Introducing Lloyd Evans and the Episode

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1086

Lloyd Evans [00:00:25] You.

John Dehlin [00:00:30] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 14, 2019, and we are back interviewing Lloyd Evans, the Reluctant Apostate. Lloyd is an ex Jehovah's Witness author, activist, and filmmaker.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] We spent several hours with Lloyd last week. He gave us the history of the Jehovah's Witness movement. And then we spent a significant amount of time talking about what it's like to be a Jehovah's Witness. Their doctrine, their theology, their practices, their beliefs, etc.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] To conclude my series with Lloyd, I wanted to spend some time just hearing his story. Lloyd has published a book, I think two books, maybe one's called the Reluctant Apostate. He followed up with a book called how to Escape from Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Lloyd has a YouTube channel. He is a popular blogger, and he's just a smart guy. And I have to credit my friend Jason Moore from Houston, my twin from a different mother who father and mother who turned me on to Lloyd. So without any further ado, Lloyd, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast.

Lloyd Evans [00:01:53] It's a pleasure to be back. Thank you. Obviously, I didn't make too much of an idiot of myself the first time, so let's be grateful for that.

John Dehlin [00:02:02] No, it was fascinating and brilliant, so not at all. All right, so let's just jump in, tell us your story. Were your parents born into Jehovah's Witness? Were they converts? So let's start there.

How Jehovah's Witnesses Entered His Family

Lloyd Evans [00:02:19] Neither were born in, although certainly on my dad's side, his mother embraced the religion when he was very young. In fact, it was on my dad's side that the religion first made landfall in my family. I've actually managed to pin down the year. It was 1953, based on some notes I got from a relative that my grandmother first got the knock on the door. And it was shortly after. She had lost both of her parents under quite tragic circumstances. So it kind of makes sense that under those circumstances, a group, you know, nice, smiling people on your doorstep telling you that you'll get to see all your loved ones again in a future paradise, I can understand why that would be appealing for her.

Lloyd Evans [00:03:12] And so she joined a religion. And although her husband, my granddad, wasn't so keen, she raised her children to be Jehovah's Witnesses. And then on my mother's side, neither of her parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, at least to begin with.

Lloyd Evans [00:03:32] The religion entered her side of the family through her. She had quite a tragic life, you could say, in her kind of young womanhood. Her first marriage ended in divorce due to her husband being gay and taking my mum as a trophy wife and being unfaithful to her and that kind of thing. So Mum then remarried and she remarried an alcoholic who. Who died tragically in a fire.

Lloyd Evans [00:04:09] And so with all of this turmoil and all of this heartache, again, you can understand why, you know, a group of people who come along and say, wouldn't you like to live in a world where there's no more misery and heartache and everyone lives forever? You can understand why that would be appealing. So my mother joined and. And yeah, she ended up meeting my dad and. And I was born. So that's how. That's how the religion entered my family.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] So your parents were in what? Towns? Town or towns in the uk.

Lloyd Evans [00:04:44] Okay. So my mother was raised in Eccles, which is like a suburb of Manchester in. In Northern England. And my dad was raised in Birkenhead, which is just over the Mersey from Liverpool. So, yeah, he wasn't too far away from the Beatles when they. When they were older age, that's exactly

John Dehlin [00:05:06] where my mind went. So how'd they meet?

Lloyd Evans [00:05:13] So Mum had. Mum was quite a social person. She was. She was always arranging parties. And dad. And this was around the time that dad was kind of really spreading his wings and. And dad was also quite a sociable person and kind of the life and soul of the party. And he would always be the one cracking jokes and that kind of thing.

Lloyd Evans [00:05:39] And so she just invited him to nearly all her parties because he was a fun guy to have around. And things ended up getting a little bit more serious than that. And she was living in a town called Wilmslow in. In a house that. In the same house where her husband had died in a fire.

Lloyd Evans [00:06:00] She obviously was living there still. And they ended up getting married in Wilmslow and joining Wilmslow congregation. And so when I grew up, I went to Wilmslow Congregation too. And the first four years of my life were spent in that house where the tragedy had unfolded. And then we moved to a different house which was actually closer to our Kingdom Hall.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] And where in your mom's sort of chronology of tragedies, when in your mom's chronology of tragedies did she join the Jehovah's Witness?

Lloyd Evans [00:06:33] Well, she got interested when she was in her first marriage, when she was married to someone who she later found out was gay. And this. This is interesting because I only found out about all of this when Mum. Many years later, when Mum was actually dying and we had a long conversation about her history and she filled in all these blanks because I only was aware that she'd had one husband before Dad. I didn't know that there were two.

Lloyd Evans [00:07:05] So Mum filled in all the details and a lot of what she told me I was later able to corroborate from reading the book Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz, who's a. Who left the religion having made it all the way to governing body member and then resigning. And he kind of documented some of the bizarre decisions that were made about sex during the 1970s. He mentioned that in 1972, for a brief period, homosexuality wasn't considered grounds for divorce. So in other words, the only grounds for adultery and hence divorce was sex between a man and a woman that was capable of producing offspring.

Lloyd Evans [00:07:54] So you could in theory be having a homosexual affair with someone and it wouldn't make any difference. And so. And in 1972, very briefly, that was the case. And so my mother was anxious to divorce her husband and she was going to her elders saying, you know, I want to move on, I want to marry a Jehovah's Witness husband. And they were telling her, no, you're not scripturally free to remarry. And they even went to the point of chasing away suitors who were interested in her because she was an attractive young woman.

Lloyd Evans [00:08:38] And this made her utterly disenchanted with the religion, so that she left behind Jehovah's Witnesses. And that's when she met her husband, who her next husband, who was the alcoholic and who ended up dying in the fire. He kind of swept her off her feet, at least to begin with.

Lloyd Evans [00:09:01] And it was when he died that she. She found that all of her, quote unquote, worldly friends who, who her and her husband had been close to, didn't want anything to do with her, you know, basically dropped her like a ton of bricks. Whereas all of her friends from when she'd been involved with Jehovah's Witnesses suddenly rallied round her and suddenly started love bombing her.

Lloyd Evans [00:09:29] And that impressed her so much that she ended up rejoining the religion, by which time the rules had changed to what they are now, which is that any kind of sexual impropriety is adultery and therefore grounds for divorce. And she was free obviously to get married to a good JW husband who she found in my father.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] You know, I just have to say, I'm looking up this book, Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz. I think it's every Mormon's, every sort of let's just say post Mormon's dream to have someone in the top levels of leadership write a tell all kind of biography.

Lloyd Evans [00:10:07] Yeah. I guess the equivalent would be the Quorum of Apostles. One of them. And writing a book. Yeah, that would probably be the equivalent. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] Yeah. So you guys are kind of lucky.

Lloyd Evans [00:10:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] To have that.

Lloyd Evans [00:10:22] Oh, it's. Listen, that book is, it was, it was instrumental in my later awakening. And I know that the same can be said for many, many who get out, because once you. It's not just the information it can sit inside, but also just the way it's written. It's written in a very, in a very kind of relaxed, kind of non confrontational, you could say Christian, you know, way. A way that's very kind of unassuming and just lets people make their own, reach their own conclusions. But the, the insight that Ray Franz had as someone who reached the very highest levels of the organization and saw everything unfolding with his own eyes, everything that he's saying just chimes with. With most Jehovah's Witnesses experiences, particularly those who've spent any time as elders or who have seen for themselves how things work the higher up you go.

John Dehlin [00:11:17] So that's amazing. Yeah, well, I'm buying it right now. So they have you to think, okay, so your parents get married and you're. Were they both. Did you get a sense that when they got married they were both devout Jehovah's Witnesses?

Lloyd Evans [00:11:36] Well, I obviously wasn't around when they got married.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] No. You have that sense, historically?

Lloyd Evans [00:11:42] Oh, definitely, yeah. Okay, so they got married in. Actually, my mum got baptized in. I think it was either 1974 or 1975. Which tells you a lot because we were talking about this in our last conversation about the hype surrounding, you know, that year and how they thought Armageddon was coming in that year.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] What year again?

Lloyd Evans [00:12:03] 1975.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] Okay, right, yeah. That's the year they got married.

Lloyd Evans [00:12:09] No, they got married. Mum got baptized.

John Dehlin [00:12:11] Oh, baptized. Okay.

Lloyd Evans [00:12:12] Okay. Shortly before. I'd have to check my notes as to exactly when, but they got married in 1977, October of 19. And I was born in 1979. So.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] Okay, 10 years after me.

Lloyd Evans [00:12:27] Yeah.

Jehovah's Witness Marriage and Community Life

John Dehlin [00:12:29] All right, so, so what, what, real quickly, what is a Jehovah's Witness marriage like?

Lloyd Evans [00:12:39] It's not all that out of the ordinary, obviously. There's no, how can I put it? They try to keep things relatively in moderation. They try to make sure that there isn't kind of crazy partying. The ceremony itself in most countries, I say Most countries. Because in some countries you're legally not allowed to get married in the Kingdom hall. It has to be in a registry office in a church.

Lloyd Evans [00:13:13] But in countries like the uk, where you are allowed to get married in a kingdom hall, you know, it's the same as always. The congregation turns up, the groom arrives, the bride arrives, and they have a talk given by an elder that they've selected, and then they'll have their marriage vows and then they'll disappear into a room and sign the registry book, and then it's announced that their husband and wife, and then everyone departs to another location and they have the party afterwards and everyone lets their hair down a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] No, no alcohol. Right?

Lloyd Evans [00:13:49] They do have alcohol. I think that's a difference between Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, isn't it? Because with Jehovah's Witnesses, we're allowed alcohol in moderation. So you can be disfellowshipped if it's found out that you are kind of getting drunk routinely, but you are allowed to drink in moderation as a Jehovah's Witness.

John Dehlin [00:14:10] Okay. And would you say the weddings are kind of boring or fun or somewhere in the middle?

Lloyd Evans [00:14:15] Well, I actually. It depends really. It really depends on what kind of wedding you go to. I was actually in a wedding band in my 20s, which tells you something. The fact that there are Jehovah's Witness wedding bands. I was a. Was a drummer and we did a few. A few Jehovah's Witness weddings. And some of them were good fun, you know, kind of what you would expect from any other wedding, apart from the fact that there's no smoking, people would get in trouble if they had too much to drink, etc.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] So what are your earliest memories of being a Jehovah's Witness?

Lloyd Evans [00:15:00] I guess the Kingdom hall, going to the meetings, going around on the ministry. I say going around on the ministry. You're taken on that from when you're in your push chair. So I guess I'm too. I can't remember exactly when I kind of was cognizant of the fact that I was being taken around strangers homes trying to persuade them to join my mum and dad's religion. But that's. That starts very early.

Lloyd Evans [00:15:30] At school, you are conscious of the fact that you're not just there to learn, per se. You're also there to teach other children your religion. You're even told this is your unique territory. The rest of the congregation can't get into your school.

Lloyd Evans [00:15:47] The only way your Classmates are going to have a chance of becoming Jehovah's Witnesses is if you preach to them. So you don't just go to school to learn, you go to school to teach. There's even videos that were shown at the last convention where young Witnesses are told portrayed standing up in class and correcting their teacher on the issue of evolution. So it's not a normal experience going to school as a Jehovah's Witness, because apart from this pressure to preach, you're also looking around at all your classmates thinking you're all going to die. If Armageddon comes tomorrow, which it probably will, and I'll get to survive, but you're all going to die.

Lloyd Evans [00:16:30] So it's not the healthiest approach to take with your peers. I find there's also a lot of bullying because obviously when you are a young Jehovah's Witness and from your youngest, from when, from your youngest years, you're taken round people's houses, inevitably some of those houses will be the homes of your classmates. So you have that awkward scenario where you knock on the door, the door opens and it's your school friend, mummy, Daddy, someone's at the door. And then the next. The next Monday, let's see that this happens at the weekend, the next Monday, you are terrified of going to school because you know that you're going to be mercilessly ridiculed for interrupting Jimmy on. On his Saturday morning. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] And that those things happen to you.

Lloyd Evans [00:17:25] Oh, yeah, definitely. Oh, school was just a nightmare for me. I absolutely hated it. I was. I was bullied a lot. And I think 80% of the bullying was due to my religious convictions. I was also a fairly odd kid. Stop. But 80% of the bullying was definitely due to my religion. And also the bullying, in a way intensifies your convictions because you're told, well, the fact that we're being.

Lloyd Evans [00:18:01] The fact that we're being persecuted proves that we're God's one true religion. If we weren't being persecuted, then there'd be a problem. So we should expect for you to be bullied when you go to school. You should, in fact, take some joy out of that, and especially when it's your teachers who are giving you problems. For example, one time I talk about this in my book, I was disciplined by my teacher for refusing to color in a poster that was advertising the Christmas fair for the school.

Lloyd Evans [00:18:33] And I said, well, that's against my religion. I can't do it. And the teacher, in front of all of my classmates, screeched Lloyd doesn't want to help the school, and sent me outside, bearing in mind this was wintertime, and made me stand in, like, a central location where everyone could see me standing there by myself in disgrace.

Lloyd Evans [00:18:59] And I thought, that's just not true. I do want to help the school. It's just that this is against my religion. So the unfair way in which I was treated reinforced the narrative. I was being told that, you know, we're going to be persecuted because we're God's one true religion.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] That's one of the brilliant things about fundamentalist religions is the smarter idea that when you're persecuted as a teen or as a kid, it gives you a sense of identity. It gives you a sense of, you know, valiancy, of courage, strength. And the effect is to psychologically, you know, at least for many, bond you and your commitment and your identity to this religion because you're a noble, persecuted warrior of truth. Right?

Lloyd Evans [00:19:50] Oh, and it has that effect, definitely. You. You feel as though you are shoulder to shoulder with the Jehovah's Witnesses who were incarcerated in concentration camps during the Second World War. You think, well, I'm just following in their footsteps, really.

Lloyd Evans [00:20:06] So, yeah, it was. It had the undesired effect of only making me more proud that I was a Jehovah's Witness and coupled with the indoctrination I was receiving. I talk in my book about one story called. I call it the Armageddon Drill of when I was.

Lloyd Evans [00:20:23] My dad made the phone ring, pretended to have a conversation, the gist of which was, Armageddon is here, and we need to. The congregation needs to assemble in a nearby forest, and everyone needs to get their things. And so I was totally taken in, and I ran upstairs and started packing my bag with rudimentary survival equipment, which I assumed I would need. I was into Enid Blyton at the time. Time. So in went the torch, in went the magnifying glass, in went the pen knife, in when the binoculars.

