[SPEAKER_06]: It has more members than the SPC.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's bigger than the Mormons.
[SPEAKER_06]: They have 23 plus million members.
[SPEAKER_06]: Why did they sew into the radar?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite calculated.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're one of those end times cults that thinks that they're going to be persecuted by the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they kind of walked
[SPEAKER_00]: to stay out of the spotlight, I think, because of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, you can live your entire life as an Adventist and really never go outside the bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got publishers, they've got schools, and they've got the fourth largest medical system in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got the third largest educational system, I think in the world, female profit founded the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was hit in head with a rock when she was about nine, ten years old for the rest of her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had hallucinations and seizures.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, they wanted to admit, oh, maybe traumatic brain injury.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to this day, she's the prophet.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has the spirit of prophecy.
[SPEAKER_06]: He advocated for female general mediation to stop masturbation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was three years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And an Adventist doctor just sliced up all her body parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: She went to another Adventist doctor later and said, what in the heck happened to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they gave her a pamphlet on masturbation and Michelle brought the door, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walking away is just such a powerful thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: what it takes to get there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Welcome back to the Prejoy's podcast.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm your host, Eric Scorsinski.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm a former fundamentalist who now sheds light on the dark side of the church and the pulpit to the pews.
[SPEAKER_06]: Today, I'm sitting down with my new friend Melissa Duggy Spires.
[SPEAKER_06]: Melissa is a former 70 of Venice, an award-winning essayist, a screenwriter and advocate for topics of religious and narcissistic abuse.
[SPEAKER_06]: Her memoir, Holy Disobedience, won the 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Nonfiction manuscript prize, and by the time you're watching this, it's available to purchase wherever books are sold.
[SPEAKER_06]: But help you out, there's a link in the show notes for your convenience, so if you want to grab a copy and have a small portion of your purchase support this show, be sure to use it affiliate link there to grab a copy.
[SPEAKER_06]: But that's enough for me, let's get to my conversation with Melissa Duggy Spires.
[SPEAKER_02]: If ain't nobody safe In the Bible Holy Oh, in the Bible Holy
[SPEAKER_06]: Alright, Melissa, thanks so much for joining me on the Fridge Boys podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm really excited to chat with you about a denomination.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think I've ever talked about on the show before.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm actually fairly familiar with the denomination and I'll explain why in a second.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was really interesting, a friend of mine named Jared has a channel called Helio Centric, and he just did an episode on Seventh Day of Venice.
[SPEAKER_06]: And one of the things he mentioned we were both kind of texting about is, it's incredible how large the Seventh Day of Venice world is.
[SPEAKER_05]: The seventh day Adventists are substantially bigger than the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Latter Day Saints, and somehow I know next to nothing about them, like how much media coverage has there been about Mormonism just in the past year alone, and then you tell people about seventh day Adventism and like some of the crazy history behind it, and nobody knows it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It has more members than the SBC.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's bigger than the Mormons.
[SPEAKER_06]: They have 23 plus a million members.
[SPEAKER_06]: really heard about seven day events.
[SPEAKER_06]: What, why are they so into the radar, can better be all?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my opinion is that it's quite calculated that they like operating under the radar because they, well, first of all, they're one of those end times cults that thinks that the government's gonna force them to blah, blah, blah, and especially because they worship on Saturdays, they have this whole thing that they're gonna be persecuted for worshiping on Saturday by the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: to stay out of the spotlight, I think, because of that, and times weirdness, but cult, cult, but on that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, it's a weird mix of superiority.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they really do think that they're just so special that they really don't need to soil their little feats in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: certainly past first generation, it's fear because they raised in such a bubble that even the kids that I went to high school with now that I look at where their life trajectory, a bunch of us kind of made it out of the religion at one point or another and almost everybody went back in, like nobody can cut it in the real world, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they just because it's so foreign and so hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think they all just go retreat back into their bubble and nobody hears about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plus, they also are, um, but people often confuse them with J W's, which kind of cracks me up, because of course they all came from that same Millerite movement that the Mormons did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of Twinsie Twinsiness there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But very much unlike the JWs, Adventists are huge on education.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're huge on medical care.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can live your entire life as an Adventist and really never go outside the bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got, you know, publishers, they've got schools, they've got medical schools, they've got legal training, they've just everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got the fourth largest
[SPEAKER_00]: um, medical system in the world, they've got the third largest educational system, I think in the world, every one of those, they are right, of course, right behind the Catholics, but, um, and the Mormons sometimes, but um, so they really just kind of feel like, why do they have to make themselves known?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're doing quite well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, I don't know, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is quite mysterious.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, the medical side is how I'm familiar because I grew up in Southern California.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was 24 minutes from Lomelinda and I know we often have, you know, people you know, go to the hospital, they end up at Lomelinda and, you know, I grew up very fundamental Baptist.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the only thing I knew when we went is like, okay, they're run by some of the Adventists.
[SPEAKER_06]: They have church on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_06]: And when you go to the cafeteria, you can't grab a Coke and you can't get anything that has meat in it.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that was a big bummer for me, coming from the Baptist world where it's like, potlucks and big golps is a very, very different world.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just out of my own curiosity, are they, they're not big on proselytizing them.
[SPEAKER_06]: It sounds like it's just a generational, like you kind of raise up and then move closer to a community or
[SPEAKER_00]: They are huge missionaries, but they're not the door to door JW type of thing, usually they do do that, they call it cold ordering or something and they try to go sell their profits book door to door.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they do, but it's just not as, again, it's not as well known as the Mormons and the JWs, and
[SPEAKER_00]: And their main, I mean, it's really, in my opinion, disgustingly colonial missionaries of that there's their big push.
[SPEAKER_00]: They target very needy communities, both in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: increasingly abroad and they sweep in there and they build schools and they build a hospital and they come in with medical care and English lessons and blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they've got church members that are so grateful that then they've got guaranteed generations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they definitely do that kind of proselytizing missionary stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: interesting and kind of gentrifying for the Lord going until these communities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's identifying all the local cultures.
[SPEAKER_06]: Of course, all the local cultures are devil and, you know, it's so fascinating because that's the thing I kept going back to, you know, reading from you and then also listening to you on so many shows is I was like, if you swapped out seven day events for independent
[SPEAKER_06]: just way healthier.
