would we do that it was this sort of little romantic sort of couple years where we just did everything together and like explored the world and like explored ourselves and understood it's hard to understand things it was like a rums it was like a rum Springer I didn't want it to end I'm reading that part and I'm like no don't leave what what kept you and you've already said it but what kept you from just staying there you know in that moment of joy and freedom what were the hooks that brought you back well for me and I don't I think it's different for everyone why they stay in or legend like this even when you are raised in it but the big like sticky thing for me was the fear from right when I was a kid just this idea of dying I loved being alive I loved life and I was really afraid still even though Armageddon hasn't come so many times that it was supposed to I still was just afraid of dying Armageddon I didn't I didn't want to be killed that was the one number one thing for me and I did really believe in Jehovah I still prayed I was uh III thought it was the truth and I wanted to I wanted to live forever basically that was a big thing for me so tell us how that that early church discipline worked and how the shunning or disfellowship meant was for you and then what in the world allowed you to endure that and then return um I think at the beginning it was all good because we were having a great time but then the pressure started to mount because we both wanted to come back and let me put as an aside here if there had been in that day and age such accessible information as there is now on the internet about how like what your church is about like other people you could talk to that had been in the church and left but in that era it was there was nothing like how would I find anything out about my my beliefs I would go to the library there was nothing it was there was nothing available so I think that there was a chance that I almost dodged the bullet and got out of but then there was just my mind was too indoctrinated to to leave so yeah as time went on the pressure mounted that we either had to stop having sex by either just being suddenly celibate with each other which is a really hard thing to do when you're that age and you already have answer was to get married that's really was the only answer get married or completely break up why didn't you you and Thomas get married I would have done it but Thomas was an interesting Jonas he he was more of a bit of a free thinker which I love it was really some Layton thing in me was really attracted to obviously um but he had come from a family with you know parents who had married young and not how to get married and he had older sisters and younger sisters who got married very young and didn't have good marriages and he was just like I'm not gonna do it he's I don't want to get married we're still I was 18 he was a little older he was 23 but I mean he was just like it's a mistake it's a mistake I mean looking back now I I think it's it was such a love story that I'm sad that it didn't work out but of course I don't think it's it's a real crapshoot to get married at that age have it right now do you know where Thomas is now is he still Jones with us no okay cool but it's a long story rich no Thomas Thomas you're next I'm Mormon stories podcast okay so you were disfellowshipped right um yeah at that time yeah yeah so what was that like meeting with the elders being judged by men just talked to I was excommunicated a lot of Mormons have been going through X cubed occasion lately just talk to us about what it was like to be a 18 19 year old woman being grilled about sexual matters by a bunch of middle-aged men what was that like yeah that was I have it's always a panel of three elders that you meet with and interestingly a lot of people ask me why did you tell them like why do jehovah's witnesses tell the elders of course we tell them because we're taught we to police ourselves and we knew if we hit something we're gonna get killed at Armageddon anyway so we better tell them so yeah I you know you contact a brother and tell them like looking and to talk to you you tell them brief notes about what it's what it is and then they form a judicial committee if you call it so you attend the Judicial Committee at the kingdom hall usually and they set you down and they say okay so tell us what happened so you know I mean I was really young and even then they weren't super all the ones on my panel which in some ways made it kind of weirder because funnily enough one of them brothers who were on was on that Judicial Committee is now also no longer Jose Reyes which is crazy but they having to ask me all the details and there's certain things they're very interested in is like was it premeditated or did it just happen which is a bit of a weird question when it comes to sex they want to know sort of like if you enjoyed it they definitely want to know whether the man climax yeah they want to know how many times that occur because that's the way that they judge whether your climaxed that did they care if you climaxed no they did not and then finally interestingly I've always been treated and some people have been treated terribly in these judicial committees it all depends on the elders you get and I've always son have been lucky that way that I had pretty reasonable elders that I've confessed to and these elders I think because my boyfriend was five years older than me they really were kind of taking it easy on me they were like you know we sort of hold him more responsible and they said to me basically like sort of feeling me out but they were like you know if you're repented enough you don't have to get to sell oh and I was so in love and having such a great time that I told them honestly I was like you better because I so yeah I got a fellowship for myself in the end but I knew that if I didn't it would just be I'd have to come back and tell them the next time I had sex I I just knew I wasn't in a place that I was gonna be able to just reform immediately and that meant shunning right and I'm in Shawnee yes I did that first that first era there how how long how long yeah it was a couple years okay so you were cut off from your entire family did your parents honor that shunning since they were kind of inactive my first were active by this time because when I was a kid remember I had asked them to go back now if I made that clear and my whole family did go back around the time I was 12 I may have missed it that's okay um so it's a strange story but Jonas is another thing you can get into unlike Mormons unfortunately Jeff Lewis's don't go to college when I left to go to college so at 18 I had already moved out of home and moved to the city so I was already living in my own apartment which is crazy and ahead job so my my parents my my mom didn't talk to me my dad at the same time was in a severe alcoholic episode and so he did come and see me and talk to me but it was obviously that was service own set of problems my family did have some problems such as alcoholism dysfunction so yeah it was you know it was shining my sisters on me definitely my brother was much younger so it wasn't as relevant but um yeah my family showed me and with his family and that was harder for him than for me I think because his family was quite close for someone who doesn't understand the psychological impact of being shunned can you can you just briefly say anything about what that's like well it's emotionally I think it's oh really I mean it's it's basically emotional blackmail because they shun you because they say it's an act of love that if they shun you you will come to your senses and the only way you'll come back to their face and not be killed in Armageddon is if you come you serve like the pain of shunning gets strong enough that it compels you to return to the faith stop sinning this type of thing so for me so it's a little humiliating I mean your name gets announced from the platform in front of the whole congregation as being dissed fellowshipped and when that happens everyone knows immediately not to speak to you and then what happens after that is that if you want to get reinstated or allow it back in you have to attend all the meetings in the back row you sit at the back you have to come right at the end so no one has to see you and leave right is it at right at the beginning sorry come right at the beginning right but not too early and then leave right as it's of no ASSE right exactly so you know I was tempted to talk to you or whatever and it's it feels like a little bit of a penance for sure yeah contritely sitting in the back row and leaving afterwards and the thing is that way as you know when you're raised with it I was like well no this is what I deserved I mean I had sex and I'm not stopping so I deserved to be the one sitting back here ostracized by everyone so I just done with it and the weird thing was is that you would think that a person who was shunned and then was out in the world at least would have gone out at my age and made friends and at least been able to go have some fun but I didn't I just I wasn't familiar with the world I didn't really understand how the world worked and I was afraid of it so I basically just spent a lot of time alone and there were periods during the shunning where Thomas and I would break up because we were trying to stop and so there were times I was very alone just spend the entire weekend when I wasn't