Introduction and Melissa's Book

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm John Dehlin. It is May 13, 2026 and we are here for part two of our I'll say From a Mormon Stories perspective groundbreaking series on looking into the Seventh Day Adventist Church. And we are here with a brilliant, entertaining, fascinating, gripping storyteller. We are here with Melissa Doogie Spires. Hey, Melissa.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:00:29] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:29] Thanks so much for joining us.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:00:31] So excited for part two. We had so much fun in part one, so this is gonna be good.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] Yeah. So if you're just joining us for the first part of this series, you need to know that we already recorded two and a half hours ish part one, where we did an extensive history of the Seventh Day Adventist movement and hopefully not in too annoying of a way, drew a gazillion parallels between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Move movement and the Seventh Day Adventist movement. And while there are key differences, there are a lot of similarities. I'd say we're more similar than difference.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:01:06] Structurally, we really found some major, and I think pretty much anyone from any high control background religion, jws, will probably find a lot of stuff in there that we didn't even cover. So yes, definitely go back and watch part one because we found some fun stuff.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] Yeah. And we're not going to be reiterating, number one, all the similarities and number two, just the extensive doctrine and history and theology and practice of Seventh Day Adventist because we're going to assume that you watched part one. So if you haven't seen part one, pause this, go back and watch part one and then you'll really enjoy part two. Because part two today we are going to be focusing now on Melissa's upbringing as a Seventh Day Adventist, but also her loss of faith in and or exit from Seventh Day Adventism, her incubation as an ex Adventist, or at least as an ex Adventist activist because she incubated for a few decades before she then came out as a public critic of the Seventh Day Adventist movement and published her book, which is a good segue for you to talk about your book.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:02:13] Good segue. So this is my book. It just came out. You can find it anywhere, Amazon, order it from your local bookstore, et cetera, Holy sex, sin and secrets in the biggest church. No one knows that being the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Yeah. And for those who again are being obstinate and are going to watch this episode without watching the first, you need to know that while the Seventh Day Adventist movement was founded in the mid 19th century, right around the same time the Mormon church was ending, 1840s, 1850s. They now boast 25 plus million members worldwide. I think we established last episode that it's like 18 million active self identifying members worldwide, which actually makes it four to five times larger than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Because in 2026, I believe the Mormon church has only like 4 million. Even though they boast 17 million worldwide. I think there's only 4 million active self identifying Mormons worldwide. But we're way richer than y'.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:03:21] All. Way richer and way better known. I mean, everybody knows Mormons. Nobody knows Adventists.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] Yeah, but y' all are huge. But again, almost unheard of. So it's just a fascinating thing. So anyway, now that we have talked about the history and doctrine and theology of your church, we're gonna dive into your story. Melissa, anything you wanna say as a disclaimer or as a preface before we dive into your Adventist story?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:03:51] There you go. Sure. I guess the main disclaimer is probably just a standard memoir disclaimer. I tell everything from my perspective. It's my opinion about my life. People who experience the same situations may have had a different experience. I don't mean to speak for anyone other than myself. And that in memoir, names are changed, things are changed. So that I think is just something for people to keep in mind when I talk about my story.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] And we are going to be talking about child sexual abuse and sexual abuse coverups because for all demand religions or cults, that's like the one reliable theme.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:04:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] Whether it's Scientology, Joe's Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Evangelical Christians. That's two by twos. That's the one thing we all have in common for whatever reason.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:04:46] So trigger warning to everyone that things will get dicey.

Four Generations of Adventist Family History

John Dehlin [00:04:49] All right. Okay. So you said last episode you're a fourth generation Adventist.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:04:54] I am. So last episode we talked a little bit about the aggressive missionary stuff of Mormons and Adventists. And that is how my family got brought in for generations previous in both my mom's side and my dad's side was that. And this used to just be US based missionary work, obviously of targeting very poor people who didn't have access to many resources. On my dad's side, it was my great grandmother who was widowed and she had four children to raise in the South. She was extremely poor and the Adventist church there gave her a job in their university laundry system and they educated her four children for free. And it was a great bargain for the Adventist church. Good investment because They've had now four generations of quite affluent, loyal Adventists ever since. Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] I would say moderately affluent.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:05:50] Right. Not Mormon affluent, but moderately.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] Not Huntsman Romney.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:05:57] Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:58] Mar.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:05:58] Just Adventist Dr. Affluent. Yeah, that's a whole other sublevel.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] But what, what city, state again did they convert?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:06:08] My great grandmother on my dad's side was in the Deep South. She was in North Carolina.

John Dehlin [00:06:13] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:06:14] But then they all. And my mom's side was out here. My mom's side actually lived in California. Yeah, we're not in California, are we? My mom's side lived in California since before it was a state. Etc. It was my great grandmother, her father. So I guess my great great grandfather became an Adventist pastor of some sort. My great grandmother was the first one on that side. They lived in what was called Fort Sutter at the time, which is now Sacramento. But so. And again, same things. Poor people brought in by hey, education, hey, this and that.

John Dehlin [00:06:51] So there were public schools at the time. Right. So is it just better schools for poor people?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:06:57] I don't know that. I guess public schools were in existence.

John Dehlin [00:07:02] But these are parochial schools.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:07:03] These are parochial schools. I think it was considered better education. Interesting. There was a promise of going on to college, you know, which probably wasn't. You could go on to an Adventist college after Adventist school. And I know on my dad's side, my great grandmother, I mean she was given a job I think first at the church laundry. And so she probably felt loyalty there. So then when they offered to educate her kids, it was probably not sure.

Adventism's Growth and Missionary Culture

John Dehlin [00:07:32] I'm not going to be doing this all episode, I promise. But I lightly mentioned this, that as the Mormon Church has tried to figure out a new identity in the past five to 10 years, they've come up with this thing called Pathways where they're offering a web based university education to people everywhere, but also internationally. And it just has to be that they've realized that y' all had it right, that, you know, we've known forever in Mormonism that tracting knocking on doors is annoying and pretty ineffective and inefficient. But education, what a great missionary hook to say come get a great education. And as you get educated and get absorbed into the culture, yeah, it's an amazing hook to make you committed and loyal for the rest of your life. It's brilliant. Y' all had it figured out before we did.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:08:27] It's. Yeah, they've been using it for generations, clearly, and it has been a very effective tool. It's interesting, I, I was talking to someone who was more Of a, like, cult scholar type of thing. And he was saying, the interesting thing about that, though, is it only works for about four generations. And they, and he used the example, bring in the poor. The poor, first ground level one. And they are so damn grateful. They are so pro the church. They're so. They are the most aggressively. We love this church. And they get their kids educated in the system and more affluent. And those kids still remember when they were poor and it was awful. And they're pretty grateful and they know that they got the education that maybe their neighbors didn't or whatever. And then the third generation is sitting on top of those other two and they've been pretty affluent and they've got all the education and the healthcare and everything. And they're fine.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] But they're becoming prideful.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:09:27] That's right. They're becoming prideful and they're just coasting. And then that fourth generation, which would be me, comes along and is like, what the hell is this craziness? Like, get me the hell out. Like, I don't need this. I can live all the good parts without this weird stuff. And there's no gratefulness anymore. The gratefulness has been totally lost by my generation.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] Whoa.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:09:50] And it's a very interesting.

John Dehlin [00:09:52] I don't know that we've studied that in Mormonism, but the way we frame it is the wealthy and the educated and the rich are prideful, and so they leave the church because they followed the evilness of the world and secular education and that sort of thing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:10:08] But anyway. Oh, yeah, there's lots of that pressure and guilt in Adventism too. But I think by the, sometimes the third generation, but certainly by the fourth generation, nobody sees it as a grateful situation at all because we're so far removed from what brought everybody in in the beginning. And it's just like. And, and, and truly that's happened in my family, like very few of my cousins or. And certainly my sister and I, and none of us are Adventist anymore.

John Dehlin [00:10:34] Interesting.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:10:35] And all the other generations still are.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] All of our so great grandparents were converts through education.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:10:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] Okay. Poor converts through education.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:10:44] Ex. So then my, my grandparents, both of my grandfathers went to the Loma Linda Medical School, became doctors. And then my father and his generation of all my uncles went to Loma Linda Medical School also. Loma Linda is the Adventist Medical school. And wait, so on both sides you

John Dehlin [00:11:09] have parents, you have grandparents. Parents and. Or grandparents that were doctors educated at this one.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:11:16] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:17] Adventist Medical School.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:11:18] Yep. And then all my uncles and of course, then of course A lot of the Adventist women go to Loma Linda to study nursing, but of course, most of them don't come away with a degree except for a Mrs.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] Degree. We call it the Mrs. Degree.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:11:33] Exactly. So that's both of my grandmothers. That's what happened with them. They were technically nursing students. I think they both got their degrees. And I think my. My mom's mom actually worked for a little while, but. But yeah, it's a marriage factory for the women and for the men, obviously,

John Dehlin [00:11:48] but a doctor in a nurse factory. And I didn't mention that. I bet y' all get confused a lot with the Christian Scientists. Yes, but you're pro medicine.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:11:57] That's it.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] You're not answering.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:11:58] People say that all the time, like, oh, yeah, I know you guys, you're anti medicine. It's like, oh, no, wrong cult. Wrong cult. We're actually the opposite.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:12:09] So when I was. Was born, my father had not yet gone to medical school. He was. He was a youth pastor in the Adventist Church. He had gone to the seminary, which is in Michigan. And I was. I don't remember much about it. I remember a little bit. We moved around a lot. He was stationed in a bunch of different churches. And then when I was about 4 or 5, he quit the ministry. He was. He was not only a youth pastor, but he was a pathfinder leader. So this. We were talking about the path earlier, so Boy Scout, Girl Scout, group of the Adventist Church, so. And then he quit abruptly, went to the Loma Linda Medical School, became a doctor. And so all of my life, I really kind of knew my dad mostly as a doctor, and I knew that he'd had this pastoring experience. He still preached a lot at. We moved to where the seminary was when I was in high school, which is Berrien Springs, Michigan. And that's where I went to Andrews Academy, which is the Adventist school there. And really quick, do you know what

John Dehlin [00:13:18] percentage of med students at Loma Linda Medical School are Adventists?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:13:24] Most of them. Most of them. But I don't know an actual. Got it a lot. Yeah, a lot. And as you can tell from my family, there's a lot of legacy going on there.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] So you're in Michigan now?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:13:42] Yeah, I was in Michigan. We moved there when I was in eighth grade. And so I went to my full academy experience there. And then shortly after I graduated from academy, I left the church. Like, the minute the door of the academy closed on my butt at 18, I was like, I'm done with this church.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] Okay? I need to Back up then. I don't want to go too far. Is that okay?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:06] Yeah.

Growing Up Adventist: Home, Gender Roles, and Siblings

John Dehlin [00:14:07] So what was it like growing up as an Adventist in your home, your parents, the gender roles, how many siblings?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] How was. How did Adventism manifest in your behavior growing up?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:23] Yes. Yeah. Because I'm going to get ahead of myself and stuff, so please back me up when I. It's okay. So we were raised on the more conservative end of Adventism.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] What was your birth order? Where were you in the birth order?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:37] I have an older sister.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] So you're the youngest of two.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:39] So I'm younger and so I was three years younger than she was. And we were very, very strict Adventists in terms of the dietary rules, the behavioral rules.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] Which ones?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:14:58] We were homeschooled until fourth grade. The mother is supposed to control everything about a child. And so my mother really took that serious. We were not allowed to have doors that locked ever, even up until high school. Our rooms were ran.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] So you wouldn't masturbate.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:15:15] Is that the type of. Well, not masturbate, but also no contraband. So our rooms were regularly ransacked. Again, usually when we are a little older than teeny kids. But for makeup, for jewelry, for novels, for magazines, for. We weren't allowed to listen to pop. Pop culture music cassettes or albums. Yeah. So no cassettes. We didn't have a way to show movies at that time because. And we didn't have a TV or a vcr. So that wasn't probably no TV or vcr. But yeah, we were raised entirely without a television. That was considered very bad. And without. We did have a radio and we were allowed to listen to a smattering of. My dad had loved the hippie music and so we did listen to a little bit of that, but that was old by the time I was into music. It wasn't cool. So Joni Mitchell didn't do anything for me.

John Dehlin [00:16:14] Like Mamas and the Papas.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:16:16] Oh, it was funny. There were like Peter, Paul and Mary was okay. Joni Mitchell was okay in James Taylor.

John Dehlin [00:16:25] James Taylor.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:16:25] But then there was all this Adventist music that was okay. The Kingston Trio.