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel you had literally I was like aside from the health restrictions, like the way you talk about purity culture and illustrations you give there, you mentioned in one of your episodes.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think maybe in your book as well, like drum beats, we're not allowed in the music because it comes from Africa and you know, it's used in pagan practices, like all that stuff feels so familiar.
[SPEAKER_06]: But beneath the iceberg is
[SPEAKER_06]: all these things that I had never heard before that are very unique to the religion.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I want to first start with the fact that the religion is co-founded by a female, which is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can you give a kind of brief history lesson about that?
[SPEAKER_06]: And how different that looks from what the movement kind of looks like today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, of course, the big irony there, just, I mean, there are so many ridiculous parts about the profit, et cetera, but the big irony is that, of course, it was founded by a female, but to this day, they will not officially ordain women.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will let women preach now, I've heard certainly when I was there and it went up until high school and women were not even allowed to preach, but so female profit founded the church, but no female ordain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the, and then the funny weird part of that is that she was hit in the head with a rock when she was about nine, ten years old and she suffered.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she was in bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for weeks and weeks with hallucinations and seizures and.
[SPEAKER_00]: and ever on for the rest of her life she had hallucinations and seizures and somehow that it has never to this day they won't admit oh maybe traumatic brain injury and there's also this thing called gishvin syndrome that was defined in like 1987 or so that just
[SPEAKER_00]: goes with the frontal lobe injury that ticks off every single thing she did like hyper religiosity, you know, low sex drive and really critical of sex or hyper sexual is a lesser symptom that she went obviously below one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hypergraphia like constant writing and she just like put out some anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she clearly the woman had severe, she sustained severe.
[SPEAKER_00]: bring injury and damage and started a church from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to this day, she's the prophet.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has the spirit of prophecy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She plagiarized really heavily and the Adventists will defend that till their dying breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, everybody did it back then and then you say, but, but she was saying it was from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So...
[SPEAKER_00]: everybody did it back then is not this, you know, doesn't tell it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles, what's the spirit of prophecy?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have faith, of course, faith.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's really interesting because again, that it does separate seven day of Venice is that they are so high on education, which is so different.
[SPEAKER_06]: Again, that's a big difference from the background.
[SPEAKER_06]: I grew up in where you don't want to be in the educational system.
[SPEAKER_06]: You don't want to, you know, there's like, what the Bible teaches on their science, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like there's these two things.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, Lomeland is an amazing hospital, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like there's some very brilliant minds there.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it always fascinates me like when there's people
[SPEAKER_06]: Because I picture the tent meeting and the preacher gets up, and it's like, you know, what else do you have about religion?
[SPEAKER_06]: But then you go to a highly educated group, and you go like, hey, here's this really crazy thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not too far off of a Joseph Smith type situation.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you're going to discard like your PhD or medical degree, you're going to get rid of all these things and just accept this.
[SPEAKER_06]: Was this something that you ever saw like,
[SPEAKER_06]: early on like a contradiction where you're like, okay, we all would say in any other instance, none of this adds up, but for us it does.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like how did people grapple with that growing up?
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I had better recall from there, you know, because I left at 18, so I don't, to me, it just never,
[SPEAKER_00]: The stuff, just basic Bible stuff never made sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why did there have to be good and evil and why didn't God just correct Satan in the beginning?
[SPEAKER_00]: And save us all, you know, just all those elementary questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time it got to the Adventist particular stuff, I was just like,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I just thought none of it made any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it and observing the adults around me to see how they dealt with the basic cognitive distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, my sister and I now have talked for the past 30 years about, you know, my dad has multiple degrees and is a very intelligent man and he buys into all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've tried to have conversations with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's basically, well, you just have to decide what you believe and then you have to just go all in, you know, and I mean, he's got a medical degree and he but then they still and until I left the church, they were still believing the world was 6,000 years old and creation and all that stuff he's kind of softened later in life, I think on the some of those points, but the church in general really hasn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: um, they're still pretty pretty much definitely creationism and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, so I don't know how they certainly I can just speak from the education within the educational system up until high school and yes they're really into education but it's a very narrow educational you know so we didn't we didn't read the classics because they were all gay and they encouraged critical thinking and we couldn't read a lot of literature we couldn't read
[SPEAKER_00]: science was of course just basic biology and chemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't actually get into any great interesting earth sciences and you know so it was very limited education.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, well, this is an interesting piece of your story is that you are a fourth generation, so don't you have been asked, there won't be a fifth.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, it ends there, but no, you're a fourth generation and you grew up in it.
[SPEAKER_06]: We share that similar to as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was born and raised in the automation that I was in.
[SPEAKER_06]: The difference is,
[SPEAKER_06]: I believe everything incredibly deeply and there's still little things I'm disentangling from all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: You sent them like from day one, you were just like, this doesn't make sense to me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Describe what it's like.
[SPEAKER_06]: First of all, how does that happen when you're grown up and they have you from day one?
[SPEAKER_06]: How do you not just accept it as truth?
[SPEAKER_06]: That's all you're taught.
[SPEAKER_06]: But also, I can't imagine surviving being in one of those systems if you don't believe it
[SPEAKER_06]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_06]: So like, how did that play out for you as a young, Melissa growing up in this seven day eventist world?
[SPEAKER_00]: It has obviously caused lots of lasting trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I have to say in terms of having gotten so practiced early on at hiding my feelings and hiding what I thought that I still to this day struggle a lot with even being able to access feelings and stuff because they just weren't safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: You knew that you were, so that's an ongoing thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some of it, it's weird being so indoctrinated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it really is child abuse and indoctrinating children that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, like I didn't believe, um, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sensed fear in the adults, from my very earliest memories, and I talk a lot in the book about I sensed it in my teenage years around sex, particularly, but it started much earlier than that just in general that they were so afraid that we would find something out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just had to keep us so close and so monitored and so foresped.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just something in that I was the strongwill child.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was the rebel and I always just didn't sit right, but I didn't know what else was out there and I knew that I couldn't I did rebel a lot and fight like with my mother and but that was a closed circuit right
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was just it literally was a matter of kind of I have to buy my time and grab the bits and little tiny pieces until I can make it all make sense, but then also so much of it is just embedding in you like like the God part never made sense and Satan and all of that to me, but I was terrified of hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was terrified of the end times.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that we would be persecuted for worshiping on Saturday, and I bought in wholeheartedly that we were superior, and we were special, we were God's chosen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had for some reason no problem believing that part.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a weird mix, you have some parts that just soaked in, and then some parts that you just couldn't embrace,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I guess that's what makes deconstructing so hard, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is because you have to identify those things of like, what did I ever really believe and what is still buried in there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, you'd still in moments of like sheer terror or something that you go, oh my god, you know, and you think you're going to start praying or something, and I was like, no, no, but it's just it's in there, it's buried.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's it's like when you're emotional brain takes over and then the logic catches up and you're like, why am I panic to about x, y and c, yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: with anybody any you said like you rebelled with your mom which is kind of vague like everybody could say they go through that stage but in terms of like the religious side how much would the people around you have been aware that you were questioning the religion
[SPEAKER_06]: It's self like they might see you like oh, she's interested in boys all of a sudden and she's we're Belling him that way or she's sneaking out going here and doing this like but how much of it was you going?