at work by myself to the point where I lost my voice because I hadn't talked to anyone in so long so it was definitely it was so many painful and weird but to me they were served like well I made my bed just I just kept trying to find a way to get back no I have I have a psychology PhD so I sometimes do these coaching moments and I just want to add a couple things her Julia Diaz levator Hanks one times say that the solitary confinement is a universal form of torture and basically what she's getting out there is that is that shunning or things like it is is literally a form of torture and then there's always Katelyn Ryan's research about the LGBTQ community that the the largest contributor to LGBTQ so key LGBTQ suicide is family rejection yeah and it's gonna be true for non LGBTQ people as well family rejection is one of the most severe psychological punishments you can ever give somebody and it's brutal and I just had to give that a spotlight I think it's really important to understand because some people don't really understand how the effect it can have on people and also it depends I think on like the person themselves like how marginalized they feel I mean I still did kind of have Thomas Moore like more or less through that whole period but for example you mentioned the LGBTQ there was I mentioned in the book that there was a brother who got disfellowshipped later when I was reinstated for being gay and during the time he was dystocia Tisdale right yeah he hung himself in the forests of the territory where we would preach looking to save lives meanwhile shunning this person that we knew who was so alone that he killed himself and I was I was so you know I wrote this down I took like eight pages of notes from your book but he he hung himself in the forest because without his Jehovah's Witness religious friends no one would have discovered him in his home because he didn't have any friends outside of the jobless witness community so he hung himself in a forest so that he would be I know it's like gives me team tools to this day because it's so tragic and of course I even feel this responsibility now that I'm not indoctrinated anymore where I feel ashamed of myself like how could I do that to somebody but I did yeah yeah well when we know better we do better as Oprah likes to say and Mormons have their own suicide epidemic going on in Utah with the LGBT youth and adults and kids you masturbate like it's it's really brutal so back to your story so you endured the shunning and then what happened so eventually Thompson I managed to fully break up and then there was enough period of time where I hadn't committed immorality that I could write a letter to the elders and asked to meet with them so then you meet with them and they basically talk to you find out kind of grilling you to find out when the last time you committed sin was and if they meet amongst themselves and they decide whether you can be reinstated I think that I might have tried once and he said no you have to wait longer because I haven't waited had been too soon since my last episode but eventually I was reinstated and it's easy because the day they announced it same thing from the platform that Amber score I have been reinstated it's just like a light switch everyone's so loving comes back like you invite right away the next weekend I was invited to a cabin and the contrast between being on the outside and the inside I mean it did make you feel like this organization is a wonderful place when you're indoctrinated you're not thinking like wait a minute why was I but it does make you feel when you're back in it that the blade is just shining on ear and the forms and the love there's definitely me I am NOT saying here that there is not nice people in Genesis because there's wonderful people I love the people the poem is the indoctrination yeah yeah so how soon after being reinstated did you end up getting married to the person that was your first husband it wasn't long it was only not long enough I mean but all my friends were already married by this point you know 21 when I got reinstated so I think I met him it was point it was within a year maybe a year after I got reinstated I think after his name in the book is I knew how badly he did he would not want to be in the book and also the relationship wasn't it wasn't a super significant relationship for me which is so sad because it was my marriage but there was something where I think it was just to me it wasn't a book about my marriage it was a book about leaving my religion and my marriage so the thing that I the thing that I say I mean that's kind of symbolic but the thing I like to say in Mormonism is in Orthodox Mormonism we don't marry each other we marry the church and so it kind of doesn't in some sense it almost doesn't matter who you marry because it's just about living the île getting on the train and going with the train and you can pretty much do that with anybody if you both have heartbeats and a some sort of libido in the same goals it kind of doesn't matter who you marry it's very impersonal and in the book your marriage have a sense of just feeling very impersonal you understand I think a lot of people don't understand that well we both come from similar backgrounds amber okay so what made you go to freaking China to be a missionary when you were kind of this prodigal daughter that was coming from an inactive home like that's hardcore right yeah well it's weird I think I think it's a bit of my personality and maybe because the religion wasn't forced on me the way that for some people it was it felt like something I had chosen and because I believed it so fully and my fear was so strong of leaving it or not being true I just went to the furthest degree I could as a woman in the church which was first to start what we called pioneering which is when you look you know in your home congregation you're putting in 70 hours a month in preaching and all of us have to support ourselves so we were I worked part time I started doing that pioneering work after I got married and then what happened was during that pioneer work you know the more you go out preaching or out and serve as we call it the more you find it's a complete waste of time you're spending 70 hours a month basically hardly ever talking to anyone you're just driving around in cars missing houses where no one's home nobody if they are home they're not interested they're like why are you here so after a number of years of that I started to get interested in preaching to immigrants in my territory most of whom because I live near a university or Chinese from mainland China and my response in that community when I would preach was much better because a lot of them told me in the end it was because they wanted to practice English at the time I couldn't obviously speak Mandarin and so Chinese people would study the Bible with you whereas the average person wouldn't so I started to just try and learn Chinese to teach people and that kind of brought me to my interest to eventually going to China and so you and your first husband go to China which city Shanghai right yeah so first we went to Taiwan to make our Chinese better which took three years because it's a hard language to learn you can't learn it unless you're in the environment it's my opinion so after three years it was me that was really pushing to go to China I was really into it I wanted to I had been there on a visit once I love this idea of going to this territory where no one had been reached before so I I kept begging my husband to write a letter to the branch in Hong Kong who looked after China at the time and seeing if we could go like telling them look we've been pioneers for as long we can see Chinese he didn't let everyone go you have to sort of you know prove that you were kind of level of spirituality that you could handle it which clearly I couldn't it's a total number of years in China either Taiwan or mainland as a missionary it was three in Taiwan and then three in Ching hai ya see Mormons only go for two years so you you have did us you tripled of the Mormon experience that's pretty hardcore but that's not forget that after two years in China I left the religion alright ok so so let's uh let's talk just briefly about what that's like how like as Mormons you're full-time missionaries you don't have jobs you don't go you go with single people when you're 18 or 19 tell us just really briefly kind of how you exist as a missionary Djilas witness missionary in a place like China how do you how do you make that work especially when you're married yeah so in Jonas's there are missionaries who are sent by the church a very small number and they're funded but in my book I mentioned it's called pioneering but I just used the word missionary because most people understand that terminology better so for people who were pioneers like us we were sort of missionaries but we were on our own volition coming so we had to find a way to get a work visa as a sort of disguise even for being there and we had to find a way to support ourselves so we did what every you know so many foreigners who were you know come to Asia that you know want to stay for a while we taught English so I did that at the beginning and then in Shanghai after a year I have been listening to some Chinese language learning podcasts sorry I just have to say one thing Mormons do that too we in places where we're not really necessarily wanted like Russia we get different