John Dehlin [00:16:30] Were they Adventists?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:16:32] They, I think were Adventist or maybe Adventists just approved of them. Possibly. But really no music of any kind. And so we went to. We were homeschooled at first that was miserable because back then homeschooling was not the rob bust thing that it is now where there are like homeschooling groups and you have fun assignments and things. It was these dry assignments from like 1950s on like mimeographed sheets and. And flashcards. And that's basically all we did day long with my mother. And she'd get really frustrated, and we would cry and. But we were particularly controlled with our looks, and that is an Adventist thing. But it was another layer of crazy in our family where my maternal line was obsessed with. We had to be pretty skinny. Our hair had to be this exact. It had to be long and wavy, which, of course, we did not. I do not have wavy hair. So we had to have perms. She would literally drag us out from. Drag me out from underneath the bed, crying, and she would hit me with a hairbrush and force me to sit still for these perms so that my hair could be basically frizzy and fried. And so then it would have to be set in rollers every night. And it was this big thing. And that was our Sabbath routine. So Adventists, for those who didn't see the first one, celebrate sundown Friday to sundown Saturday as their holy day. And so it was a very, very strict. I was spanked regularly. And the biggest parts of childhood that I look back on with just horror were the emotion control, the thought control, and emotion control. It was a combination again, of Ellen White, the Adventist prophet, and my mother's particular parenting that you were not allowed to feel any bad emotions. That is not okay. You're not allowed to express bad emotions. Or happy. Actually, Ellen White didn't like happy either. My mother thought if we got too happy, she would say, you're being silly. Stop being silly. And. But. But it was really bad. You could never confront anyone. You could never say no. You could never disagree. And Ellen White had a lot of stuff that she said where literally there's a quote where one bad child, one un. What did she say? Because it was more emotional than that. Not bad. But one fussy child basically would ruin heaven for everyone there. So nobody could be in heaven if you were a fussy child. And so you were not allowed ever.

John Dehlin [00:19:33] We covenant not to do loud laughter, by the way.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:19:36] There you go. Anyway, There you go.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] Had to throw that in. But that's weird. No, positive. Excessively positive or negative emotion. Yeah, that's significant. So you're just neutered. You're detached emotionally from yourself.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:19:53] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Which serves the church and the parents, but not necessarily. But not the individual.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:19:59] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] So crying was discouraged.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:20:03] Crying was very discouraged. In fact, my sister and I have really horrific memories of my mom literally choking children. My sister can remember her doing it to me. And my mom babysat a Couple of children. And we remember her doing it to them where she would literally, if they were crying, put her hand over their mouth until basically they were choked out, till they stopped crying for a minute. Because. And I remember confronting her because I was the child that confronted things. And she said, oh, I'm just getting their attention. You know, it was okay to just completely deprive a child of their emotions because emotions were wrong. So that was a big part of the scariness of growing up Adventist. Another scary part was Adventism is an end times cult. So we were raised from infancy to know that we were going to be persecuted for and our parents might be killed in front of us and we were going to be beaten and tortured because we believed in the Sabbath and we were going to have to run away to the hills and all of this. So the Adventists have this big persecution fetish and it's very abusive to children because I remember I wet my bed for years, having really bad nightmares of. Of the persecution end times when I was going to be chased into the hills and my parents were going to be killed in front of me. And so it was a very, very strict upbringing. And we went to Adventist schools.

John Dehlin [00:21:38] Talk about food.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:21:39] Oh, yes. Okay, so food. Yes. So Adventists have very strict dietary rules, and if you're following them. So we were vegetarian. We were.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] As a family.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:21:51] The whole family. Oh, yeah, Everybody.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Wow.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:21:53] Yeah. You had to be a strict vegetarian. And then there are all these corollary. Corollary rules where no, no caffeine were eggs and cheese.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:22:07] Or we did have eggs and cheese. Yeah. Ellen White at one point said cheese was bad, but we never had. We never followed that one again. You know, hypocrisy is layered everywhere you look.

John Dehlin [00:22:16] But.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:22:18] But. And then there were weird things like margarine was okay, but butter was not. I don't know, Very strange.

John Dehlin [00:22:26] But eggs and cheese were okay, but mostly vegetarian.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:22:28] But mostly vegetarian. And. And then Ellen White had a bunch of rules that were based around preventing sex and masturbation, which we followed very much, which was no spices, no pepper, no mustard, no salsa, nothing.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] Ketchup. Okay, okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:22:45] Ketchup was okay.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] Yeah, it's more sweet.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:22:47] Ketchup is more sweet. Yeah, I think. And then we were raised pretty much with no sugar also. And that is not a. Not an Adventist thing. That was just a. My parents being.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] It's hard to be thin and beautiful if you eat a lot of sugar.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:23:00] That's true. I think that's true. And we would find my mom hid about bags of candy, like under her car seat and behind the freezer and things like that, but we were not allowed to have it. And when we would, when we were allowed to go trick or treating, she would take the candy away from us as soon as we got in the door and she would give us one piece per day. But somehow our whole bag would disappear within like a week.

John Dehlin [00:23:24] But what about like spaghetti straps and halter tops and mini skirts?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:23:30] So our, our clothing was extremely tightly controlled as well. We were definitely modesty and just sober dressing in general. Nothing too flashy, nothing too lacy, nothing too bright, I guess, or sequined maybe, but we were not allowed to have. Yeah, tank tops or bikinis. It had to be very modest. Everything had to be modest. No low cut anything. And there were also all kinds of subsidiary rules, like Adventist schools. Up until I graduated in 1987, most of them banned jeans, I guess because that was still lightly associated with the hippies.

John Dehlin [00:24:11] Maybe from women's band jeans in Utah through the 60s. Yeah, yeah. For women. For women, yeah, yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:24:17] For men in ours also up. And it was all the way through the 80s. But they claimed it was just because we needed to look nice and professional. But I think it was associated with those, those reckless hippies. But. And so.

Control, Modesty, and Emotional Suppression in Childhood

John Dehlin [00:24:33] So no movies, no Hollywood.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:24:34] No movies, no Hollywood anything. No, we. We were encouraged not to wear makeup by the school and the religion, but my mother forced us to wear makeup, but it had to be light. So there was a lot of my mom's and she got this from her mother. And what she would say to us from when we were very young was, your father likes it when you look pretty. And not only did that always strike me as really creepy, but I also knew that it didn't matter. My dad was rarely home, he was working all the time, and he never really looked at us. He was always reading a book or something. I knew that my dad didn't care if I was pretty, but. So it struck me as false. But it also just rang creepy. And I didn't know why. I didn't know what was involved then at the time, but apparently my mother's mother had done that to her, along with the skinny and the pretty and everything. So it was a multi generational thing. And so let me think, what other.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] When you're deviating from the norm, like with makeup, how is that justified? I mean, you said, you said that the dad wants you to look pretty, but like disobedience to religious teachings, the extent to which you weren't ultra orthodox.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:25:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] Did Your parents try to justify things theologically or belief wise.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:25:58] Dad never weighed in, but mom's was that it was just to make you look presentable, don't look like an old washer woman. So if we had gone the other way, if we had done bright lipstick, for instance, or sparkly eyeshadow, that would have been absolutely. We would have been smacked for that too. So it was just to hit a very fine line, which was a lot of what we walked being raised as an Adventist kid, which was also very, I think psychologically damaging because so much was not explained and not codified. It was absorbed. And you were expected to know it and expected to know exactly where that line was, but nobody ever actually could tell you. And it would shift, it would shift

John Dehlin [00:26:39] randomly because obedience is more important than doctrinal consistency.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:26:44] Submission and obedience was prized above everything. And Ellen White said that multiple times with children, submission and obedience, you start mothers was usually what she said, you start making them submit. A child's will is not its own. And that was it.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] And so Joseph Smith said, obedience is the first law of heaven.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:27:05] There you go. Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:08] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:27:09] So damaging for in high control religions it's really, really bad. So other kids got to go do pathfinders and have sleepovers and play dates. My sister and I were never allowed to do any of those things.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] Why not?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:27:25] Well, we'll get to that later.

John Dehlin [00:27:26] I know. Okay. Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:27:27] I, I finally understood as an adult, but as a child it just made me feel like a freak. And I was never included pretty much anymore in anything because I couldn't do anything. And most of my friends were had slightly more liberal parents. So they had like a television or something. So it would have been really exciting to get to go to their house for a playdate. But we weren't allowed. And so we trying to think like school, Adventist school was very controlling also. So we were. They would look the other way for those of us girls who wore makeup with our parents permission. But again it had to be really subtle. So if I like. They kept a bottle of fingernail polish in the office, fingernail polish remover in the office in my academy. And you would get, get sent to the office to remove your fingernail polish if it was anything other than the palest of pink. And some, some academies girls were not allowed to have short hair. Boys were not ever allowed to have long hair back then that was in. And if you had some kind of dress up thing, boys were never allowed to wear women's clothes. You could never, they could Never wear a dress that was absolutely evil and forbidden. We had a lot of sexual control in academy in terms of purity culture, a lot of classes on how to stay pure. Abstinence was the only thing we learned about. And so we, I like to say we kind of grew older but we didn't grow up like we particularly in my family. My sister and I didn't have any formative experiences really and have to navigate much. So I was pretty naive by the time I reached 17, 18. And so the religious side then. So I've talked a lot about the behavioral control stuff but you know they say we're all born atheist and then we get indoctrinated. And somehow I always feel like my indoctrination just never quite took. Like they sure tried but I really, really as a young kid wanted to be a gymnast. And we were allowed for some reason again more of the hypocrisy because my mother had done a little bit of gymnastics in her childhood, I think and that was why we were allowed and we belonged to just some. It was non Adventist gymnastics team for a couple of years and I was probably 8 to 10. And once you get up to a certain skill level you're supposed to compete, right? And I was not allowed to compete on Saturdays. And so that was it. I was a gymnastics has been by the age of 10. And I had a big beef with God and with the church at that point that I never quite got over. Like I did not understand people telling me this was a good God, why was he taking this thing away from me that I loved more than my left leg, you know, like why would he do that to me? And also if the church was the problem and it was because of their stupid Sabbath law that I wasn't allowed to compete, well then. And they were on the hook too. And I hated them too. And I kind of never got over it. And I just, I knew I didn't have any control over my life. So I just had to mark time. So I became what I call a performance Adventist. Basically all through high school I would say that's what I was. We called, we called Ellen White egg White because her initials were often abbreviated. They called her E. G. White. And so we called her egg white. And so I always called the. The really religious kids egg whites. And I was not an egg white, I was a performance Adventist. And I did all the stuff, I did the prayers, I taught Sabbath school. I was always in whatever skit they wanted done at week of prayer. But I didn't really believe Any of it. I was just biding time, I think, you know.

Adolescence, Sexuality, and Leaving the Lifestyle

John Dehlin [00:31:33] Oh, that's pretty remarkable. So in your mind, let's just say you're a teen, fully immersed in the culture with a fully, you know, orthodox family. In your mind, are you consciously a non believer or was it more dormant or something?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:31:54] I think it was more dormant.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] That would make sense.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:31:56] I would have said that I just had fundamental problems with God and with Seventh Day Adventism, but I was almost kind of an agnostic. Like, I just didn't know, but, but nobody would ever let me see what was out there. So I was just like, well, I don't know what else is out there. I know I can't be Catholic, but other than that, what, What?

John Dehlin [00:32:13] It's like Truman show you, you know, that something's not right, but you don't even have experience outside to know what outside would be.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:32:20] Precisely.

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Okay, got it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:32:21] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:32:22] So by the time I was in late high school, so just to describe kind of a day or a week in an Adventist high school student, like our, our school day started with chapel. So everybody went in and there was like a little ceremony thing or a prayer. It was only like about 20 minutes or something. We sang a choir song and more prayer. And then, then you went on with your school day. There was always one hour of religion class every single day for your whole four years of academy. And. But it was, was not religion. We didn't learn anything about anything except Adventism. And then evenings, every evening we had family worship. So you'd had three indoctrination, indoctrination sessions every single day.

John Dehlin [00:33:12] Wow.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:33:13] And then Friday night to Saturday night, you often had three services. Vespers, church, well, four, I guess. Vespers on Friday night, Sabbath, school, church, and then family worship that night. And by, you know, junior year pretty much, I was just like, what are they all so scared about? Why do they have to keep shoving this on us so badly? Like, why are they so scared? What are they hiding from me? And I got really. And up until then, I had just been a goody two two shoes. Like I was such a people pleaser that if I was trapped in this system, I was just going to be the best at being in this system. And I was just going to be submissive and obedient. And senior year I was just like, nope, something smells rotten. And I decided it was the Adventist fixation on sex and I was going to find out what it was all about. And so I knew I couldn't do that in the Adventist system. And I literally had probably kissed maybe two. Two boys a couple of times. That was the extent of my great experience. And through high school.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] Through your senior year of high school?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:34:27] Yeah, yeah, through. So I was 17 when I graduated. So I was 17 and I was like, I can't do it here. So I went down to the local public school and I just, I went to there. I. I said I was going to Vespers on Friday night, but I was really going to the football games or the. Cause I had my driver's license by then, so I was semi autonomous. And I would go to the football games and the basketball games and I was hunting and I found a guy that I thought was absolutely gorgeous. And I thought, well, that's. That's. That's it. So I found out where he worked and I went in and initiated a conversation. And two weeks later, I was without my virginity. And I was so proud of myself. I just thought this was the best thing ever.

John Dehlin [00:35:12] What about deep shame from all that sexual programming?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:35:17] Didn't have it. I. I knew they were lying. I just knew it before I did it. It was like, they are lying. They're afraid I'm gonna figure out that it's actually, I don't know, fun. Maybe. Fun was the whole ban on it. I didn't know, but I was just like, there's the. All of this. Oh, you're the licked cupcake. You're the this and that. Partly because it was only targeted at girls. And so I was just like, that inequality didn't sit well with me, but also because they just clearly didn't want me to find something out. So the fault must be on them, not on me.