John Dehlin [00:20:58] Is that. Is that a author, mystery author, or what?

Lloyd Evans [00:21:01] Yeah. Enid blyton is like a 50s, hopelessly politically incorrect author from the 1950s who wrote children's adventures, most notably the famous Five. They were children who would go off and have adventures. And so I was into those books at the time. So this was a big adventure for me, but it was also the end of the world. And I really believed in that moment that Armageddon was. And the Armageddon was here.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Even though it was just a drill,

Lloyd Evans [00:21:28] I didn't know it was a Drill. But this is the thing most jehovah's witnesses. Well, 99% of all Jehovah's Witnesses go their entire life without ever experiencing Armageddon. But in that moment, at least in my head, I was experiencing Armageddon because I genuinely believed it was here. And that's something that most Jehovah's Witnesses don't get to say. So I ran downstairs expecting the front door to be open and the car engine to be whirring outside, and no such thing. Everyone was just stood there with big smiles on their faces because I'd fallen for it. Wow.

Growing Up as a Jehovah's Witness

John Dehlin [00:22:07] What do you mean, 99% never experience or never. What did you mean by that?

Lloyd Evans [00:22:13] What I mean is that Jehovah's Witnesses are waiting for something that's never going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Why did you say 99%?

Lloyd Evans [00:22:20] Because I'm probably. If it happened to me, if the Armageddon drill happened to me, it surely happened to someone else. You know, I'm sure in someone's family, a similarly kind of twisted father has come up with the same idea. You know, that was your dad's idea. Yeah. And in fairness to him, I think that he thought he was doing me good. I think. I think both him and my mum were raising me in the religion because they genuinely thought it was true, and they genuinely thought it was my best shot at salvation when Armageddon came. But they were wrong.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] It reminds me. I hate to draw this parallel, but it reminds me of what I've read about Jim Jones, how he would bring in punch at. You know, I guess religious services tell people that the end was near, that they needed to drink the punch because it was gonna be a part of their rapture or whatever. And the punch wasn't poisoned, but they were all conditioned to kind of think it was. And that that was an important part of conditioning people's brains for the ultimate sacrifice they were gonna be called to make. I may have that wrong, but that's just what my memory is. And it.

Lloyd Evans [00:23:40] The sort of obedience that's required of Jehovah's Witnesses. There were articles in 2013 which told witnesses that they had to be obedient to elders. Even if what they. Even if what the elders say doesn't make sense from a human standpoint, you still have to obey. Well, that sort of logic takes you all the way to Jonestown. It really does. I mean, how is it ever acceptable to obey, regardless of whether what you're being told to do makes sense?

John Dehlin [00:24:12] Right. Okay. So bullied as a kid did a lot of did. Did the traditional missionary work as Jehovah's Witness and did a, did a drill. What else? How else did being a Jehovah's Witness color inform your childhood and adolescence?

Lloyd Evans [00:24:36] Okay, so I mentioned that I hated school, and I just about kind of managed to make it through high school without being pulled out and homeschooled, which is actually what happened to my sister because she also got bullied and she.

Lloyd Evans [00:24:52] It caused her to have irritable bowel syndrome and all sorts of health problems. I was not that bad, but I was also really struggling with depression. But I just somehow managed to get through high school without opting for homeschooling, which I'm glad I did. And then at the end of high school, my parents said, well, if you want to go to college to get a better qualification, that will enable you to pioneer where we would accept that. And that's actually rare for Witness parents to do that. I think especially with my dad being an elder, that wouldn't have been acceptable today because certainly in the last few years they've really come down hard on higher education even further.

Lloyd Evans [00:25:41] And it was frowned on for me back then, but somehow my parents, being slightly more liberal, were able to make an exception. So I went to college for two years and studied arts, which was kind of a pointless qualification. I've not never really drawn on that qualification, to be honest. But it was during those two years that I started to spend more time with my friends who were Jehovah's Witnesses, who were pioneers. And as we, as I may have mentioned in our previous discussion, pioneers spend 70 hours per month doing the preaching work.

Lloyd Evans [00:26:17] And so I was kind of on my free day of college, kind of heading into Manchester and doing pioneer work. And quite frankly, a lot of it was also to do with my hormones because we've discussed, I think, or maybe we haven't, the sexual repression aspect.

John Dehlin [00:26:34] And let me, let me, let me ask about that. First of all, I want to. For listeners who didn't listen to your first several hours, I was shocked to learn that Job's Witnesses explicitly discourage higher education. You just made a reference to that, but I wanted to make it explicit. That's a next level severity that tops Mormonism. So that's severe. Let me ask you, just jumping back to your adolescence really quickly. I have two kind of questions at least. One was, did you ever have any rebellion streaks in you? Were you just the total obedient Jehovah's Witness boy, or did you ever kind of, you know, push the rules and rebel against the religion of your parents as a. As an adolescent and as a teenager,

Lloyd Evans [00:27:24] no, I was actually a very, very compliant Witness child. My sister was a bit more rebellious than I was. But just to illustrate, at college, even though I was extremely hormonal and had had a crush on a girl at college and had a crush on a girl who was a Jehovah's Witness, simultaneously, at one point, I was bundled into a closet with a girl who fancied me by my. By my fellow students, the idea being, oh, we're going to lock them in this closet so that they'll make out.

Lloyd Evans [00:28:01] And so I was in this situation in this darkened closet with this kind of blushing girl, and I actually apologize. This must have kind of really messed with her head. But I apologized to her, and with every ounce of my strength, I managed to get the door open and flee that situation. And I was quite proud of doing that because that's the textbook response that is expected of a Jehovah's Witness in that situation. You're supposed to be like Joseph fleeing Potiphar's wife in that situation, which is exactly how I. How I played it out. So I was very compliant as a JW child.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] So did you, like, ever try to smoking, you know, as a kid?

Lloyd Evans [00:28:44] No.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] Drugs or anything like that?

Lloyd Evans [00:28:48] Nothing of the sort, no.

John Dehlin [00:28:50] Did you. Did you ever make out with a girl, you know, any of that sort of thing?

Lloyd Evans [00:28:55] No. I thought about making out with lots of girls, as the story I've just told you illustrates. It never would have even occurred to me to actually, because you are expressly told that sex is just for married people, and you're only allowed to marry someone who is a Jehovah's Witness. And by the way, until that happens, you're not even allowed to masturbate. So with all of these kind of layers of sexual repression being kind of piled up on you, it really does mess with your head.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] So this is a really personal, direct question, but it's what we do on Mormon stories. So did you. Were you able to avoid masturbation as a kid, or did you. No one is, but just feel guilt and shame.

Lloyd Evans [00:29:44] I guess it's possible that you're. You can avoid it, but I certainly couldn't. But all that happens, of course, is that you masturbate and then you immediately feel terrible about it because you've been told it's a terrible, terrible thing. Then you pray really hard and you do lots of studying. You think, right, well, that's gonna be the last time. And of course, it Isn't the last time you just go through the whole cycle again later on?

John Dehlin [00:30:09] So, yeah, do you guys have any sort of confession? Like in mormonism, you've got 12 year old boys and girls behind a closed door with the bishop confessing masturbation.

Lloyd Evans [00:30:19] I've heard about that. I've heard about that, yeah. What's that process called again?

John Dehlin [00:30:25] Worthiness interviews.

Lloyd Evans [00:30:26] Worthiness interviews, that's the one, yeah. No, no, I've heard of, I've heard of witnesses going to elders because they feel, feel guilt over masturbation. And I even interviewed on my channel someone who, who did that and was actually given a calendar, believe it or not, masturbation calendar, to kind of prove that he hadn't masturbated.

Lloyd Evans [00:30:56] Which is just an astonishing degree of control over one's sex life. I somehow managed to avoid, although I often thought about going to elders about it, I somehow managed to avoid doing that, for which I'm extremely grateful. Because you hear horror stories of particularly young women. We don't have the worthiness interviews, but we do have situations where, for example, there will be a judicial committee because elders will discover that, let's say a young witness couple have had sex before marriage. And what they will do is they will interrogate both of the individuals with quite often extremely personal, inappropriate, prying, lewd questioning. That's very invasive and that happens an awful lot.

Lloyd Evans [00:31:56] It's not worthiness interviews, it's more of kind of a judicial process. But give elders that kind of power and they'll find a way to get off on questioning people on that basis.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] And you're insinuating that for some there's some actual sexual fantasy or gratification involved.

Lloyd Evans [00:32:16] Oh, there has to be. There just has to be. I mean, in my own case, this happened later on in the story. But I, after I got married, my marriage was on the rocks at one point because all of these kind of hang ups and sexual repressions had kind of carried over into my married life.

Lloyd Evans [00:32:39] So that I was continuing my kind of way of dealing with my sexuality as it were online, you know, chatting and communicating with women who I didn't plan to meet, but kind of fantasized about meeting. And obviously masturbating was involved as well. And I was married at this point. And when my wife found out about it, she was absolutely mortified.

Lloyd Evans [00:33:07] And we decided to go down the route of acting, of having it dealt with judicially. So I wrote a big long letter explaining in detail what had happened so that I wouldn't have to go into detail during the judicial committee, because all of the details there already, and I still had to go through all of these questions of an extremely invasive nature. Now, I guess it's a stretch to say that they were getting off on those questions, but you have to ask, what other reason would there be to ask in that level of detail when you already have the facts in front of you?

John Dehlin [00:33:52] Sure. In our church, the rationale is just that you need to confess and forsake your sins. And unless you fully confess them, you haven't really fully repented. So it's just this idea that maybe by confessing them fully in full detail, you feel the full weight of guilt and shame, and you've been fully honest, and that. That allows you. That gives you what you need to kind of fully repent and move on. Maybe.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:20] But you've been fully. But you've been fully honest with people who, in all truth, do not have any power over you whatsoever or shouldn't have any power over you. And the way I put it in my book is I may as well have confessed to my local storekeeper or my local postman, because who were these individuals?

John Dehlin [00:34:39] That's the mindset after, but not the mindset during.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:42] But you do actually look back, though, and think, what was I. What was I thinking? You know, telling these random guys who had no right to that information.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Yeah.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:53] But who were nevertheless interrogating me about my body and what I'd done with my body? What was I doing divulging my information to them? And it does leave you frustrated, but obviously, at the time, my mind was not my own.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] Sure. Okay. Let's jump back to your story. So you were a righteous, faithful youth. And I'm just. I just have to say, for all our sexual repression, we made out. I made out with lots of girls. You know, you couldn't touch their breasts or their, you know, anything below the belt, and they couldn't touch you, but you could definitely just make out and make out and kiss and make out, you know, and BYU students are famous for that. So there's an area where we had it a little bit better than you guys, I guess.

Lloyd Evans [00:35:48] Yeah, definitely.

Teenage Doubts and Suppressing Questions

John Dehlin [00:35:50] Okay, now, one other question. In your teenage years, did you ever kind of question whether Jehovah's Witness movement was true? Did you ever question your belief? Did you ever try. Within Mormonism, we're challenged to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and receive a witness from the Holy Ghost that the book is true, and therefore the Joseph Smith is true. And. And then we're always Pressured to bear our testimonies, which means you go up in front of youth or adults and you basically say, I know the church is true. I know this church is true. And in that sense, there's the pressure to know it's true, but more importantly, the pressure to say that you know it's true. And somehow that's a really important indoctrination process. Did you guys have that pressure to gain a testimony and did you ever have serious questions or doubts about the church as a teen?

Lloyd Evans [00:36:47] Prior to college, we didn't have to give testimony. Once you get baptized, I guess the whole kind of confirmation and committing oneself to the faith happens when you get baptized. And after that, there are frequent opportunities when you go to the weekly meetings to give comments during the meetings which kind of affirm how seriously you're taking it.

Lloyd Evans [00:37:13] Obviously, what goes on in your head privately can be something altogether different. But in my own case, throughout my teenage years, I absolutely took it all seriously and believed passionately that what I had was the truth. It wasn't until I was sort of 1920 that things changed. And they changed because I had been asked to. I went to a convention.

Lloyd Evans [00:37:41] I mentioned in our last conversation that Jehovah's Witnesses have annual conventions. And at these conventions, it used to be the case. Not necessarily the case nowadays, but it used to be the case that they would release new publications. It was kind of the highlight of the convention is, oh, what book are they going to release?

Lloyd Evans [00:38:00] And at the 1999 God's prophetic word District convention, they released a book called Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy, which was kind of like the latest, greatest kind of interpretation of end times prophecy for Jehovah's Witnesses. So I was very excited and took it upon myself to devour the book almost immediately. But as I got towards the end of the book, something very unusual happened. I found myself consciously disagreeing with the rationale and the logic in interpreting certain verses. And it just didn't make sense to me. And I was so unnerved by the act of consciously disagreeing that I couldn't even bring myself to kind of make a note in the book.

Lloyd Evans [00:38:55] I couldn't even bring myself to put a question mark. My solution was because I wanted to kind of leave some indication that I didn't agree. And my solution was to fold the page over and make like a triangle of the page just so that I would know. This page is weird. Let's move on to the next one. And I think it happened like four or five pages. I ended up doing that. But that was like my first act of rebellion.

Lloyd Evans [00:39:26] So I was. Was starting to wake up at that age. But then shortly thereafter, When I was 21, my mother died of breast cancer. And of course, as a Jehovah's Witness, the way you interpret death, particularly if someone close to you dies, is, well, they're not really dead. They're still alive in Jehovah's memory.

Lloyd Evans [00:39:54] And the way for me to see this person again is to stick as closely as possible to the organization so that I'm guaranteed to be there to survive through Armageddon and to be there when, in this case, my mum gets resurrected. I'm going to be there to welcome her. And as far as she's concerned, no time will have passed, she'll have just fallen asleep, and then the next thing she knows, there I am welcoming her. I'm determined to be there. And. And if that means putting all of my doubts to one side, forgetting they exist. In the Book of Mormon they have that song, the Book of Mormon musical.

Lloyd Evans [00:40:30] They have that song. Turn it off. It's exactly the same for Jehovah's Witnesses. You just turn off those doubts and you pretend that they don't exist.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] And can you tell us kind of the character of the doubts? Was it just different interpretations of prophecy? What?