types of visas to mask what we're doing and and then through do the missionary work through the guise of teaching English and it's fundamentally illegal right so you were kind of doing illegal activity as a Christian Church right yep obviously even worse than Mormons but at least you guys generally have university degrees I think well German horses rarely have university degrees we're told not to go to college so we've bought fake degrees online for certain couple hundred dollars okay and then we would use fake degrees to qualify for anything what was sort of thank me the false premise anyway but of course all these things are justified because they would be like cautious as serpents innocence as innocent as dogs which is you know a scripture or that's basically saying you know you can be sort of sneaky if it's furthering the kingdom interest basically right yeah you had a word for the at the beginning of the book Radek were fair yeah man we call it lying we call lying for the Lord that's what we call it so you guys are in Shanghai you're you're there under the guise of teaching English would you have to support yourself right yeah so what you you were talking about the job you got I thought was cool as a podcaster I thought it was cool yeah well it was the first wave of podcasting and one of the first the very first language learning podcast had started in Shanghai and it was started by three foreigners and they had a small staff and they had just started broadcasting these Chinese lessons by podcast and they had really friendly tone and the hosts were entertaining of the shows and so I started listening and I loved it and I was very interested so I wrote them and said you know do you need any way can I come work there and they did eventually so they hired me part-time cuz I'd only ever worked part time so I could preach but of course I didn't tell them why I was really there and why I could speak Chinese but it was a great job I loved it it was in this back alley this old warehouse building and we were making podcasts at the very beginning of podcasting altogether it was before social media even and we had forums online and it was it was really exciting time and especially for me because as a journalist witness I had never had a career and let alone done anything creative because we were discouraged from all of that you were just supposed to preach so I did have okay jobs I mean some journals innocence a lot of Jonas was just our cleaners or because we don't have an education I had had it some enjoyable jobs part-time jobs but this was something new altogether it was really exciting and was the podcast in English teaching Chinese or was it in Chinese so it was mostly in English but teaching English speakers Chinese exactly so almost all of the listeners were people from all over the world who just had an interest in China for different reasons maybe you know they had some of them were like american-born Chinese people who didn't grow up speaking Mandarin so then were married to a Chinese person some of them were coming to China for business there was all these reasons and then tell us what the missionary work looked like and how you would approach people how would you meet them how you would kind of hook them and then what what their trajectory would be into membership if they ended up becoming members yes so obviously as Mormons know in China you can't do your work openly and so what we dip it was and I'm curious to know if Mormons take the same tack probably probably um but anyone who's listening can tell me in the comments or something but basically we would just go there there was we are usually you know Jonas life is very structured at home there was three meetings a week as I mentioned you need up for preaching all of that was gone when we got to China because you couldn't do things so openly so or so organized so we were on our own a lot from the second we got there someone met up with us told us how to do the work which was basically just meet people trying to meet as many people as you can in a day get their number if they seem friendly and then just start getting to know them and the idea was getting to know them was to find out whether there was anything dangerous about them danger would be someone who because our work was under picked was you know restricted and illegal their danger would mean they had a relative or they themselves were part of the Communist Party or maybe they someone works for the government in their family anyone that seemed even marginally hostile to religion or suspicious we would just dropped right away and then the others we would slowly just cultivate them and then one day when we felt like okay I think this person is okay then we would slip in the Bible our publications which as I say in the book is an awkward proposition at the best of times but when you're in China it's a little weird because most people they look like something that's really in their periphery men like my own know about the Bible but it's something that comes up all the time right but the interesting thing is although that seems so maybe strange and jarring to deserve slipping the Bible it was actually very easy because especially most of the people ended up preaching to were young people they were interested in the Bible they were interested in Christianity because it had been something that they didn't have access to and now China was opening up and there were these foreigners here and they wanted to know about foreign stuff so it was actually quite easy just start Bible studies with people and you mentioned a lovely friendship with Jean in the book that I'm glad survived ultimately your dissipation I loved the part of the book where you talked about Chinese culture and how they're more comfortable talking about certain things that we're not you want to talk about that really briefly yeah I mean I think this was related to the fact that I eventually started to wake up in that when you get to China China and you're a person from the West the longer you're there and the more you understand the language the more you understand that this place is like opposite culturally in almost every way to what you're used to and so even like things that seem very natural or polite to you as a westerner could be very weird and even rude to a Chinese person so for example like from very like everyday things like in hot weather they would drink hot water if they saw you drinking like I drink the ice it was like a national incident like people would be like wow so bad for your health another scene in the book it was just funny is when I take one of the sisters that is in China they're now a Jehovah's Witness with me to her Bible study and she brings her a gifts of a clock like an alarm clock and that is like basically the worst thing you could give a Chinese person as a gift if so I'm it's considered so unlucky like morbidly unlucky because the word for clock I think is Shin Jung and that should if you say it wrong it sounds like the word for death and they're very suspicious but talking about death I mean thing because it also has a similar - the word for death like there's all kinds of things all kinds of slow pause a lot of Westerners would take their chopsticks and put it in the rice when they're not eating like other seems like a convenient chopstick holder just stab and chopsticks into the right I got restaurant would come to a standstill almost if someone saw you do that because it's also considered very unlucky so yeah there I learned so much and the product of that was that I started to sort of see that there was different ways of doing things I'm like my I had a very obviously from being raised I witnessed I had very black-and-white quite rigid world view everything was you know this or that and something there was all things like other things that I was like whoa kind of blew my mind it's so ironic that that fundamentals religions send their adherents on foreign missions because you know Mark Twain's famous as having said that the travel is fatal to prejudice and so it it makes total sense that you would see this other beautiful odd strange but also wonderful culture and you go into the book about learning about Confucius and learning about Lao Tzu and how you just started putting the mad doing the math and saying now wait a minute how come these are good honest healthy people and how come computers and and Buddha and lotsa are kind of saying the similar things to what Jesus said and it just makes so much sense there what's that for the most part yeah it makes sense that it could do and it could be the undoing of a fundamentalist religious person to be on a foreign mission and yet that's just so classic that that funest religions send people on foreign missions but it turns out that was the beginning of the end for you right yeah I think it's like a product of their overconfidence you know when you think you have the truth and I don't know you're just the hubris I'm just like these people and change them all the heathens are like they'll see the truth of what we're saying so you know we have that mentality you're not thinking about your own the weakness in your own armor you just think you're here to bring light and truth to you know and believers yeah I wonder from Mormons do they find that a lot of people leave when they're on their mission oddly it happens sometimes it was the beginning of my end but it still took me another 15 years or whatever to leave