John Dehlin [00:35:52] You know, man, I'll just have to say, in the Mormon context, this narrative is almost unheard of.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:35:58] I think Adventists too.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] Even a gay Mormon boy who knows he is attracted to men, he still is marinating in the shame and will take decades to unwind. The homo negativity and the self hatred. So the fact that you were marinating in the sexual shame culture, but you were impervious to it, it didn't really penetrate your subconscious. Well, you're saying that was even unique for you, for your culture?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:36:26] It was very unique for Adventist culture. And it did affect me very badly for decades after. So I did not. At that moment, I thought I was free and clear and it was the best thing I could have done. But we'll get there. So I.

John Dehlin [00:36:43] So you lost your virginity?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:36:44] Yeah, so I just. Well, and of course I didn't call it Lost. I destroyed it. Like, I was freaking.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] After you were defiant.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:36:52] I was killing it. I didn't want it. I was pissed at the whole system. And yeah, we dated a little bit, but it really didn't ever become a relationship. But. And I think. And he was. He was quite like, a little cowed by all of this, you know, And I. He was like, are you sure this is what you want to do? And I was like, damn straight, you know, let's get. Let's do this. And so I thought at that point, like, I had beat the system, you know, Like, I didn't feel a thing. I, you know, kind of waited. Is part of my soul going to be ripped out of me? Am I going to feel the whole. Whatever? And I just felt really giddy and pleased with myself. And so I was like, ha, ha ha. And what.

John Dehlin [00:37:43] This is super sensitive because, like, we demonize men that are asking details. But I. I think it's. Hopefully it's okay for me to just say it had been demonized and made to look, like, scary and horrible and bad.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:37:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] Do you want to talk about, like, how it actually was for you?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:38:03] Yeah, sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:04] In a way where I swear I'm not being creepy.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:38:06] No, no, no, no, no. I mean, there's so much in here about it, that experience and everything. So you're just asking questions right along with the book. And I'm, you know, I talk about it because I'm willing to talk about it. So absolutely no creepy questions. It's all good. It was, you know, I honestly don't remember it that much. I remember. It's funny because I talk about in here where he asked me if it hurt. And I was stumped for a minute and like. Like I was so detached from my body, I didn't even know I had detached completely. It was this. This other thing that I had to get done, and that's the part that came back to bite me was because I never learned to associate love with sex. I never learned to associate any good feelings with sex.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] You were doing exposure therapy where you were finding the aversive behavior and then doing it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:38:57] There you go.

John Dehlin [00:38:58] To, like, re. Try and reprogram your brain, I think.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:39:01] Yeah, yeah. But I, you know, I didn't quite get it correct.

John Dehlin [00:39:05] And so that's very different than, like, learning to have emotional intimacy with somebody.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:39:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] You're just like, gotta have sex because it's taboo. And I want to kill the taboo.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:39:14] Yep, exactly. That's exactly. That was my thought process. And so I thought I had Done it. And then, you know, they had. I always say that they had taken sex away from me before I even got there. You know, it had been so managed and so loaded with all this crap and it had become this depersonalized thing. So I just kind of put the nail in the coffin by depersonalizing it. Just like, there you go. It was depersonalized. You got it. And so from then on, for a couple years, from 18, 17 to 20. So then. So, so then I was done with Adventist school shortly after that experience and I wanted to go to a non Adventist school. So we'll talk about that and then we'll get back to the sexual part of it. So I was convinced from my soft freshman year, I wanted to go to an Ivy League college. I was not going to go to an Adventist college. I was not never going to go to an Adventist college.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] And I. Taboo, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:40:20] Which is taboo. We were supposed to go. Yes, we were absolutely supposed to go. Everyone in my family had always gone. Everyone everybody knew had gone.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Nobody to the one in Michigan or the one of them.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:40:31] I could have gone to the one in California or the one in Tennessee or Tennessee. Anywhere was okay, but. And so the way Adventist schools back then controlled it was that Adventist colleges only accepted the ACT test, American College Test, I guess it's called.

John Dehlin [00:40:50] That was true about BYU too, by the way. Weird. Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:40:53] Okay. Well, maybe this is their way of doing it too. And all what I call normal colleges, whether they were public colleges like University of Michigan or private normal like Barnard, where I ended up going. They. They took the sat.

John Dehlin [00:41:08] Interesting.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:41:09] And back then, of course, nothing was online, nothing was. It had to be proctored in person with the bubbles fill in the pencil stuff. And sats were only administered at public schools on Saturdays, so we couldn't even go out of our school system and go sign up at the public school.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] I never made that connection about why BYU did the ACT and not the sat.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:41:30] There you go.

John Dehlin [00:41:30] But it would help funnel people in Mormons into byu.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:41:33] Bingo.

John Dehlin [00:41:34] I had no idea. Bingo. Wow.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:41:36] I've never heard anyone talk about it other than me, but that is exactly why they did.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] Wild. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:41:42] Okay, so. So there. So our. Whenever you take that, I think fall of fresh senior year, two other students and I and we had a very small class. It's like 65 kids or something. Two other students and I. And I don't know how we found each other because it was such a traumatic experience. We were so afraid of getting caught, or I was so afraid of getting caught. But and she and he were not in my social groups necessarily. So I don't know how we found each other, but we somehow arranged. Oh, I still get goosebumps talking about it. We arranged for a proctor to administer it for us on a Sunday.

John Dehlin [00:42:17] The sat.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:42:18] The sat. And I don't know where we did it or what. I cannot. I remember I missed the word archipelago. Archipelago, that was. Otherwise I would have had a perfect SAT score. And I was so mad, but. So I remember that part.

College, Education, and Breaking from Family Expectations

John Dehlin [00:42:33] But I don't know. See that Education came through.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:42:36] I bombed. Bombed the math, but the verbal, I was okay on, but. So we had to go around, like, seriously. And, and, and we did have academic counselors, but they wouldn't talk to us about schools that weren't Adventist. Our libraries wouldn't stock because back then, of course, nothing online. So you had, like, college catalogs to look at the classes and look at the campuses and all that stuff. They would only stock the Adventist colleges. I had to go to the public library to look at like, like Harvard or University of Michigan or something.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] I just have to say that's a cinematic moment of, like, these kids acting like they're going to do something really rebellious and terrible. And then you zoom out and you realize that what they're actually doing is secretly preparing for the SAT and getting an SAT proctor instead of, like, getting an abortion or whatever.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:26] That's it.

John Dehlin [00:43:27] That's got to be a Adventist.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:29] There you go.

John Dehlin [00:43:30] Movie someday.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:31] From your mouth to God's ear, as they say. Right. I'm hoping my book will eventually become a movie. So anyone watching that's thinking about that. That's one of your scenes.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Okay. Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:40] But.

John Dehlin [00:43:42] So, so catalogs are Adventists.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:46] Yeah. So they basically tried to prevent us from applying to anything that wasn't Adventist.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] Secular.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:43:52] So my. So I had only applied to one college. My little hubris there was going strong because I'd only applied to Harvard and I did not get into Harvard. So. And, But I had my Ivy League goal and I was like, okay, what am I going to do? So I, I agreed with my parents that I would go to an Adventist college, but I would go to one of the ones in Europe. So I had taken German and Spanish in high school, and so I applied. I went to the Adventist school in Austria after I graduated from Adventist Academy. And I went. I was. I was signed up for a year, but I was partying too hard over there and so I had to come back early. But. So I had heard that the Adventist colleges in Europe were much more Loose Intercontinental and yeah, they were intercontinental. And so I thought okay, so I'm going to get some polish for my resume. Maybe I can reapply to colleges. I want to get into next year. Plus I'm going to get very far away from my parents and going to practice my German. And so I. It was a fabulous fun experience. It was the only like fun Adventist experience I really can point to. I was only there about six months but we, the English speaking students, we weren't really in an official program so we were just there to study German. So we had all these German classes but we didn't have any pressure to get good grades or anything. And mostly we, they. So they were very strict like anybody else during the a A week. So we had vespers and chapel and blah blah blah. And the girls got locked in their dorm at night. The boys did not at like 9 o' clock at night or something but during the weekends we were just allowed to check ourselves out and just go. So we would go all over Europe just drinking and smoking ourselves silly and just being goofy and having sex and doing whatever we wanted. And so that was my first experience with any of those vices. I learned to drink, I learned to smoke and thought it was really fun. And so we eventually somebody found out because we kept showing up to class drunk and because we didn't know about being subtle and because there's that whole thing about, you know, when you deprive people of things for so long, they don't know how to moderate. Right. So we did not know how to moderate the alcohol. And so I didn't to want. Want to get kicked out because I still had my eye on my Ivy League prize. So I left about halfway through the year, went home, applied to, to regular colleges and ended up at Barnard College from which I got my Columbia degree which gave me my little Ivy League badge that I so desperately had wanted all my life.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] So is that New York City? Barnard College in New York City? Yeah. So Barnard feeder into Columbia?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:46:41] It is, it is the, the sister call. So the, the seven sisters and the Ivies were you know, the seven college pairs. And so Barnard is the female, the sister college of Columbia and you actually get your Columbia degree. So I have my, my fancy Latin degree from Columbia which I really wanted all my life. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:47:00] That's a big deal to go to Ivy League school and to graduate from,

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:47:03] from an Adventist school. It really at or in any, I

John Dehlin [00:47:06] mean just period graduating for I. Leaving school is.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:47:09] I think it was a lot easier back then. But it was still like a huge. Like, I really had to work hard for it. You know, I did all the grade grubbing all my life to get there. It was my big focus. And. And I'm.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] Were your parents mad that you went to Columbia?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:47:23] You know, I think they were. My dad was snobbish enough to think that that was a real feather in his cap, so that was okay. My mom. Yes. My mom was not pleased at all because where would I find a husband? She didn't want me in New York City. That was scary and heathen. And she actually, after my first year at Barnard, she took me out because she always paid the bills for our school because her. Her parents paid them. And so that was one of my big traumas. Was you out?

John Dehlin [00:47:55] What do you mean?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:47:56] She refused to pay for my. For my junior year at Barnard. And so that was a big power play, which my mom would do occasionally. And so instead of, she. She said I wasn't being grateful enough for my education, which was absolute because I was so grateful for it. I was so in love with my experience at Barnard. And what she really wanted was I was supposed to come home for the weekend and. Or for the summer. And I didn't want to come home. I wanted to stay in New York City. My roommate had a great apartment on the Upper east side, and we were gonna. I was gonna take rocks for Jocks or something so that I didn't have to do science during the year. And then I was just gonna have fun in New York City. And mom did not like that. And she said I was being an ungrateful child.

John Dehlin [00:48:42] And so what city state was she in again at that point?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:48:45] Michigan.

John Dehlin [00:48:45] Still Michigan.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:48:46] Okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:48:46] And so let's see.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] Michigan or New York City.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:48:50] Right? I know. Would. You're 19, 20 years old. Gee, I don't know. So my mom pulled this power play. Not going to pay for school. You have to come home. And I said no. And so I disappeared. And I literally ended up being homeless in New York for six months. Ish.

John Dehlin [00:49:08] That's scary. Like, dangerous.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:49:11] No money to even buy, like a subway token sometimes or food. But I did have friends who let me couch surf with them. So I wasn't like, living on the street, but I was. Was so poor and so, like, didn't know what I was going to be doing next week.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] I mean, that's not a cinematic moment. You're punished for going to an Ivy

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:49:31] League, punished for going to. I know, right?

John Dehlin [00:49:32] And homeless because you want to.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:49:34] Because I wanted my education so bad.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] That's wild.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:49:38] Well, this is not the first time my mother had done this and my father had actually joined her. My older sister, they took her out of college, did the exact same thing. Stopped paying, you have to come home.

John Dehlin [00:49:50] Where was she?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:49:51] She was at the Adventist college in California and they were still in Michigan. They did it to her because she was not skinny enough. So they took her education away because she would not lose weight. So education was used as a weapon because again, we probably wouldn't need one, right? We were going to get a marriage, get a husband and whatever. So it was used as a weapon to control us, even in college. And so I refused and couch surfed and just did what I could and decided I was gonna be an actor because what else could I do to make, make everyone pissed off? Because you can't be Adventist and be an actor. That's just sin and iniquity all over the place.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] It's like dancing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:50:35] So I ended up moving in with this guy who's about 12 years older than I was, who was the first actor guy I played against in a. Because I had nowhere to live and I had this love scene in this movie and I was like, okay, well. And that set the pattern then for the rest of my life. I went from older man to older man being basically a submissive wife. But I didn't know that that's what I was doing for decades.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] Were all girlfriends at first or marriage.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:51:12] I had two marriages and then two long termish relationships, him being the first. And so my mom caved after she found out I was living in sin. And being an actor. I was allowed to go back to Barnard to finish my degree. But by that time I was living not on campus. I had lost a whole semester of school and so I just had to check my boxes to make sure I had my graduating credit. And so all the fun and the really interesting, mind blowing, soul expanding parts of being on campus and being able to take crazy electives like Death in Modern Fiction and Lesbian Fiction and Shamanism, you know, I couldn't do any of that. I had to just like tick, tick, tick. And I was still living with this guy who was 12 years older than I was. So I was just like a housewife basically. Going to college.