[SPEAKER_06]: I read this thing in my Bible and it doesn't make sense and Like I'm gonna push back on this or was that it was it all behavioral stuff that you were kind of pushing back on
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say, and that's part of what I'm very interested to, I know that people I want to school with are buying and reading the book, and I'm very interested to hear from them because I would wager a substantial amount that all of them thought I was absolutely hook-line and sinker Adventist.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I preached for Sabbath school, and I did the prayers at whatever
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a goody two shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was super, seemingly devout, I think, and I did everything right, you know, and because that was armor, that was, I didn't want to have to fight everyone because I tried to do it just within my family early enough on, particularly again, with my mother more of her behavioral things, but same thing, like you just,
[SPEAKER_00]: you could not win and your will was broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just learned that from everything, then just don't even try.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did try to have a few philosophical conversations with my dad again, just really rudimentary when I was like nine or 10 and just the question about why they're had to just be good and bad and why there was still evil in the world, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would just give me these answers
[SPEAKER_00]: weren't really answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't an invitation to actually talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a way to shut me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just thought, OK, well, there you go, you know, I just won't won't ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't question.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I started to have it very young of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, trying to organize anything that I wanted to do that I knew wasn't approved like completely under the wire so that nobody knew I wouldn't tell anybody what I wanted to do I didn't sell people where I wanted to go to school or what I wanted to do with my life or anything I just played the little party line up here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I was perfect and underneath I was like I'm going here and I'm going there and I'm going there and I'm going there and by the time I was 18 I'd laid all the plans and I got out.
[SPEAKER_06]: When you were, well, let me ask you this first before it subsby me and I forget to ask later, but you mentioned a lot of your friends from back then, you know, or probably by in the book, they're going to be startled by that, and I'm sure startled by many other things throughout the book.
[SPEAKER_06]: On a scale of one to ten, how terrified are you at the thought of former classmates reading your recollection of events?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not at all actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm really welcoming to an interested to see what they think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they will be shocked and I even in hindsight found out that most of the kids in my Adventistic Academy were doing normal stuff, having sex, drinking whatever, nobody told me, even my best friends that I thought at the time apparently they were doing all kinds of stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: He just weren't invited.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me because I was just such a goodie to choose, so I think
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's going to be a little amused to see like this is how I turned out and this is what was really going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm well, I'm looking forward to those conversations, honestly, because I don't think anyone including myself, stop it coming.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, it is funny.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think about all the time in the context of the show because I have people that from the past have listened.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the person I am now versus the person they knew then who was bought in and would argue privately, you know, like Jesus did not turn water into wine.
[SPEAKER_06]: He turned it into grape juice.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you look at the original text, you know, you can start really figuring out what it's saying.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and so like, I think sometimes then they see me now and they're like, what a 180, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: That's not what you think and it's like, well, 30-year-old Eric is a little different.
[SPEAKER_06]: I hope a little more developed than, you know, 16, 17-year-old Eric.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, let me talk to you about leaving then because you left when you were 18.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you went, I talked about purity culture on the show all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: Your story is like one of the most zero to a hundred stories of sheltered purity culture to just exploring the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like can you talk about that period and I want to get two sides of this one.
[SPEAKER_06]: What do you think full for?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because there's a lot you're thankful for about that period, but also you were very sheltered and came from purity culture.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm sure there's some things that happen that could have been avoided.
[SPEAKER_06]: had you been properly educated, had you been given good information, had to say for support system.
[SPEAKER_06]: So are there any regrets from that period where you go, if I could go back and hold Melissa's hand and say, don't do this thing, what are some of those things that you would bring up?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really good food for thought thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, I, uh, I'll try to summarize really quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had really not dated or had any physical experience with anybody until, um, like, my junior senior, it was my senior year, and, um, I just, I just decided it was just like a flips, uh, the switch flipped.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
[SPEAKER_00]: thought, you know, really everyone's just afraid that we're going to find out what sex is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where there's all this organization, we have these classes and everything charts and all the stuff about men books have not to have sex, not to have sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, and I was just like, fuck it, I'm going to go find out because they again, they're literal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very literal.
[UNKNOWN]: They're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_06]: Very Freudian, slip them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just thought that it was ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew I couldn't do it in the Adventist system that the gossip was too much and I would have to go have prayer sessions or God knew what would happen to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I knew people who'd been to send off to conversion camps or something because I don't know something about their sexuality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was all so scary back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went down to the local high school and I just started watching football and basketball games and there were these two twins that were absolutely gorgeous when I was like, okay, it's going to be one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I figured out which one was Lucer off and on with his girlfriend and I just hooked up with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And um,
[SPEAKER_00]: That didn't last very long, but it was my first relationship and from then on, it was just, you know, I felt so proud of myself because I had proven the crumpled cupcake or whatever the crumpled dollar and the lift cupcake and the chewed gum and all that stuff the trampled shirt was totally wrong because I didn't feel a thing and and so then that was my sexual experience for.
[SPEAKER_00]: way too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I am really, so the things I'm grateful about that is that, well, first of all, so many people I know who grew up in the religious system, their first sexual experience was not their choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So mine was my choice and I wasn't nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, overall it was a good experience, and, um, and that I didn't, you know, I mean, so many people got married so that they could have sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't go that route.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, and I still to this day don't feel guilt over sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's actually pretty remarkable
[SPEAKER_00]: The things that I regret is, and I'm not sure how I would fix it if I went back to talk to young Melissa, but clearly the fact that I learned through the purity culture indoctrination, but also through the way I approached getting a rid of virginity, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: took emotion out of it, took sex and love to me, are two separate things and they still are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really feel that if I had been raised in a different culture of a different experience, I'd had like you said more support, more education, more everything, perhaps it could have been different.