but but no the church has found that if they can get people on missions and then as soon as they get home get them married and get them having kids that maximizes the chance that they'll stay in the church so it's kind of ironic it's it's it's only some people that that sort of are open to the types of thinking that you had I have to say one of the most powerful parts of your book for me or when you're talking about the preacher and how the preacher is sure of himself or herself the preachers are bold do you remember what you wrote about the preacher cuz it was it was in for me chapter 17 but your book your chapters aren't numbered so I was I was listening to the audiobook but do you happen to remember what you said about the preacher because if you're a teach it's something to do it's like if you're a teacher you know you listen and you also learn but when you're a preacher you're not there to listen you're there to tell and to have people listen to you and you're so bold because you have no self doubts you're not even considering what else might be thinking or say and there's such a confidence that comes with that and also I think because you serve like I wasn't consciously like elevating myself but you know people are sitting at your feet listen you hear something you know it gives you a lot of confidence and it's funny I'm just thinking what's the other day but someone asked me on a radio show on in here I think it was they asked me what does it feel like to convert someone and I said it feels like in winning an existential argument it feels like it confirms that you were right it feels like the best high there is in the world because you took this person who have no frame of reference and you taught them something and they got them to believe it and now you were like see I'm right there's you're on my side now it's a very affirming knowing yeah but but that chapter is super powerful that they're both bold preachers bold and blind they can ask questions these are my notes they'd ask questions of themselves they already have all the answers so why would they ever ask a question they do all of the talking and then are they asking okay so powerful so tell us about how you started losing your faith as Jobos witness missionary in China how did that happen and of course we're gonna be talking about Jonathan yeah so as I mentioned there was a sort of cultural disorientation where I started to see there was other ways of seeing the world and then I think there was also a bit of a linguistic or a disorientation in the sense that Chinese as a language in order to speak it as a person who has a background in English and I would think any latin-based language you can't just translate like when you learn Spanish you know you learn the vocabulary if you have no vocabulary you can sort of like just probably speaks even if you don't make a complete sentence you can form sentences but in Chinese it is not like that it you cannot directly translate from English you have to basically like reform your mind in order to speak it you have to think in a different way so but what happened is I think over time I would be teaching these same materials I had taught my whole life these same brochures that we use them in 200 languages so I have the same picture as the same text sitting in front of me with them except in Chinese characters and I would you know get my student to read the paragraph as we always did when we are doing this interchange like a Bible study and as I would listen so the way it sounded in Chinese is also like a very direct language it doesn't have a lot of articles or conjugation of verbs is quite straightforward because it's such an old language and I think there was just something about hearing my beliefs in this other language it started to overhear it with new ears like I saw it with new eye and there were moments where I would I would feel embarrassed like this is great like this sounds a little crazy and also because the people didn't even have a Christian background like it was something if anyone I studied with in Canada if I ever happened was not often but they had a frame of reference like they understood the story of Adam even in East Texas you know there was a crossover culturally but in China there was like how do I even start they don't even like believe in the buy it they don't even know what the Bible is and then Here I am going into these very nuanced crazy witness beliefs like you can't have blood transfusions or you can only marry in the Lord in China there's no generals witnesses who are these people are going to marry like all this stuff started to just seem poor but you shouldn't get an education right people that is not like you know hard they work to get into universities I mean that was crazy so I started to notice like this this doesn't work for everybody like this might work for me but how is this gonna work for these people you mentioned that some would view your teachings is quaint I imagine them kind of patting patting you on the head viewing your teachings as clean and silly like the one true path and then you talk about the the ethics of God choosing this very narrow religion for mostly white people mostly the United State and the theological implications of the fairness of that you want to talk about that yeah that was a big thing for me to wear I knew a lot of people were not going to convert like I could tell they were enjoying the ride but to actually I was it was far-fetched I thought it would not be a really high conversion rate so to sit there and think okay the reason these people aren't going to convert is because this sounds wacky to them like they've been raised in a completely different cultural context their education is completely different they their ancestry like the whole cultural heritage the way of looking at life is different so I'm like well of course they're not going to be able to cross over this this far it's gonna be hard for someone to do that and then I started to think well if this really is the requirement for salvation that you follow these beliefs watchtower books to a tee and it's basically these people it's not their fault they were born in a different culture where they don't even have any frame of reference for these things how on earth would that be fair of God like so if I was born in America or Canada and I was raised around the Bible and even if I wasn't raised to witness it be like less of a far cry for me be like oh maybe you know I can sort of change my beliefs 25% but yeah it started to occur to me that it it was it made no sense if you looked at it from a perspective of God that we believe God was fair and all loving and unbiased like there's a lot of us here saying that this is what we have to follow so do you think about it preferential treatments kind of unfair I think they're like a billion people in China how many people are in America like 300 million or something like the proportion of witnesses in America versus what would be the proportion in China I mean after Armageddon very white bread not to say there aren't witnesses and other countries now because they proselytize so much but like if you're talking about a Muslim country and China that's like 2 billion people right there that don't even have a chance you know to to be saved yeah I had those same questions to me anymore I had those same questions as a youth but I kind of just stuffed him down what about the the theological implications of an Armageddon where we're a loving all-powerful God is murdering everyone who doesn't follow the right you know choose the right religious path talk about that do you know anything weird to me from childhood we have these Bible story books that have pictures depicting this happening so sort of like a normal event in my mind but also really the witness has always used these examples from the Bible biblical examples of where God had wiped out live but big populations of people because they weren't following his word or they weren't doing the things that you know he commanded so as much as it felt a little like cruel or traumatic a little I wrote in my notes God as murderer is what I wrote go ahead but when you're indoctrinated you're kind of like well we want paradise and we don't want to have crime and we don't want to have like bad stuff so they gotta go I love how and so many of your chapters you end with these really subtle but profound statements and at the end of what I have is chapter 18 you write curiosity is a bad quality for the preacher what if it's the preacher that needs saving yeah those are my words but yeah what if it's the preacher that needs saving yeah it never occurred to me that's for sure so tell us about Jonathan your undoing yes we definitely like the nail in the coffin so to speak so I yeah during in the podcast role job that I had I at the time didn't have my own podcast yet but I was the person who I did translating and then I was the first if you looked after the online community and so that meant I interacted with tons of worldly people which you know and not with the premise of preaching to them it was just my job so suddenly that was right you know right before social media but the whole internet was like on the cusp of talking to each other and it was amazing I thought it was so fun because here I wasn't this community of people who were all learning in Chinese and we had this thing in common and I had a lot of answers like I knew more Chinese than they did and I