Welcome and Introduction to Amber Scorah

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is June 6, 2019, and I could not be more excited to have with us today another epic, amazing, phenomenal author and guest.

John Dehlin [00:00:49] Those of you who are followers of Mormon Stories podcast will remember a few epic interviews that we've had over the past couple years with Never Mormons. We call them Nevermos in our community. One is Tova Mervis, who wrote that amazing book, the Book of Separation, about being an orthodox Jew, losing your faith, being in a mixed faith marriage, leaving her husband.

John Dehlin [00:01:09] That was an amazing book. We brought her to Salt Lake City. We also had the privilege of interviewing Tara Westover about her amazing book. Educated brought her to Salt Lake City as well. And now we have the chance to interview Amber Skora about her brand new book, Hot off the Press, Leaving the Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life. We interviewed Lloyd Evans a couple weeks ago about his Jehovah's Witness experience.

John Dehlin [00:01:41] But Amber's book is going to take our understanding of the Jehovah's Witness movement to a new level. So we're thrilled to have her today. We're thrilled to have several, many, many people joining us live on Facebook. And so, without any further ado, Amber Skora, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Amber Scorah [00:02:00] Thanks, John. I'm really happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] We had a false start, so thanks for your patience.

Amber Scorah [00:02:05] Happy to be here again.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] All right, so many of our listeners will have had a bit of an introduction to the Jehovah's Witness movement through Lloyd Evans. Do you know Lloyd?

Amber Scorah [00:02:15] Yeah, we've talked online. I've met him in person once when he came to New York.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Yeah, super cool. Well, every experience is different and there's so much that your book adds. We're just thrilled to have you. So thanks for joining us. And where do you want to begin with your story? There's so much to talk about in such a little time.

Growing Up as a Third-Generation Jehovah's Witness

Amber Scorah [00:02:35] Yeah, I was just thinking how the one thing that really overlaps that might be interesting to Mormons or ex Mormons is that my story involves a mission in China. And it's funny cause when I was in China, I do remember seeing other Mormons there, especially in Taiwan. I think in Taiwan it was a little more obvious because you didn't have to be as secretive in Taiwan. And in the book, it's funny cause there is this scene where I talk about how sometimes the people we talk to would mistake us for Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] And I loved it that the last thing you guys wanted to be identified as was Mormons.

Amber Scorah [00:03:13] No, no, no, no. Those Mormons are the ones who, when they ride their wear helmets. We don't wear helmets. They called them helmet preachers in Taiwan, which is funny. Which was dumb. Not to wear a helmet. It's not a PSA or anything saying don't wear helmets.

John Dehlin [00:03:27] Yeah. And I loved it. I've got.

Amber Scorah [00:03:28] Everybody does when they're on a bicycle. So it was unusual.

John Dehlin [00:03:31] Totally. I've got a friend of the family who served a Mormon mission in Taiwan. And so I told him, you got to read this book. Just because it talks about being a missionary in Taiwan. But let's go back just a tiny bit. Amber, tell us about your, your parents and your upbringing just briefly in the Jehovah's Witness movement. How did your parents, or in this case, I think your grandparents kind of get into the movement?

Amber Scorah [00:03:55] Yeah, I'm third generation Jehovah's Witness, or I was, and my grandparents on both sides converted and probably much like Mormons, there's not a lot of intermarry. Like there's not a lot of external marrying. Most when you're a Jehovah's Witness, you're pretty much supposed to marry another Jehovah's Witness. So that's how it sort of came down the family line. My grandparents, I'm from Canada and they were. They studied as adults and converted and got baptized. So my mom, she was raised in it as of the age around 14. On my dad's side, I think he started a little. I think his parents converted a little earlier. But by the time my parents had me, they had become inactive in the faith.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] Do you know why?

Amber Scorah [00:04:37] I don't really know why My parents, it's strange, but they didn't really tell me a lot of things, but basically I can sort of imagine the reasons. I'm not sure how many meetings a week Mormons have, but Joe's Witnesses at that time had three meetings a week, technically five, but two of them were on the same day preaching all the time. And there's a lot of pressure to be perform as a Witness. Like if you don't preach and if you don't, if you're not regular at the meetings, you'll start to get elders visits. So I can imagine, you know, my parents, whatever the reason, they had two little kids by that point.

Amber Scorah [00:05:12] They just stopped going for a while. However, they still took us to the main meetings, like the biggest meetings of the years. Like the Memorial we call it is sort of like feels like if you're Jehoshonist and you don't go to the memorial, which is like, basically the anniversary of Jesus death, then you know, you're definitely gonna die in Armageddon. However, most of the meetings we didn't go to. However, as a child, I don't know, I think I was a very introspective child, maybe. I don't know. But I would listen at these few meetings we did go to and hear what they were saying. And it really had an impact on me.

Amber Scorah [00:05:45] I started to have a lot of fear and, like, worried that if my family didn't go start going back to the Kingdom hall, that we would all be destroyed. Because Joe's on this is. At their meetings, like, every meeting, they talk about how Armageddon is gonna happen, like, at any moment. And they've been talking that way for 100 years. But when you're a child, and that's your first introduction to it, it has a big effect on you.