Lloyd Evans [00:40:51] Yeah, so, yeah, it was just. It was internally inconsistent interpretations of Bible prophecy. So, for example, in one prophecy, Rome, the ancient power of Rome, ends up becoming Anglo America. They call it the Anglo American world power. Power. Britain and America acting together as they did in World War I and World War II. And then in another prophecy, also referred to in Daniel, Rome ends up becoming Nazi Germany. And I was thinking, why would God inspire a prophet or multiple prophets even to think of Rome in that way? So that in one part of his inspired word, Rome becomes Anglo America, and in another part of his inspired word, Rome becomes the nemesis of Anglo America. It makes zero sense. So that was.

John Dehlin [00:41:56] These were prophet. These were interpretations written by former church leaders, is that right?

Lloyd Evans [00:42:01] No, this. This was in the official book that I picked up at that convention.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] Contradictions within the same book, you're saying?

Lloyd Evans [00:42:12] Indeed, yeah. So that's why I. That's why I couldn't bring myself to agree with it. And it genuinely unsettled me because in my mind, everything from the governing body was supposed to make perfect sense, but clearly this didn't. And my only solution was to just kind of have it in the furthest recesses of my mind and try not to think about it.

John Dehlin [00:42:33] Because with your mom Passing away. You really want to see her again?

Lloyd Evans [00:42:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:37] You want to be there at her resurrection.

Lloyd Evans [00:42:39] So that must be something I've overlooked. You know, maybe the governing body will receive new lights as the closer we get to Armageddon, and it will be corrected. And you go through all of these mental acrobatics to make the square fit.

Ministerial Training and Becoming an Elder

John Dehlin [00:42:56] Okay, so you put it all on a shelf and you turn it off and you're around what age?

Lloyd Evans [00:43:04] So that was between the ages of 19 and 21. I was 21 when mum died.

John Dehlin [00:43:09] Okay.

Lloyd Evans [00:43:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:11] So how did that shelf, how did that turning it off end up? What happened?

Lloyd Evans [00:43:17] I really took the religion seriously. And in my congregation we had a rather unusual situation where there were a lot of elders. Obviously, elders are different in Jehovah's Witnesses. In Jehovah's Witnesses, you have to try quite hard in most countries to be an elder.

Lloyd Evans [00:43:36] Most, the minimum number of elders you can have in a congregation is three. Most congregations will have, let's say, I don't know, 10 elders. In my congregation, we had 18. So there were very few opportunities for me to help the congregation, in my view. And I wanted to do more. I wanted to spread my wings.

Lloyd Evans [00:44:01] I managed. I expressed my issues to our circuit overseer and he arranged for me to be assigned to a neighboring congregation that had only three elders. So the idea would be that I would go there and help the congregation as a ministerial servant.

Lloyd Evans [00:44:19] And while I was there, I was accepted for ministerial training school, which is a big deal for, or was a big deal for Jehovah's Witnesses. It since changed. They've changed it to the School for Kingdom Evangelized School for Kingdom Evangelizers. But back then, the ministerial training school was like a big deal for young men to be accepted. So it was basically like a two month, very rigorous study course where you go through courses and you take exams and you. You prepare speeches for the class and that kind of thing. And at the end you get a diploma. And so I went through that process. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] Okay, so you were on track to advance in leadership in the church. That sounds good.

Lloyd Evans [00:45:10] Well, yeah, it sounds good if you believe it, you know, and. And I did believe it at that time. And there were one or two kind of red flags at the Ministerial training school. I can remember at one point we were told we had our Insight on the Scriptures books in front of us. And Insight on the Scriptures is like a double volume encyclopedia that's written by Watchtower and it's like an A to Z of Bible subjects. And Bible characters and Bible places, which basically explains everything about the Jehovah's Witness view of the Bible. And on one page, we were asked to actually cross out a sentence.

Lloyd Evans [00:45:56] And this was, like, sacrilege, because bear in mind how I'd previously thought of the Daniel book when I'd encountered something I didn't agree with, and I couldn't even bring myself to write a question mark. And here I was with. With spiritual food from the faithful slave, being asked by our instructor to cross out a sentence because apparently it had been. There'd been a revised understanding of that particular teaching.

Lloyd Evans [00:46:23] And I can just remember thinking, why. Why just us? Why are we, like, as a class of 22 students in A. In a course that's being held in Dudley in England? Why are we being asked to do this? Why aren't all of Jehovah's Witnesses being asked to do this? If this is genuinely from the faithful slave? So things like that happened, which, again, you just kind of put it to one side.

Lloyd Evans [00:46:54] But after ministerial training school, or not that long after. Well, first of all, I met my wife. And that was because our reunion a year after the ministerial training school took place in Croatia, because one of our students was from Croatia, and we all decided that we'd go across Europe to visit him. And that was where I met my wife, who is Croatian, and hence why I now live in Croatia, because we ended up moving back there.

Lloyd Evans [00:47:24] But at the time, because I'd been assigned by Watchtower out of Mts. To the congregation I previously been in, that was classed as an official assignment from the organization. So I convinced my wife to actually come uproot and come to the UK while we were courting. And then eventually we got married, and. And not long after we got married, I was appointed as an Elder.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] Wonderful. So the advancement continues. What's not to love?

Lloyd Evans [00:47:59] You make it sound like it's. Yeah, in a way, I did love it. I did love being appointed an Elder. It was. It was something I'd been reaching out for. But obviously, when you get to this side of indoctrination, you realize it was really no big deal. You know, it's just.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] Did you say you have to get married to become an Elder?

Lloyd Evans [00:48:21] No, you can be. You can be an Elder whether you're married or unmarried.

John Dehlin [00:48:24] Okay. But at some point, you also got married.

Lloyd Evans [00:48:28] Yeah, So I got married shortly before being appointed an Elder.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] So talk about your courtship and how important, you know, commitment to the Jehovah Witness movement was to both you and your fiance.

Lloyd Evans [00:48:41] Oh, it was very Important. I kind of. One of my criteria for. For meeting someone who I would marry was, well, they need to take the truth seriously, and preferably, they need to be a pioneer, because, you know, I don't. You know, I've got ambitions here, and I want to be thinking about being an elder, and I want to maybe consider being a circuit overseer at some point. So, no, they've got to be pioneering.

John Dehlin [00:49:09] And a circuit overseer is someone who oversees multiple congregations, right?

Lloyd Evans [00:49:14] Indeed, Indeed.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] So dream of coming to the US and joining the council someday.

Lloyd Evans [00:49:22] You know what? That was in the back of my mind, I was thinking, if I'm, you know, especially. That's it. When I was having my initial doubts, I was sharing them with another Jehovah's Witness who said, maybe. He said, maybe you are one of the anointed, and maybe the fact that you've discovered this means that someday there will be new light and it will be along the lines of what you've already discovered. And that kind of played in the back of my mind so that even though I couldn't bring myself to say that I was of the anointed, it just seemed way too presumptuous to say, oh, I am one of a very small number who get to go to heaven.

Lloyd Evans [00:50:04] It did play in my mind that maybe at some point in the future I might. And who knows, you know, maybe that would be the time to start thinking about moving in that direction. So I did allow that degree of arrogance, I would say, to kind of seep into my thinking.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] And that's got to be in the mind of all devout Jehovah's Witnesses. And we talked about this in the last episode, this teaching about the 144,000, the anointed, and this delicate balance modern Jehovah Witnesses have to play, which is to have that be a motivating force for righteousness and devotion. But at the same time, the church having to limit how many people are officially acknowledged as being anointed because it's pretty easy to fill up 144,000 after several decades of a church growing and thriving.

Lloyd Evans [00:50:57] Indeed.

John Dehlin [00:50:59] About false modesty and humility, but at the same time aspiring that maybe you're one of the ones. And I'm sure you weren't the only boy or girl with that aspiration, right?

Lloyd Evans [00:51:11] Oh, indeed. But if you found out that someone now believe that they were of the anointed, your first thought wasn't, oh, well, that makes total sense. Yeah. I can imagine them ruling in heaven with Christ for, you know, your first Thought was, oh, really? That's what they think, is it? You know, so whether that kind of played into my aversion to declaring myself to be one of the anointed, the fact that I didn't want to be, you know, elevating myself and making myself a target for people to kind of point fingers and say, you know, who does he think he is? I don't know. But I just.

Lloyd Evans [00:51:50] I could never bring myself to say, oh, I'm. I'm so special that even though, you know, the majority of the millions of Jehovah's Witnesses are going to be on Paradise Earth, I'm one of the very small number who are going to be ruling over them in heaven with Jesus. I just couldn't bring myself to say it.

John Dehlin [00:52:08] Yeah, okay. But it was in your mind. Okay, so you get married and any funny stories about your courtship, about, like, you're not allowed to have premarital sex or mess around, but you are, obviously hormones are raging and you're dating this woman.

Marriage, Restrictions, and Crisis of Conscience

Lloyd Evans [00:52:25] I guess I've got to be careful at this point because obviously I'm bringing in my wife, you know, who she's probably. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:34] So only what you're comfortable saying.

Lloyd Evans [00:52:36] Yeah, no.

John Dehlin [00:52:38] So it would be interesting just to hear what it's like to be a Jehovah's Witness teen or young adult. You're not supposed to have any sexual intimacy at all, and yet you're dating and you're spending a lot of time together and you're playing.

Lloyd Evans [00:52:54] I will. I will tell this story. We met up with. This was very early in our. In our courtship. She came to the uk. This is before she'd actually officially moved to the uk. She visited the UK with some friends from her congregation, and we spent some time in London kind of staying with Jehovah's Witness families who kind of gave us accommodation and that kind of thing. So it was all done very kind of cheaply because we were all broke.

Lloyd Evans [00:53:28] But on one of the trips out into London, Deanna and I had been holding hands and having. And kissing. And that is. In. In theory, that's supposed to be okay. I mean, as long as you're not. As long as you're not having sex, in. In theory, you should be able to kiss as a courting couple. But it tends to vary depending on the culture. So whereas it might be acceptable in one country or in one congregation of one country, literally just moving to a different congregation or moving to a different country, things could be very different. And so Diana and I were holding hands and kissing.

Lloyd Evans [00:54:12] And then she went back to Croatia after the end of the trip. And I later found out that she'd got in trouble with her elders for kissing me. And it got to the point where there was even communication with my elders. So I went through the whole situation of having to speak to my elders because I was only a ministerial servant at this point.

Lloyd Evans [00:54:34] And they were actually quite bemused that Diana's elders had made a big deal about this because again, it varies from country to country. And I think Croatia is fairly. The way it was described to me by one Croatian circuit overseer is that Croatia is fairly spiritually immature.

Lloyd Evans [00:54:53] They're not as established in the truth, and that's why they make some funny decisions. But Diana got a whole load of grief just for kissing me from her elders. And at one point she was thinking that she was going to be taken, she was going to be removed from being a pioneer, which thankfully it didn't come to that, or we were thankful at the time. But yeah, that's another oddity of the religion. Not just the sexual repression before you meet someone, but also the sexual repression after you meet someone and the fact that the way the rules on sex are enforced can vary from one congregation to the next.

John Dehlin [00:55:33] Yeah. And this, this touches on two really important themes, I think, for all fundamentalist religions. And it goes back to Stephen Hassan's you know, bite model and the way unhealthy organizations, or you can call them cults if you want, they have to control behavior. And it seems like a really important reason for controlling behavior is you need people to feel, you know, and I'm sorry just to kind of go off on an aside, but Christianity relies fundamentally on people feeling unworthy. It need. Yeah, it needs you to feel bad about yourself.

Lloyd Evans [00:56:13] It needs to set impossible goals that you'll never fully fulfill, you know, so that you constantly chasing your tail.

John Dehlin [00:56:20] Yeah, right. You need to feel bad about yourself because there needs to be a savior.

Lloyd Evans [00:56:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] Just to make you feel better, to do whatever is needed for you to feel better, to save you, because you need or you need to give your devotion to this religion. And guilt and shame becomes a really important part of that. So they need to control your behavior, get you feeling guilty so that you feel like you need the church. And so again, these controls over masturbation, over petting, over healthy, normal sexuality, number one, is a key mechanism that the church requires to obtain your devotion. Right. Yeah. But then it also really can mess up for many their self esteem, but also their sex life once they actually do get married. Yeah.

Lloyd Evans [00:57:10] Which is exactly what happened to me.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] Okay, so what happens next? So you get. You get married, you're an Elder. Everything seems like you're living the Jehovah Witness dream.

Lloyd Evans [00:57:22] Well, when I was made an elder, I was initially very excited about having that position because it felt as though this was my opportunity to stamp my own kind of individuality on what it means to be an elder and to make sure that rather than kind of lording it over people, I was just genuinely helping people as best I could. And I felt that I, as well, had maybe a good way of presenting, of communicating and giving talks and that kind of thing. And people seem to enjoy my talks on the platform. So I felt like I could bring something maybe a little bit different than most elders and just try to liven things up a little bit.

Lloyd Evans [00:58:09] But then very almost immediately after I was made an elder, I was made aware of this situation in our congregation. And I don't know how much detail I should go into because it's all rather tedious. But bottom line, the coordinator of our body of elders, who's like the top guy on a body of elders, he was using, or trying to use a rule, it's called the marking rule, to exact vengeance on his sister, who had just joined the congregation after her marriage had fallen apart.

Lloyd Evans [00:58:46] And he didn't approve of the fact that she was dating someone so soon, someone in our congregation so soon after her divorce. In fact, before the divorce papers had come through, she was in a new relationship. And because his sister had defied his advice, he tried to get her marked, which is like a soft form of shunning where. Whereby when you come to the meetings and you. You do the preaching work that the. The congregation still gets to speak to you, they're just not allowed to associate with you. They're not allowed to socialize with you. And so he was trying to wield this punishment on his own sister.

Lloyd Evans [00:59:31] And I was kind of. As a new member of the body of elders, I was tasked with, number one, finding out whether this was appropriate. And I very quickly reached the conclusion that it wasn't appropriate because it wasn't in line with what the requirements were for marking. But once my feelings were kind of disregarded and my advice ignored and we went ahead with marking them, my job then became to make sure that everyone fell in line with this direction. And I was even tasked with sitting down with one of the ministerial servants who we knew was still associating with this couple and telling him basically, that if he didn't fall in line with what the elders wanted, he would quickly find himself no longer a ministerial servant.

Lloyd Evans [01:00:20] So that's kind of the lowest it got for me. When I think back in terms of regrets and guilt as an elder, I continue to feel guilty that I allowed my own convictions to kind of be swept aside to the degree where even though I knew it was the wrong decision, I was still enforcing it and being a yes man.