could answer their questions and and tell them about things I had learned in Chinese culture and so i'ma start just you know primed for the first time in my life to have some relationships with worldly people even though they were online relationships and then in walks Jonathan who was just like any other of the people our customers that I would interact with on a day-to-day basis but for some reason he was very funny I didn't know anything about him I didn't know where he lived but we just started talking and engaging it was my job I wasn't doing anything wrong but it definitely started over weeks of time it just started to become a daily thing and I would get to work he lived in Los Angeles I later found out I was in Shanghai at the time zone was exactly opposite so at the time of day when I got to work it was the end of his workday and we just started talking all the time what was the age difference can you say that okay I was wandering them yeah I'm like as I is I'm Lissa as I'm reading this I'm like she is slipping into an emotional affair there's no question I had no idea one thing I didn't know about looks like like it's just the internet also was it definitely was like it masked it for me because I was like well I can't even see this person and that's it you know in this sense religion is obsessed with bodily pureness suddenly you know and the if that was a man in a coffee shop I would never kept talking to him but when there's no body and you're like well that guy is like thousands of miles away you just kind of don't think of it nothing will ever happen yeah there's also like I'm not even attracted to him I mean I don't even know he looks like it's not that good it's not any kind of chemistry thing it's just an intellectual dialogue which was fun you must have been starving for emotional intimacy because you're in a marriage that wasn't really a love affair it wasn't even a close friendship it seemed yeah I mean it was sort of like a mild friendship it was I think what happened was how you say you're on this train track of a relationship together that you know you're doing the God's will together and that that is something in common and it can hold you together plus you're not allowed to get divorced and germs witnesses unless someone commits adultery so you also know you have no choice so when you get very very young and then you've come to realize like oh like a year later you should not be married there's nothing you can do about it so all you can do about it is just keep going and doing stuff in the church so I couldn't say we like we didn't have a terrible marriage it was just not really like a marriage it was not an intimate relationship really which is a terrible marriage I mean we all marriage is always hard even the best of marriages are super hard I don't mean to set people up for unreasonably high expectations but ideally you end up with your best friend and ideally you're emotionally and sexually intimate and compatible and you really enjoy being together and I know you guys had a moderate friendship but it's clear you were both lonely or at least you were desperately emotionally starved right yeah yeah so Jonathan felt that so many things in your religious person that you serve like you don't acknowledge these are like I think about that I just sort of accepted it right so how so how did things roll with Jonathan oh yeah so I don't know we just started talking more and it was always about work stuff or Chinese or he just loved hearing all the stories cuz so much stuff would happen every day in China so much crazy stuff I mean it's a city of 20 million people so many fun things would happen I would always just start sharing with him and he would come online be like what happened today something weird always happen so then it kept going and then I don't know how long it was but slowly the conversations started to shift to more deeper topics and one of those tops of topics ended up being spirituality and of course in China the government monitors the internet so we never talked about what we did on the internet because the government could see if they wanted to spy on your gchat or whatever but I serve told him in code eventually we had could become close enough that I kind of wanted to share I never told anyone my secret of why I was there and it sort of started to feel like oh here's this sort of abstract person I can finally share with him I mean I was sharing with him all this other stuff about my day it got to a point where I wanted to share others like preaching stuff and also every witness kind of has this thing in the back of their mind when they make a friendship it's like oh well my friendship is to try and convert this person so you know maybe if I talk about my religion no become my witness say so and you use code words for religious words tell us what those code words were like I don't know just like a forearm a big a hidden jay-z for Jesus was too close I think we just called it which WI T or something but when I first told him what I was like he wanted to know what religion it was and I was like oh like don't even say that word but then finally I told him like think of a court case witness and then he knew and then funny thing is that he reminded me of Kentucky jokes at the chemo and he reminded me which I left out of the book that when I told him he said oh that's my fifth favorite my fourth favorite cold what was his favorite what favorite as in most hated he does there's a person you're like yeah but hey let's a love-hate relationship let's just admit it we all all love hate our Colts right yeah okay so yeah the relationship tenor turns and he starts really challenging you know you know you being in a cult and I'm just thinking number one I was just thinking why didn't you just immediately run away right well how how could you let some stranger start assaulting you about being in a cult and you keep coming back for more what was going through your mind that lets you allow him to start the deprogramming process yes I think um I definitely think that I had started to enjoy the interaction it was high I mean it was interesting he was interesting he was smart and I can't remember when exactly searching so collaborate on things that were it started to feel like in an entanglement and so this became one part of that and I think that here's the thing is like it's also a personality thing like some people might have been like that jerk and I've never spoken to him again but I come from a family of people who are quite direct and I actually prefer just knowing what people think and I prefer honesty even if I don't want to hear it actually would just rather know where I stand so yeah I would he was starting to like sort of criticize or tell me things about my religion that I didn't agree with and I would just argue like I would say that's not true and I get mad me but what happened is I would like he'd go to bed and I would work and then I would just find myself thinking about it well he said you would stew yeah even just do in the sense of everything I can I can just prove him but you know it was getting harder and harder to refute what he was saying sometimes because it was true I had to believe that's you know I had to believe that somewhere in your heart or in your emotions you were finding that the Jobos Witness lifestyle or the beliefs weren't working for you and I'm sure it was the missionary work they kind of softened you up but in my experience working with with Orthodox progressive and then post Mormons you kind of have to your heart has to be softened and what I mean by that is there has to be something either emotionally not working for you in the tradition or something emotionally engaging outside of it that makes the soil fertile for those sorts of seeds of doubt and questioning yeah have you ever read that book by Alexandre Stein no love and terror no so I found that book recently not at the time just recently um and one thing that she says is that almost like one of the only ways or most effective ways any way for someone to get out from cults or indoctrination like this especially a very close community is to that there be an intimate relationship with someone on that side so sometimes for people that's I guess family member it could be someone from their old life before they became that that would convert it to the church but interestingly when I read that I was like that is why I needed Jonathan because what happens is if it's an if it's a close enough relationship if any other person on that forum at work started seeing that stuff to me point-blank about my religion which people do I mean people make fun of tell jokes witnesses they're wrong all the time I could just dismiss it but when there is like an intimate relationship formed already it means that you trust the person and so even though you might argue you're inclined to take in what they're saying even if it's on a small scale and reading that after the fact because you know I did feel some shame like as much as yeah sure there was no way to get out of a marriage unless you like committed adultery I mean I still do want to be that kind of person like you got sort of an image of the kind of person that you are but reading that was kind of a revelation because I was like I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have been able to fully pull the trigger even though there were other factors that kind of were making me hot dose unless I had some sort of