John Dehlin [00:52:07] Were your parents like, you need to go to church, you know, practice the Sabbath when you're in college?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:52:12] You know, I still can't figure out. My sister and I talk about this all the time. They were so controlling up until we were about 18 and then never again. Like the education thing for sure. They were controlling, et cetera. But. But the religious part completely dropped off. We never got guilted. They have been very emotionally supportive, financially supportive, even though we've made choices that must just make them spin in their beds at night. And they've never said a thing. You know, divorces, whatever. They've always only been supportive. Excuse me. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know what that process was, but it's very unusual because basically everybody I know in Adventism who left got some sort of repercussions of their parents disowning them, excommunicating them. They lost their friends, they lost their whatever. So I did not experience any of that.

John Dehlin [00:53:12] And your dad was a physician, not a pastor, is that right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:53:16] At that point? Yeah, he had, he was still a doctor. He had been a doctor since I was about five, all the way up through, yeah. And yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] So you, you made it through Columbia?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:53:29] I made it through. I got my Columbia degree and I.

John Dehlin [00:53:34] But you stopped attending and practicing Advent church?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:53:39] Oh, from the minute I left Andrews Academy, absolutely. I, I called myself an atheist. I was done, in fact, even in Barnard, people. I didn't tell too many people the background I came from at all. But if and when I had close enough friends who were like, I had told a little bit about this weird Bible culture, they were like, they were taking stuff like comparative religions, and they'd come to me and be like, okay, I'm studying Christianity, give me the Cliffs Notes. Like, what's it all about? What's the Bible about? What are the Bible? And I would, and I just would blank. Like, it would just be gone. I would just be like, well, you know, Easter Christ dying, you know, I couldn't remember any of it. I couldn't remember the books of the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] Well, you didn't totally internalize it, you know.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:54:28] Yeah, part of it. That's part of it, Yeah. I had held it at arm's length as if I could the whole time I was a child, because I really didn't believe it

John Dehlin [00:54:40] really quickly. It's reported that over half of ex Mormons almost immediately go to atheism or agnosticism or both, instead of like some sort of more vanilla Protestant mainstream Christianity. So when you say you went straight to atheism and we're both high demand religions, do you have any explanation for why you didn't become a Presbyterian or a Methodist or something else?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:55:05] I think it has to do with the fact that I just never really believed and the fact that God and I had that beef over gymnastics and I just had never been able to, I had never been able to just resolve the simplest things that I was being told about. Like, well, if he's a good God, why does he let kids, kids die of cancer and my cat get run over? And like, you know, just all kinds of stuff just did not make sense to me. And so I just, it never imprinted somehow.

John Dehlin [00:55:32] Totalistic religions tend to kill God and Jesus for their members for some reason. They do.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:55:38] They do, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:39] Yeah. Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:55:41] I guess so. It's, it's. Yeah. And I, I think of the Adventists that I know who left and are now ex administ. I think a lot of them, most of them probably still believe in some version of God and stuff. So I might be an outlier again. I think I had a lot of outlier experiences, but okay, for me it just never clicked. Never clicked.

Life After Graduation and an Abusive Relationship

John Dehlin [00:56:04] So what did you do after graduation?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:56:06] So after graduation I immediately moved on to my next long term older man relationship. That one lasted, that became my first husband and that one lasted approximately 10 years. And that was where it really ended up. I was starting to act out the programming that I had been raised with, but I, I did not realize and wouldn't realize for forever.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] How so?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:56:31] He was an extremely controlling. I was not allowed to have a car, I was not allowed to see my friends. He didn't even like to see my family.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Was he religious?

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:56:44] He was, he was raised Catholic.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:56:48] But, but not, you know, a white

John Dehlin [00:56:50] collar, professional kind of guy he ended up being.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:56:53] He had been raised in really kind of very scary neighborhoods outside of New York City. But his family was all involved in the mob in various ways and stuff and. But he had gone, he had educated himself and when I met him, he was my martial arts instructor. But he very quickly moved on and became quite a tech guy in marketing and all kinds of stuff. So he ended up white collar, professional, Very, very smart guy. He and I are both quite introverts, I guess. So that was kind of, that attracted me at first, like we didn't need to socialize or whatever. And then I slowly realized, but I want to at least see my friends and my family. And I couldn't even do that. And it, it became very quickly a kind of narcissistic control relationship where I, I was guilted for wanting to see my family and if we, if we didn't spend every single night together, we. Well, what was I in a relationship for? And you know, there was all this kind of Stuff that would start coming out, and I didn't know what that was. I, you know, it seemed very much like the God that I was raised to submit to and obey. And so you fell in that pattern

John Dehlin [00:58:14] mold, even though you didn't believe in it and rejected it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:58:19] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:58:19] As a teen.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:58:20] Exactly. It was that. It was that good girl programming of don't say no, submit, be obedient, please, please, please be pleasing, and that men really are in charge. And so what I did with that and with the sexual piece, because he was also very sexually kind of aggressive, and I wouldn't say violent, that that means it wasn't consensual and it was because I was into it, but it was very. I fetishized it.

John Dehlin [00:58:52] It.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:58:52] So if sex was gonna. Was supposed to be bad, if. If they had told me sex was bad, I was going to be the worst. I was going to be so bad. Look at me go. Look at me how I'm like, taking their sex that they said was such a fragile flower and whatever, and I'm just gonna make it, you know, as naughty as I can. And. And I kind of did that with his controllingness too. It was. I thought I was being so subversive, like, oh, I was raised to be a trad wife, basically. Well, look at me. I. I'm choosing to do it because. Ha, ha ha, I know better.

John Dehlin [00:59:26] There's probably a feminist, kind of cosmopolitan empowerment piece.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:59:30] That's it.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] I thought it was owning your sexuality.

Melissa Duge Spiers [00:59:32] Yes, I thought it was, but I was missing out on the actual empowerment of it. But I didn't know that. I did not know that. So then I went straight from that marriage to my second husband, which is interesting. You know, it always. To me, they say in abusive relationships, which I think my first abusive relationship was with the church and my family, my mother, to an extent. They say in domestic abuse situations, it takes people an average of seven times to try to escape before they get out. And when I track my own life, it's pretty true. I only got out about after the seventh try. I, you know, I got out of adventism in my family and I got to Barnard and then I got into the men, and then, you know, I got out of the men with sort of with my second husband. And he was not abusive, not controlling. He was my age, ish. We had kids. He was a party guy and he was a fun guy. And so he didn't really want to be around for the kid part too much, it seemed. And so we kind of grew apart and we didn't have communication skills. So, you know, that marriage eventually ended, but not. Not for the weird controlling issues it could have been. I think if we'd had communication skills and therapy and all the things that probably everyone needs in a marriage, I think it could have been what anyone would call a normal and healthy relationship. But I had no experiences with that in my family, in the church, with my previous men. And so then the minute the familiar came along, I went jumping right back into the awful men. But important thing that happened during my second marriage and that was. Well, it started at the very end of my first marriage. It ended my first marriage along with jumping into the second one was got a phone call from my dad. He had retired from medicine as soon as we had gone through college until since when all those bills were paid. He retired from medicine very early, like when he was 55 or 50 something, which is very early to be retiring. And he went back to being a pastor. He was the lead pastor at a church. And that he'd been that for maybe two years, three years when I got a call from him and I was probably 30, maybe 30. And he proceeded to tell me that he was being removed from his pastor, his new retirement past job. Because as a youth pastor when I was a tiny baby, and as a Pathfinder leader, he had had inappropriate relationships with young girls.

John Dehlin [01:02:28] Oh, wait, so two things. So that explains why he went from pathfinders to medicine because he.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:02:36] He got removed eventually because he was abusing kids because the church had moved him several times and he repeated the behavior because predators always do.

John Dehlin [01:02:48] But it also explains why he didn't want. That's weird. Why he didn't want y' all in Pathfinders.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:02:52] Well, that was my mother. My mother did not let us in Pathfinders because my mother found out about these things. And I think it just absolutely crushed her. Of course. And she was given no support. The church, her mother, everybody told her, just accept this. This is your cross to bear care. Your husband, child abuser. Yeah.

Discovering a Family Member's Abuse and Church Complicity

John Dehlin [01:03:12] Was he abusing children or teens or both?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:03:14] Yeah, like young teens, though the first one was quite young.

John Dehlin [01:03:17] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:03:18] And.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] Yep.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:03:19] And it was because I've talked to him about it and he was very angry at the label of pedophile. And his thing was, I don't go around in a van, like yanking children off a playground. And I was.

John Dehlin [01:03:36] They're just 14 year old girls, right? Yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:03:39] And I was like, dad, you're thinking of violent predators. What you were was a groomer. And he made them think he was in love with them and he wrote them love notes and he this and that and he told them that if he wasn't married that he would run away with them. You know, that kind of thing. You know, so it was this. No really, we're in love. And, and other cultures allow this kind of love. It's just here that's not, not allowed. You know, that kind of groomer stuff.

John Dehlin [01:04:03] And two things I have to call out. One is that the church didn't excommunicate him. It sounds like they just reassign him and hush, hush, keep it under.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:04:12] Ordained him after at least two things.

John Dehlin [01:04:15] That's just, that's so Mormon and it's so Catholic and it's so mind blowing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:04:19] It is so all of them. It is. So all of them he was or officially ordained because the, the way it works and I'm sure in all of them is pretty straight similar was after he went to seminary then he had to serve the kind of underling pastor job for a couple of years before he was actually considered. Okay, you're actually pastor material. Will ordain you. So you spend those two years or so working in different churches as usually a youth pastor because you're young, you just graduated or pathfinder leader, all that kind of stuff. You get your experience, you get your recommendations from the older, the senior pastors that say oh yeah, you know, Paul is great and then you get ordained. And so that's what happened with him was he was a youth pastor in at least two different places, groomed and preyed on the at least two different girls and then they ordained him.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] And it just has to be in my mind that so many leaders must have been abusers themselves because how else could they then be okay with someone younger being an abuser and still becoming a leader? They must have.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:05:24] Yep. You know the details of that particular case. And I just found out recently, just in the past like few weeks because of course once my book came out, I'm hearing from people in my past who know things about my family and, and somebody came out of the woodwork recently who said, oh yeah, I knew one of the senior pastors in that situation and he was groping my mother all the time.

John Dehlin [01:05:46] Exactly, exactly.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:05:47] You know, and then there was another pastor that was associated with that situation. I don't even know which of the churches. But when it was found out and one of. Of course the girls were always blamed. It was those, those, those Lolitas were seducing. One of those girls was then sent for kind of therapy to some Other pastor, elder, whatever he was. And of course he abused her because my dad. Dad had put a target on her back. She was easy picking. Right. I mean, it's just the levels of sick and boys club. I mean, the Epstein island has nothing on churches. I mean.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] Yeah. When I first realized, I'm like, wait, is the Mormon Church like when we had an activist rise up and start calling the church to protect children better, and he was excommunicated, and then I was finding all these predators, pedophiles, who were not only not punished, but were often promoted. I thought in my mind, wait, is it possible that in Mormonism predators are promoted and victims are punished? Victims of whistleblowers are definitely, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:06:59] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:07:00] And then I thought, but wait, how? Why would anyone ever do that? And then I thought, it's because they're the perpetrators. The leaders are the perpetrators. So of course they're protecting the perpetrators.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:07:12] I. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:14] Oh my gosh.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:07:15] Exactly. They're all in it together. They're just protecting. They're just watching each other's backs.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] Oh my gosh. It's just mind blowing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:07:21] It's mindblowing. And just the levels and layers of. Of just. They're not even very secretive about the sweeping under the rug. It's all just kind of sloppy. And Adventist schools sometimes trade a perpetrator around like four or five times. And then they claim, oh, we had no idea. And it's like, oh, other than the six people who came forward and said, right, oh, right, that. No idea. I see.

John Dehlin [01:07:46] You know, but then the other sick thing is that it's like, oh, he's been a predator too many times. He can't be a pastor. Let's make him a medical doctor. Like what? Where he's like inspecting people's genitals. What? Like, how does it. That makes sense.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:05] Yeah. Yeah. Well. And they all claim, of course, they had no control. So of course the church would say they would have no control over the

John Dehlin [01:08:11] medical part or church, you know, medical school.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:14] I know, right? It's just ridiculous.

John Dehlin [01:08:17] He went to Loma Linda, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:18] Y.

John Dehlin [01:08:19] So they did have control.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:20] They let him in. Yeah, exactly. I mean, somebody had to write his recommendation letters, right? I mean, it's.

John Dehlin [01:08:25] You can't make this up.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:26] You cannot make this stuff up. You cannot.