[SPEAKER_06]: What can you unpack that a little bit what you mean, because I can give our context, which is, you know, it was, depending who you talk to, you would either get that like, you know, with the married couple, you know, it's basically the marriage beds under filed so like, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: In this sanctity of marriage, sex can just be this amazing thing doing to people and all these things.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there was also a branch of those people that were like sex is not for pleasure, it's for procreation.
[SPEAKER_06]: And if you're eliminating the possibility of procreation, yes, it's pleasurable.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there needs to be that possibility.
[SPEAKER_06]: You can't limit what God wants to do in blessing you with children and all those sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_06]: Is that kind of what you mean when you say like,
[SPEAKER_06]: It took a motion out of it where it's like, this is a functional thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is something that you do.
[SPEAKER_06]: Or does it mean something different that's tied to some form of SDA theology on nothing familiar with?
[SPEAKER_06]: That's like, it makes it very mechanical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it just simply means that it's like, it's a physical function of a biological function of like, it's like eating, or it's like, this and that, which doesn't mean I don't believe in,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, commitment to people or whatever that you're in a relationship with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't have a terribly great track record with that either, but yeah, it just completely
[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow I had to kill, or it was killed in me, I'm not sure, the fact that it could be this amazing, emotional connection vehicle for people, the really brought people together and made this incredible special moment for people.
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, it's just fun, and it's great, and it's, I'm on its consensual, and it's, you know, the sky's the limit, but there's nothing there there.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no big deep whatever.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, when it comes to whether we're talking about sex or anything else that that people explore when they leave a super controlling religion.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a really tricky thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think to walk through yourself and then also to walk other people through when you're posting a podcast on the topic or I'm sure writing a book on the topic where.
[SPEAKER_06]: In these groups, it's kind of like the Lion King.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, you don't go where the shadows are, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like there's certain things that are off limits.
[SPEAKER_06]: And on some levels, some of the things that you're restricted from, it's like sprint to those things that they're telling you, don't look under the, behind the curtain, don't look under this thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: But also, some things are really harmful.
[SPEAKER_06]: They have really good boundaries on them for a reason and I guess I'm curious like now as a person who thought about this a lot and you know put some years between teenage brain trying to figure this out What's something you do practically to determine whether something is being kept away because it's actually harmful or if it's something you should you know taste test to see like
[SPEAKER_06]: This is probably fine because like that's something I still wrestle with where it's like, yeah, maybe this XYZ thing would be really helpful and it would be great as a parent or would be great as a spouse and then other things you do it and go like, oh, I can't believe we didn't do that for so long.
[SPEAKER_06]: How do you kind of way out what what's a safe test I guess, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have to borrow some breakfast certificates and say, well, I can't think there's anything that I haven't done, but so I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I always tell people to triage for sure and a two-column triage of identify the things that harm you the most and work on those and then identify the things that you really wanted to do the most but you were taken away from you and then work on those.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't really
[SPEAKER_00]: say, how would you test for how harmful they are?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, because I think the example we would have heard ground was like, you don't need to try math to know that it's bad.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and they would, but then they would say, you don't need to try pre-marital sex to know or whatever the thing is.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so yeah, but I think I think what you just said is a really interesting way of looking at is like, what were the things you were kept from that you did enjoy that were harmless and working on those things, which is a lot you can cover before you get to things that could potentially
[SPEAKER_06]: But also I think like unpacking the motivation of why they were keeping certain things is probably helpful as well, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah, I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then just I feel like this seems so overworked at this point, but really kind of sitting with your body to tell you, I mean, we were also disconnected from our bodies just in general and our gut, our gut feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: quietly enough for a few minutes and just be like, why do I want to do this thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, why would I want to do math?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would it do for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why you don't like what would be the, um, I think you could probably come to a fairly good, um, a solid, uh, analysis there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, what's your motivation in wanting to do it?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah exactly is it rebellion is it just need your like i got to do it because they said no you know like a toddler i mean sometimes that's fun but um yeah uh is it is it just because it's been taken away from you or do you think there could be something positive
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, let me ask you about that because we're billions of big part of your story.
[SPEAKER_06]: Spoiler alert for those who haven't read the book yet.
[SPEAKER_06]: But this was this is something that I have gone back and forth on and how I feel about it and I'll use drinking as an example.
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot of times I will, me and my friend talk about this when you go out to dinner with a friend who's still a Baptist, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: you're saying that you're like, oh, I know it's going to bother them.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to order a beer, you know, and some of the people who do that might not really love beer and they wouldn't normally order the beer for lunch, but they're like, as a finger to that world, I'm going to do it.
[SPEAKER_06]: When it comes to rebellion, it's like, I'm going to do the thing I wasn't supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think there's merit to some of those things, but I also, the thing that always kept me kind of tethered to reality is I would go, if I'm living my life in reaction to what I left, they're still controlling me.
[SPEAKER_06]: you know and so like how do you balance out the feeling of like I'm taking control versus like by doing these things they said I should never do they're still controlling me because I'm just the opposite reaction like how do you weigh out what's actually for you versus what's still really serving them like now you're just an illustration of what goes wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that is a big struggle for those of us who came from super high control where there's just that whole list of a million things, you know, they've never been to a concert, you know, Yeah, you just want to throw it in their face and I, you know, I'm totally like I'm wearing my wearing my little dragon today, you know, Address won't don't like jewelry and they certainly don't like dragons so you know, I do still do like little things to like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hoke even if I don't and usually wear jewelry, you know, but so I think some of it can be really fun, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And and pretty innocent, but again, I do think that you have to sit with yourself and say, you know, why am I just doing this to make a point.