Lloyd Evans [01:00:44] But I continued to have problems with this coordinator because he was basically using his position in the congregation to make people's lives miserable and to offer counsel, which meant basically berating people and telling them that they weren't doing enough. And I actually started. I found myself in this strange situation where because I knew that there were other elders who felt the same way I did, it was basically put on my shoulders to orchestrate this, the removal of this individual from his position, which I failed at doing quite spectacularly for reasons I won't go into. But around the time that I failed in.

Lloyd Evans [01:01:34] In getting him removed as the coordinator, things came to a head in my private life with my wife. And I knew that if I stayed in the congregation, the coordinator who just won this battle against me, I knew that he would use the opportunity to exact vengeance.

Lloyd Evans [01:01:55] So we moved congregations back to my original congregation in Wilmslow. And that's when I wrote the letter and posted it through and said, these are all the things that I've done. I'm really, really sorry. I accept any punishment that's coming my way.

Lloyd Evans [01:02:12] And they didn't disfellowship me. They gave me what's called a reproof, which is where you. An announcement is made. Well, depending on the type of reproof, an announcement is made saying, Lloyd Evans has done something wrong. We're not going to say what, and you're restricted from commenting at the meetings for a period of months.

Lloyd Evans [01:02:37] So during these restrictions, my wife and I decided that we would move back to Croatia and basically start afresh. We start on a blank canvas and I would try and work on my spirituality, try and get back to being this kind of up and coming elder again.

Lloyd Evans [01:03:00] And I was warned by a friend of mine who had spent time in non English congregations trying to learn other languages. He said, lloyd, don't do it, because when you go to Croatia, you're not going to know the language. And as a result of that, you're going to suffer spiritually. And right now you need to be, you know, strengthening yourself spiritually. And I was like, no, no, everything's going to be Fine.

Lloyd Evans [01:03:28] I'm going to. I love Jehovah, and I'm going to get back my spirituality and I'm going to learn Croatian. So that won't be a problem. Still haven't fully learned Croatian, by the way. And what he predicted exactly happened. So within a few months, I'd concluded that I actually wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, because I was just sitting there in these meetings that were in Croatian, not understanding a word of what was being said. It was like the kind of Charlie Brown, you know, teacher.

Lloyd Evans [01:04:04] I just didn't understand it. And this gave me kind of breathing space to just in my seat there at the Kingdom hall to just think, what do I believe? You know, never mind what all these people believe. What do I actually believe? And one day I stayed back from the meeting altogether.

Lloyd Evans [01:04:24] I think I was slightly ill or maybe I feigned illness. And I wrote down a list. I thought, I'm going to write down a list of all the things I don't agree with. And a lot of those things were things I'd already, all those years back, found in the Daniel book. But there were a few other things as well. And it ended up being nine things on this list.

Lloyd Evans [01:04:46] I just kind of looked at the list and thought, if I've been able to put pen to paper and come up with nine things that I disagree with about this religion, clearly I'm not a Jehovah's Witness. And it was from that point forward, really, that I started to kind of negotiate myself out of the religion.

John Dehlin [01:05:06] Okay, so what year was this?

Lloyd Evans [01:05:09] So this was the beginning of 2010.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] Okay, so about nine years ago, when you were how old?

Lloyd Evans [01:05:17] 30.

John Dehlin [01:05:19] Okay, so really quickly you mentioned that that book written by a former. By a former member of the Governing Council. Remind us the name of that book again.

Lloyd Evans [01:05:31] Crisis of Conscience. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:35] By. By Raymond Franz. And that the only book that kind of comes to mind for me is, for Mormons is a book called no Man Knows My History, which was written by the niece of one of our former prophets. And that book was written in 1945. So this book, Crisis of Conscience, had been written, as you say, in what year again?

Lloyd Evans [01:05:56] I think it was. I think the first edition was something like 1986 or something.

John Dehlin [01:06:01] So that book had been around for a couple decades by the time you have your faith crisis.

Lloyd Evans [01:06:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] What had you been taught about that book?

Lloyd Evans [01:06:08] I knew. I knew about it. I didn't know about. I knew that there had been. Well, I knew that there were apostates, full stop. But I knew that one apostate was actually a former governing body member and he'd written this book, and we absolutely shouldn't read it. It's like the book that we don't read. So I always, always avoided it, even though I. In the back of my mind, I knew it existed.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] And again, this, this goes to the bite model, Stephen Hassan's bite model, where, you know, cults tend to control information, so you have the information there, but for decades you ignore it because you're taught that it's evil and dangerous. Right.

Lloyd Evans [01:06:50] I think there is like an equivalent crisis of conscience with Mormonism. Isn't. Isn't there, like, wasn't there like some research done by someone who wrote a letter?

John Dehlin [01:07:00] Yeah, yeah, that was B.H. roberts. He wasn't in the highest governing bodies. He never made it to an apostle. And that book was hidden from Mormons for a long, long time. So much harder. Not. Not a published, publicly published.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:15] Wasn't there like a letter written? I'm thinking of a letter that was written by someone who was querying the history or something.

John Dehlin [01:07:22] Yeah, that's B.H. roberts.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:23] Oh, right. Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:25] But he. But he never published like a tell all biography where he denounces the truthfulness of the church.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:32] It was more he died kind of in a little bit obscurity with people not knowing that he had had these problems until it came out later.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:42] And is that not like a document that will be in the back of the minds of Mormons thinking we couldn't read it.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Overwhelming with Fawn Brodie's book or with the Tanners, which were these, you know, Mormon crit, ex Mormon critics of the 60s and 70s and 80s, and Sandra Tanner still lives today. Mormons would have heard of the Tanners growing up or when they were serving on missions, and they would be told, the Tanners are angry ex Mormons, stay away from them. So we would have heard of the Tanners and we would have heard of Fawn Brody's book. No man knows my history. And today, of course, you know, Mormons would hear about John Dehlin or Mormon Stories podcast or Jeremy Runnels and the CES letter.

Lloyd Evans [01:08:26] That's the one. The CES Letter. That's what I was thinking of.

John Dehlin [01:08:29] Yeah. Jeremy was never a leader in the church.

Lloyd Evans [01:08:32] Right. But is that not like a document where once you read it, your faith begins to unravel?

John Dehlin [01:08:38] Oh, yeah, okay.

Lloyd Evans [01:08:39] Right.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] I'm just saying I'm trying to draw a parallel between Fawn Brody's book, which is the classic book that would Take people out of the Church.

Lloyd Evans [01:08:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:50] Published decades and decades and decades ago. It sounds like, you know, Raymond Franz's book Crisis of Conscience would be the equivalent to that book for the Jehovah's Witness. And I just wanted to make sure and draw that parallel that you would have known growing up, but never have read it because you were warned against reading it.

Lloyd Evans [01:09:08] Yeah, it's a torpedo to the religion. When you read it, you'd really have to be. Have some very, very powerful cognitive dissonance to make your way through it and not think, oh, good grief, I've been lied to.

Deciding to Leave the Jehovah's Witnesses

John Dehlin [01:09:24] Okay, so you're making. So 10 years ago, right. You're making this list of doubts and concerns you have while you're living in Croatia, Right?

Lloyd Evans [01:09:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:34] Okay, so how do you proceed? I'm on the edge of my seat.

Lloyd Evans [01:09:38] Well, I was in the situation where I was married to a Jehovah's Witness who, you know, and we were still fairly, fairly early in. Into our marriage, so we still hadn't, you know, really given thought to children, but that was certainly, you know, a possibility at least. And here I was kind of deciding that I no longer believe. So all of a sudden you have all of these issues of, well, what's going to happen to Deanna? Is our marriage on the rocks? What do we do if we fear

John Dehlin [01:10:10] that she might leave you?

Lloyd Evans [01:10:11] Oh, definitely. In fact, I can remember one of the things that she said when we first met or when we. Maybe when we first got married, was the only reason I would ever stop loving you is if you stop loving Jehovah. And so she said that to me once. And so in the back of my mind, I was. I was thinking, okay, leaving Jehovah's Witnesses means I'm probably going to end up getting divorced. And I. I never got diagnosed, so I can't be certain, but I had what I believe was something approximating a nervous breakdown.

Lloyd Evans [01:10:48] I remember there was lots of drinking and lots of. Couldn't get out of bed and just not wanting to exist for a while. And there were lots of. There were lots of milestones that I had to go through as well, such as, you know, first telling my dad, oh, Dad, I don't, you know, I don't think it's God's organization.

John Dehlin [01:11:08] What was that like? So tell your dad before you. Who's the first person you told?

Lloyd Evans [01:11:14] My wife. And I had to do that in writing. I was so stressed about it, but I had to write her a letter.

John Dehlin [01:11:22] Okay, so you write her a letter.

Lloyd Evans [01:11:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:25] And what does it say, is it long? Is it short? Does it give details?

Lloyd Evans [01:11:30] It gives detail. It's fairly long. Yeah. It's explaining because I didn't want her to think that it was just me making some kind of excuse to leave her, you know. Oh, you're just saying this because you want to get out of the marriage. No, I want to stay with you. I love you. I want to make this work. But here's the problem I'm having, you know, and that was very much the tone of the letter. And I even said in that letter, I don't think I want to be a Jehovah's Witness anymore.

John Dehlin [01:12:00] What were your main reasons for not believing? Can you just list what were the main five or ten reasons?

Lloyd Evans [01:12:10] Well, in my mind, I couldn't be in a religion that I didn't think was true. And if there were multiple things that were logically inconsistent, then therefore the religion itself wasn't the truth. And they were mostly things of a theological nature. But there were one or two other things as well. Such as? I couldn't. I was. Even though I didn't class myself as an atheist, I believed in evolution.

Lloyd Evans [01:12:39] I thought that the organization was wrong on that. I thought the organization was wrong with their stance on higher education. And there were lots of theological issues as well that I couldn't agree with. This was all very naive, but compared to what I know now about the organization, I was literally just on the tip of the iceberg. I hadn't even at this point, gone on JW Facts, which is that's when things really start to unravel.

Lloyd Evans [01:13:11] JW Facts is like an online version almost, of Crisis of Conscience, where. But instead of having everything in a book, you have it on a website and, you know, you have all these tabs which are alluding to things that completely dismantle the beliefs. So this was even before that, and I'd already managed to, through my own kind of logical thinking, realized that it couldn't be God's one true religion. And. And having reached that realization, I felt I would be a fraud to go out to people's homes and try to convince them to join a religion I didn't believe myself. And I certainly didn't see the point in wasting hours of my life going to Kingdom hall meetings.

Lloyd Evans [01:13:54] So I reached the conclusion I want. What needed to happen was I needed to become what's called inactive, which is where you are still technically one of Jehovah's Witnesses. You just don't go to any of the. Any of the meetings, and you don't count time on the Ministry.

Resources for Doubters and Going Public

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1087

John Dehlin [00:00:31] So in 2009, what were the resources available to a doubting, questioning Jehovah's Witness? Were there podcasts? Were there websites? Were there Reddit groups? Were there email, email forums, Facebook groups? Were there famous known ex Jehovah's Witness, sort of evangelists or missionaries? What resources were available to you 10 years ago or not?

Lloyd Evans [00:00:58] I don't remember YouTube being a massive thing back then, but there was obviously crisis of conscience. There was JW facts and there were forums. And so in 2010, moving into 2011, I can't remember exactly when, but I started going on forums. I think this was, although I think this was after I'd been on jwfax. The very first thing I did, to be honest, John, is I went on Wikipedia because I thought, well, Wikipedia is a quote unquote neutral source.

Lloyd Evans [00:01:33] So I'm not going to just be listening to apostate rantings. I just want to kind of get an objective viewpoint on my religion so that I can understand whether I'm crazy or not. And what I found on Wikipedia was fascinating. And by the way, Wikipedia is something like of a war zone between JWs and EXJWs who are kind of racing to edit articles according to their own ideas. But there was just enough on Wikipedia to make me think, no, no, I'm on the right track here. Because there were one or two points that were made about the governing body and the faithful slave and that kind of thing, which I thought, no, that's absolutely right. I am on the right track. And then once what was wrong with

John Dehlin [00:02:19] the governing body and the faithful slave?

Lloyd Evans [00:02:21] There was a teaching which changed in 2012. As of 2012, the teaching changed so that the faithful and discreet slave, which is the channel of wisdom to mankind, is only the governing body. Okay, but before 2012, the teaching was that the faithful and discreet slave are all of the anointed who are alive on the earth. And the governing body are the representatives of that faithful and discreet slave. And that made no sense at all, because if you're going to represent a group of people, you need to at least communicate a little with them.

Lloyd Evans [00:03:05] But the governing body didn't communicate at all with all of the Jehovah's Witnesses who believed they were going to heaven. There was no. They didn't, like, have any. There was zero contact with them. So one of my nine grievances was, how can they call themselves the representatives of the faithful slave when they never talk to them?

Lloyd Evans [00:03:29] You know, they're just awarding themselves that title. But then in 2012, they changed it to say, well, actually, you know, let's cut out the middleman here. Forget about the anointed. Just. Just the governing body of the faithful slave.

John Dehlin [00:03:46] Now, you. You were saying, this is in 2009, but this change happened in 2012. But your faith crisis was in 2009.

Lloyd Evans [00:03:52] No, no, it was more. It was more 2010. So 2009 was when I moved to Croatia.

John Dehlin [00:03:58] Okay.

Lloyd Evans [00:03:58] I moved at the end of August, and then By January of 2010, I kind of reached the conclusion I wasn't going to be a Jehovah's witness.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] But the 2012 change would have. That. That would have bothered you later, is that right?

Lloyd Evans [00:04:13] Yeah, I was already up and running as an activist by that point. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Okay. Okay. So you. You've got this. So when you tell your wife about these concerns, and she's. She's a native Croatian.

Lloyd Evans [00:04:27] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:28] Okay. What was her response?

Lloyd Evans [00:04:32] Well, her first response was, lloyd's trying to leave me. Is he just concocting an excuse that he's losing his faith so that he can leave me, marry someone else? And, oh, suddenly he's a Jehovah's Witness again. But when I was able to convince her that, no, I'm not trying to leave you. I want to stay with you, it's just that I can't believe this anymore. And she was convinced that I was genuine.

Lloyd Evans [00:04:59] She was obviously very sad. And I think she says that one of the meetings she can remember crying during the song, that I wasn't there with her. But the approach that I took with Deanna was to. Because I kind of realized the dangerous situation I was in where there was a very real likelihood the marriage wasn't going to make it, which is what happens in lots of cases of a similar kind. And so the approach that I took was, I'm not going to bombard her with information. I'm not going to kind of confront her and say, you know, we're in a cult and you need to leave with me, and that kind of thing.