John Dehlin [01:08:30] Similar.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:08:30] Yeah, it is. It's ridiculous. And people. I mean, people love to come at me. And I'm sure we'll have in this comment section some people who love to come and say, it was just your father, he was just a bad guy. Don't blame the church. I mean, I get that hundreds of times a day in my social medias, and I get so tired of answering it. It's the church. Let me show you how, you know, But I just go through. I go through my father's and I fill up a bowl of pasta and I say, okay, here's what. Here's the number of victims. Here's the number of bosses my dad had at each church. Here's the number of family members who knew in my family and in the victims, you know, here's the number of conference members who had to know to give him ordained, you know, and then I go through this, that, and this, that, and then pretty soon I've got a whole bowl of pasta. And so then I pour it out in front of the camera and say, so is it just one bad predator or is it the church?

John Dehlin [01:09:24] And again, that's just one perpetrator.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:09:26] And that's just one perpetrator, right? One perpetrator. And I get a bowl full of pasta. Yeah, it's ridiculous. But so. So that happened, and my family didn't deal with it. The family line still was that poor dad had been seduced, particularly my mother kind of took that line. And my family doesn't really talk about things anyway, of course. So it was not talked about about. And everyone just kind of went sailing on. But I did sit my parents down at that time because I'm the kid who confronts things. And I just said, listen, because I found out from my mother that there was more than one victim. Dad only told us about the one victim. Mom, she. She let slip, she didn't mean to let slip that there was more than one victim. And so I sat him down and I just said, you know what? You guys have been lying to me my whole life. I feel like everything I've ever known is. Is absolute crumbling under my feet. And you have this one chance to tell me if there's anything else that's going to come back and hit me in the head, because I am not dealing. You know, I have lost all belief in you guys, and I can't go forward as with you in part of my life. And they just both looked ill and said, no, no, you know, everything. And. And that was it. Nobody ever talked about it again. Life just sailed on.

John Dehlin [01:10:46] And so wait, so let me make sure I'm understanding. Understanding. So you're. You're an adult now in your second or, you know, marriage or third or whatever, and you find out that your dad has retired from medicine and become A pastor again. And that's when you find out about his history of abuse.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:11:02] Yes. Okay, so that's a very important part of the story. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So it was just supposed to be his retirement job. I never told anybody because I was embarrassed he was a pastor again. I was like, but it was his retirement job and I, I was 30 something. I didn't really care. And then he had to call us and tell us about this because he was being removed by the Adventist church because the original victim, or at least the first victim we know about, had found out that he was a pastor again and had called the church and the conference and said, he cannot be in a, in a position of power. And so the church and the conference made an agreement with her. And I'm sure my dad was part of that, although he doesn't seem to claim that he. But anyway knows much. But the church in the conference definitely made an agreement with her that she wouldn't sue and she wouldn't go public with it in any like, big news story. Excuse me, if, if they removed him

John Dehlin [01:12:02] immediately, I wonder if she got a chunk of cash.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:12:05] No, no, there was no, no money exchange. She just agreed not to, not to say anything if they would remove him.

John Dehlin [01:12:14] She can feel like she.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:12:15] Right, right. And she, she had gone on to a really fabulous career. She was very, you know, she didn't want to go public with it because she didn't want her name dragged through the mud and all that. You know, victims just don't. Why would they be re traumatized? So she was just like, remove him. I've done my piece. I protected other children, you know, do not allow. And so, so they said, okay, so they had to remove him. So that's when he had to call and tell all of us. And within, I kid you not, less than a month, he was preaching again. He was. There were things on YouTube. He was assistant fill in pastoring at a big church. And I've confronted him about that too. And I said, you know what? Why did you feel it was okay to go back when that was the terms of the agreement? And that's when he kind of like, oh, it wasn't his agreement. It was the church and the conference's agreement. I said, okay, well, okay, so they're going back on their word. Is that better? Are we, are we happy with that? And he said, well, I was never officially employed again. I was never paid by the church of the conference. So that's how they all got around it. So he was just allowed to Keep going.

John Dehlin [01:13:27] The mental gymnastics.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:13:28] The mental gymnastics. And again, the kick in the teeth for the victim. Victim. So again, they have just flipped her the middle finger. Yeah, yeah. You can ask us, you can say, you can ask for justice. You know, I mean, it's just sick. It's so gross.

John Dehlin [01:13:43] But if you're. Our church, you know, basically controls a law firm with like 200 plus lawyers.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:13:49] Adventist risk Management.

John Dehlin [01:13:51] That's a. That's a group of law firms. So that's your. It's called Kurt McConkey in the Mormon Church. That's your Curtin McConaughey. And it's a law firm primarily.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:13:59] It is insurance law. Yeah, it depends.

John Dehlin [01:14:04] Crisis management.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:14:05] Crisis management.

John Dehlin [01:14:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But lawyers are part of it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:14:08] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [01:14:10] I swear. They've got the same playbook. These people. Consultants are talking to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:14:16] Yep. So after all of that, nobody talked about it again. I would just. Was like, okay, well, I've tried my best to confront what I could and I still don't think anybody's telling me the truth, but whatever.

Processing Trauma and Finding the Ex-Adventist Community

John Dehlin [01:14:31] I have to note it's interesting that you had stopped believing at 18, had totally left the lifestyle, the practice, and yet you're experiencing belated 10, 20 years later, like a real jolt. We call it a crisis of faith. But the whole destabilization came then, even though you had detached from it for 10 or 20 years. How do you. Do you have a way to explain that?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:15:00] You know, I think it was. No, I think I was taught so early so well to not process anything, you know, just stuff it away, stuff it away, stuff it away. And I knew, I didn't ever. I mean, just even hearing the. The name of the Adventist church just gave me hives. And so I was just like, I'm done with it. I'm out. Look at me. Live a secular life. Life. I, I really thought leaving equaled healing. I did not realize, of course, there was no official concept of deconstruction back then. So, you know, you just left and. And you didn't know any other ex. Adventist because there was no social media. So I didn't know anybody who'd done what I had done. I was just like, okay, well, I guess this is the way you live life. I just left the church. That was nasty. And I went on, you know, yeah,

John Dehlin [01:15:48] like Scientology has Leah Remini and Mike Rinder and. And Jehovah's Witnesses have Amber Skora or whoever. I guess the Mormon Church has me or other people like the Tanners before me. I can't imagine a mainstream cult larger than Mormonism not having in any generation a prominent ex member, activist, critic. It's wild. Like the Two by Twos didn't have that before recently. And it's wild that your church, as old and as big as it is.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:16:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:26] Hasn't had that. Now those books you showed.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:16:29] Yeah. Oh, I put them away. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:32] Those people, those authors weren't public.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:16:35] Well, you know, I think social media has become. Has been the switch that flipped because those books came out. But the Adventist church was able to just say, oh, he was ridiculous, he got excommunicated for things, and he's just sour grapes.

John Dehlin [01:16:47] He smeared him and defamed him.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:16:49] They smeared him, defamed him. And nobody who was really Adventist would get be caught dead reading that, you know, because it was a physical copy that you had to order and hold and have in your house. Now people can find it out online. Now people can and. But there still are not. You know, I started speaking out during COVID and I was. There were other ex Adventists online on Instagram and Tick Tock, but not so much talking about like just the nitty gritty and certainly not exposing the sexual abuse part. Theirs was mostly how the doctrine was silly or Ellen White was a plagiarist or whatever. But got it. So hopefully, I mean, I always say that I really hope in like five years or less, I am completely forgotten. You know, I just hope that this is the gate that opens where all these ex Adventists are going to tell their stories. You know, they're the kids that went through conversion therapy. They're the kids who, you know, that are not related to my story at all. That I really hope they see now that it's possible that you can do it. And, you know, I don't want to be talking about the Adventist church forever. I'm really hoping people step out.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] This is my 21st year as a podcast podcaster, so.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:18:09] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:18:09] Y' all need an Adventist story podcast maybe.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:18:12] And I, I love the commenters. I'm sure you get them all the time that are like, you're just being mean about the church for likes and comments. And it's like, you really think I'd want to go through all this for like, fun, for like, shits and giggles? Right?

John Dehlin [01:18:25] You're a grifter. You're trying to make money.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:18:26] Right, Right, exactly. Just trying to make money, which we don't make any money, but that's all right. And we just love having nasty people say nasty things all day long. Yeah, but so your dad.

John Dehlin [01:18:39] You find out your dad?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:18:40] Yes. So where were we?

John Dehlin [01:18:44] So you're in your 30s when you find out your dad.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:18:46] In my 30s, I find that out. I go sailing on. Because I was in just the very beginning stages of having children and I just didn't have the bandwidth. My children never slept. I just, you know, I was dealing with a marriage where I didn't really feel like I was very well supported with my party husband. And so I just had my hands full, basically, and I just.

John Dehlin [01:19:02] Did you have a career during all this time?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:19:04] I was always a writer. Well, up until I had children, I was a technical writer for high tech. I had been back in New York, I had been a personal assistant slash administrative assistant for some hedge funders and big Wall street people. So I had always worked, always. But then when I had kids, kids I did not. And I, I then transitioned to my vintage clothes selling because that was flexible and writing. So I wrote articles for magazines and stuff. But so when I was having children, I went through the whole, how am I going to educate them? You know, we had been raised the public school was like awful. Like you could never let your child go to public school. And even though, again, my Adventist programming was showing there, I couldn't imagine my child going to public school. So I looked up all the private schools around me and I. And one of them was an Adventist school. And I started laughing because it was an Adventist school that had, of course, a horrible. One of the links about it was this horrible sexual abuse case about it. And I was like, oh, of course, you know, there's my dad. There's this. It was called Monterey Bay Academy and it had a really famous. It even made it to the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The horrible abuse case there. And so I started reading this article just snickering at how horrible the Adventists are. And I realized that they were interviewing a woman who was talking about a case long ago. And I was like. And they gave her name. And I was reading it and I can still just feel that stomach drop and that like icy cold feeling. And I was like, she's talking about my dad. And it was literally just a Google, a random Google search. And it brought me to her. And I was like, so it's another victim? Well, it was, it was the original victim. Yeah, but we, we'd never been given her name. No one ever, ever mentioned her name. No one ever mentioned any, any identifying characteristics. And just the way she told her story, I was like, oh my God. Oh my God, that's My dad. And so I looked her up. It gave the city that she lived in and her name. And so I looked her up and I wrote a letter and I just said, you might not want to hear from me and that's okay, but I feel like I've been lied to by my parents forever and I would just like to hear your side of the story. And she didn't write back for a long time and. But I was like, if she talked to a newspaper, she definitely wants to talk to me. So I googled again and lo and behold, there were two women of her exact name in her exact city. And I had sent one obviously to the wrong woman. So there's some random woman out there that has this letter who's like, I don't know, this is the strangest thing I've ever received. But, but so I wrote to the Second one, the second Dr. Z, I call her in my book. And, and she wrote right back and she was like, I've always thought I would hear from you and I'm ready to answer any questions. Okay. She was really open immediately and she said I can answer, you know, any, any details you want. Nothing's off the, off the board, but I just want you to know that I'm okay and I'm here for you. And, and then she just kind of. We just started this friendship where she, she wanted to know about me and she wanted to, you know, of course everyone's, everyone's question right off the bat is whether I had been molested. And I was like, no. You know, my sister and I always thought dad was like this magical creature, you know, he was just wonderful presence in our lives. Our mom was the evil one and dad was just great and, and she just. So we developed like a 10 year friendship off and on. Sometimes I felt like I just couldn't handle it. Sometimes she felt she couldn't handle it and, and she was always kind of, of pushing me to look at the Adventist church. Like she was the first one, she was the first one to mention this book actually. And I don't know if. Yeah, read it, read the title on becoming a woman, which we all had to read in high school. She did way back before me and people after me had to read where it advocated for female genital mut. Mutilation among other horrible purity culture things and controls of sex. And she kept very gently being like, you know, it's not just my story and experience with your dad, you know, you need to look deeper. And I just, I didn't want to do it. And I just dug in and so I wouldn't talk to her for a while. And in the meantime in my life I had left my second husband for an extremely abusive older man who was diagnosed like personality disorders, narcissistic as along along with other very sexually abusive. And I went back to what I knew in times of stress I went back to what I knew and that was it. If I can abuse myself and submit to abuse from others, then I don't have to think, I don't have to feel, I don't have to. It was a non feeling thing and I can be again. I thought I was being subversive and out there, but right around Covid and I had been in that relationship then for almost eight years. Seven. Eight years.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] So in your 40s by this point?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:24:59] Yeah, so I was, Yeah, I was mid-40s, at least by Covid, almost 50. And I started just like so many of us. I got online during COVID and was. I found the deconstruction community, which I'd never heard of in my life. Adventist or no, just anybody who was deprogramming themselves from any religion.

John Dehlin [01:25:25] And is that a subreddit? Deconstructionist.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:25:28] There is one deconstruction subreddit, but also just the hashtag deconstruction or hashtag ex Christian. And then I started looking up ex Adventist and I found some ex Adventist and I was just like. And so I was like, I could do that.