[SPEAKER_00]: drinking or whatever for my benefit or is it simply to just poke the bear or make a statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you feel a little foolish once you actually identify the things that you're doing that are that are just for show basically to you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, I couldn't go back and forth back and forth, cut a lot of slack for people that need to do stuff just for show for a while because they're forming their inside independent while having to form this kind of frost out here that's a little outrageous and they don't really lean into that too much, but it helps them define that boundary of I'm breaking away.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's I always go back because I I put out something out maybe a year and a half ago and I was like saying being a former fundamentalist should not be your entire personality and I still stand on that I think in many ways and I mean it in the sense of what do you actually like versus what do you just you know again it's person drinking the birds like I don't like beer, but they just that I couldn't drink beer and it's like well, maybe find what you do like you might be a cabaret person, you know, and but
[SPEAKER_06]: then some people kind of push back and they're like, you know, the whole point of leaving is that you don't tell people what their personality can be and you're like, okay, let me back off the gas a little bit here.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, I was I was curious to take on all that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Before I shift gears into a couple of different things here,
[SPEAKER_06]: When you were testing all these things, I know you didn't buy into like SDA theology.
[SPEAKER_06]: Did you have a period at any point after leaving where you dip the toe into any other religious practices where you're like, or did you ever go like, isn't it all like, I'm gonna read the SDA books and see if they're on to something that I missed, you know, was that a piece of the journey or was it something where you're like, I've done the religion thing, you know, like it's time to do, do me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I, um, in college, uh, I started taking karate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in college in New York, city, and there were these all these great dojos everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I picked a place that I really loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very traditional.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so part of that was Zen Buddhist meditation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did take a couple of Buddhism classes in Colombia and I took shamanism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took, so I did experiment in a couple of other, I mean, obviously shamanism was more like a history of it wasn't like, hey, let's all become shamanism.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I did experiment a little bit with Buddhism for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I had to pick a religion, certainly Zen Buddhist would be what I would pick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still do meditate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, there's a little monk online in Tibet who posts his little meditation videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do those quite frequently.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I never did go back, oh, and I loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly love to go to Catholic services.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's that little bit of me that's like, fuck you Adbinists because they think that the Catholics are from the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: They think they're six, six, six, six, they're whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so every time I set foot in a Catholic church, I'm like, oh, but mostly I like it because I like formality and I like pomp and circumstance and I love organ music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I will just go if there's a service going and I'm like walking down the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will go sit in there and listen for 15 minutes to the I look choir music.
[SPEAKER_00]: um, and I'll listen and um, I love the Latin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I never studied Latin.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have no idea but when they're doing the super high vase or whatever with the prayers, it's just like, oh, that's so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's more of just in a, um, you know, it's like going to watch a play for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like I'm buying into this virtuality at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I feel good, you know, I, there's a certain
[SPEAKER_00]: in churches that I think is at those churches are so kind of and I've never been to like a mega church like a Baptist or a you know like any of those I can't tell again I like the pomp and circumstances of the older.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a gorgeousness, even though you know how most of those charges were built on the back, so horribly enslaved and tortured people, there's beauty there, you know, and I like that part.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Anything that ties to like old history, like is is interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I know like visiting like old Catholic churches.
[SPEAKER_06]: I love like and it's something, you know, I do a show that largely covers sexual abuse and churches.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I can't praise the Catholics too much on the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: But, you know, and of course, not all Catholics, and of course not all churches, disclaimer for all the Catholics tuning into this episode with a Baptist in a seven-day of Venice.
[SPEAKER_06]: But, no, it's really cool to see something that's like, this is how it's been done for
[SPEAKER_06]: hundreds, or in the case of some churches, thousands of years, and there is a rich beauty, and there is a lot of things that are really cool.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the stained glass is like my favorite thing in the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm always like, if I had unlimited budget, I would create a office.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's just stained glass and like book shelves, and it would just look like a pastor's office somewhere.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, it's, it's, it's really, really neat.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, to, since we're talking about the Catholics, let's talk about sexual abuse showy.
[SPEAKER_06]: One of the things that you mentioned is, you know, this is not something that you were seeing on the regular growing up in it.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a bit very much you uncovered in your mid-30s that sexual abuse was a thing and you've found this out because a family member was
[SPEAKER_06]: and covered as a predator.
[SPEAKER_06]: Just tell us a little bit about that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, people can hear longer shorter versions of the story elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_06]: But how did you discover this and how did it reframe the way you looked at all of that religious past?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so a, you know, top level review was yes, when I was growing up, nobody taught, I didn't even know about sexual abuse at all really seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly if we, you did hear it was the Boy Scouts or the Catholics and both of those were awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we just thought everything was perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I left the church at 18,
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad had been a doctor most of my life, but he had been a youth pastor when I was really teeny.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when as soon as we were all through college, he went back to being a pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: we've got fun calls and I was about 35 or something saying he was being removed from his post at the church that he'd been put at because of victim of his when he was a pastor when I was a baby had called the church and said that he should not be given any power or authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, at the time that was, I mean, still is devastating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of my family has not dealt with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my dad was worshiped in our family and in the church at large as far as we all knew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was devastating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the strongwill child and the only kid that really just bought it heads with things, I was the only family member of the extended family who literally sat my parents down and said, what the fuck is this, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And like,
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then found out, of course, there was more than one victim because of course, there always is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then that just kind of dropped and nobody wanted to talk about it and we all sailed through our lives because our family doesn't talk about things for the next five or so years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I literally stumbled across an article because I was still kind of in my, I hate the church phase that I'd been in since I was 18 and then I was, that's to 40 probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw an article about this really horrific sex abuse case at one of the Adventist Monterey Bay Academy in the 80s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of my cousins had gone there in the 80s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, I'm going to read this article.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was fucking Adventists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And literally there was they interviewed a woman about other, they were interviewing all of these people about other sex abuse cases.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Adventist Church, which I just blew my mind right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was reading this paragraph.