John Dehlin [00:06:10] Tell us, since we're there. I know this is really hard, but in a few minutes. And your book has a chapter on this or two. Give us just an overview of the main, you know, doctrinal or theological tenets of the Jehovah's Witness movement so we can frame that as we talk about your upbringing and your story.

Amber Scorah [00:06:29] Yeah. So they were founded in the late 1800s, and they kind of came out of that second great awakening in the eastern United States where, like, Seventh Day Adventists came, I think, maybe don't forget.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Don't forget Mormons at the same time.

Amber Scorah [00:06:43] Yes. And they sort of, you know, morphed and managed to be one of those religion sex sects, really, at the time that evolved into sort of this larger mainstream proselytizing religion. Their core beliefs are basically. They feel that they are the only true Christian religion Earth today. That they're basically an extension of 1st century Christianity.

Amber Scorah [00:07:09] The only sort of, like, continuous line from Jesus followers to the present day. There was a governing body that was in Brooklyn for 100 years and just recently moved to upstate New York. And the governing body is this group of, I think, eight men who write a lot of the literature, make a lot of the doctrinal decisions, and basically run the show from the very beginning. They were very apocalyptic. They believed in Armageddon that the world was gonna end. We were living in the last days as of 1914, which is a date that they picked out, calculating, using sort of like mysterious calculations from the Book of Daniel, I think it is.

John Dehlin [00:07:51] And wasn't there temple kind of Egyptian numerology stuff involved yeah, like going further

Amber Scorah [00:07:56] back, what a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses don't know is that Charles T. Russell, the original founder, when he was really on his search for truth, he even traveled to the pyramids in Egypt and was looking for answers there. Basically, when people have this preset idea that the world's ending, they're looking for some formula that can confirm that that's gonna happen. And that's, I think, what he was doing. So eventually he found, through this math in the scriptures, a way to pinpoint 1914 as the beginning of the last days. Originally, they thought that was gonna be Armageddon. But when Armageddon didn't come, they. They realized, oh, no, no, it's just the last dates.

Amber Scorah [00:08:31] So over the, you know, ensuing hundred years, they've just over and over predicted. They used to pick dates up to 1975. And then when finally in 1975, when Armageddon didn't come, they kind of stopped doing that because they realized a lot of people left when it didn't happen. So now they just talk about how that Armageddon is imminent.

Amber Scorah [00:08:52] Some, like, sort of notable things about Witnesses that most people know is they're preaching, of course, and that preaching is informed by the idea that they think the world is going to end. And that makes them as zealous as they are.

Amber Scorah [00:09:05] Also, they don't celebrate birthdays, Christmas, funnily enough, because most people think of that as a really Christian holiday. They don't celebrate it because of the pagan roots. So they basically, essentially, they take a very literal translation of the Bible, and they view themselves as sort of pure Christianity that hasn't been adulterated by sort of other pagan traditions that most. They say most other churches have.

John Dehlin [00:09:32] And do you have a sense. And we'll get into this. But how. How is it different from just Presbyterianism, Lutheranism? Have you thought about ways, key ways that it kind of is set apart from mainstream Protestant Christianity?

Amber Scorah [00:09:48] I mean, I don't know if I would call those religions fundamentalist, but Jehovah's Witnesses are definitely fundamentalist religion. They're different.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] Sorry, meaning what?

Amber Scorah [00:09:58] Just that they. I actually was, like, studying this in religious religion class just this semester. I'm trying to, like, define the definition, but I think it's basically like a religion that adheres to a doctrine. It's like the pure faith. And also, it doesn't have a lot of evolution in their teachings. So, for example, the Jew's Witnesses have. One of the main things to know about Joseph Witnesses, too, is that they don't believe in taking blood, blood transfusions. And that's sort of what I would consider a really fundamentalist doctrine in the sense that they don't revise someone. You know, I think it was the 50s, they decided that.

Amber Scorah [00:10:28] And no matter how much evidence is produced that, you know, perhaps we should, you know, evolve the church, reform the church, they don't. They're like, what was proclaimed then is the truth, and we can't change it no matter what happens. Similar with their policy on reporting child abuse, which we can get into later. So there's that. Doctrinally, they're different than other churches in that they don't believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is almost a feature universally of Christian churches. And Joseph believe that there's God, Jehovah, Jesus as the intermediary between God and man and the Savior.

Jehovah's Witness Culture and Unusual Rules

Amber Scorah [00:11:02] That's quite different. They also pride themselves on being preachers because most of those Christian churches don't actually fulfill that command of Jesus to go and preach the good news in the entire inhabited earth. And that's something that Jehovah's Witnesses often use to point to themselves as evidence of being the true religion. They're also neutral. They don't get involved in politics. Jehovah's Witnesses don't vote. And they. All this comes from the scripture they pull out where Jesus said that we shouldn't get involved in the affairs of the world and we should be, you know, separate from the world.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Right. Okay. So towards the end of your book, you talk after leaving, you talk about all the things you were able to do for the first time. I think you mentioned eating Lucky Charms. Was it. You mentioned our movies for the first time. Like, behaviorally, what are the things that Jehovah's Witnesses aren't generally allowed to do? What are the things that are frowned upon?