John Dehlin [01:25:44] Did you still ex Mormon? Did you see ex Mormon? Yes.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:25:46] Oh, the ex Mormon. I have really good now ex Mormon friends from that whole situation where, you know, we were comparing, no coffee, no this, no that, you know. And so I just, I was like, I'm going to start talking about this weird religion that I grew up in. I'm just going to join this community. I'm hey, why not? Nobody's doing anything. It's Covid. And and so I started primarily posting on TikTok and Instagram. Just goofy stuff. Like we weren't allowed to swim on Saturdays, but we were allowed to walk. Why was that? You know, just goofy stuff. And then the more people I met, the more people started telling me about how they were abused in the Adventist church. And I was like, yeah, well there's that. Yeah. And so the combination of that, the social media side opening up up and Dr. Z kind of always pointing me toward you. You really need to process how the church affected you. And this increasingly abusive relationship kind of really forced me into almost a breakdown of sorts where I was just Like, I'm just, I'm done with all of it. I have to. I went into therapy, I stopped drinking. I. I started literally hugging trees and going on multiple walks every day. And just like I would cry all the time because I never allowed myself to cry. Tried to let myself feel the bad feelings, but I didn't even know how to do it. And I just, you know, I, I left the man and it took me a year or two. And all that while I was just talking on the Internet about. I was recording people who wanted to tell me about their abuse in the advent of church. And I was writing my book as part of my therapy.

John Dehlin [01:27:31] Real quick, the. You have a. Do you have a handle the Glory Hole?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:27:34] I do.

John Dehlin [01:27:35] And it's W H O L E. Explain that. And was that a different book than this?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:27:40] Was that was this book. But then my, my editor very wisely said, you know, you don't want to go forward with that name. First of all, the double entende was like silly and pointless in terms of like, people are not going to go to a bookstore and say, I wanted that book. What was it about the Glory Hole? Like, it just. The name didn't match up with my content.

John Dehlin [01:27:58] Whereas was that just silly or there actually a character?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:28:00] There was meaning to it.

John Dehlin [01:28:01] So I'm not trying to.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:28:03] No, I love, of course I'm a writer, so I love plays on words. So of course a glory hole. People who don't know what that is.

John Dehlin [01:28:10] I know what it means in Idaho.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:28:12] Exactly. So it is basically a hole in a wall in generally a men's bathroom, public bathroom, where people can just extend themselves over there and hopefully get an orgasm. Right. And who knows how? Who knows how?

John Dehlin [01:28:28] Could be a sheep. Could be a goat.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:28:30] Could be a sheep, a goat, man, woman. And I, of course, just being a disaster forecaster, I always thought, why would you do that? What if it's someone over there with a, like machete? Like what? You know, so to me, a glory hole always seemed a little bit terrifying. And so I. The whole glory hole was my symbolism for or high control religion of any sort, where you're convinced to like hand over this very tender, very part of yourself, your soul, basically, right. You're just, you're, you're convinced to expose like this really fragile, defenseless part of yourself. And hopefully you're gonna see God, right?

John Dehlin [01:29:10] Powerful.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:29:11] You're gonna be given a transcendent experience. You also could have it hacked off and mutilated and become maimed and dysfunctional for the rest of your Life. And I feel like that's what happened to a lot of us with high control religion is we got the bad Glory Hole experience. We got maimed and disfigured for life. And so it was just my own personal private joke. And. But I always loved it. And so. But it didn't work well for a book type title, so. But that is how people can still find me. That is. Those are my. My social media accounts on Tick Tock and Instagram is the Glory hole with

John Dehlin [01:29:52] W H O L e. With the

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:29:54] W H O L E. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:55] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:29:56] And it's funny because now I meet people who have only known me online and they don't really associate my name, they just say glory.

John Dehlin [01:30:04] Okay, that's better than Glory hole.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:30:08] That's not a good thing to shout across a restaurant. True.

John Dehlin [01:30:10] So you're known as Glory. That's cool.

Reckoning with Systemic Abuse and Family Complexity

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:30:16] So, yeah, so I went through this entire. Just kind of breakdown of. And I had just.

John Dehlin [01:30:24] You moved to California from New York, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:30:26] Oh, gosh. Oh, yeah. I had done that with the first husband. So yes, I had moved.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] I had been living in California the first several relationships.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:30:33] Yes, exactly. So I had been living in California, Cal. I have been living in California first since I was 28, maybe 27. 28. And so, yeah, I was writing the book just for therapy, just for doing it, and never really intended to publish it. And then I won a writing contest with it and I got agents and so then I was like, oh, maybe I should publish it.

John Dehlin [01:30:56] And

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:30:59] you know, and just as my social media presence and advocacy grew and I realized nobody was. Was taking holding the church to task, it was me. And I was like, well, I can't stop now. I gotta keep going. And I started these lists of every abuse case in the Adventist church that people told me about. And when I had free time, I would Google and I would just sit down and google Adventist Church abuse, Arkansas. And sure enough, at least a few would pop up and I'd add those to my list. And so I have these huge Word documents. One is just private cases of everything everyone's told me, and that's never to be released publicly. And then they're the publicly educated adjudicated ones or ones that at least people were arrested or something was known or like my. My father's case, which never went to trial but is public because everyone has admitted that it happened. And so that's really what I do online still. And someone last year reached out to me from a big personal injury law firm and said, we are starting a Mass tort lawsuit against the Adventist church. Do you want to help us? And I was like, oh buddy. And so those lists that I was just keeping because I thought I needed to honor people that somebody needed to keep a list because nobody was. Was caring about all of these Adventist abuse victims. I was able to hand the them over the public one over to this law firm and say here I've got 13 pages already of cases that you can refer to. Because a mass tort lawsuit is not like a class action. It's kind of individual cases that, that are all built on this central theme that this organization was horrible. And so the more you prove that there were previous cases, the more you can help this person's individual case and this and that. So my, my history of the abuse and the hiding and the enabling and the moving of predators was. Was helpful to them. So they. That lawsuit opened officially in January and it goes on. Anybody, everybody can join as long as their statute of limitations is not up and it's a rolling case type of thing. And I'll give you the link so that you can put it in the show notes. It's a law firm called Pintas and Mullins. And so that is where. That's my story. That's where I am now. Just an advocate on fire for exposing the Adventist church in general. I just think people need to know about it. But the abuse of abuse within the Adventist church and telling my story.

John Dehlin [01:33:49] Yeah. So have you retained a relationship with your parents?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:33:55] Yes. And people are often sister and my sister. My sister and I are very close. She is also not Adventist. She's also having to do her own work still to kind of deprogram from all of the it. We have maintained our family is kind of an acquaintance ship with our parents. You know, it's not like they really know or ask or care too much. I don't think about our lives because they're not Adventist lives. So I don't think their interest really extends to the details. And we kind of return that favor. We don't really care about their Adventist lives. So it's a kind of.

John Dehlin [01:34:34] Of don't ask, don't tell.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:34:36] Yeah, don't ask, don't tell. And people who've read the book have told me that I. They think I'm too easy on my father.

John Dehlin [01:34:46] He never got legal consequences. How did he avoid legal repercussions?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:34:51] The victims did not want to, you know, go through it. That's normal. That's very normal. Unfortunately, I mean I respect their decision decision completely and but yeah, they had gone on with their lives and they had been blamed for so many years. I think that when it originally happened, and then probably statute of limitations, I don't know. I haven't really dug into why not. But I do know Dr. Z just wanted to go on with her life. She didn't want to drag through it all the time. And there was a fear that my father would. Can we say it on YouTube, would kill himself. That was a consideration when everyone was. They would tiptoe around it. That's manipulation. But. But I know at least one of the victims said she could not live with that if that happened. So that was one of the reasons she. But. And the way I tried to explain or the way I try to deal with people who say I went too easy on my father. Well, first of all, it's a very interesting dynamic that I tried to show very much in the book is it's an interesting thing to be in midlife and realize that your entire picture of your parental structure was upside down. So we grew up. My mom was horrible. She was horrible to us. And now I have a lot of sympathy for her because she had no idea how to protect us from, like, if my dad could do that, anyone could do it. She was given no support. She was given no anything. And so the only thing she knew that was in her control. Control was to control us. So thus, we were not allowed to go on sleepovers. We were not allowed to go to sleepaway camps, we were not allowed to join pathfinders. We were not allowed to anything because she was protecting us. And, I mean, she succeeded. She did her job to what, you know, the best of her ability. She protected us. We were not molested. And poor thing, you know, I can't imagine what that took out of her. And then my dad to find out that this guy, who I just had this great relationship with and he had championed and my actual education, and he had this and that. And then to find out when I was 35 that he was the bad guy. So how to kind of honor the fact that I had a good experience with this person, but they're not a good person, is a really weird, weird dynamic to try to go through. And so I have tried to portray the fact that the best I can do at this point, and I've heard other, like, children of serial killers say this also is like you, The. The binary. It's particularly in religious settings. Like, I have tried to get away from black and white thinking, and I have tried to get away from good and Bad. And you can't just mash it all together and make some happy. Like you can't take the black and the white and make it gray. And it's all happy and bland. There are edges and there is bad in the good and there's good in the bad. And the religion tried to not allow us to think that, you know, so I am just trying to exist with there's good in the bad and there's bad and the good. And the. The only thing that I can do in this situation is give respect to Dr. Z and my dad's victims in the way they want it, which they were okay with me telling the story, but they don't want to pursue anything further. So I am respecting that. And I can try to be a megaphone for the systemic problem. And really the systemic problem is I talk about individual predators, but the systemic problem is where I'm really trying to.

John Dehlin [01:38:46] Exactly. It's systemic problem. It's you. Oh my gosh. I'm relating so much to this. Like, obviously there's people thinking, well, you should have cut your dad off forever.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:38:55] Right.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] Sounds like you haven't done that.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:38:58] No, no. I mean, both of my parents are very, you know, they are very old at this point. My mom has Alzheimer's, my dad's not too far behind, they have health problems, et cetera. So at this point, to cut them off would. Would. I don't know that they would. They would probably not process how and why. And so what point would it be, you know, would I be making a point? I'm not sure. But.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] And if people want to cut off an abusive loved one, whether they were abused by the loved one or not, I wouldn't judge that. But what I relate to, like, I just finished a 41 part series on the life of Joseph Smith.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:39:33] Oh my God.

John Dehlin [01:39:34] And he obviously was a sexual predator, but why is the church so rich and popular and successful? He also gave people hope and meaning and community and did great things. And even the Michael Jackson video is out right now. The movie. He was one of the most successful pop artists of all time that brought so much joy to people. People still love his music even if they were abused themselves. And he was a child abuser. Like, we're faced with this reality of, like, what do we do with beloved people who were also abusers?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:40:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:13] And I don't know that. Sometimes people on the Internet like to say, there's one answer. Cut them all out. Cancel them all from everyone's life. They should all die. But that's not how everyone ends up choosing to interact with these people that have abusive pasts. Because you could also argue your dad, maybe your dad was abusive. Well, maybe he was part of a systemic abuse that created the abuse in him.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:40:42] Yeah, I totally believe. I absolutely believe. And my uncle, who is my dad's younger brother, also believes that my dad was. They were sent off to Adventist boarding schools and they were sent off very young. They were two or three years younger than their class. So my dad was this tiny kid in a. With a bunch of teenage boys in a boarding school. Are you kidding me? You know, know.

John Dehlin [01:41:04] And that's why I do think the answer is systems, not people.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:41:08] Systems. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] Or systems over people, let's put it that way.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:41:12] Yeah, I think. Yeah, systems. Yeah. And I, and I think again and listening to the victims and I think people want to see their version of justice. And you know, in, in my dad's case, the victims have said their version of justice is this. I'm respecting that. I'm listening to that. You know, if I had come in on this story at a different time period when they were younger, he was younger, I was younger, whatever, the answers might have been totally different. But at this point, this is the way I can listen to the victims, respect the victims, try to change the system, stand up for more victims and try to positively make, make a big impact, a big change. I can hope.

John Dehlin [01:41:57] Yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:41:57] I mean, Adventist, an actual Adventist organization, asked me to speak about this problem last weekend. And that was the first time I've gotten a reach out from anybody within the Adventist system in six years of speaking out. The Adventists have ignored me.

John Dehlin [01:42:12] Wait, they've been, they asked, they invited you to something.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:42:16] There is a, there are two, they call themselves, I think independent journalism, which is, there's Spectrum and there's Adventists today. And they are not financed by the church. They are Adventist publications, but they're not financed by the church. They're financed by individual donors and advertising or something, I guess. So they, they maintain and they do cover abuses within the Adventist church, both of those do. And kudos to them. Big, big shout out. And Adventists Today actually approached me and said we do this thing called Sabbath Seminar and we have speakers come speak and would you like to come talk about the Adventist abuse case? And I was like, I'm there, you tell me. And so they did, they, they just gave me the floor. They didn't put brakes on me. They didn't tell me what I could or couldn't say. They didn't tell Me, you know, I was expecting them to try to edit me or something. They were wonderful. They just said, come speak. I did my spiel. I, I guess lectured for about an hour and then they opened it to questions and answers. And most of the people who had questions and answers were very respectful, very. A lot of them chimed in and were like, yeah. One guy was a psych psychologist and he was like, I've been in this field for 30 years and I'm just here to say, like, predators are not rehabilitatable. It's not a rehabilitatable thing. They always reoffend. I was like, thank you for that.