[SPEAKER_00]: this woman is talking about my dad and um so I wrote to her and uh she wrote back and since then we've been friends and at the time I thought what I really needed to chase down was the story of how could this person who was so magical in my life be this other person like who was he to you what did he tell you what what happened like how could he be these two people
[SPEAKER_00]: and she was very forthcoming and very she's just a magnificent person and so generous and she told me anything I wanted to know but she kept bringing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: the Adventist Church and how all these horrible things about it that I hadn't known about how they were circumcising girls because it had been recommended for her and how they just the huge sex abuse case and I didn't have the bandwidth and so and I just
[SPEAKER_00]: We dropped communication for a while because it was just all too overwhelming and then when I picked it back up just seven years ago or so and started talking to her again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to approach it from a whole other angle because I realized it wasn't her story, my dad's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: She got to confront my dad as an adult and just read it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't need to protect her and that's what I felt guilty about as a kid being the kid approaching it at 35, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: um meeting up with her basically is that the church had screwed her multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she'd gotten to say her piece with my dad as an adult, but the church had told her, okay, we'll take him when she came to get him removed from the position, you know, uh the church had told her, okay, great, we'll remove him, please don't sue, please don't take it public.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll remove him,
[SPEAKER_00]: within freaking weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was preaching in two different churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was on whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they had done it to her as a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd made her the villain.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd moved my dad around.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd gotten off Scott free.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they did it to her again when she was 45 or whatever she was at that time 50, I guess, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, I realized that's where I need to look for my healing, and if I wanted to do anything about this situation, that's where my energy is best spent is tracking down and holding accountable the church who has not only done this, did this to this woman
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started speaking out about it and I just went online and I didn't start talking about the family case or her at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just started talking about how weird the Adventist church was because it's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then people just start talking to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: People started telling me their stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just, I mean, every day now, practically in my DMs, I have more people.
[SPEAKER_00]: who were abused.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that I've come out and said actually my father was the Predator in my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have people in my DMs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had one today who said you and I are identical.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was a seven-day address pastor and Bob Ablan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had multiple ones of those and um it's crazy and it's the church like the Baptists and like the Catholics they all have the same playbook.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cover it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: They move people around.
[SPEAKER_00]: They blame the girls or the
[SPEAKER_00]: there's no accountability, there's just none.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that has now become my mission.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I saw last month you shared an article on Substack, Melissa Duky Spiders.Substack.com, and you shared a article that there's a giant lawsuit right now involving sexual abuse cover-ups within the church.
[SPEAKER_06]: One of the things I'm curious about with 7-day Venice specifically is, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: That's people you spend time with that's your political views all your buddies you get together and do stuff with like they're all from the church
[SPEAKER_06]: with the way the SDA kind of sets up legit communities.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have to imagine it's like a 10,000 times worse thing where you're going to a store in Lomalinda where everybody else is seven day of Venice or any other place you wanna put on the map.
[SPEAKER_06]: How does that play a role in whether or not people feel safe to come forward?
[SPEAKER_06]: And on the backside of that, I was curious if you know
[SPEAKER_06]: when they control a lot of the schools, they control a lot of these other organizations, how deeply in meshed in the law enforcement or are they, is that a piece of that?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because I was thinking about like, little Melinda, because again, that's my point of reference.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know there are other places, but I kept going like, I wonder if the police department is like particularly friendly in some of these areas.
[SPEAKER_06]: And again, I'm not going to specifically throw that as an accusation.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm just curious from your experience that you've talked to.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how in bed with law enforcement.
[SPEAKER_06]: They are actually I have a pretty anti government involvement.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was like, they can go either way, you know, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are, they're not terribly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never even heard of an Adventist police officer ever, you know, so I, you know, it's a, that's a really interesting question, just in general what the party line is when abuse cases happen is don't go to the police let us handle it internally and there are all these promises made that of course it will be handled which it isn't, but there's also a lot of, a lot of shaming particularly if it's a same sex situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: of to the kids and the kids family, you don't want this to get out of the politicality.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will hurt the child.
[SPEAKER_00]: This we're thinking of the child's reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you take it to the police, it's public.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let us handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course, they just hush it up.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a pretty gross, I mean, in general, but it's also when it's like the worst thing that could happen from the situation that someone could assume that you're gay, you know, like that's like you if in regardless.
[SPEAKER_06]: It wouldn't make this less bad or more bad, like it's bad.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's just bad for what it is.
[SPEAKER_06]: So you've talked to many different people now who've left.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm curious to you, like I know you've obviously, like you've talked my good friend Tia Levings.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know she endorsed your book.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know you've, you're talking to myself.
[SPEAKER_06]: You've talked to Ashley San Solo, who's another friend with Coldstak Consciousness
[SPEAKER_06]: How does it feel seeing so many similarities?
[SPEAKER_06]: We're like I said you could take a lot of what Shalice says about the Mormon Church remove more men and replace it with some of the day of Venice.
[SPEAKER_06]: He'd like this same experience.
[SPEAKER_06]: Does that shock you?
[SPEAKER_06]: Does it something where you go like that all makes sense?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like what has it been like seeing all these denominations follow the same playbook as you said?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, at first it was terribly shocking.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just because, of course, we were all told.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were so special and so unique and so the only last remnant blah blah blah, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even though
[SPEAKER_00]: like I never really quite believed in any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that there was there was certainly the church was unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like I didn't approve of its uniqueness, but it must be very unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's just like every other day I'm church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just speaking of Tia when I watched shiny happy people because she was in it and she and I had just formed a friendship and I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: shocked about all the IBLP stuff because and so then I went down a rabbit hole and I realized that the Adventists were at one point the biggest attendees of IBLP seminars, they would send bus loads over there and what really got me about that whole thing was, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: The hair, how they had the exact same hair things that we had and I thought my sister and I grew up thinking that was just my mother and my grandmother and and here it was this thing with not even just add that it's not all the other so it's crazy and it's at this point not shocking to me anymore it's sad that
[SPEAKER_00]: patriarchy has, you know, Christian patriarchy just has such a grip on everything, but it's also white.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean solidarity and strength and numbers, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so amazing to be like, I can see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't go to the same thing, but I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've got you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it it really is the common thread is like just the patriarchal sight of it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like like I always uh, you know, I've always talked about stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm like, oh, I can't believe that this religious group where women aren't allowed to talk and men have all the power.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's rampant sexual abuse, you know, and whether we're talking about what we're seeing certain Islam Islamic communities, whether you're seeing it in, um, you know, the Mormon church.
[SPEAKER_06]: We love trash TV.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, utilize a more than
[SPEAKER_06]: That's, oh my god, look, they just were allowed to listen music, you know, and is that they go to the Sunday of Michigan, like, oh, they just weren't allowed to drink soda, but we were all told, like, you're a light on a hill, you're a peculiar people, you're the last, you know, the last Rem, all these things.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's like, it was just we're a bunch of people that we thought we were the weirdest group.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so we must be right.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the differences are so my
[SPEAKER_06]: crazy.
[SPEAKER_06]: There was a book, I remember what it was called, and I'm sure somebody who went to Bible College, I skipped that trauma.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there was a book on cults that they would read in Bible College.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's so funny when I've looked up any excerpts.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm like, how do you write a whole book on cults?