Amber Scorah [00:11:58] Well, it's funny because that thing about the Lucky Charms or, like, Smurfs, There was a big thing about smurfs in the 80s that people thought Smurfs suddenly demonized. Some of these things don't come necessarily from the leaders, but you know how, like, you've got this culture, a sort of insular culture. And I don't know if this happens with the Mormons, but, like, some of these things will sort of arise that are just kind of quirky and weird too.

John Dehlin [00:12:20] Like, totally. Like, Mormons for the longest time wouldn't drink Coca Cola because it had caffeine because coffee and tea were forbidden. Right?

Amber Scorah [00:12:29] Yeah. So Lucky Charms was to do with the fact that luck was satanic. So anything that was related to the occults, you know, psychics, all of these things are satanic. So anything that is considered satanic is you can't participate in. So as a child, like there's some things we're allowed to do, as you say, we could watch some movies, but not R rated movies. I could watch cartoons when I was a kid, but we weren't allowed to watch Scooby Doo because there was ghosts in it. It's this type of thing.

John Dehlin [00:12:58] Okay, and what about like purity, morality? You know, you talked about wearing a miniskirt at the end. What about morality, purity, modesty, that sort of stuff?

Amber Scorah [00:13:07] Yeah, modesty, Dress. Modesty and dress is very important. You can't even as a woman, you're not supposed to cut your hair short because you might look like a man. One thing I always find interesting now having left is that a lot of the parameters for what is considered modest seem to align with the era that the governing body members. They're all older men, mainly white men. Sort of like the 1950s era version of modesty is the so called biblical era of modesty. For example, I just heard of someone who, you know, so many men these days have a trimmed beard. I know someone who was basically removed as an elder, which is like a leader in the congregation because he had a trimmed beard. Which really made me laugh because in all the publications when they depict Jesus, he has a beard.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] We got the same thing.

Amber Scorah [00:13:58] It's just, it's silly. I mean, and nowadays no one thinks a beard is like bad or like sort of spooky. But I think in the 50s it was like if you had a beard that was kind of anti establishment or something.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Yeah. You will die when you learn all the parallels between Mormonism and the Jewish.

Amber Scorah [00:14:16] I'm actually very interested. And that's funny how these parallels independently sprouted up.

John Dehlin [00:14:22] Yeah. Brigham Young University is named after Brigham Young. He had a beard. You can't have a beard at BYU.

Amber Scorah [00:14:30] I always think that every man looks 33% more handsome when he has a trim beard. It's a shame.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] Okay, so. And then of course we'll talk about the shunning. And Lloyd talked about that. Basically don't have non Jehovah's Witnesses as friends. And if somebody breaks some of the big rules, you're to cut them off, Right?

Amber Scorah [00:14:51] Yeah, there's a. Shunning is a big thing. Definitely similar to Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] I think, I think it's worse. I actually think you guys win the prize on shunning. But we have soft Shunning. You guys kind of have hard, hard shunning. Yeah, but we've got our other things. Okay. All right, so let's talk about now, your upbringing. So what was it like? What was your home like? How would you characterize kind of your parents, their parenting style, and what sort of home life you had as you were approaching teenagerhood?

Amber Scorah [00:15:22] Well, it's interesting because my parents were inactive. They were not active in the church, but they still taught us that we were Jehovah's Witnesses. And, you know, when you're a child, you don't know any different. So early on, I thought I was a Jehovah's Witness. So when I was at school, I had to. There's a lot of stands you have to make as a child. It's really. It's really intimidating and difficult. But, for example, if someone was having a birthday and they had cake, we weren't allowed to participate. We couldn't have the cake. We couldn't sing Happy Birthday at Christmas time. And they were singing Christmas carols in the gym.

Amber Scorah [00:15:52] We'd have to go outside when they sang the national anthem. We'd have to sit down when everyone was standing up. So I was adhering to all these things, but I didn't have any Jehovah's Witness friends. I only had friends at school because we didn't go to the Kingdom Hall. So it was a weird thing where, in a sense, I kind of had the worst of both worlds because I didn't really have fit in at school, but I also didn't have the community of the church.

Amber Scorah [00:16:18] So it was a little weird. I think that's why I'm a little weird to this day. Maybe I can spend a lot of time alone and be fine. But eventually I heard enough at the church that my fear grew, and I asked my parents if they could take us back to the meetings. So when that happened, then I finally realized what it meant to be a Jehovah's Witness. And it's. It was a very busy life. It meant, you know, Saturday mornings, you didn't get to watch cartoons anymore. You had to go out preaching. Sometimes on Sundays, too. Sunday we had a meeting. We had a meeting on Tuesday night and Thursday night.