Lloyd Evans [00:05:39] I just thought, well, inevitably, she's going to come to me and try to salvage my faith. And when that happens, I need to respond as tactfully and astutely as I can in the way I phrase things and what I say. And. And if I discover something that's genuinely surprising, I'm not going to hide my surprise from her. So, for example, there's lots of scandals that Jehovah's Witnesses just are unaware of. And as I was uncovering these scandals, I didn't hide my surprise.

Lloyd Evans [00:06:15] I shared them with her, and she also. She found those unsettling. And approximately a year after I'd, quote, unquote woken up, she woke up. So she was roughly 12 months behind me. But that. That process of just kind of taking it easy and not overwhelming her, that mostly worked.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] And did you have kids at the time?

Lloyd Evans [00:06:43] No, it was. It was when Diana was pregnant that it kind of forced our hand and made us realize, no, we need to formally disassociate. It's not enough to just be inactive, because our genuine fear, it wasn't just a fear, it was a very justified concern, was that if we remained as only inactive and we had a child, that child would be inundated with indoctrination from any of our relatives who are Jehovah's Witnesses. They would justify indoctrinating our child, saying, well, we're only doing what you should be doing. You know, we need to make a clean break. We need to spare our child from all of this nonsense. So that was what eventually pushed us into saying, no, we're done with this. And that was in December 2013, six years ago.

Telling Family and Facing Shunning

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Okay, so. So between that point of. Of you telling her, you said you had to talk to your parents, is that right?

Lloyd Evans [00:07:53] Yeah, my dad. I had to phone dad, and I had. There were multiple stages with dad. The first stage was telling him I no longer believed, and his reaction was, oh, I'm sorry, that's actually too much of a shock for me. Lloyd, you're going to have to talk to someone else about that, because I'm. That's too emotional for me to deal with. Even though he's an elder and it's his job to help people in that situation.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] Did you expect a different response? Were you hoping for a loving response? Did you have a relationship with him where that was really shocking to you, that response?

Lloyd Evans [00:08:27] I had a good relationship with him, and I still would like to have a relationship with him. But if I'm completely honest, he's not. How can I put it? He has emotional deficiencies, I think, is a diplomatic way of saying it. I think that. That out of both of my parents, he was the least emotionally engaged.

Lloyd Evans [00:08:52] And whether that's something to do with his childhood. And I know that his father was abusive towards him, so maybe that played a part in the way he is as a parent. But I continue. Even if dad were to wake up and we had our relationship back, I think I'll go to my grave resenting the fact that if he really believes it's the truth, the least he can do. The least he can do is try to salvage me, is try to convince me to stay. He made no effort whatsoever, which I will always, I think, even when we patch things up. I'm sorry. No matter how indoctrinated you are.

Lloyd Evans [00:09:37] In fact, if you are indoctrinated and you really believe it's the truth, that that should be motivating you to convince me. And I've heard of stories of others who've left. I'm thinking of one friend of mine who's an ex Bethelite. His dad actually turned up on his doorstep and was screaming at him, trying to get a conversation started, you know, confronting him and saying, what are you doing? You need to stay in the truth. I'd have loved if my dad could have done that.

Lloyd Evans [00:10:07] I'd have loved it, because at least he's trying. But dad didn't try at all. And so I had to go through the process of telling him that I was inactive. That was difficult. And then as my exit loomed, it looked like my elders were at one point trying to engineer a scenario where they could disfellowship me. And so I warned my dad. I said, dad, it looks like they want to disfellowship me in Croatia or back in the uk In Croatia.

Lloyd Evans [00:10:42] Because they were convinced that the reason. There must be more to my. There must be more to my lapse of faith. There must be some kind of sin that I'm concealing. And one of the elders actually dragged my wife to one side at the Kingdom hall and interrogated her and said, we know that Lloyd's treating you like a cloth for cleaning the floor.

Lloyd Evans [00:11:09] You need to tell us what it is that he's doing so that we can help him. And Diana was just completely bewildered because the guy who was doing this didn't even know me. He'd only just recently joined the congregation, and here he was assuming the very worst of me as a person.

Lloyd Evans [00:11:24] And so she just came straight back and told me. And I. And I immediately made it clear to the elders, well, what's happened there with you interrogating my wife without me being present? You know that that is entirely against the procedures for elders.

Lloyd Evans [00:11:42] So until you apologize for doing that, I'm not going to be entertaining any meetings or conversations with. With you guys until you apologize. And I made that stipulation knowing full well that I would never get an apology, because elders never apologize. And that bought me a little bit of time.

Lloyd Evans [00:12:03] But when that happened, I feared that they were coming for me, especially if you Read Crisis of Conscience, where the same thing happens to Ralph Ranz and suddenly the knives are out and they're trying to chase him out of the religion. I felt like the same thing was happening to me. And I rang my dad and I

John Dehlin [00:12:20] said, dad, had you read that book by that point?

Lloyd Evans [00:12:23] By that point, I read that book, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] What was it like when you read it?

Lloyd Evans [00:12:26] Oh, it was, it was just mind blowing. It was completely validated everything that I'd feared and, and added a few extra issues. And it also was the missing piece of the jigsaw. In explaining what Mum had told me just before she died, where she sat down and said, lloyd, I want to tell you about, about my first marriage and how the elders treated me. And so to have Ray Franz, who was there at the time, saying, well, this is what happened in 1972 when we came up with these old crazy rules about no adultery for homosexuality, no divorce for homosexuality, everything suddenly fell into place.

John Dehlin [00:13:12] Your mom was telling you she didn't believe or that she had problems with the church.

Lloyd Evans [00:13:16] No, I believe Mum did believe. I think she went to her grave as a believing Jehovah's Witness. But I will always, always be grateful for that parting gift, because my sister didn't get that. And I think my sister, to this day, I don't have a good relationship with my sister, by the way, and never really have. But she thinks I'm making things up and no, I'm not, that this really happened. We really had this conversation. And again, it wasn't Mum, you know, trying to sow doubts in my mind. It was just Mum telling me something that had been on her mind and she needed me to know how things had really happened.

Lloyd Evans [00:13:55] And when I read Crisis of Conscience, Everything, suddenly there was this harmony between this story that I'd been carrying with me for years. And here's this former governing body member corroborating what she's told me. So I, I, I went to my dad and I said, dad, I'm probably going to get disfellowships. And he said, it will kill me, Lloyd, but I'll have to shun you. And so it'll kill you.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] What?

Lloyd Evans [00:14:22] It will kill me to do it, Lloyd, but I'm going to have to shun you if that happens.

John Dehlin [00:14:26] Oh, my God.

Lloyd Evans [00:14:27] That was, that was even. And I said, you mean even if I'm disfellowshipped for an unfair reason? And he said, yes. So I knew that that would be his stand, and then this would have been about 2012 or 2011. Thereabouts. And then by the time 2013 comes along, I'm already well and truly into my activism. The YouTube channel started around 2012, so I was well underway, but I was keeping all of my work below the radar. And I was operating under a pseudonym, John Cedars, which I still have as the name of my channel. And I, we just reached this crossroads in 2013 where we thought, no, our child's coming.

Lloyd Evans [00:15:13] We need to make a clean break. And anticipating that we would be disassociated or we would disassociate, I convinced my dad to come for one final holiday in Croatia. And he didn't know the full reason why I'd invited him.

Lloyd Evans [00:15:31] But one evening, I sat him down and I said, dad, I need you to know Deanna and I are going to be disassociating. And here are the reasons. And I had prepared, like, laminated newspaper articles to show him and various things that explained why I had these grievances and what have you. And he just kind of sat there in stunned silence, and he tried to kind of defend one or two things I was showing him.

Lloyd Evans [00:16:05] But we reached a point where he said, well, Lloyd, you've shown me you've given me a lot to think about, and I'm very, very tired, so if you don't mind, I'm gonna go to bed. And I was like, okay, well, I can imagine it's all very overwhelming for you. So he went to bed, and the next day he came to me and he said, lloyd, when you disassociate, I will be shunning you, or we're not going to have any further contact. And I really broke down at that point, and I said a few choice words to him. I was really angry at him because he hadn't even, evidently tried to again, salvage me.

Lloyd Evans [00:16:52] He hadn't tried to defend the religion in any way, shape, or form, which I believe, as an elder, he had a moral duty to. He just capitulated and said, all right, well, that's the situation. As soon as you're disassociated, I'm going to be shunning you. And that's exactly what happened. So that. And what happened was what led to the disassociation was that I finally, really

John Dehlin [00:17:16] quick, what's it like to have your dad say that to you? I will be shunning you.

Lloyd Evans [00:17:21] I cried. I broke down in tears. I was inconsolable. And I said, you're a robot. I said, you're a robot, and you're a hypocrite. I regret this now, by the way. I wouldn't encourage this approach to someone in this situation.

Lloyd Evans [00:17:46] But I said, you go to people's homes, to the homes of strangers to convince them to join your religion, and in doing so, you criticize their religion and point out all of the logical flaws in their religion. But the minute your own son tries to show you logical flaws in your religion, you won't listen.

Lloyd Evans [00:18:11] I said, you're a hypocrite. And again, it wasn't the right approach. I would have done it differently, given another roll of the dice. But I can understand why that was an emotional situation for me to go through. Having already lost my mother and only having my dad left.

Lloyd Evans [00:18:32] I really did try and salvage him in. In my. In my heart of hearts. I guess I knew it wasn't going to work, but I kind of hoped it would. I hoped he would at least hear me out. And he didn't have the courage to do that. And again, even if we patch up our relationship, there's a lot that I'll be able to forgive dad for. But in my mind, if you take your religion seriously, you defend it. And he never even tried to defend it, especially with so much at stake, especially staring at the possibility of no longer having any further contact with your son.

Lloyd Evans [00:19:15] And now that I'm a parent, I'm sorry, there's just nothing that could ever come between me and my daughter. When you go through that process, it's like, I don't know whether you've got kids, by the way, but you just think, how could anyone ever shun their kid? It's the most unnatural thing in the world.

Lloyd Evans [00:19:38] So for my dad to reach a point where he could do that, to the point where he is passing up on opportunities to see his granddaughter. Yeah, I can't make sense of it. So there'll be a lot of things that I would forgive dad for if we were ever reunited. But there are some things that I'm going to have to hold on to, I think.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] And in the work I've done with ex Mormons, you know, when a. When a Mormon is disaffected or starts doubting and starts going through this crisis of faith, and they're terrified and they write letters or emails or try and communicate with believing family and friends about their crisis of faith. And they could have been a stake president, a bishop, they could have been a Relief Society president, a top leader in the church, you know, they could have. They could have been a grandfather. It doesn't matter how much commitment they had. How much they had served, how much they had done for their loved ones. The most common reaction is silence.

John Dehlin [00:20:43] And the almost unheard of reaction which is the most logical is, oh, my gosh, I love you and you're important to me. You're smart. You really took this seriously. If you have doubts and if you've left, I want to know everything that you know because there's nothing more important. And I love you so much. And that is an almost unheard of reaction.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] You know, a less frequent reaction is, well, let's talk about the problems and really get to the bottom of this. But I'm going to defend the church. The most common reaction is being completely ignored.

Lloyd Evans [00:21:22] Yeah. And what's interesting is that at least in my case, it's counterproductive because I can understand why in the majority of cases, the emotional blackmail succeeds and the shunned son or daughter thinks, well, just so I can have some contact, I'm going to at least pretend to be a Jehovah's Witness again and go through the motions and what have you. Some do that, but that doesn't really work if you leave for ideological reasons and those ideological reasons aren't addressed.

Lloyd Evans [00:21:56] I had very, very clear reasons that dad wasn't willing to listen to, and the only way he was gonna see his son come back to the religion was by disproving my issues. He didn't even try to. And what's happened since then is obviously that I've gone on to become an ex Jehovah's Witness activist.

Lloyd Evans [00:22:19] And if any, if my email inbox is to be believed, I've been responsible for, to at least some degree in at least creating material that can help other people get out of the organization. So his behavior toward me and toward Deanna has had the opposite effect of actually making more problems for his organization. I mean, I like to think that I would still have had something to say as an activist even if I hadn't been personally had, even if I didn't have personal experience of shunning.

Lloyd Evans [00:22:57] But the truth is that if there is a fire in my belly, the fire is due to, you know, again, the personal experience of having genuine conscientious reasons for no longer believing. And rather than having those reasons explored and addressed and debated, to just be treated as though you don't exist, no questions asked.

John Dehlin [00:23:24] Yeah. So I'm so sorry for. I can't imagine what it's like to be shunned. Mormonism doesn't have this hard shunning, certainly not as a doctrine or policy. It's more judgment and soft shunning or alienation. And it's not universal. There's going to be a wide variety of familial reactions. Anywhere from on the extreme positive end, love and support.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] On the extreme negative end, disassociation, shunning, silence, you know, removal from wills or inheritance. And then in the middle, it's the mass, you know, majority is just going to be disappointment, judgment, false assumptions, mischaracterizations, you know, rumors about false motives and just the withdrawal of emotional intimacy and respect that downgrades the person's status from a person of high status and respect in the family to a status of disrespect and disappointment. And in some sense, you know, being removed from the text chain, being removed from some family meetings, just being treated as a second class citizen within the family, that's probably the norm. But it does not in any way reach these formal levels of disassociation and shunning, which is just something we can't imagine. And it's more like Scientology.

Lloyd Evans [00:25:00] Yeah, oh, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] That's where Jehovah's Witness sort of maybe becomes more severe than Mormonism and starts to reach the severity of Scientology.

Lloyd Evans [00:25:08] Oh, definitely. And you know, frankly, John, we're social creatures. We're just not programmed to deal with shunning. And I always think of, I don't know whether you've heard of Dr. Kip Williams. He has done research on ostracism and he develops computer systems, in fact, to measure the reaction when someone is shunned. And you may think, well, how can you measure shunning? And he stumbled on this technique by taking a walk in the park. And there were these two guys throwing a frisbee to each other.

Lloyd Evans [00:25:47] And all of a sudden they threw the Frisbee to him and he threw the Frisbee back. And all of a sudden, with these total strangers, he's involved in a game of Frisbee. But then completely unexpectedly, they started throwing the Frisbee to themselves again and pretending he wasn't there. And even though these were total strangers, he felt this very visceral feeling of anger and resentment that he had suddenly been excluded from this activity. And he said he thought, well, that's, that's what I've got to do. I've got to recreate that. So he created this computer system where you engage in like a, like a ball throwing exercise with either with digital people or with real people.