like beacon like that on the outside that was showing me that there was some path out and I trusted and what was ironic was that you were a missionary but in so many ways Jonathan was acting as a missionary to a missionary just for a different different approach to life right yeah mm-hmm I don't want to you know that's one of the really fun parts of the book to learn about what happened with Jonathan and how that relationship evolved or didn't evolve or ended or didn't and we'll let you listeners oh did you ever talk to about his motives because you know was he just was he just really juiced about saving someone from a cult well or did he just develop you know feelings for you and wanted to help you like he spent a lot of time helping you he was like a missionary real a service I think like and because we're friends now and it's been you know a number of years and so I feel like I know him on a different level now because we're friends and we don't you know we still talk sometimes but now we're on more equal footing no he's not trying to save me anymore and I think he has a personality in that he's he is a very intense person he's a person that really believes that people should have freedom of choice it really upsets him to see people throwing away their power of reason and turning over their minds to someone else so I think you know those things were already sort of fundamental parts of his character but yeah I mean he he does say it's some point along the way where I'm like why are you he who spends much time like doing this and he says because I'm like you so you know if you like someone you also care about them and so you're gonna have some kind of emotional you know pull to help them more than maybe the average person however I mean I I don't know I think to this day when for example when I have TV appearances and I was telling Jonathan about it the other day he starts texting me just like the old days he starts like say oh you gotta tell them this like these people are trading in your I don't know like they're using fear and they Kings you in and like they use emotional black you tell me all this stuff and he kept saying you got a coin the term collision don't call it a religion occults was religion so he's still very intense on these topics even you know this many years later collusion what is it which is one of the two words cults plus for the coalition oh my gosh religion is so charged some people if you're trying to get a job with his oh you cannot call it a cult because they will just close their mind right and yet he did with you and it worked with you which you know you know so much of my book is set in China and about China and I have to say he helped but China was just a big character in my eventual demise that's Jonathan I couldn't have left without both of them yeah yeah and there were they're one of the most powerful parts of the book you asked the question if I had been through the Cultural Revolution and those who don't know a little bit about Chinese history won't understand the Cultural Revolution that sounds awesome more culture what it is is it's mal if it were if I'm right and millions and millions of people being killed and imprisoned and enslaved and you ask the question if I had lived in the Cultural Revolution would I have been someone what finished the sentence oh if I would have been the perso what did I say well there's a few things oh yeah there was in the culture illusion that like people like we're under the cult of Mao and he at some point you give these decrees and at one point he gave it to create it all the flowers and gardens were bourgeois and they had to get rid of them so people would just go and start pulling out the flowers from the flower bed because they were too beautiful or whatever they're making people softer so I was like yeah who would I have been like I probably would have pulled up the flowers like because once you're in that headspace of indoctrination it's scary to think because where would you where do you draw the line and even recently the Jehovah's Witnesses released a magazine and in the magazine it said something to do with even if at some point the directions we give you as the governing body don't seem to make sense from a human standpoint or from human reasoning it doesn't matter you should still follow it and that was the first time I had ever seen them so blatantly come out to say directly what they always kind of danced around saying which was if we tell you to do something you have to do it and finally enough when I watch I read something about in The New Yorker about the Branch Davidians and you remember the Branch Davidians that they were in there yeah you know the apocalypse of their own making but the Branch Davidians came from the same sort of like when you read what his beliefs were they were very similar to the genesis just maybe more extreme and on a small scale so that's that's the thing is like if you have that mindset suddenly what could it happen but certainly the Armageddon that never comes is creative it's a question I ask because how long can you put it off and that was what the Branch Davidians he kept saying the Armageddon was coming and then in the end the apocalypse came but not in the way that anyone thought right you know so I do think that that is I really do mean China made me see that parallel what the ability for humans to wonderful nice people can do terrible things yeah you said it takes ideology to make wonderful people do terrible things yeah it's a strange thing and you and you asked I have been in the in the cultural revolution the person pushing others out of the building or what I've been one of the ones being pushed out of the building right I think about this stuff a lot like what is it that makes people some people follow the crowd and other people stand it up and say I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do what's wrong it's wrong so yeah it's funny when you think about morality after you leave a religion I it's that's one question I've thought about a lot and to me one underpinning of my current morality it's always like I always want to make sure that I'm keeping my moral compass and thinking for myself I'm not just doing what everyone else is doing and so tell us how you tell us your process for leaving is we kind of get to the you know the end of your time as drove as witness well does that like to have been a missionary to have been married to have already been through shunning once what was it like to contemplate leaving again this time for the final time I mean it felt so different this time because I had started to not believe before I even left so it was more permanent the only thing basically this is how I sum it up is that it was nothing heroic on my part or brave it just got to the point where staying was more uncomfortable than leaving and I mean I did not wanna lose my friends much of my family that was the last thing I would have chosen but the promise is that every Jonas religion requires you hand over your mind your time your life and if you don't believe in it you just can't do it anymore I mean I do know people who can stay in and sort of fake it but that's another thing is that my personality is just I'm too open as we saw as you'll find out in the book I think sort of climax when I actually leave I probably could have kept my mouth shut and not in the position I'm in but I just don't you i yes I think and it's important to me to live an honest life and you talk about you one of those really short chapters you mentioned what you lost and what you've gained can I read that or do you want to read it on page 213 do you want to read it once you read it sure 2:13 this is yeah the ball this is page 213 of leaving the witness by Amber's Cora things I'd lost things I still had yeah I had exited without an exit plan I was an X creature stuck in China with no education but beyond high school no profession no home to go back to in my home country that took stock of things things I had lost family members all my friends my future my past my life with my friends family in it my faith my certainty I hope my purpose in life and then you look at the things I have it ain't pretty it's like two pots some books a hockey bag suitcase a bicycle some IKEA towels and then you write my health back you know years later and I feel like it was a really special time it was an amazing time in my life it was a great country to be in but it was traumatic like I did not know how I was gonna get out of China I didn't know where I was gonna live I didn't know how I was gonna earn a living I didn't know any people I didn't have a relationship so it was definitely a stressful scary time so we'll leave we'll leave the final plot points to people to actually read the book because this is a phenomenal book everyone should read it again leaving the witness exiting religion and finding a life in our final moments together amber skoura so what what has been the reaction to this book by the people in it and by your family and friends who you knew during the time have you been hated if you've been celebrated it's so funny because I was just thinking this morning and I'm still in the honeymoon period between the book having just come out and all the people who ordered it or heard about it are we eating it and it's most people say they can read it in a couple days or you can listen to the audiobook in just six hours or whatever it is so I've got all these people who are