Amber Scorah [00:16:51] And in between those meetings, we had to do a lot of preparation for the meetings, which involved looking at the Watchtower magazines, underlining the answers, looking up the scriptures that they were quoting in the articles. As I got a little older and I started to have a lot of friends in the congregation moving on to teenage years, it Was. It was fun. Like, we. Because you're in a community and you have this thing in common. There's other kids your age. We had a real bond and we did a lot of fun stuff together. It wasn't like life wasn't fun. But of course, we did have our boundaries, as you say. We didn't go to our rated movies. And as far as, like, dating, things like that were pretty forbidden and as we got older.

John Dehlin [00:17:34] So you weren't allowed to date as teens or you weren't supposed to.

Amber Scorah [00:17:37] You're not supposed to. You're only supposed to date when you're with a view to marriage. So, funnily enough, most. Joseph, I don't know about Mormons, but get married at like, 18 years old because you can't have sex before marriage.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] So, yeah, that's us. Yeah.

Amber Scorah [00:17:51] So dating with a view to marriage would be like. I guess you'd start dating at age 17 and a half and get married by 18. I don't know. I was a bit different that I kind of. I didn't rebel, but I ended up. When I did start. I started dating a guy, seeing a guy, if you can call it that, when you're just a bunch of teenagers hanging out together. And he was a bit older than me. And then we ended up kind of having a relationship and ended up when I was 18, getting disfellowshipped because we committed immorality.

John Dehlin [00:18:21] That was Thomas, right?

Amber Scorah [00:18:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:23] Yeah. So you had. Thomas became kind of your boyfriend and you had. You had sex. But it wasn't just sex. It was. As I read that part of the book, I'm like, what a beautiful time of, like, connection, of intimacy, of exploring the world. What's that?

Amber Scorah [00:18:40] It was so great.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] Yeah. I was like, everyone should have that little period in their life where they're just young and adults and in love and exploring the world. Right.

Amber Scorah [00:18:52] And I think because we got disfellowshipped or, you know, kicked out of the church, I mean, I was. I was still a true believer. But of course, my, you know, mortal or carnal sins, you know, had, like, brought me to the outside. And I knew I was always going to come back in because I was fully indoctrinated. But all the same, it was such a magical time. And then I think, because we were so on our own, having been shunned by everyone we knew and we didn't have friends in outside world, like, why would we do that? It was this sort of little romantic sort of couple years where we just did everything together and like, explored the world and, like, explored ourselves and understood. Started to understand things.

John Dehlin [00:19:34] It was like a rums. It was like a Rumspringer.

Amber Scorah [00:19:36] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Except I didn't want it to end. I'm reading that part and I'm like, no, don't.

Amber Scorah [00:19:41] Don't leave.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] Don't leave. What kept you? And you've already said it, but what kept you from just staying there, you know, in that moment of joy and freedom, what were the hooks that brought you back?

What Kept Her Inside the Faith

Amber Scorah [00:19:54] Well, for me, and I don't. I think it's different for everyone. Why they stay in a religion like this, even when you are raised in it. But the big, like, sticky thing for me was the fear from right when I was a kid, just this idea of dying. I love being alive. I love life. And I was really afraid still. Even though Armageddon hadn't come so many times that it was supposed to, I still was just afraid of dying at Armageddon. I didn't want to. I didn't want to be killed. That was the number one thing for me. And I did really believe in Jehovah. I still prayed. I was. I thought that it was the truth. And I wanted to. I wanted to live forever. Basically. That was a big thing for me.

John Dehlin [00:20:32] So tell us how that. That early church discipline worked and how the shunning or disfellowshipment was for you, and then what in the world allowed you to endure that and then return?

Amber Scorah [00:20:51] I think at the beginning it was all good because we were having a great time. But then the pressure started to mount because we both wanted to come back. And let me put as an aside here, if there had been in that day and age, such accessible information as there is now on the Internet about how, like, what your church is about, like, other people you could talk to that had been in the church and left, but in that era, it was. There was nothing. Like, how would I find anything out about my beliefs? I would, what, go to the library? There was nothing. There was nothing available.

Amber Scorah [00:21:22] So I think that there was this sort of chance that I almost dodged the bullet and got out, but then there was just. My mind was too indoctrinated to leave. So, yeah, as time went on, the pressure mounted that we either had to stop having sex by either just being suddenly celibate with each other, which is a really hard thing to do when you're that age and you already had sex.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Yeah, super hard.

Amber Scorah [00:21:47] So the other answer was to get married. That really was the only answer. Get married or completely break up and

John Dehlin [00:21:52] why didn't you and Thomas get married?

Amber Scorah [00:21:56] I would have done it, but Thomas was an interesting Jehovah's Witness. He, he was more of a bit of a free thinker, which I was really, some latent thing in me was really attracted to, obviously. But he had come from a family with, you know, parents who had married young and not had a good marriage. And he had older sisters and younger sisters who got married very young and didn't have good marriages. And he was just like, I'm not gonna do it. He's like, I don't want to get married. We were still. I was 18, he was a little older, he was 23. But I mean, he was just like, it's a mistake, it's a mistake.

Amber Scorah [00:22:28] And I mean, looking back now, I think it was such a love story that it's sad that it didn't work out. But of course, I don't think it's a real crapshoot to get married at that age and have it work out.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] Do you know where Thomas is now? Is he still a jovial witness?