Lloyd Evans [00:26:30] And suddenly the game switches and your reaction is monitored. And it's even thinking about that scenario being in that scenario with total strangers, I can imagine how it would feel for me. We are social creatures. We cannot handle exclusion for, for no good reason. And that's what shunning is, just being treated as though you don't exist without good, without justifiable reason. And it's a really, really evil.

Lloyd Evans [00:27:06] It's psychological warfare. And it needs, it needs to be resisted, it needs to be exposed. And that's one of the things I'm trying to do with my work.

John Dehlin [00:27:19] Yeah. I think overt, I think psychologists have found that overt cruelty is actually preferable to shunning psychologically.

Lloyd Evans [00:27:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Right.

Lloyd Evans [00:27:34] Yes. I would rather have, I'd rather get beaten up, I think, than go through that. Being made to feel as though you're something less than human again because of a conscientious stand that you've taken. It really, really does mess with your head. And again, if there's a fire in my belly, it's because of that. It's the fact that I've been relegated as a human being just for having conscientious reasons, for no longer entertaining certain religious ideas.

Becoming an Ex-JW Activist Online

John Dehlin [00:28:09] So tell us how you became an activist and what, what was the progression of projects or initiatives? Because not, not everyone who leaves a fundamentalist religion becomes an activist. It. No, it's a special calling.

Lloyd Evans [00:28:26] Well, it is, yeah. Well, well, you asked before about what Internet resources there were back then. And there was one forum which actually still exists. It was JWN, Jehovah's Witness.net I think it's now JehovahSwitness.com and it was a forum where you could join, but you could join anonymously and no one know who you are. And I remember for a while being addicted to it because suddenly you're interacting with people who are like you, who are the cast offs, you know, the ones who have been rejected or who are perhaps, you know, maybe they're still perceived to be believers, but they are keeping their doubts to themselves. And so it was a fascinating experience for me to suddenly be engaged with this online community.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] Okay, wait, so the church didn't grab its own domain name.

Lloyd Evans [00:29:27] They originally had watchtower.org and then when they streamlined their web presence they called it jw.org.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] okay, so someone else was able to grab a primary domain using Jehovah's Witness name.

Lloyd Evans [00:29:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] Turn it into a public forum that wasn't formally controlled by the church and it became sort of an anti JW forum.

Lloyd Evans [00:29:52] Yeah, I think it's Jehovah's Witness.com or something like that.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] All right.

Lloyd Evans [00:29:57] So that was kind of my introduction to dealing with other ex Witnesses. And one idea I had was because I could see there were ranges, a range of opinions on almost everything. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could have some kind of survey so that we can gauge how people feel on certain issues, such as shunning, such as child abuse, such as blood transfusions and etc. And I started putting out feelers for who would be interested in maybe buying a subscription service. And I got a ton of heat because people thought I was trying to. Because I was proposing that we buy like a SurveyMonkey subscription, which is a few hundred dollars a year.

Lloyd Evans [00:30:43] And people thought that I was trying to con people out of money. And so I got a ton of heat. But one guy came to the rescue. His name was John Hoyle. We're still very good friends. And he said, listen, I like your idea. Don't worry about SurveyMonkey. I will build you a website with its own survey feature. What do you think?

Lloyd Evans [00:31:06] I was like, well, what do I have to lose? You know, if this guy wants to build me a website, I'm going to let him build me a website. So he built JW Survey.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] Okay. So your first idea, your first foray into Jehovah Witness activism was to come up with a survey.

Lloyd Evans [00:31:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:23] And what was your strategy?

Lloyd Evans [00:31:26] My strategy was again, just to. I felt as though Jehovah's Witnesses are. Are silenced because they can only have one opinion, and that's the opinion of the governing body. And I wanted to know what their genuine opinions were by having an online survey where people could anonymously even believing Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [00:31:48] Oh, wow.

Lloyd Evans [00:31:49] Could anonymously say, well, this is what I really think.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] So I'm@jwsurvey.org and I see you've published 2011 through 2017.

Lloyd Evans [00:31:59] Yeah, we're having a bit of a change around. We've had a move around in the team. So we're trying to get the. A new survey set up for 2019.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] But would you post so you. So this is a way to give voice to members about how they feel about the church. Did you each year publish the results of the survey?

Lloyd Evans [00:32:21] Yeah, so every year we publish the results. And to begin with, I would kind of write a letter to the governing body and make it very. I think we even delivered by. Returned by recorded delivery. The first few surveys to the governing body obviously never got a response.

John Dehlin [00:32:38] Okay. I'm not seeing the letters published on the website.

Lloyd Evans [00:32:42] No, they're in a PDF Document you can. For the first few surveys. If you click on the results, it should take you to a PDF. And in the first couple of pages of the PDF, there's a letter there to the governing body.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] Why did you stop writing the letter?

Lloyd Evans [00:32:59] Because I never got a reply. I thought, well, there's no point dignifying them with a letter when it's more powerful to just let the results speak for themselves and just summarize the results so that people can read the results for themselves.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] Where can you find the summary of results for the 2017 survey?

Lloyd Evans [00:33:22] We're still. Again, we've had a change around with the team because I found that with my work, I'm increasingly distracted by my YouTube work. And we've had to kind of change the personnel around at JW Survey. So we have someone now who's trying to kind of get everything stabilized with the survey so that we can publish the results for 2017 and 2018 and put something out for 2019.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Okay, so when was the last year you published the results?

Lloyd Evans [00:33:51] I think it was. Was it 20? 2017 or 2016?

John Dehlin [00:33:57] I just got an error in the site that my access has been limited to the site because I exceeded the maximum global request per minute.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:07] Oh, you're. You're attacking us, John De Lin. You're giving us attack.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] I'm your best friend.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:16] I'm sorry, I don't know what's happened there.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] No, it's fine. Okay. So that was your first foray. What was, you know, what was the response? Both for believing, for your family, for your wife, for believing Jehovah's Witnesses, and for the ex witness community.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:36] What, to the survey? Well, they didn't know. They didn't know about it. I was. I was running the survey I started. JW survey began in October 2011, and it was December, it was November 2013 by the time I'd outed myself as Lloyd Evans, so.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] So those first couple years, no one knew it was you.

Lloyd Evans [00:34:56] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:34:57] Did your wife know you were doing it?

Lloyd Evans [00:34:59] Oh, obviously, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:01] Not obviously. People do things in secret.

Lloyd Evans [00:35:03] Well, I researched without her necessarily knowing, but by the time I was an activist, I was just, you know, she. She just, you know, she didn't like it, but it was.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] Why didn't she like it?

Lloyd Evans [00:35:16] Because she was still a believing Jehovah's

John Dehlin [00:35:18] Witness when you started.

Lloyd Evans [00:35:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] Okay.

Lloyd Evans [00:35:24] Or still had some level of indoctrination. But JW Survey was the beginning. And then. And pretty soon I started writing blog articles for JW Survey. So I kind of took on More of a journalistic role, you could say, of keeping tabs on the latest stories that were going on with Watchtower. And so this blog started, and the blog kind of merged and then evolved into the John Seeders YouTube channel. Because I just found over the course of time that I could impact people more with videos than with blog articles.

Lloyd Evans [00:36:06] To begin with, the videos were just a supplement to the blog. But pretty soon I noticed that I could reach more people just comparing the statistics with a YouTube video than with a blog article. And all the while, I'd been writing my book. So I started writing my book in 2012, and then in late 2016, I had a major push to get it finished.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] Finished.

Lloyd Evans [00:36:33] And I published it in the beginning of 2017. That's the reluctant apostate.

Writing Books and Building a YouTube Channel

John Dehlin [00:36:39] So it took you how long to write your book?

Lloyd Evans [00:36:43] Four years.

John Dehlin [00:36:44] Wow.

Lloyd Evans [00:36:45] Yeah. If you order it, you'll see why. Because it's 800 pages. That took a lot of research and a lot of soul searching as well. Because obviously, I write about my. In addition to writing about the history of Jehovah's Witnesses, I also kind of lace. I thread through my own story. So I'll. I'll talk about something that happened in my story and then connect it with something from Jehovah's Witness teachings or Jehovah's Witness history, if that makes sense. So that's kind of my way of introducing the reader kind of gradually to various aspects.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] Okay, so the YouTube channel became your really big, big way to make a difference. I'm on your channel now again. It's called John Cedars C E D A R S. The John Cedars channel.

Lloyd Evans [00:37:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:39] There's 44,741 subscribers. Mormon Stories only has 15,000 subscribers.

Lloyd Evans [00:37:46] Well, you need to get your act together, John. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] Three times more effective than I am on YouTube.

Lloyd Evans [00:37:51] Well, it's. Clearly you're failing in some way, so I suggest you. Yeah, I suggest you try harder.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] Okay. And so you've got how many videos? What's your basic format for. For activism? Are these short videos? Are they long form?

Lloyd Evans [00:38:11] Most of them. I get a lot of them are maybe an hour. Because I do rebuttals to Watchtower video propaganda, which tends to itself be maybe an hour long for the JW broadcasting episodes. So it's difficult for me to do a rebuttal to one of these episodes that isn't itself at least an hour long. And there's also convention videos that get shown at conventions that I do rebuttals for. But Every now and then I'll do a shorter video that just, that addresses a certain subject. And my most watched video with over 700,000 views is 5 minute video. Everything you need to know about Jehovah's Witnesses in five minutes. So that's like my most viewed video and it's, it's five minutes. And I actually did a follow up to that, Everything you need to know about Mormons in five minutes.

John Dehlin [00:39:05] Hey, stay away from. Lay off us.

Lloyd Evans [00:39:08] But that didn't, that did. Even though I collaborated to some degree with, with a former Mormon, make sure it was accurate. Yeah, Jonathan, for some reason that hasn't taken off so well, but the Jehovah's Witness one has taken off.

John Dehlin [00:39:21] Yeah. Okay. And so what has the reaction been in the global reaction to your videos?

Lloyd Evans [00:39:34] I guess it depends who's watching them. I recently, the very latest video that I've put out is the most ambitious video I've ever done, which is a documentary. I actually drove to the Netherlands, spent a week interviewing victims of abuse and

John Dehlin [00:39:53] advocates for an organisation, Reclaimed Voices Abuse Survivors. Survivors Speak out.

Lloyd Evans [00:39:59] So that's. Reclaimed Voices are an organization that represents victims of abuse from within the Jehovah's Witness community in the Netherlands. And they've been so successful that they have actually managed to get the Dutch government to launch an independent investigation, investigation into Jehovah's Witnesses in that country, which is, you know, compared to other countries, that's pretty much unheard of.

Lloyd Evans [00:40:24] So I made this documentary. I felt I shot it back in October and I've only just now managed to, you know, get it uploaded and edited and what have you. But I, I was really touched by one message in particular because you asked about Reaction and it was from someone saying that he had been out of the organization for 20 years and all that time his wife refused to look at anything that was critical of the organization.

Lloyd Evans [00:40:51] And he managed to persuade her after 20 years to watch the Reclaimed Voices documentary. And he said she was crying all the way through because her brother had been molested within the organization. So I mean, who knows whether that will go anywhere. Maybe with her looking at other material, I don't know. But that sort of message, I'm sure you get messages like that with the work, with the amazing work you're doing as well. It really motivates you, I think, to carry on.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] I know you don't tend to sort of want glory or hyperbole directed towards yourselves, but I have to ask, are you maybe the world's most notable ex Jehovah Witness activist or are there others that have your level or profile or higher?

Lloyd Evans [00:41:44] I don't, I don't view it as a competition.

John Dehlin [00:41:47] Yeah, yeah.

Lloyd Evans [00:41:47] I'm not, I'm not deliberately trying to be kind of bashful or anything or coy. It's just, I mean, I don't know. There's actually one channel that's got more subscribers to mine, if you, if you want to measure it that way, that's called Telltale Atheist. So he's got like 90,000 subscribers.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] And he's a former Jehovah's Witness.

Lloyd Evans [00:42:05] He's a former Jehovah's Witness, but his channel touches more generally on, on cults and, you know, religion and that kind of.

John Dehlin [00:42:12] I don't ask the question out of a sense of competition. It's a sense to get, it's a question to get a sense for the field, the playing field. In other words, do you have peers that you collaborate with or others that are at your level of profile such that there's a group of activists that are kind of working shoulder to shoulder in their different formats. Does that make sense?

Lloyd Evans [00:42:40] Yeah, we have a team. So I have like, we have like a periodical podcast style show called Watchtower in Focus, which I host. And we have some other kind of notable XJWs on there. Mark O', Donnell, who's kind of the real kind of investigative reporter of the XJW movement. He's on every show. And Covert Fade, who is now the editor of JW Survey, he's on every show.

Lloyd Evans [00:43:12] So. But the view I take of ex Jehovah's Witnesses is that just because someone is an ex Jehovah's Witness, I'm sure it's the same with ex Mormons, doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to be a balanced kind of rational, reasonable person to work with. I think that when, when someone's in a destructive group, it can mess around with, with one's head to some degree, and it leaves people with a lot of anger. And what we find in the XJW movement is that sometimes people take that anger out on other XJWs, especially other XJWs who are perceived as having a large following, you know, such as myself.

Lloyd Evans [00:43:53] So that's one of the ironies really of my activism work is that despite having kind of made a name for myself to some degree for criticizing Watchtower and dismantling the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses, in all the years that I've been involved in activism, I've hardly had any kind of pushback from Watchtower or even from Jehovah's Witnesses. The main opponents or the main people who push back against my work have been other ex Jehovah's Witnesses. And it's tragic, but that's the way it is.

John Dehlin [00:44:28] It has been exactly the same with me. The people who have been most harmful, most hurtful, most damaging have been fellow ex Mormons.

Lloyd Evans [00:44:38] Yeah, who do you think you are, John Dehlin, giving your opinion? That's not what we think. You don't represent us. You, you're arrogant, you're egotistical, you just want to start a new Mormon church and blah, blah, blah.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] What do you think that's about?

Lloyd Evans [00:44:54] Again, we're dealing with a community of people who've been messed around in their heads and you know, it's messed us around, hasn't it? We feel the effects of having our thoughts dictated to us for a significant chunk of our lives. And that leaves residual anger and residual, you know, you could say demons that we've had to deal with or are continuing to deal with. And you know, maybe we've been successful to at least some degree in facing those issues. But not everyone is successful. And sometimes people take their anger out, not on the organization, but on other ex members who they feel are misrepresenting them or who are getting attention that they feel they should be getting or who are voicing opinions that they feel are dangerous that shouldn't be listened to.