interested and a lot of ex members who've read it and it's just so happy and they feel like they someone has a voice and has put voice to the things that they you know feel and send me a lot of very encouraging kind words but I'm in that heavy material because I think the ripples of like the press and everything haven't reached the actual Jehova's community so I'm expecting the onslaught because I mean you know it's you know it's coming because people do not like it when you leave and talk about it I'm sure as a Mormon it's the same but for Jim Genesis it's also particularly rare like there's not that many people who have really openly written about it and an experience like this someone who was sort of like you know very into the church for like a long time and gone to the point of being a missionary like he feel is a real betrayal I'm sure that happens in your community too and they don't understand when when you're indoctrinated you don't understand why anyone would tell the story they think you have some nefarious motives it's hard it's hard to understand until you get out how important it is to tell these stories and so you haven't received the super- mean reactions yet no which has been surprising but I maybe I'll check my email no I mean I mean to be honest and you were on like The Daily Show just two days ago most Mormons don't read these books like you mentioned a book a memoir has written yes they won't know about it they won't even know that it came out because that's a part of that bite methodology have you met Steven Hassan yet I've learned about his work yeah behavior they control behavior information thoughts and may manipulate through motions that stranglehold of information on members and high demand religions is kind of profound and they say even when it came to sin or anything you police yourself I did it I would never run it I'm sure some people will sneakily read it but it even in the very fact of its existence you know will make them upset even if they don't read the content because I don't think the content is particularly I tried to be fair I tried to be not you know like ranting and raving I tried to be balanced about the way I presented things but they'll just just the fact of it that it's here physical form and also you know it's been in mainstream media that is media that jokah this is listen to you like the radio so yeah but yeah if any of them are watching I encourage you just to read it because I think it's just if it's presented not as some sort of an apostate but trying to ruin your faith it's just basically a story that kind of reveals things along the way that you know might make a person think and so who are you it's hard to write a book right how I'm gonna take you to write this it took me two years and a but I had a day job at the time so that I was writing at night and I had a yeah in a couple of chapters earlier just myself so those are in there too but I was saying oh no it's like two years that's a big commitment and what was your intent in writing it who are you trying to help did you have a primary secondary tertiary audience well the funny thing is is that I actually just tried not to think about the audience when I was writing it because I didn't want there is of course some residual residual I still care about people that were used to my friends even though they don't talk to me anymore and I knew that if I thought about that it would prevent me from being as truthful as I needed to be so I never really wrote it with the intent of like letting get you exposed your services or I want to make my friends see the light I think that in the end of the book could do all of those things if it reached the right people but I didn't think about it at the time I just felt like I needed to write a truth my truthful experience and that was as far as I would allow myself to sort of thing and then the funny thing is is that the day I finished and like you know it candid enough to the editor it was done it came back like proof read form and then I thought I was like I tried to be you know honest about things I did as well and I didn't want to serve like sugarcoat my own behavior for those it's super brutal to get a book contract with the top you know publishing house for those who would want to write their own memoir and have a shot at this level of exposure any tips you want to get people of how you made that happen because that's probably not easy yeah I live in New York so that helps because this is the land of publishing but one of the thing that actually got me my very first agent meeting was that I wrote a piece that got published in the magazine called the believer it's not even a very well-known magazine but that piece it was like a very short abridged essay about my story and if you get published just does not mean you know 2,000 words 3000 words it was enough to be huge but if you got a piece published then it well written and it's engaging it definitely helps as a way as a path forward to getting a meeting with an agent the other thing to know is that you don't have to write the whole memoir publishers don't want the whole book when they're shopping when you're shopping it around they want a proposal so having a very good master plan is more important than writing the whole book so that's really important too so if you were some of the chapters in this book part of your proposal yeah you have to submit usually two sample chapters one of mine got thrown out the editor didn't want it and it was a chapter on I had toward the general doesn't miss baffle in Brooklyn as a member back you know many many years ago and then when I lived in New York after leaving the religion I went back and toured it again sort of under cover so it was a chapter like that but it didn't really fit into the narrative my book but what it does essentially show them that you can write and you know even if you're writing your own piece it's always good to have someone else look at it as an editor because more eyes on the thing always makes it better assess my other reading advice every every writer needs an editor yeah for sure do you have plans what are your plans going forward related to this book and you being now a prominent extra lose witness do you do you have do you want to be an activist you want to save other people from cults do you want to move on and just write about other things and leave all this behind how do you think about your future now it's funny because before I read the book I always felt like I was trying to outrun my past like I didn't have a degree I'm still trying to finish my degree because I've been working and had children but when I wrote this book planning I felt like I just owned it like I own with my past and it felt really good because it felt like it stitched together in the past with the present in this way that now I didn't feel like the time before was wasted where I used to feel like I was almost time it was cold but now it suddenly feels like oh no this is like part of my identity so I have a few ideas I have another book idea that I might try I also taking a lot of classes religion classes right now so I'm planning to finish my degree in religion and then maybe go on to masters and I was considering doing something you know sort of counseling that you do not like activist in the sense but I was thinking I was becoming a therapist to try and help people to get out because I think it is a way of sort of knitting together your own storyline and I can't help it I still have that features impulse I think to help people it's it's nice to help people so maybe something like that um we'll see what happens yeah there's a I just have to tell you one of the things I'm most proud about in Mormonism is this uber post foreman ism is this uber robust Mormon community of progressive and post-war man themed podcasts of progressive and post Mormon Facebook groups of a really robust ex-mormon reddit page with over a hundred thousand members we're starting to have workshops and retreats and even conferences for healing and growing after after Mormonism and I just it's a it's a it's an area I I just want to just throw my two cents in that's it you know I wondered about whether you would ever want to start a next row of his witness podcast I told Tovah Mervis the same thing there needs to be an ex Orthodox podcast the Mormon stories models really worked of just having people to other stories about having been Mormon and now how they left Mormonism and then how they built a life afterwards so I just want to give you my two cents man I guess yeah the therapist a coach so much neat out there and I just want to personally thank you amber skoura because sometimes people in one faith tradition need the experience of someone in a totally different faith tradition to kind of wake up and Mormons are Mormons and post formers are going to see themselves a thousand different times and a thousand different ways in this amazing book the book is leaving the witness exiting and religion and finding a life one last thing I'm gonna ask you one last question was going to be a little bit hard the last chapter of your book you talk about ending up finding a partner having a baby and then losing the baby yeah it's a sober topic but you know when people are rebuilding a life and and without religion and then you're confronted with the sort of tragedy that that is what creates religion in the first place the certainty the comfort the theology about an afterlife