Amber Scorah [00:22:41] Yeah, I know where he is. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] Is he still Jehovah's Witness?

Amber Scorah [00:22:44] No.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] Okay, cool.

Amber Scorah [00:22:46] But it's a long story, which I could tell.

John Dehlin [00:22:49] Thomas. Thomas, you're next on Mormon Stories podcast. Okay, so you were disfellowshipped, right?

Disfellowshipping, Shunning, and Reinstatement

Amber Scorah [00:22:55] Yeah. At that time, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] So what was that like? Meeting with the elders, being judged by men? Just talk to. I was excommunicated. A lot of Mormons have been going through excommunication lately. Just talk to us about what it was like to be a 18, 19 year old woman being grilled about sexual matters by a bunch of middle aged men. What was that like?

Amber Scorah [00:23:16] Yeah, that was, it was, it was odd. I had. It's always a panel of three elders that you meet with. And interestingly, a lot of people ask me, why did you tell them? Like, why do Jehovah's Witnesses tell the elders? Of course we tell them because we're taught to police ourselves and we knew if we hid something, we're gonna get killed at Armageddon anyways, so we better tell them. So, yeah, you contact a brother and tell them, like, look, I need to talk to you. You tell them brief notes about what it is, and then they form a judicial committee, they call it. So you attend the judicial committee at the Kingdom Hall.

Amber Scorah [00:23:50] Usually they sit you down and they say, okay, so tell us what happened. So, you know, I mean, I was really young and these men, they weren't super old. The ones on My panel, which in some ways made it kind of weirder because funnily enough, one of the brothers who was on that judicial committee is now also no longer Chova's witness, which is crazy. But, yeah, they asked me all the details, and there's certain things they're very interested in. Is like, was it premeditated or did it just happen? Which is a bit of a weird question when it comes to sex. They want to know, sort of like, if you enjoyed it. They definitely want to know whether the man climaxed.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] You can say it.

Amber Scorah [00:24:36] Yeah. They want to know how many times it occurred, because that's the way that they judge whether you're a pen. You climaxed with that.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Did they care if you climaxed?

Amber Scorah [00:24:44] No, they did not.

John Dehlin [00:24:46] Of course.

Amber Scorah [00:24:46] Of course not. So, yeah, there was all of that. And then finally, interestingly, I've always been treated, and some people have been treated terribly in these judicial committees. It all depends on the elders you get. And I've always kind of been lucky that way that I've had pretty reasonable elders that I've confessed to. And these elders, I think because my boyfriend was five years older than me, they really were kind of taking it easy on me. They were like, you know, we sort of hold him more responsible.

Amber Scorah [00:25:17] And they said to me, basically, like, sort of feeling me out, but they were like, you know, if you're repentant enough, you don't have to get disfellowshipped. And I was so in love and having such a great time that I told them, honestly, I was like, you better just disfellowship me, because I can't. I won't be able to stop.

Amber Scorah [00:25:33] So, yeah, I kind of disfellowshipped myself in the end, but I knew that if I didn't, it would just be. I'd have to come back and tell him the next time I had sex. I just knew I wasn't in a place that I was going to be able to just reform immediately.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] And that meant shunning, right?

Amber Scorah [00:25:47] And I meant shunning. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:48] So I was shunned in that first. That first era.

Amber Scorah [00:25:51] How long?

John Dehlin [00:25:52] How long?

Amber Scorah [00:25:52] Yeah, it was a couple years, at least.

John Dehlin [00:25:56] Okay, so you were cut off from your entire family. Did your parents honor that shunning since they were kind of inactive?

Amber Scorah [00:26:03] My parents were active by this time because when I was a kid, remember, I had asked them to go back. I don't know if I made that clear. And my whole family did go back around the time I was 12.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] I may have missed It.

Amber Scorah [00:26:12] That's okay. So it's a strange story, but Joseph's Witness is another thing we can get into. Unlike Mormons, unfortunately, Jehovah's Witnesses don't go to college. We're not allowed to go to College. So at 18, I had already moved out of home and moved to the city, so I was already living in my own apartment, which was crazy. And I had a job, so my parents, my mom didn't talk to me. My dad, at the same time was in a severe alcoholic episode, and so he did come and see me and talk to me. But it was. Obviously that was sort of its own set of problems.

Amber Scorah [00:26:51] My family did have some problems, such as alcoholism dysfunction. So, yeah, it was, you know, it was shunning. My sister shunned me, definitely. My brother was much younger, so it wasn't as relevant. But, yeah, my family shunned me. And same with his family. And that was harder for him than for me, I think, because his family was quite close.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] For someone who doesn't understand the psychological impact of being shunned, can you. Can you just briefly say anything about what that's like?