John Dehlin [01:43:42] We're having the same conversations over and over again in our culture too.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:43:45] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:43:47] Wow. Well, that must have been really gratifying to be. It was invited in by at least a marginal group, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:43:53] Yeah, at least. Yeah. And they're definitely the very liberal, very, you know, progressive part of Adventism. But still, you know.

John Dehlin [01:44:01] Yeah, they'll be excommunicated soon, Right.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:44:04] I'm sure they were. I'm sure they got a letter from Adventist Risk management. You are off butt.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] Listen.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:44:11] But so we'll see. I really hope they just. Of course, supposedly Adventists say they've been making changes, but I haven't seen it yet. They say that since the 2000s they've been making everyone take training. They haven't been moving predators, but I've talked to dozens of people from the 2000s and more recent where they've moved predators. So I know, don't. Maybe, maybe that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:44:38] So there's a systemic pattern in Adventism of protecting predators and relocating them and they reoffend.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:44:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:44:48] Okay. That's very spotlightish. Catholic Church, Mormon Church.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:44:52] Absolutely. Same playbook.

John Dehlin [01:44:54] Okay. Doesn't surprise me. I'm sad. Okay, couple final questions. So, okay, you and I may view this differently and I actually am quite different than most of the ex Mormons. I think I know because. Because I had this weird position where I think I see clearly most if not all of the harm the church causes. And I've been doing ex cold or ex high demand religion activism long enough to see that plenty of people who leave Mormonism and or high demand religions sometimes end up worse off leaving than when they were in it. Now again, I'm not saying what's true on average or even the majority, but what I'm sure of is it's not as simple as leave your cult or high demand religion and life is going to be healthy and happy when you leave. And there are worse things in My opinion than being a Mormon. Mormon. One of those is being desperately sad and lonely and suicidal because you have nothing, no morality, no spirituality, no community, no meaning, no purpose, no friends. You want to die addicted. Right? So I'm not in the position. I think part of this comes from my training as a psychologist because I do have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. I got that along the way. And you're taught as a therapist, you don't impose your values on other people. You let other people have their journey and you don't even nudge them as to what the right answer is. You don't even give advice. You develop in them their own compass and their own values and let them make their own decisions. So all of that to say, in 21 years of doing what I've done, I don't think I've ever told somebody, you need to leave Mormonism. Or I don't even think I've ever had as the goal with Mormon stories to get people out of Mormonism. I just want people to become their healthiest self, whether that's in or out. So having given that huge disclaimer, you may or may not feel differently or have different goals, but I'll just ask you now directly, for that Adventist that's questioning or unhappy, or for that Mormon who's questioning or unhappy, or for that member of somebody other high demand religion or group where they're questioning or unhappy, what advice do you have for them?

Advice for Leaving High-Demand Religions

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:47:33] Yeah, that's a. That's. I think I would spend. I would tell people to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where they get their direction from. And is it partly, you know, familial or is it the church? Is it guilt? And if so, where's the guilt coming from? I know it took me a long time and I'm still kind of trying to figure out where my autonomy lays down boundaries and where it says directs me, or am I reacting? And if so, what am I reacting to? Because I think high control religions do give you a set behavior system within which to operate. And, and if that's true, if that's where your operational system is coming from, is it serving you? I mean, is it really serving you? Or is it just an echo that you're following? And could there be something better? And there might not, you know, there really might not. But I think particularly for women in high control religions need to spend a lot of time thinking about how am I, is, is this serving me? And is it equal? And is it, you know, I think sometimes reversing occurrences in the church. Well, if a woman did that, would it be seen the same way? And then thinking, well, why not? Well then am I not valued as much? You know, so you know all those little things that you can ask which don't mean you have to jump, you know, that you don't have to jump anywhere. You can just start asking yourself these questions.

John Dehlin [01:49:26] I mean, I can already see the difficulty and even that approach, which I totally agree with. And whether you're Mormon or a Mormon woman or another high demand religion or group, like with you and Adventism, you're taught to be disconnected from your feelings. So do you even know what happiness or sadness is? You're so busy, do you even stop to learn how to feel your feelings? But then also, if you're a Mormon woman, you're taught your job is to serve others. So do you even feel like you're allowed to care about whether you're having joy?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:50:04] Right.

John Dehlin [01:50:05] And whether you're experiencing joy? Because maybe that's not like with Adventist. Maybe that's for the next life, not for this life.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:50:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:14] And so like there are. And then you're taught to never consider as valid any external source. And any thought or feeling that might lead you outside is scary. And then scary emotions are from the devil. So there's so much conditioning that a Mormon woman or a Mormon man or another member of a high demand group or religion, there's so many chains and barriers that would keep that advice from evil, even allowing someone to explore. And it's the right answer, right?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:50:50] Right. No, it's totally. And I'm, I'm sure that Mormons have a kind of equivalent thing, but Ellen White was very blatant about saying that even doubt is from the devil. Questioning is from the devil. That's the devil using you. You know, your gut feelings are from the devil. Don't listen to your, you know, so how in the world. World are you supposed to.

John Dehlin [01:51:13] Mormons are taught to doubt your doubts.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:51:15] Doubt your doubts. Well, of course they have like a little catchy phrase for it. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:24] So I mean, that's the right answer. And it explains why so many people have a hard time. Hard time waking up. Yeah, because it just assumes that they can care about what's right and feel their feelings. And already it's a non starter.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:51:38] It's a non starter. Absolutely. You know, the feeling feelings thing. Thing is really hard. When I had that little episode for six months to a year or whatever where I was trying to be an actor, I was a terrible actor. And I. And I knew that I was a terrible actor. I knew that I was just. I appeared wooden on screen or not. Not wooden, but it just all seemed fake, like I wasn't actually expressing. And of course, now I realize that. Yeah. Because I didn't know how to experience feelings. I knew how to fake them. And usually only happy ones. It was embarrassing to try to cry on screen or something, and I couldn't get there at all. But, you know, you. You don't know how to experience even the most basic emotion.

John Dehlin [01:52:27] Absolutely. Yeah. That's so powerful. And then there's. How do you even know. There's this idea of a cult personality where you're told what your personality is and all the authentic parts of your personality are kind of suppressed and hidden. So how do you even come to begin to discover who you are and what makes you tick and what lights you up?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:52:54] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:52:55] Because you have to figure out what's the difference between you and however you were programmed. Right.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:53:01] That's it. Yeah. I often people say, like, what's your advice to people who are leaving, not just people who are questioning.

John Dehlin [01:53:06] Okay, yeah, that was my experience question, actually. Yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:53:08] And I always. I always say triage because there is so much packaged in high control religion, you could live three or four lifetimes and never get through all of it. So you have to do a really personal triage of what affected. And I have two columns of it. What was shoved down your throat the most, that. That damaged you the most, that you had the most conflict with or whatever. And what work on those. The top items, and then what was taken away from you that would give you the most joy or the most fun, or you just want to explore that might open a side of your personality that wasn't allowed, you know, and then work on those top things. And so for me, in the, you know, what was shoved down your throat and you just were forced into and gave you the most confidence, conflict and trauma. You know, for me, it wasn't biblical stuff. I didn't care about the Bible or the doctrine or whatever. For me, it was purity culture. It was all of the behavioral rules, the submission training, the obedience training, the no boundaries that don't listen to your gut. So I have to work on all of those things. And I don't care if I ever read the Bible or know what the doctrines actually are. That didn't affect the me one bit. So. But for other people, they spend a ton of time rereading the Bible, trying to, like, convince themselves of one way or the other before they can feel at peace, you know, and then the other column is the stuff that you were not allowed to have or do or be that might open up a part of your personality that might not. I, I have a good friend who is one of the authors with my publisher, Katherine Spearing, who has gone full on since she left her religion into improv theater and musical theater because that was not allowed. And it's allowed her to process and find joy and identify with all of this. And I just, I love that. And you know, for me, when I first got out, it was all those things that as an 18 or 19 year old you wanted to do, like drink and um, but. And I wanted to act and I wanted to dance, but stuff like gambling, I don't care if I ever gamble. I don't give a. So, you know, I'm not going to spend time learning how to play blackjack, you know, which was very forbidden as an Adventist. But for some people that's just cool as hell and that's what they want to learn how to do. So you have to choose your top items in both columns and then you have to work on those because it's a lifetime just getting through the top items.

John Dehlin [01:55:55] I wonder if sometimes, I mean, how many ex Adventists do you think you've interacted with in some way at this point?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:56:05] Hundreds. Certainly hundreds. Yeah. I would say you'll get to the

John Dehlin [01:56:09] tens of thousands at some point. But I have noticed, and this is probably cliche and I don't have data, it's anecdotal, but sometimes I see that, for example, ex Mormons, you know, that they all are taught not to drink or do drugs or, you know, have extramarital sex.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:56:32] Right.

John Dehlin [01:56:33] So when they leave, they don't know how to manage alcohol, they don't know how to manage drugs. They don't, you know, they. They want to explore alternative sexuality in ways that sometimes can harm marriages or families or themselves.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:56:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:48] Can you relate to that stuff?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:56:50] Yeah. Oh, absolute. I mean, I. Well, and there's also, I think, particularly with the drinking, but probably other addictive things as well. For those of us raised in multi generational high control cults that banned drinking, you don't know if alcoholism runs in your family because nobody was a drinker.

John Dehlin [01:57:09] That you know of.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:57:10] That you. That you know of. Exactly. And so I am, I am sure now that alcoholism runs in my family and I've seen enough of it to know, but I wouldn't know that, you know, if. So, yeah, you, you have no, no breaks. Put on by gradual experience and seeing it modeled like you. You have no breaks of seeing it modeled where someone had a glass of wine and then stopped. Yeah, because that's the way you were raised. You know, like the famous example is the first French. You know, the French kids learn to start drinking at 12 because everybody has a little glass of wine and then they're done.

John Dehlin [01:57:50] Or Italians.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:57:51] Yeah, we're Italians. Exactly. And so we all end up going kind of overboard, I think probably. And certainly, you know, I've certainly known some ex Adventists who are drug addicts and alcoholics and thank goodness it's. It seems to be a minority. But.

John Dehlin [01:58:10] But also they're self medicating trauma.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:58:12] They're self medicating trauma big time.

John Dehlin [01:58:15] Right. In their defense.

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:58:16] Yeah, yeah.

Key Pillars of Healing and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [01:58:20] What have been some of the key pillars of healing for you that you want to call out to maybe recommend for others?

Melissa Duge Spiers [01:58:29] Certainly. I know therapy has been huge with a religious trauma therapist. I have two therapists actually, a religious trauma therapist and then a family systems therapist who also works with microdosing psilocybin. And so we've done deep dives. And that was incredibly helpful in learning to process my feelings because I wasn't in control. And I never even in my college drug phase, I never did psychedelics because I didn't want to lose control. And so therapy has been really helpful. And I think I avoided therapy so long, not necessarily because of the religious thing. I didn't even know I needed religious therapy, but I surely could have used it for all of the sexual stuff and the, you know, the obedience and boundaries and everything that I didn't have any idea I was acting out. Unfortunately, as far as I've seen people who know, like people you are intimately connected with, like your siblings, your partners, your parents often throw therapy at you as there's something wrong with you, you need to therapy, you should go to therapy. And so of course your instinct is to be like, screw you, you know, I don't need therapy. You need therapy, you know, and it just becomes this ridiculous thing. Whereas if it were presented in a different way, it might be a really great thing. And so I had to learn myself that I needed to go for myself, not because someone else was telling me I was broken.

John Dehlin [02:00:04] That's huge.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:00:05] And so that was. That's been very helpful in the past five years, of course, physical. I've learned to process feelings through physical stuff too. I'm a big runner, so running has been very healing. I'll. I've always been a runner but it's been very therapeutic since I've figured out that I can process my feelings while running and then physical stuff like like I crochet now. You know just the repetitive physical motion often helps with the self soothing and the processing emotions that are difficult still for me to do. And writing of course writing was a marvelous part and also I have to say being alone and I needed to be alone. I had been in relationships my entire adult life in generally in controlling or power imbalance relationships. Like my second husband that was not a controlling one but it was definitely a power imbalance. Like he was out seeing Lady Gaga and I was watching the children. You know that was not so being alone has been the best processing and encountering myself and not really having any distractions anywhere to hide. I guess you can't just focus on someone else and help serve them fall right back into that female thing. So and then reading I've been read that you know the so the online communities of people I are really that's what kicked it off for me was the deconstruction the exit Christian the there's an ex Adventist Reddit which has about 10,000 people on it that was huge still huge. I check it every day in fact I I I posted it there two nights ago saying I'm going on Mormon stories. Anybody have something they really want me to cover? Like what is it about?

John Dehlin [02:02:01] Had they heard of Mormonism or Mormon stories?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:02:03] Oh yes. Yeah yeah yeah that's where that's where I got a couple of the oh I love Mormon stories. So yeah shout out to my my Reddit. Love it.

John Dehlin [02:02:14] The ex Mormon Reddit has like 300,000 subscribers. It's crazy.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:02:18] It's I it's the best I point lots of people to the Reddit forums and and then TikTok and Instagram for they have limitations but the hashtags of deconstruction and religious trauma hashtag was another big one that I just I could go down that forever got found so many people to follow religious trauma therapists and things and so you know I think it's a matter of layering your healing because not like one thing doesn't work all the time. So you know I still go hug my trees sometimes.