Lloyd Evans [00:45:52] It's really tragic. But that's unfortunately, it goes with the territory. And even though I may be a well known exjw activist now, I'm almost certainly not going to be around forever and. Well, I'm not going to be around forever and whoever follows is going to have exactly the same problem because that's, it's just the nature of what we take on.

Funding the Activism and Collaborating with Others

John Dehlin [00:46:16] How do you have a day job or do you do this full time?

Lloyd Evans [00:46:19] I'm now full time. I started full time in January 2017 when my book went out and just those royalties just helped me to make that jump to being a full time active this.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] So did you start a non profit or is it for profit or how does that work?

Lloyd Evans [00:46:36] I just run everything. It's not a nonprofit? No, I just, I'm a professional activist so I run everything. I have like an accountant and I just run everything through my business and the idea being that I'm going to produce content that's freely accessible and so I'm allowed to do that through my book royalties, through Google Ad revenue and through my patrons.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] So. Google Ad revenue?

Lloyd Evans [00:47:04] Yeah. So on YouTube when they show adverts, I don't know whether your channel's monetized, but you know, when they show adverts

John Dehlin [00:47:14] on YouTube videos, but it may bring in 5,000 a year, it's very small revenue.

Lloyd Evans [00:47:20] Yeah, for me, not so bad with, for me personally, it's, it's not a bad figure. And it just, again, you say it

John Dehlin [00:47:28] is a lot bigger.

Lloyd Evans [00:47:32] I don't know whether we should be comparing figures, but it's.

John Dehlin [00:47:35] Oh, no, no, no. It's not competition. I don't, I'm not thinking from a standpoint of competition.

Lloyd Evans [00:47:40] It's just, it started off like $60 a month and it's now signet. It's now into the hundreds. And that kind of, that amount coming in combined with other revenue, it just, it means that you can just focus entirely on the activism.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] No, I get it. I'm full time supported by my work too. Are you ever called to be transparent in your finances? Do you ever get grief about either being transparent or not being transparent or people accusing you of getting rich or making money off of people's, you know, pain and distress?

Lloyd Evans [00:48:22] I'm not called to be transparent because I think people realize that that's, that's just silly. But I do get people.

John Dehlin [00:48:29] Well, why is it silly? That's a huge thing in the ex Mormon community is people wanting blood. If you're not transparent with your finances.

Lloyd Evans [00:48:37] I'm not, I'm not. People aren't forced to give me money. You know, I don't ask for money. If people want to contribute to my work, they can do. But if I were, if I were going around extorting people or I were promising something but then not delivering it, then, yeah, let's start talking about transparency. But if people want to donate to my work without me asking them to and they feel that they are getting something in return in terms of they're happy with the content that I'm putting out, why do I need to explain myself? And with ex witnesses that they're not, they don't. I don't get asked for transparency, but I do get people saying, oh, he's just in it for the money.

Lloyd Evans [00:49:18] He's managed to take people's hurts and people's trauma and he's making up, he's profiting from it. And my response to that would be, I've made 300 blog articles, I think 400 YouTube videos, all of which are accessible entirely for free.

Lloyd Evans [00:49:40] The two books that I've written you could in theory read for free if you ordered them at the library. So there's actually nothing that I've made that I'm withholding from people. It's all accessible for free. And if people want to reimburse me for doing that so that I'll continue to do it, because I don't owe anyone anything. I've woken up, I've moved on with my life. I have a happy family life. And if people think that I owe people this activism, as though I should do it, whether I'm being paid or not, no one owes anyone anything. You don't know. You don't owe the ex Mormon community the Mormon Stories podcast.

Lloyd Evans [00:50:22] You owe them nothing. It's, it's what you choose to do. And yeah, I just find it very odd that people would, would expect me to. Another thing I say to people is, well, okay, if you, if you disagree with me being a professional activist, here's what you need to do. You need to run my channel, or a channel equivalent to mine. You need to do the activism work that I'm doing and hold that, and hold down a full time job and make time to be a husband and a father. And once you've done all of those things successfully, then you can come back to me and say that I'm wrong for being a professional activist.

Lloyd Evans [00:51:06] But it's one of those situations where people criticize you without necessarily feeling as though they could, you know, do what you're doing or without wanting to kind of walk a mile in your shoes.

John Dehlin [00:51:23] Yeah.

Lloyd Evans [00:51:24] End of rant.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] I love it. So have you had very generous donors come out and support you?

Lloyd Evans [00:51:32] Well, yeah, I mean, that's, that's why I was able to go to the Netherlands. And I think that that's one of the beautiful things actually about Patreon. I know Patreon's had its issues with the way it's run and with certain characters, certain public figures having their Patreon accounts closed for very arbitrary reasons. And I disagree with that. But in my own experience, it's enabled people who believe in what I'm doing to donate as little as a dollar a month. And it all adds up. And it means that because I'm a professional activist and because I'm answerable to this community of people, and there's now over 300 on Patreon who are supporting me.

Lloyd Evans [00:52:13] They are basic. I view them as my boss. They are collectively my boss. And I owe them videos. I owe them, you know, content of a certain quality. One of the things I promised them I would do is make a documentary film every year so that was what enabled me to think, right, what projects are there? What could I make a documentary film on? Ah, there's this happening in the Netherlands. I'm going to drive to the Netherlands and I'm going to spend a week there filming, and I'm going to do all of this. I'm going to commit to doing the months of editing that this would entail, because I'm being paid to do it by these people.

Lloyd Evans [00:52:53] If they weren't paying for me to do it, this documentary film, the reclaimed voices documentary film, literally would not exist. And that's the point I make in the end credits as well. So.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] And it has over, what, 20,000, 16,000 views already? Just.

Lloyd Evans [00:53:08] Yeah, it's. I wouldn't. I would encourage people to watch it. And I'm not a fan of going on other people's channels and saying, oh, you need to watch this video. But this particular subject and this particular video, in all of the videos I've made, this is the one. If I had to choose one for someone to watch, it would be this one. Because, you know, same with Mormonism. Any organization, its absolute minimum requirement is that it looks after the most vulnerable and it certainly doesn't put them in harm's way and put them in a situation where, for example, children are at risk from sexual predators.

Lloyd Evans [00:53:51] And that's what Watchtower is doing. In country after country after country, and in one country in particular, the Netherlands, the survivors banded together and said, enough of this. We're going to do something about it. And their bravery and their resourcefulness really shines through. Or at least I hope it shines through. I hope I've done justice to their story, but it was a real privilege to tell it. So if your viewers are interested, I'd really appreciate if they could take a look.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] I love it. Is there you mentioned something like a coalition of ex Jehovah's Witness activists that work together in some collaborative way. Is that true or not?

Lloyd Evans [00:54:32] Well, we have our JW survey team and we have like a WhatsApp group where we all communicate regularly. And that's not just JW survey, but also a documentary project that I'm involved in called the Truth about the Truth. So we have my co producer, Javier. He's also part of the group. And I just. I guess I don't know what it's like with Mormonism, but you have it with the XJW movement. You have the kind of firebrands and you have the kind of loose cannons and people who just rant on screen and people who, you know, indulge in attacking other activists. And then you have the more serious ones who basically just go after Watchtower and limit their activism to debunking cults and the kind of destructive ways of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Lloyd Evans [00:55:25] And I just deal exclusively with those. And I ignore all of the ones that are just jumping up and down, ranting. And I find that that approach helps. And so what we'll do is we'll do collabor videos together. I did one recently with another XJW YouTuber called 5th.

Lloyd Evans [00:55:43] His channel is XJW 5th. And we did a video collaboration where we just literally went through the FAQ section of the JW.org website, pointing out all of the lies and all of the ways that they were trying to mislead people, which was interesting.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] That's awesome. Is there ever amongst the activist kind of rivalries or factions that emerge where people. You mentioned this a little bit about people who try and take each other down. Does it ever rise to the point where kind of leaders in the XJW movement are kind of going at each other or amassing followers to kind of try and take each other down?

Lloyd Evans [00:56:30] I wish I could say no, but we literally have a group in the XJW movement that call themselves the Vast Apostate Army. And the fact that they've called themselves an army kind of tells you something about the approach that they take.

Lloyd Evans [00:56:51] They favor what's called Kingdom Hall. Crashing. Where they literally go into a Kingdom hall while the services are underway and try to disrupt the meeting and get up in witnesses faces and confront them and berate them and mock them and what have you and do the same thing with Witnesses who are maybe preaching in public next to one of the literature carts.

Lloyd Evans [00:57:14] And they can't stand me. They really, really don't like me. So they've made multiple, multiple videos where they just do nothing but slag me off because I've spoken out against that sort of behavior without naming names. So my approach is, you know, life's too short. I'm gonna say what I think, even if it offends people, but I'm not gonna call people out and I'm not gonna name names and make videos about people. But they. They don't quite follow that. They. They will literally, if someone like me is saying something that they don't agree with, they'll literally make multiple YouTube videos where. Where they basically character assassinate people.

Lloyd Evans [00:57:53] It's really, really very sad. But again, I think it kind of to a degree goes with the territory when you're involved in this kind of work.

John Dehlin [00:58:01] How do you. This is just a personal kind of person to person. Activist, activist question. How do you keep from allowing the critics to depress and overwhelm you to the point of sometimes wanting to quit? How do you keep your spirits up? How do you keep your confidence? How do you keep your determination to keep going when sometimes you feel so mistreated or unappreciated or maligned?

Lloyd Evans [00:58:33] That's a really good question. It does happen now and then that the attacks get overwhelming and there's been one or two occasions in particular where the gloves have really been off and they've really. There's been like a sustained period of attacking me on something I've said or saying that I've done something which I absolutely haven't done, or trying to float some kind of conspiracy theory or what have you. And it can really drag me down, quite frankly, because apart from.

Lloyd Evans [00:59:13] Apart from feeling frustration that the value of my work is in some way being diminished because at least some people are going to believe what they're saying and believe that I'm this monster that they've created, there's also. There's also just the. The kind of feeling of despair that there are human beings out there who are.

Lloyd Evans [00:59:37] Who have sunk to that state where they view you as more of a target than an organization that breaks apart families, covers up child abuse and literally kills people, and you're worse than them. And it really does get to me at times.

Lloyd Evans [00:59:59] But I like to think that over the years I've kind of to some degree, matured and figured out a way of coping. And that coping mostly involves starving them of attention. They want attention. The thing that they absolutely want me to do is make videos replying to their videos. And they quickly get frustrated when that doesn't happen, which is always so. And I think as well that that level of hatred is exhausting for them. It's not a healthy situation to be in, and it's.

Lloyd Evans [01:00:40] It offers diminishing returns. And I think. I think it's exhausting to have that much hatred, quite frankly. So I noticed that these things come in waves and people lose their energy after a while. But in terms of how I cope, I cope by trying my hardest to ignore it, which sometimes is easy and sometimes is more difficult.

Lloyd Evans [01:01:03] But I also cope by having a fantastic team around me, including my wife, who is a really good sounding board when stuff's happening. And so, for example, sometimes if there's something in particular that I might need to think about responding to, in terms of an accusation or something, she'll be the one to watch the video or read the article because she knows it's going to drag me down, having to deal with all that negativity. So she'll kind of take the bullet for me. And I also have again, this WhatsApp group where we're like a team and we're really tight knit and we have each other's back because I'm not the only one who's been attacked.

Lloyd Evans [01:01:42] There've been other, like my friends have been attacked on occasion. And so we have this understanding that, you know, when we're, when we're feeling the heat, we can, you know, rant to each other and let each other know our thoughts. And that help. It really does help to just have that outlet for expressing ourselves that doesn't involve fanning the flames by adding further controversy and rebuttals and what have you. So it is difficult.

Lloyd Evans [01:02:15] I'm sure it's difficult for you as well, but after many years you just find a way of dealing with it. And although I have considered quitting on occasion, I think to some degree I'm institutionalized by my job to the point where even if I, I'm at the point now where even if I tried to walk away from activism, I don't think I could. I'd be, I'd be thinking, I need to make a video. I need to make a video. It's quite sad really.

Lloyd Evans [01:02:45] I'm almost addicted to the work I'm doing. But I have had occasions where I thought, you know what if this is the way I'm trying, I'm doing my best to help people and if this is the way I'm being treated, then screw them all. You know, I quit. And I've had times where that thought has floated through my head and maybe one day it will all get too much and I will do that. But for now I feel as though there's still some juice in the tank and I'm going to carry on.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] I love it. And this team you talk about, that, that encourages you and that you commiserate with, it's comprised of what, employees or other activists or what?

Lloyd Evans [01:03:23] I don't have any employees. No, it's just other. So the JW Survey team is made up of basically volunteers. Because JW Survey, I mean, I think we have like Google Ads on the website, but it's not, it's, it doesn't make any money or anything. It's just literally making information available. And so all of the team that work on JW survey. We have our own WhatsApp group and that group also incorporates Javier, who is my co producer on the Truth about the Truth documentary. So we're able to kind of again compare notes and rant when we need to rant and that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [01:04:06] That must be nice to have a group of friends that have your back.

Lloyd Evans [01:04:10] I would definitely. Anyone in my position who's. Who's doing what I do and who has so much grief from his own side, I would recommend having a team around you who can just kind of act as like a buffer and who can again provide you that kind of solidarity when. When times are tough.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] I love it. I'm so glad you have it. A quick question and I'm. And a shout out to those people. I'm glad they support you and vice versa. Quick question about books. Just because I haven't written a book yet, but when I got excommunicated, I was encouraged to buy a New York agent. My understanding was you don't make money off of books. Like meaningful money, like enough to support you on a year to year basis kind of thing.

Lloyd Evans [01:05:00] That's like. I think that's true. You. I think it's different if you have a. Like you mentioned a New York agent. I don't know what it's like when you have your book published through a publisher. I don't know how that works because obviously they. A publisher will have opportunities to distribute the book that aren't available to someone who does self. A self published book. Which is my situation where I.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] So you self published?

Lloyd Evans [01:05:28] I'm self published and my books on Amazon. But what I will say is that when you, when you first release the book and if you have a large enough audience, it does sell a lot of copies. And beyond that, you find that it kind of levels off at a fairly modest number of books per month. I'm trying to think what my figure is. I think usually it's something like three copies a day. So let's say 80 or 90 books a month is usual. But then there's always opportunities that might come along. So for example, when I appeared on the Aftermath Special, they very kindly showed.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] That's with Leah Remini. Right?