Amber Scorah [00:27:22] Well, it's emotionally, I think it's a really. I mean, it's. It's basically emotional blackmail. Because they shun you, because they say it's an act of love, that if they shun you, you will come to your senses. And the only way you'll come back to the faith and not be killed in Armageddon is if you come, you sort of like get the pain of shunning gets strong enough that it compels you to return to the faith, stop sinning, this type of thing. So for me, so it's a little humiliating. I mean, your name gets announced from the platform in front of the whole congregation as being disfellowshipped. And when that happens, everyone knows immediately not to speak to you. And then what happens after that is that if you want to get reinstated or allowed back in, you have to attend all the meetings in the back row. You sit at the back, you have

John Dehlin [00:28:10] to come right at the end, so no one has to see you and leave right as it ends right at the beginning. Sorry, come right at the beginning. Right. But not too early, and then leave right as. So nobody has to see you.

Amber Scorah [00:28:20] Right, exactly. So you're not tempted to talk to you or whatever. And it's. I mean, it feels like a little bit of a penance for sure. You know, you're sort of contritely sitting in the back row and leaving Afterwards. And the thing is, though, as you know, when you're raised with it, I was like, well, no, this is what I deserve. I mean, I had sex and I'm not stopping, so I deserve to be the one sitting back here ostracized by everyone.

Amber Scorah [00:28:50] So I just dealt with it. And the weird thing was, is that you would think that a person who is shunned then was out in the world, at least would have gone out at my age and made friends and at least been able to go have some fun, but I didn't. I just. I wasn't familiar with the world. I didn't really understand how the world worked, and I was afraid of it. So I basically just spent a lot of time alone. And there were periods during the shunning where Thomas and I would break up because we were trying to stop. And so there were times where I was very alone, where I would just spend the entire weekend when I wasn't at work by myself, to the point where I lost my voice because I hadn't talked to anyone in so long.

Amber Scorah [00:29:27] So it was definitely. It was definitely painful and weird, but to me, it was sort of like, well, I made my bed and just. I just kept trying to find the way to get back.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] I have. I have a psychology PhD, so I sometimes do these coaching moments. And I just want to add a couple things. I heard Julia d' Azevedo Hanks one time say that. That solitary confinement is a universal form of torture. And basically what she's getting out there is that is that shunning or things like it is literally a form of torture. And then there's always Caitlin Ryan's research about the LGBT community that the largest contributor to lgbtq, LGBTQ suicide is family rejection. And it's going to be true for non LGBTQ people as well. Family rejection is one of the most severe psychological punishments you can ever give somebody, and it's brutal. And I just had to give that a spotlight.

Amber Scorah [00:30:29] I think it's really important to understand because some people don't really understand how the effect it can have on people. And also, it depends, I think, on, like, the person themselves, like, how marginalized they feel. I mean, I still did kind of have Thomas more, like more or less through that whole period. But, for example, you mentioned the lgbtq. There was. I mentioned in the book that there was a brother who got disfellowshipped later when I was reinstated for being gay. And during the time he was disfellowshipped,

John Dehlin [00:30:56] it was Dale, right?

Amber Scorah [00:30:57] Yeah. He hung himself in the forest of the territory where we would preach, looking to save lives, meanwhile shunning this person that we knew who was so alone that he killed himself.

John Dehlin [00:31:09] And I was. I was so, you know, I wrote this down. I took, like, eight pages of notes from your book. But he hung himself in the forest because without his Jehovah's Witness religious friends, no one would have discovered him in his home, because he didn't have any friends outside of the Jehovah's Witness community. So he hung himself in a forest so that he would be found.

Amber Scorah [00:31:31] I know. It's, like, gives me tingles to this day because it's so tragic. And, of course, I even feel this responsibility now that I'm not indoctrinated anymore, where I feel ashamed of myself. Like, how could I do that to somebody? But I did.

John Dehlin [00:31:48] Yeah, well, when we know better, we do better, as Oprah likes to say. And Mormons have their own suicide epidemic going on in Utah with the LGBT youth and adults and kids who masturbate. Like, it's really brutal. So back to your story. So you endured the shunning, and then what happened?

Amber Scorah [00:32:14] So eventually, Thomas and I managed to fully break up, and then there was enough period of time where I hadn't committed immorality that I could write a letter to the elders and ask to meet with them. So then you meet with them, and they basically talk to you, find out, kind of grill you to find out when the last time you committed sin was, and if they. They meet amongst themselves and they decide whether you can be reinstated. I think that I might have tried once, and they said, no, you have to wait longer, because I hadn't waited. It had been too soon since my last episode.

Amber Scorah [00:32:46] But eventually I was reinstated. And it's crazy, because the day they announced it, same thing from the platform, that Ambroscora has been reinstated. Just like a light switch, everyone so loving comes back like invites right away. The next weekend, I was invited to a cabin. And the contrast between being on the outside and the inside, I mean, it did make you feel like this organization is a wonderful place. When you're indoctrinated, you're not thinking, like, wait a minute. Why was I out there?

Amber Scorah [00:33:13] But it does make you feel, when you're back in it, that the light is just shining on you and the warmth and the love. There's definitely. I am not saying here that there is not nice people in Joseph, because there's wonderful people. I love the people. The problem is the indoctrination.