how did you and do you cope with sort of some of those real-life hard tragedies without a religious framework and maybe we can use that as a way to just sort of final thoughts for our listeners as they're trying to pick up their lives and rebuild and Bell faced tragedy - yeah that's the thing it's like when I left religion I felt like oh god all that bad stuff behind me and like everything's gonna be okay now so when that happened after I finally felt like I was on my feet again it was really hard to deal with it was hard to accept and I will say this anyone who has lost a child's religious or not it is very difficult thing to cope with I think a lot of what helps people who are religious cope with death is the community of the religion and I will say this is that when I was at Jones - I thought that that was like the trademark of being chosen is that you had all this loving community and I was led to believe that that only existed in the Genesis but outside it was even more there was so much love shown to my family and that's only what gets people through this kind of tragedy as other people there were people who strangers who had also lost children who contacted me there was a therapist through who helped me which was very important and just the love of that people show it so there's like that I think that that's like religion a big burner religion is that community and that's a big part of what Houston goes through then is of course the imagined future that you're going to see that person again and that for me is very difficult because obviously the thing I want most in life is to see my child again but the reality is is that I can't manufacture that belief now that it's gone and I'm not going to turn it in for something else because it I just have a fundamentally different sense of life and God and reality now than I did as a religious person so I just have to find ways to cope one of the ways I did that was by being in the real world for example after my son died I started a campaign for parental leave because he was a small child and he died on his first day in child care so in as a jobless witness we're not allowed to get involved in politics trying to make the world better that's God's department but now here I have this opportunity to you know keep my son in the world by trying to change policies around parental leave in this country which are dismal so there was there's not and that surprisingly was a very healing thing because the one thing that a parent that lives as a child deers most is that their child will be forgotten and like their life doesn't matter because it was short and so to this day if you ask like I could meet people all around New York at least and maybe other parts of the country if they know what the story of my son Carl this is name and a lot of people actually know his name and they know the story so there's that I think there's things you can just do in the present and then the other side of it is just trying to exactly that I'm not trading in a future of some fantasy future that I had you know that I'll see him again I have to live in the now and just by appreciating life because one thing that losing a child teaches you is that life is very short and you this very fragile and nothing is guaranteed so although it is still very painful it is painful every day to not have my child but um I do just try to move forward and I also have a daughter now which definitely helps as well so yeah I mean there's no answer there's gonna be pain in life I mean I think religion can numb some of that pain but religion also brings different pain with it sometimes especially more culty religions so yeah I think that's it like there's no way to escape death and so we have to live with it and that's what I didn't have to do you also write about pain McKee you more compassionate personal deeper person in a more grateful person action yeah and that's something that if it's numbed then you don't get that development right very sure yeah yeah we're last question where have you landed on kind of God in Jesus and and the afterlife or have you even landed anywhere you know I know what I believe in now I believe in magic like for me I can't not like I wrote a recent article in ER times actually about grieving without religion and a lot of people interpreted what I said to mean that I was an atheist but I am NOT an atheist I just don't believe that we know and I don't think there's any evidence of life after death so I don't believe in life after death until someone tells me something something that's proven different but I do believe that there is some creative force there's no way to me that everything can be so magical and beautiful for no reason I don't know and also just having like seeing a child grow inside of my womb and like how the miraculous miraculous Ness of life when you give birth to a child it's impossible for me to believe it's completely random but I don't think there's like an interested God figure sitting up in heaven looking down on us and I don't believe that the God that you know we worship from the Bible is an actual representation of actual God I think it's a human constructed as you know as you will learn in a sociology class socially constructed God I think people create God because they need that but it's not the kind of God that's been created in mainstream religions was sir I'm sorry yeah I'm kind of over that I don't I don't and the afterlife is just a question mark for you yeah I think we'll know when it happens and are you okay with that uncertainty that seems to be the theme of the book is that certainty is the is the villain yeah because I have to be I wish I wish that I could live forever in paradise on earth but you know I don't think that's happening I mean I don't want to die I don't think most people would die I would love to live on forever but I also don't want to live my life for something that's not true I don't want to pin everything because it changes how you live life so basically the point where I'm like I take what's in front of us as reality yeah well beautiful amber score I could have had you on for five ten hours easily what's that thanks for having me is great talking to you we're so grateful for your time and we're so grateful for this book leaving the witness exiting a religion and finding a life amber skoura is the author you are a gift to us all we wish you fortune and success and popularity be under wildest dreams please don't forget about us if you ever want to come to Salt Lake City I will personally help bring you here I mean that I've done it several times and I'll do it again so thank you for sharing your story with us not just Mormon stories but with the world and please stay in touch and and we wish you so much success I would love for your listeners if they want to talk like engage in discussion I'm online just my name I'm the only amber score in the world so easy to find but I love talking about this stuff how do they reach you what are the ways I'm on Twitter Amber's Cora I'm on Facebook all you gotta do is I have a website everything's under my name email address yeah what is it it's amber Doc's Cora at gmail and score as sco ra h for those listening and not viewing you can also find out my website if that was too quick yeah Tovah Mervis said told Amira says that the reaction - oh what's the website amber scored I love a beautiful told actually has told several people that and again X Orthodox Jew that her engagement with Mormonism Mormons ex-mormons and liberal Mormons has been the most meaningful part of her memoir so so listeners progressive and post Mormons let's make amber scores engagement with with post Mormons the best part of her memoir I remember you take care thank you so much have a great day and thanks all our listeners for joining us a Mormon stories warmer stories at gmail.com if you want to email us please donate at Mormon stories org ten fifteen twenty hundred bucks a month whatever you can afford keeps this nonprofit alive and to keep bringing stories like this if you want to bring amber to Salt Lake City reach out will will fund a trip and we'll schedule it and we'll bring her out and we'll get some more time with Amber like we did with Tova and with Tara Westover so please reach out please support us Mormon stories take everybody and we'll see you soon amber bye take care you

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 15,011

Rating: 4.8149467 out of 5

Keywords: lds, mormon, latter-day saints, jw, jehovah, jehovahs witness, jehovah's witness, leaving, religion, new, life, forging, transition, crisis, faith, doubt, amber, scorah, book, parallels

Id: 2oPVF3WHMDA

Length: 99min 9sec (5949 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/All-Iwantisthetruth]

She also was a speaker at the November 17th Thrive conference and had a Q&A with an audience. I really wanted to go, but Utah is too far away. Both videos can be found on Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel or iTunes. I really enjoyed both plus the other speakers.

[u/Balcacer]

https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/dzz694/mormon_stories_1218_an_interview_with_amber/

This is Part II or the follow up:

Our follow-up interview with author Amber Scorah of the book "Leaving the Witness" at the Community of Christ in Salt Lake City, Utah. In this interview, we solicit comments and questions from our live audience.

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