Lloyd Evans [01:06:16] It's Leah Remini, Aftermath Special. And so my book flashes up at one point and there was a massive spike in sales after that, which was really lovely. Apart from anything else, it's nice that something that you've slaved over for years is being read. You didn't go through all that trouble for it to not be read. But yeah, I think that if you're looking at a regular income as a professional activist, you're not necessarily going to see it through, through writing a book unless it's very popular, unless it sells extremely well.

John Dehlin [01:06:54] But the book kind of gets your foot in the door in other areas. Right?

Lloyd Evans [01:06:58] Yeah. I'm glad.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] I.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:00] Well, the main reason why I wrote the book is so that there would be a resource available to people, because Crisis of Conscience is one of, if not the go to books for people leaving the religion. But I wanted something that kind of brought things a bit more up to date because the organization that Ray Franz describes in many ways has completely changed and I wanted something that people could relate to today. And so the main reason for writing it was not to make money. It was literally to provide a resource for people who wanted to get out. But there's you. I can't think what the question was now.

John Dehlin [01:07:45] No, just if a book, if, you know, whether my. Everyone I've talked to just says, don't write a book for the money. Write a book because it spread the word and gets publicity out and gets you opportunities.

Lloyd Evans [01:07:56] That's right. It's more than just about royalties. It's about providing like a handshake almost, that can, you know, if someone wants to know about you or what you stand for, what your cause is, all they need to do is buy the book. And it's something that people can reference if you have opportunities like the Aftermath Special. And I've spoken to people since then and let's say producers who've approached me and they said, oh, I've read your book. And immediately I. I know that they must have a reasonably good understanding of the organization if they've made it through those 800 pages. It's gonna. Some of that's gonna stick, you know, so it literally is more about getting the information out there than necessarily watching the royalty checks come in. Right.

John Dehlin [01:08:54] I just have to say, when Leah Remini came out with her series, the ex Mormon community went wild hoping that. That she would feature Mormonism at some point. So that remains something that our community is really hoping for.

Lloyd Evans [01:09:09] Well, there's just. There's so much material, isn't there? I think that in a way, the media, or let's say the entertainment industry, for want of a better word, is only now understanding what a fertile pasture is to be found in exploring the issues surrounding cults and what these movements do in people's lives. I remember watching a Channel 4 documentary, Meet the Mormons, not the official Meet The Mormons. But the one that was done on Channel four, I don't know whether you've seen it following a missionary in the uk.

John Dehlin [01:09:49] Oh, yeah, of course.

Lloyd Evans [01:09:50] Yeah. And I was blown away by that. And there needs to be more stuff like that. I mean, how many years have gone by since that was made? How many other subjects could you find with similar stories or even worse stories than the guy that they kind of stumbled upon or they were pointed to by the church in that instance? But no, I think that in any number of movements, including Mormonism, where people's lives are being damaged by an authoritarian hierarchy, Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot by ignoring it.

John Dehlin [01:10:32] So in the, in the. Let's just say in your list of, like, worst mainstream cults, you know, how do you. Do you have like a hierarchy of who's the worst and who's, you know, a little bit better? Do you consider Mormons, Mormonism, occult? And where do we fall on your scale of severity?

Comparing JW and Mormon Experiences, Defining Cults

Lloyd Evans [01:10:55] Okay, well, I have. I have what might be called an unorthodox approach to defining cults, and it's, it's informed to some degree by my atheism. So I believe that basically all. All belief structures that are based on things that cannot be proven and are, in fact, untrue are cults.

Lloyd Evans [01:11:22] But you have, in my mind, soft cults and extreme cults. And so a soft cult might be, I don't know, Anglicanism, where. And that's not to say that there isn't harm being done in Anglicanism, but let's say, for example, you had a religion where they had zero harmful practices. It was literally just. The only problem was that the religion isn't true. Okay.

Lloyd Evans [01:11:53] That would still, in my mind, be damaging because any parents in that group would have to be teaching their children things that aren't true. And if you teach a child something that isn't true as though it's true, you're doing that child a disservice and you're limiting its development in some way. It's child indoctrination.

Lloyd Evans [01:12:14] So even, even the most benign religion that you could imagine, in my view, would still be, at least to some degree occult. But then you have obviously an increasing scale of severity. And so I think that Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology are comparable. I would actually, I know I'm biased, but I'd put Jehovah's Witnesses slightly higher than Scientology, if only because we've got eight and a half million and Scientology's got like 20, 30,000.

Lloyd Evans [01:12:46] So we're impacting more lives or Jehovah's Witnesses are impacting more lives with Mormonism. Mormonism is obviously comparable in numbers to Jehovah's Witnesses, although Mormons have a very different way of counting. As I understand it, they basically count almost anyone who's remotely affiliated with the church in the numbers.

John Dehlin [01:13:08] But we're about, we're around five or six million active Mormons, which is less

Lloyd Evans [01:13:14] than the eight and a half million Jehovah Witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:13:18] Okay, yeah, yeah. So there's more Jehovah Witness. Yeah.

Lloyd Evans [01:13:20] When I first started doing the research, I thought there were more Mormons, but then I found out how they do the counting.

John Dehlin [01:13:25] Yeah, there's more numerically but not active. Yeah.

Lloyd Evans [01:13:29] So with Mormonism that it's, we can say it's comparable numbers at the very least. But with Mormonism, I think that they're definitely higher upon the scale than say Anglicanism and arguably higher than Catholicism, depending on the country. Obviously I think Catholicism can get more extreme in certain parts of the world. But Mormonism has a problem with the extremely hierarchical nature of the organization. The lack of transparency, the manipulation, the worthiness interviews and the increasing concerns over sex abuse cover ups, which I'm hearing

John Dehlin [01:14:19] about racism and the sexism and the homophobia.

Lloyd Evans [01:14:24] Indeed. And yeah, it's not. Even if you take aside the fact that it's just, bottom line, not true, there's more to it. So I would put it as definitely a cult, but probably not quite as extreme as Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:14:45] Got it. All right. If somebody says you're trying to destroy the church, Jehovah's Witness church, what do you say? Or another way to ask that is what are your goals? What do you want? If you could wave a magic wand,

Goals, Abuse Issues, and Personal Beliefs

Lloyd Evans [01:14:58] what would you have happened? That's a really good question.

John Dehlin [01:15:05] Would you just, would you destroy the church? Would you make it disappear? Do you think the world would be better off if Jehovah's Witness organization just disappeared?

Lloyd Evans [01:15:16] How can I put it? I suppose so my problem is that what I really want is for people to be able to think for themselves. And I can't force that on them, you know, So I mean, there's exjws who would like the Warwick headquarters to disappear in a mushroom cloud.

Lloyd Evans [01:15:37] But if that were to happen, apart from it being an atrocity, of course, there'd still be eight and a half million Jehovah's Witnesses who, who believe around the world. You don't stop, you don't stop their delusion by taking out their leaders, if that makes sense.

Lloyd Evans [01:15:53] So here's what I would like. I would like. I think that all eight members of the governing body need to serve jail time for being complicit in the COVID up of child sex abuse. And I think that their jail time should be commensurate with how long they have been serving in that capacity.

Lloyd Evans [01:16:16] I think that the organization, as a result of that exposure and that kind of action being taken, should be find substantial amounts of money and that that money should find its way to the victims. And I would also like as many Jehovah's Witnesses as possible to have their minds back to realize that they've been lied to and exploited and find their way to mental freedom. There's no magic wand scenario as far as I'm concerned, that can just fix everything that I think needs to be fixed.

Lloyd Evans [01:16:50] I can only know roughly what I would like and do my best to try and make that happen. And knowing that at least by doing something, I mean if you aim high, you're going to achieve higher than you would have achieved if you didn't try and do anything at all. So that's kind of the basis on which I work.

John Dehlin [01:17:13] And so the. For you, the biggest problem by far is that is the child sexual abuse in Jehovah's Witness organization

Lloyd Evans [01:17:22] that on the shunning it's difficult to kind of.

John Dehlin [01:17:24] Oh, shunning, okay. No, no, no. I just want to make sure we cover the name.

Lloyd Evans [01:17:28] Well, in some ways they're interlinked because obviously one of the problems that abuse victims have is that they are punished through shunning in many cases by trying to separate themselves from the toxic environment that has helped facilitate.

John Dehlin [01:17:42] Victims are shunned.

Lloyd Evans [01:17:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:17:46] Wow. So the response of the church to a victim coming forth is that that victim gets shunned?

Lloyd Evans [01:17:53] Well, that's a little bit overly simplistic. My point is, and this was brought out in the Australian Royal Commission, that if as an abuse victim you feel that you. Well, for one thing, as an abuse victim you're required to forgive your abuser, which could put you in a situation where you have to on a weekly basis attend meetings where you're only a few feet away from the person who has done this to you on a weekly basis.

Lloyd Evans [01:18:26] That's what forgiveness means in the Jehovah's Witness religion. So let's say you can't handle that. Let's say you don't want to be a few feet away from your abuser and your solution is to get out of the organization. Okay, you're going to end up being shunned.

Lloyd Evans [01:18:46] So that's in many ways, the shunning and the child sex abuse kind of overlaps and kind of goes hand in hand. And I also think that if the shunning were to end or be reversed so that Witnesses were told were forbidden from shunning disfellowshipped family members, it would enable more Witnesses to vote with their feet and hold the leaders directly accountable. Because at the moment, what you have is a captive organization where people aren't allowed to leave even if they want to. So that even though the leadership claims, oh, we've got eight and a half million followers, no, you don't. You've got eight and a half million who identify as Jehovah's Witnesses, some of whom want to leave but can't.

Lloyd Evans [01:19:31] So it's a captive organization. And if it ceased to be a captive organization so that people could vote with their feet, I think that that alone would organically fix many of the more harmful problems because the leaders, again, would be more accountable for what they teach and what they practice.

John Dehlin [01:19:53] Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, I. I want to keep talking, but I have a lunch I have to run to today that was scheduled. So let me end with this, Lloyd. Well, first I want to. Well, I'll save my congratulations till the end. But what do you believe now? What are your beliefs? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in Jehovah? Do you believe in Jesus? Yeah, I know you already told us, but I want you to summarize with your beliefs. And if you don't believe in Jehovah's Witness ism anymore, what is the set of beliefs or worldview that you've come to that you feel comfortable about, feel comfortable with?

Lloyd Evans [01:20:34] I believe in things that can be proven. And it turns out that every single one of the world's religions can't be proven or is equally unprovable. So I don't worry about any of them. And in my own case, I understand that not everyone shares this view. And I understand that for whatever reason, some people seem to need religion in their lives. They need to entertain this idea that they can cheat their own death or they can see their granny again, or whoever.

Lloyd Evans [01:21:09] In my own case, I'm comfortable with my mortality. My mortality, in many ways motivates me to make the best of the life I have rather than thinking I can defer things to an afterlife. And it gives me a sense of fulfillment to know that there is satisfaction to be gleaned from leaving the world. A Slightly better place than you found it, if possible.

Lloyd Evans [01:21:37] And, yeah, I only worry about things that can be proven. And if someone comes to me with an idea, I'll listen to it. I don't shut myself off to religion to that extent where I won't even listen to what people have to say. But I address every religious claim with equal skepticism, and that inevitably leads to me, you know, saying, okay, that's fine, that. If you want to believe that, but you've given me no reason to believe it myself, so that's where I am.

John Dehlin [01:22:10] This is a sensitive question, but what about the idea that you won't see your mother again or your father when he passes, or your wife or kid? That's how Mormonism often hooks people, is by promising them they'll see their family again? You don't have that assurance.

Lloyd Evans [01:22:26] I'm comfortable with that now because that's how it is. I can't wish it to be any different, you know, and in fact, the. In the. In the Jehovah's Witness theology, I wouldn't want their afterlife anyway because the paradise that's on offer for Jehovah's Witnesses has been landscaped over the remains of seven and a half billion men, women and children who've been slaughtered for the crime of not being Jehovah's Witnesses. I wouldn't be able to enjoy my slice of watermelon at the picnic table knowing what's just a few feet underneath, you know, So I don't want that quote, unquote utopia. It wouldn't be a utopia. It would be a dystopia.

Lloyd Evans [01:23:12] Especially given the fact that I would need to spend eternity praising the monster who's done that. No, thank you. That's not a paradise. Whether Mum's there or not. It wouldn't be a paradise for me. Happy with the fact that when we die, we die. And if anything, that motivates me to try and make the very best of the life I have, rather than worrying about one that doesn't exist in the future?

John Dehlin [01:23:37] I love it. Well, John Cedars or Lloyd Evans, it is such an honor to meet a fellow. I don't want to say soldier, because that's a war metaphor. So a feller, fellow activist in trying to wake people up, bring them some light and truth to minimize pain and suffering and to help, I don't know, bring light to the world to the best that we can scratch it out. So it has been just a real honor to get to know you. Your credit to your people, and I would love to find a way to collaborate with you and others like you in the future, because this is important work you're doing, you know.

Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans [01:24:20] Indeed. I've been aware of you for some time, and it's really nice to have this conversation. I feel honored to be on the show, and I really hope it's not the last time we work together.

John Dehlin [01:24:33] All right, Lloyd Evans, everybody. And just to plug again, his website is Reluctant Apostate Co. He. He has two books that you can check out. The books are called the Reluctant Apostate and then how to Escape from Jehovah's Witnesses. And of course, he has a YouTube channel, which is his bread and butter, and it's called the John Cedars Channel. Cedars. Along with the, of course, JWSurvey.org and all the other things. You can find a page of links on reluctantapostate Co, along with his bio and other audio and video sources and merchandise, et cetera. If there are any Jehovah's Witnesses who ex Jehovah's Witnesses who are listening, please support Lloyd Evans and support his work, because this work can't continue without support.

Lloyd Evans [01:25:38] And I would say the same thing for your work. It's a really valuable service you're providing. So I like to think together we're making a difference. And yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to compare notes.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] All right, Lloyd, you take care.

Lloyd Evans [01:25:54] You, too.

John Dehlin [01:25:55] Stay in touch. Reach out if I can ever help with anything. And if you ever come to the United States, and especially Utah, you better let me know.

Lloyd Evans [01:26:02] Oh, you'll regret making that offer.

John Dehlin [01:26:06] All right, Lloyd, you take care.

Lloyd Evans [01:26:08] Take care.

John Dehlin [01:26:09] Thanks, listeners. See you guys again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

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