John Dehlin [00:33:28] Yeah. Yeah. So how soon after being reinstated, did you end up getting married to the person that was your first husband?

Amber Scorah [00:33:37] It wasn't long. It was definitely not long enough that I waited. But all of my friends were already married by this point. I was, you know, 21 when I got reinstated, so I think I met him. It was probably. It was within a year, maybe a year after I got reinstated. I think after a year.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] And his name in the book is.

Amber Scorah [00:33:55] No, I didn't. I didn't use his name.

John Dehlin [00:33:57] Okay.

Amber Scorah [00:33:58] It's a funny thing, because I just. I knew how badly he did. He would not want to be in the book. And also, the relationship wasn't. It wasn't a super significant relationship for me, which is so sad, because it was my marriage. But there was something where I think it was just. To me, it wasn't a book about my marriage. It was a book about leaving my religion and my marriage. So it just came out that way that I didn't use his name.

John Dehlin [00:34:23] The thing that I. The thing that I say, I mean, that's kind of symbolic. But the thing I like to say in Mormonism is in orthodox Mormonism, we don't marry each other. We marry the church. And so it kind of doesn't. In some sense, it almost doesn't matter who you marry, because it's just about living, you know, getting on the train and going with the train. And you can pretty much do that with anybody. If you both have heartbeats and some sort of libido and the same goals, it kind of doesn't matter who you marry. It's very impersonal. And in the book, your marriage had a sense of just feeling very impersonal.

Amber Scorah [00:34:56] Oh, it's so funny. It's really nice that you understand that, because I think a lot of people don't understand that.

Going to China as an Underground Missionary

John Dehlin [00:35:01] Well, we both come from similar backgrounds, Amber. Okay, so what made you go to freaking China to be a missionary when you were kind of this prodigal daughter that was coming from an inactive home? Like, that's hardcore, right?

Amber Scorah [00:35:15] Yeah. Well, it's weird. I think. I think it's a bit of my personality. And maybe because the religion wasn't forced on me the way that for some people it was. It felt like something I had chosen. And because I believed it so fully and my fear was so strong of leaving it or it not being true, I just went to the furthest degree I could as a woman in the church, which was first to start what we called pioneering, which is when you live, you know, in your home congregation, you're putting in 70 hours a month in preaching. And all of us have to support ourselves.

Amber Scorah [00:35:45] So we work. I worked part time, and I started doing that pioneering work after I got married. And then what happened was, during that pioneer work, you know, the more you go out preaching, or out in service, as we call it, the more you find it's a complete waste of time. You're spending 70 hours a month, basically hardly ever talking to anyone. You're just driving around in cars, visiting houses where no one's home. Nobody, if they are home, they're not interested. They're like, why are you here? So after a number of years of that, I started to get interested in preaching to immigrants in my territory, most of whom, because I lived near a university, were Chinese from mainland China.

Amber Scorah [00:36:23] And my response in that community when I would preach was much better because a lot of them told me in the end it was because they wanted to practice English. At the time, I couldn't obviously, speak Mandarin. And so Chinese people would study the Bible with you, whereas the average person wouldn't. So I started to just try and learn Chinese to teach people, and that kind of brought me to my interest to eventually going to China.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] And so you and your first husband go to China, which city? Shanghai. Right?

Amber Scorah [00:36:57] Shanghai, yeah. So first we went to Taiwan to make our Chinese better, which took three years because it's a hard language to learn. You can't learn it unless you're in the environment, is my opinion. So after three years, it was me that was really pushing to go to China. I was really into it. I wanted to. I had been there on a visit once. I loved this idea of going to this territory where no one had been reached before. So I kept begging my husband to write a letter to the branch in Hong Kong who looked after China at the time and seeing if we could go, like, telling them, look, we've been pioneers for this long. We can speak Chinese. They didn't let everyone go. You had to sort of, you know, prove that you were kind of earning, level of spirituality, that you could handle it, which clearly I couldn't.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] And so total number of years in China, either Taiwan or mainland, as a

Amber Scorah [00:37:47] missionary, it was three in Taiwan and then three in Shanghai.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] Yeah, See, Mormons only go for two years. So you. You outdid us. You tripled the Mormon experience. That's pretty hardcore.

Amber Scorah [00:37:58] But let's not forget that after two years in China, I left the religion.

John Dehlin [00:38:02] Oh, right. Okay. So. So let's. Let's talk just briefly about what that's like, how like as Mormons, you're full time missionaries. You don't have jobs, you don't go. You go with single people when you're 18 or 19. Tell us just really briefly, kind of how you exist as a missionary, Jehovah's Witness missionary in a place like China. How do you make that work? Especially when you're married?

Amber Scorah [00:38:27] Yeah. So in Joseph Witnesses, there are missionaries who are sent by the church, a very small number, and they're funded. But in my book I mentioned, it's called pioneering. But I just use the word missionary because most people understand that terminology better. So for people who were pioneers like us, we were sort of missionaries, but we were on our own volition coming. So we had to find a way to get a work visa as a sort of disguise even for being there, and we had to find a way to support ourselves. So we did what every. You know, so many foreigners who come to Asia that, you know, want to stay for a while. We taught English. So I did that at the beginning. And then in Shanghai, after a year, I had been listening to some Chinese language learning podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] Sorry, I just have to say one thing. Mormons do that too. We, in places where we're not really necessarily wanted, like Russia, we get different types of visas to mask what we're doing and then through. Do the missionary work through the guise of teaching English. And it's fundamentally illegal. Right. So you were kind of doing illegal activity as a Christian church, Right?