[SPEAKER_06]: And go like, all these things that they do that are just like us
[SPEAKER_06]: but we're not going to talk about us at all, you know, it's such a weird, it's a weird disconnect.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, I'm going to ask a question here that is like so completely random, and I just want to know, and since you're my resident, this is some day of Venice, the theology expert.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can you explain to me, I read about this and I didn't get any close to understanding it?
[SPEAKER_06]: What was,
[SPEAKER_06]: What was your view as a religious group of like the end times in your soul?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because like we were very much like we're going to wrap you up and then you know we're going to all end up in heaven and from what I understand like
[SPEAKER_06]: your soul doesn't die or you don't like I was trying to read and make sense of it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was like either this doesn't make sense or I'm just not in the weeds enough on this.
[SPEAKER_06]: My understanding is like there's not like a definitive like heaven hell dynamic like what
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what was the view there it is so weird and I just have to ask right now apologize to my other ex Adventist who were real Bob Bible scholars and please weigh in in the comments and correct me below because I will not get this perfect to leave because it's it.
[SPEAKER_06]: I check that long before they got to the eschatology conversation you're like, I check that I'm going.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: or I remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: The belief is that when you die, you're just dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they don't have a soul that separate from your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just dead and you're in like a nothing space, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't believe that there's a hell that's burning right now where people went, and they don't believe that there's a heaven where people went.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's just dead and
[SPEAKER_00]: and then everyone is going to be raised and he's going to like read through the sins or something or he already has not sure how that works and then he's going to take all the righteous up to heaven, all at once and then the sinful will burn here on earth for eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: little, I'm not a little busy on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also this whole judgment like Jesus is reading them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called it and they think it's also unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it makes them so unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to botch this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: When, because Ellen White, of course, like all the end times, called Prophecy that Jesus was going to come back in 1844, I think, and when he didn't, right, or I can't even remember because 1844 was Miller, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So she, yeah, so she don't ask me dates.
[SPEAKER_00]: But within her lifetime, and Jesus didn't, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then so they had to scramble and reinvent so that they could keep it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
[SPEAKER_00]: the patch, the little bandaid on that was that Jesus, no, no, they'd misinterpreted.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't coming back here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was going into the most high, holy chamber of the Tabernacle up in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was, he has been
[SPEAKER_00]: reading everybody's sins, and everybody's transactions, and just everything about every person on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he's done with that, whatever magical time that is, is the end times, and he will walk out of the tabernacle, and it's going to be end times, and he's coming down, and he's going to rescue everybody.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I love the thought that he's like, can you guys slow down?
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm just catching up.
[SPEAKER_06]: I keep getting the list is getting longer.
[SPEAKER_06]: Please stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, the whole thing is so ridiculous and I mean for an omniscient god, that's really interesting that he's had to spend thousands of years reading catching up That Tommy stole the tricycle from next door, but um, no, yeah, based on your memoir, I'd love to see that scroll that we're going through line blind with the highlighter.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, I
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we always heard the it's going to be like, you're going to see your life on like a screen and I'm going to show you all the things you've done get a very unique.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm sure you're not camera late to that story at all, but it was like you're going to watch the greatest hits in worst moments, you know, on the on the screen and your friends and why didn't you tell me and all these sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, I had to ask about that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm trying to see in my notes here if I had any other last.
[SPEAKER_06]: things because we can never talk again after this.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I've to get along.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's the funny thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: I used to always do interviews.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would get so panicked and I'd literally be like locked into my notes crying.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm like, I don't want to go.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I started realizing, I can ask them to come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to come back.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you're like, you're like, I can say no when you say to come back.
[SPEAKER_06]: So get your questions.
[SPEAKER_06]: And oh, I was going to ask.
[SPEAKER_06]: this.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is another, let's end on this because this is a really interesting thing that I knew and then you connected the dots for me and I didn't know that they were connected.
[SPEAKER_06]: I knew a long time ago about the Kellogg's thing and I had no idea that
[SPEAKER_06]: he was a seven day of minutes.
[SPEAKER_06]: So give me some John Kellogg's lower drop for my audience so they can, they can know all about this because one, if people don't know why Kellogg's here was created, that's an amazing thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then give some context as to John Kellogg himself and his connection to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was actually one of the founding members.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were several that were kind of satellites around the Ellen White, but he was in that that posse and he ran a something called the Battle Creek Sanatorium, which was a proto hospital type of thing and presidents and like royalty everybody came and stayed there for a while and got an animus there I found out today.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was violently anti-sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: He apparently was married for forever and never had sex with his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very adamantly against even masturbation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he that it's sat here bodily flavors, flavors, what ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: He, a lot of his treatments were to prevent, it was really sex was the root of all bodily problems in his mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he had all these weird treatments like yogurt, enemas, and all the stuff that he forced on people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the originator of circumsizing boys in the United States because he thought it would prevent masturbation and when they couldn't sell that really well, then it became oh it's a cleanliness issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs to be a, you know, and but he was also the beginning of the Adventists carried on into La Melinda of circumsizing girls to prevent masturbation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ellen L. I was also a huge against that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was a Victorian obsession to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, a lot of other people were kind of weird about that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so part of his whole anti-sex was he invented cornflakes because rough-aged and plain flavors, bland flavors, and fiber were going to dampen sex stripes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he invented cornflakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, much later, he fell out with Ellen White.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not quite sure what the scuttled butt is there except that most people think it was financial.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people say that he and she disagreed on theological stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the general consensus of church critics, anyway, is that Ellen wanted a bigger chunk of Kellogg Corporation than what he's being given her.
[SPEAKER_06]: Who wouldn't?
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's an excellent movie and I think it's even a book called The Road to Wellville with Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Broderick in it and it's all about the Kellogg thing and that man was a weird dude.
[SPEAKER_06]: Definitely going to check that out.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I was reading up on him a little bit.
[SPEAKER_06]: I had known that because like that's my favorite little like I love the serial story because it's so funny.