John Dehlin [02:02:55] Are you seeing a There was just this just yesterday's the daily podcast which is a New York Times Daily News podcast.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:03:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:03:07] Yesterday's was about how just in the past few years there's been a pausing of the secularization of younger America and there's been a bit of a turn for Younger America back towards spirituality a little bit more with young men than young women. But it's done by an ex Mormon journalist named Lauren Jackson. She's the one that is the editor of the. Of this show. But one of the things she talks about is just how lonely secular ex religious people are. Are you finding that ex Adventists are struggling to find community and friendships?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:03:50] They are, they are. Particularly like you said, the younger ones. And you'd think it would be all of us oldsters who never knew that there was another ex Adventist except for us, you know, but the younger kids are really find having a hard time and I see them post a lot on Reddit and it really, you know, breaks my heart because they're struggling with the. Not only just the stuff, the challenges that are facing all of Gen Z of the. I still have to live at home with my parents because I can't afford this and that. And I've got, you know, $200,000 of school loans for stupid Adventist college that I didn't even want to go to, but my parents forced me and now I still have to live with my parents even though I don't want to be Adventist anymore. And you know, so they've got all those layers and, and then just the guilt and shame that kind of keeps them. They feel like they don't know how to make friends with non Adventists, that they don't have the social skills. And that's. It's really sad because I, I don't, I don't have an answer for that part of it.

John Dehlin [02:04:58] Yeah, no one does. Almost no one does. Yeah, I've been doing this 21 years and I don't think I do.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:05:03] All the empathy but none of the answers. I just.

John Dehlin [02:05:07] Yeah, well, that makes sense. We're just figuring it out. I will say my deepest respect as someone who has been trying to do what you're trying to do for quite some time. It's not easy as. So my deepest respect to you for trying to be to your community what I'm trying to be to mine in some ways.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:05:32] So it's a lonely path and here we are.

John Dehlin [02:05:36] Yeah. Sometimes I wish, like, it's weird to me that Mormon Stories has a larger never Mormon audience than Mormon or ex Mormon audience. But I think it's because I think every tradition needs its own Mormon Stories equivalent. I was gonna say to you, I would love for your people to have not an X an Adventist Stories podcast for people in and out of Adventism to be able to talk about their Adventist experiences. Cause I Think stories are kind of the most magical way to develop empathy.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:06:15] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:06:16] Yeah. So maybe we can tie it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:06:19] Let's inspire somebody. Come on.

John Dehlin [02:06:21] So you don't want to be a. You don't want to be an Adventist Stories podcast host.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:06:25] You know, I mean, I've got novels I want to write, and I've got, you know, all this stuff that. And I. And I really do feel like at this point I wouldn't want to start. Like, I. It should be someone younger who has a longer trajectory to go. And, you know, I'm. I'm really hoping. Like I said, I'm really hoping to be obsolete and just, you know, we need to be hearing from the people with the LGBTQ experience, and I want to hear from people who have been in the African American conference, like, what's that all about? And, you know, I really hope that there will be a lot more diverse voices because I only speak to the super white, older, you know, raised in the conservative cis, het or basically hat bisexual audience. So that ish. There you go. And that's just a narrow, narrow part of it. And to an extent, of course, I had a lot of privilege with all of those labels. Right. And so the people who didn't, I mean, I really hope they start speaking out and are able to ask had there.

John Dehlin [02:07:40] So you're going to publish public, you're going to promote your book, and then right up into the sunset in your mind, right off into the exit.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:07:47] Well, I have. I have a memoir too, that's in the works with my publisher. It's a few years from. Because. But so I have to do that as a follow up.

John Dehlin [02:07:55] How's that different than this? How's that different?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:07:58] Well, it's interesting. I didn't realize that memoirs could be. That you could have multiples. I always thought, well, it's. You only have one life. Like, how can you write multiple books about the one life?

John Dehlin [02:08:07] I don't even know the answer.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:08:08] But. But this one covers, you know, the Adventist experience, my dad's story, the leaving and all of that. And. And then the next one covers the abuse, the narcissistic control, the submission control, and of course, the religious overshadowing gets into it, but it's more about. About the submitting to men and why that happened and how that ended in a really bad situation and how I got out of that and all of that. That one involves a private investigator and all kinds of fun things, so people are gonna have to stay tuned.

John Dehlin [02:08:46] So this is just your first of a couple books.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:08:49] Hopefully this is my first of two memoirs. And then I'm done. I'm done talking about myself.

John Dehlin [02:08:54] All right, well, and then I'm novel.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:08:56] Got my novel all ready to go.

John Dehlin [02:08:57] All right, well, we'll see how successful you are at writing off into the sunset. I do. I do wish your community further growth and health and development, because technically, the ex Adventist community should be bigger than the ex Mormon community. But we got a big head start in blogging and in podcasting and TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. For whatever reason, Mormons were on the forefront. Maybe. Maybe it's because we were raised to be comfortable with entertainment, whereas y' all weren't.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:26] That's it. That's. That's it.

John Dehlin [02:09:28] Of course, Because I was raised to perform. Singing and dancing and speaking. Public speaking.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:35] That's it.

John Dehlin [02:09:35] Maybe that's it.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:36] That and. And you didn't have a hex on any kind of entertainment or even technology, like, technology was promoted.

John Dehlin [02:09:43] My mom was a director of musicals all through my other up upbringing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:48] There you go. That's. I think that's the main difference.

John Dehlin [02:09:50] Acting, singing and dancing. Yeah.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:52] So, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:53] Okay.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:09:53] Because I've heard from other ex Adventists of, like, well, the Mormons are way ahead of us in terms of their. They were able to organize their exes, like, when we haven't. But that's it. I mean, if you look at, for instance, the Adventist church's official social media channels, it is so bad. Like, they still can't join the media bandwagon or anything yet. They're just so bad at it.

John Dehlin [02:10:16] We're just more faithful. Mormons are just starting to figure it out.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:10:20] Oh, there you go.

John Dehlin [02:10:21] But I don't think it's going to end well. But, you know, whatever. I wish them well.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:10:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:25] All right. Well, that's exciting. I look forward to seeing your community grow.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:10:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:10:30] And I'm sure your church, your former church is. If they're smart, they're shaking in their boots at, like, what's going to come of your work and of all the people you influence and of all the other, you know, members of the ex Adventist community. So I'm sure they'll be suing Tiktokers and Instagrammers and podcasters soon, just like my church is apparently starting to do. I mean, because they're. We're all following Scientology, right? Yeah, we're all just eventual Scientology clones, God forbid.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:11:08] Anyway. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope. I do hope that, like, lots more ex Adventists come out, the community grows, and it just becomes a big thing. I'm ready to champion whoever's ready to come to the forefront. I'm got my cheerleading ready.

Closing Reflections: Books, Heroes, and Current Joys

John Dehlin [02:11:24] Okay, so final questions. What's something you're watching or reading lately that's bringing you joy or listening to Ooh, ooh, ooh.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:11:34] I read three books at a time. I read a novel, a memoir, and sort of like a self help or a history or something else. So right now, my self help or history or whatever is the Culting of America by Daniela Mastinjak Young. She's the cult or the knitting cult lady.

John Dehlin [02:11:55] Oh, yeah, she's brilliant.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:11:56] She's fabulous. And that's her second book. Her memoir was amazing. And so I'm reading the Culting of America. That's fantastic. The memoir I'm reading is like, religious trauma, self help plus memoir. That's Katherine Spearing's A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts. And she's so funny, and I love her. And then my novel, right now I'm reading Jonathan Franson's Crossroads. I love his writing style, and so he does good, multiple characters, which is what I want to do in my next novel. So I'm keeping really close eye. But it's also got a religious undertone of, like, church shenanigans going on there, so I'm enjoying it fully.

John Dehlin [02:12:40] Okay, tell us a hero or two of yours.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:12:44] Oh, my gosh. So right now, you know, I've been thinking so much recently about Anita Hill and. What was her name? Christine Blasphemy Ford. The original women who spoke out against our Supreme Court molesters and predators and how if they had been believed, particularly Anita Hill because she came first, we might not be in this situation in the United States at all. You know, and then, you know, just Gisele Pellicot and the Epstein, Virginia. Virginia Giuffre. I've just been thinking about all of them and how no one ever believes the women. No one ever. And even when they speak out, nothing happens. Nothing happens. And the boys club moves onward. And I just want to give them a shout out because they are brave women. And they. And I know that that's just a cheap word to say to describe the depth of what they go through just existing, but they have been inspiring me lately, greatly.

John Dehlin [02:13:53] Love it. And then what's lighting you up lately? Just other than reading and writing, what's bringing you joy?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:14:02] I am training for a half marathon in July, which I have not. I used to run ultramarathons and really long distances. I'm slow, but I can run forever. And so I'm getting back into it. So I'm super excited. I'm gonna run it in Napa, and. And which is a wonderful place that I love. And so the training is fun. Just the anticipation of it is fun. And it's a wine tasting marathon or something. I've never done, like, one where there's, like, a little party at the end or whatever. And so I'm excited about the social part of it. And what else am I doing that's fun? Well, coming out here was a blast. I can't tell you how fun this whole little trip has been for me, so that made me really happy.

Connecting with Mormon Stories and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [02:14:50] How did you. You applied to Mormon Stories? How did you.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:14:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:14:54] I can't imagine you've watched or listened to a lot. What made you apply?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:14:58] My editor sent it to me or my publisher editor, and he said, you know, there's an audition process, but you should try. And I was like, sure.

John Dehlin [02:15:08] That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you, editor.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:15:11] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:15:11] I love it. That, like, never. Mormon editors of. Of book companies are recommending ex cult members to interview with Mormon stories. That's amazing.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:15:22] I love it. I love it. I was trying to think I may have. I don't know if anybody wants to talk to speak out about him yet, but did you hear about. Oh, my God, Now I'm gonna not remember his name. Well, we won't take up our airtime. Cause I know. But I do have a cult guy that I haven't seen anyone do anything on who just got sentenced to life in prison. And I. I would love to find some victim who wants to talk and hook her up with all of you.

John Dehlin [02:15:50] Okay. All right. Well, cool. Well, that's fun. So good luck, sell your book, and we'll end by how can people follow you? And how can people support you?

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:16:04] Awesome. So, yeah, I will just show the book again. We've been talking about it the whole time, but. But it is holy. Sex, sin and secrets in the biggest church. No one knows. There is an audio version. I get to read it to you. So if you have the audio version, it's me. And there's an electronic Kindle version. There's the print, obviously. You can order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, get it from your bookstore, all of those things. You can even ask your library to order it, which people forget to do. But if you can't afford it, ask your library. They will get it. And then you can follow me on TikTok and Instagram. I am the Glory Hole. W H O L E and then I'm on substack. And I and I do different content on all the different things. So you might want to follow one or two instead of just one substack as Melissa Doogie Spy buyers. And if you want to support other than buying the book, you can be a paid subscriber on substack. I don't do a lot with my paid subscribers yet, but I would like to in the future start to build a whole catalog of stuff that's just for subscribers.

John Dehlin [02:17:20] I totally relate. It's so hard to do everything that's required on social media these days, but that's fun. Well, I'll make sure Brooklyn includes links to all those things in the show notes as well as to your book.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:17:34] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:17:34] I'm so delighted that you applied. I'm even exponentially more delighted to just meet you and get to know you. You're brilliant, you're courageous, you're a force. And I'm grateful that you would bless Mormon stories in our audience with your story. And we just are gonna be cheering you on and wishing you all the best in your journey.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:17:55] Thank you. Thank you. I have been so excited about this and we had a great day. Boy, we just used up our time and it flew by. And thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:18:03] It's almost inhumane what I do to people. Oh, it's six hours of interviews.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:18:09] I love it. I love it because then you get really deep and you don't feel like there's a time limit on all of that. So I hope lots of people leave us comments. I hope we have lots of ex administs coming out. And I think everyone who's ever been in a high control religion will probably identify with most of what we were talking about today for sure.

John Dehlin [02:18:27] Well, thanks again. Buy the book. The book is one more time.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:18:31] There we go. Holy disobedience.

John Dehlin [02:18:34] All right, thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:18:35] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:18:36] Thank you so much for coming on Mormon stories.

Melissa Duge Spiers [02:18:37] Absolutely. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:18:39] All right. And just really quickly email us@mormonstoriesmail.com you can apply@mormonstories.org apply if you donate to us. Thank you. If you don't donate to us and you want us to continue, MormonStories.org donate is the way you contribute. We are being sued by the Mormon Church for alleged trademark and copyright violations. We think my opinion is it's to silence and bankrupt us. If you want to support us in that, we have a legal fund set up@mormonstories.org legal. But mostly we just want you to live your best, happy, healthiest life. Please subscribe and like and comment. Comment that helps with the algorithms, but most importantly, pursue your own healing and growth however you can. That's why we do what we do. So thanks for joining us today. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Thanks to Brooklyn and Julia for all they do to help with our production, along with our board and Margi, of course. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.