[SPEAKER_06]: It doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_06]: and uh... but then uh... reading about a connection to the seventh evidence and then i came across um... e-herald uh... shrioch which is the hardest game of the world to say and his stuff is like just sadistic where his book uh... on being a woman is that is a book yeah and uh... yeah the whole female because i then i was deep diving on the windows like have they done a lot of like
[SPEAKER_06]: the FGM stuff, and it's like, no, there's not record of it, but one of the guys that was like a big name, and I think it was a building named after him with the World Shriak, and he advocated for female to an omitilation to stop masturbation, but
[SPEAKER_00]: He did, and he not only was, he was the director of that whole medical school for over 30 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote all the mental manuals, he trained all the doctors, so...
[SPEAKER_06]: He died in 2002, I believe, it was like, so it's not like ancient history.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like, seven day of events, infantism is ancient history, but yeah, that's so startling, that's such a waste of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, they will deny it up and down, there's a very good documentary film, if anybody wants to go down that rabbit hole, it's called The Cut.
[SPEAKER_00]: by the cut FGM in America by John Chua, C-H-U-A.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe it was either PBS or BBC and I can never remember which one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he tracked down an advent woman who had it done to her in the
[SPEAKER_00]: and an Adventist doctor just sliced off all of the body parts and then she went to another Adventist doctor later and said what in the heck happened to me and they gave her a pamphlet on masturbation and just left the show throughout the door basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Chua, it's so funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes to La Melinda and he interviews the then head of whatever and says, did you know about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the guy was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, we don't, we don't even have who Shriak is and she was like, you have a building named after him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[SPEAKER_04]: It's on its mocks, but I don't know there's a subject to go back and okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's surprised by that, but I can tell you for sure, the official position of the church today would be totally against that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that anybody reads your health strap today, but that doesn't have anything to do with who we are today.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's so many things like that at the pop-up where you start going down a rabbit hole about like, oh, this person and...
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh, what was the other, you know, the Waco being connected, which I didn't, which, which I've never do deep into that story ever, like it's just been one of the ones that just, I haven't ever really read up on.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just know like the broad strokes of it, but I didn't even know that was rooted in a branch off of the seven day of Venice church.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, um, all that to say, uh,
[SPEAKER_06]: all of the stuff that you've been putting out has just pushed me deeper into learning more than I ever thought I would know about this religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we have to wrap it up here quickly but the fun thing about Waco is that that's a real hot button issue for Adventists and one of my favorite things to do is just be like David Koresh was an Adventist and then just duck duck and just like he's just so nuts because
[SPEAKER_00]: The breached obedience actually broke off in the 1940s or 50s, but they were all adventist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they then formed, they just had their own interpretation of whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually surrounding the end-time stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel and Revelation is usually where they all have their little arguments.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then David Krash obviously broke off in the 80s, he was Adventist, and he joined the branch to Vittians and then kind of took over.
[SPEAKER_00]: So both parts of the branch to Vittians, his later takeover and the original were Adventist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Krash had pictures of Ellen White and her husband on his walls.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see him behind him in interviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: He observed the dietary rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: He observed the Sabbath.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took basically all Adventism with him, but he just added his
[SPEAKER_00]: They were Adventists.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, you know, they go a little too extreme and all of a sudden the Adventists are like, oh, we have nothing to do with it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I have to imagine that there's some conflicting feelings with certain seven day Adventists who have been taught to fear a tyrannical government seeing a guy practically, you know, living out and pursuing this like end time, theology to the max.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then being taken out by
[SPEAKER_06]: a government regime, like I would, that's around table discussion and being interested to sit and watch with like people justifying or fighting and pushing back on that, because I'm sure there's some that are quietly supportive of things like that, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, from what I've heard through just the, you know, gossip,
[SPEAKER_00]: in the Adventist system is that all the survivors and his gatebees of it basically went back into the Adventist system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are still, I guess, some ranged civilians, somewhere in Wake up, I'm not sure, but it's pretty decimated, but that a large percentage of the people who got out and either before or during the siege went back to being Adventist.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, I know that we're near the end here, but I have to ask question I ask every single author now that I talk to.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, there's like the broad goals of the book.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's the things that make the back cover.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's the things that you put in like a poll quote or you submit as a separate article.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I know there's also like little gems or things that are really meaningful to you that the average person might just like skim over while they're reading on a plane or something and go, oh, no big deal.
[SPEAKER_06]: Is there a reference, a moment, an experience
[SPEAKER_06]: Again, isn't the main selling point of the book, but it's deeply meaningful to you, and you hope people take a second to really ponder it, or just appreciate it, or laugh at it, that, you know, just stands out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I have to, I mean, then this sounds very, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, but all, but I mean, my favorite, I still cry when I read the last chapter, and I've read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even tell you how many times, but walking away is just such a powerful thing to do, and we've all had to, you know, it's something that everybody can identify with, and what it takes to get there when you actually turn your back and walk away, you know, and
[SPEAKER_00]: Haunts me, I still have to read that heart for the, because I'm not done reading the audio book and I'm like, I don't know how many times I'm gonna have to read it before I don't cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also do hope I was so excited because Eric is Smith and somebody else of my endorsers pointed out the humor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's a dark story and it's a dark,
[SPEAKER_00]: when I first pitched it around 20 years ago to editors, everybody said, oh, love the writing, love the writing, but we're not doing misery in memoirs now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so insulted because, to me, it's a black comedy, you know, and there's redemption at the end, and I find a lot of humor in some of the absurdity, some of the everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I also,
[SPEAKER_00]: I treasure the humor in it and I hope other people find it too and that they that they are inspired at the end and that it's not too dark.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, I definitely hope you will check it out.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you're listening to this episode right now, it should be out any second now.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you're listening to this episode, so go grab a copy.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's a link to it in the show notes of this episode.
[SPEAKER_06]: And beyond the book, I mean, sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's, I mean, the sub-stack is like a book that doesn't stop.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, you keep getting new thoughts and new insights all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: But most of the things so much for doing this, I'm glad we made it happen.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I hope it's not the last time we talk.
[SPEAKER_06]: But if it is just tummy off mic and we'll pretend I never said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am coming back anytime you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any awesome.
[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'll see you this time tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_06]: Everybody else.
[SPEAKER_06]: I will see you on the next episode of The Prejudice Podcasts.
[SPEAKER_06]: You've been listening to The Prejudice Podcast hosted by Eric Swisinski.
[SPEAKER_06]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said come one come on We are gathered here today It's a praise the only fire The field of glory of his name Anyone can worship here So long as you act straight Pay your ties and follow rules Even the ones God didn't make