Amber Scorah [00:39:38] Yeah. But honestly, even worse than Mormons is that at least you guys generally have university degrees, I think. Well, journalists rarely have a university degree because we're told not to go to college. So we bought fake degrees online for a couple hundred dollars or whatever, and then we would use fake degrees to qualify for basically what was sort of a fake visa. A false premise, anyway. But of course, all these things are justified because they would be like, cautious as serpents, innocence as innocent as doves, which is, you know, a scripture that's basically saying, you know, you can be sort of sneaky if it's furthering the kingdom interest, basically.

John Dehlin [00:40:14] Right? Yeah. You had a word for that at the beginning of the book. Theocratic warfare.

Amber Scorah [00:40:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] Oh, man.

Amber Scorah [00:40:21] I know.

John Dehlin [00:40:22] We call it lying. We call it lying for the Lord. That's what we call it. So you guys are in Shanghai. You're. You're there under the guise of teaching English, but you have to support yourself, right?

Amber Scorah [00:40:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] So what you were talking about the job you got, I thought it was cool. As a podcaster, I thought it was

Amber Scorah [00:40:39] cool well, it was the first wave of podcasting and one of the first, the very first language learning podcast had started in Shanghai and it was started by three foreigners and they had a small staff and they had just started broadcasting these Chinese lessons by podcast. And they had a really friendly tone and the hosts were entertaining of the shows. And so I started listening and I loved it and, and I was very interested. So I wrote them and said, you know, do you need anyone? Could I come work there?

Amber Scorah [00:41:10] And they did eventually. So they hired me part time because I only ever worked part time so I could preach. But of course I didn't tell them why I was really there and why I could speak Chinese. But it was a great job. I loved it. It was in this back alley, this old warehouse building, and we were making podcasts at the very beginning of podcasting altogether. It was before social media even, and we had forums online and it was just, it was a really exciting time. And especially for me because as a Jehovah's Witness, I had never had a career, let alone done anything creative, because we were discouraged from all of that.

Amber Scorah [00:41:45] We were just supposed to preach. So I had had okay jobs. I mean, some Jehovah's Witnesses, a lot of Joe's Witnesses just are cleaners because you don't have an education. I had had some enjoyable jobs, part time jobs, but this was something new altogether. It was really exciting.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] And was the podcast in English, teaching Chinese or was it in Chinese? So it was mostly in English, but teaching English speakers Chinese.

Amber Scorah [00:42:08] Exactly. So almost all of the listeners were people from all over the world who just had an interest in China for different reasons. Maybe, you know, they had. Some of them were like American born Chinese people who didn't grow up speaking Mandarin. Some of them were married to a Chinese person. Some of them were coming to China for business. There was all these different reasons.

Missionary Work and Cultural Awakening in Shanghai

John Dehlin [00:42:26] And then tell us what the missionary work looked like and how you would approach people, how would you meet them, how you would kind of hook them and then what, what their trajectory would be into membership if they ended up becoming members.

Amber Scorah [00:42:41] Yeah. So obviously, as Mormons know, in China you can't do your work openly. And so what we did was, and I'm curious to know if Mormons take the same tactic. Probably, probably. But anyone who's listening can tell me in the comments or something.

Amber Scorah [00:43:00] But basically we would just go there. There was usually, you know, Joseph's life is very structured at home. There was three meetings a week, as I mentioned. We'd meet up for preaching all of that was gone when we got to China because you couldn't do things so openly or so organized. So we were on our own a lot from the second we got there. Someone met up with us, told us how to do the work, which was basically just meet people. Try to meet as many people as you can in a day, get their number if they seem friendly, and then just start getting to know them.

Amber Scorah [00:43:33] And the idea with getting to know them was to find out whether there was anything dangerous about them. Danger would be someone who, because our work was, you know, restricted and illegal there. Danger would mean they had a relative or they themselves were part of the Communist Party, or maybe they someone worked for the government in their family. Anyone that seemed even marginally hostile to religion or suspicious, we would just drop right away.

Amber Scorah [00:44:03] And then the others, we would slowly just cultivate them. And then one day when we felt like, okay, I think this person's okay, then we would slip in the Bible or our publications, which, as I say in the book, is an awkward proposition at the best of times. But when you're in China, it's a little weird because most people, that's not like something that's really in their periphery, even, like, they kind of know about the Bible, but it's not something that comes up all the time.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] Right.

Amber Scorah [00:44:30] But the interesting thing is, although that seems so maybe strange and jarring to just sort of slip in the Bible, it was actually very easy because especially most of the people I ended up preaching to were young people. They were interested in the Bible, they were interested in Christianity because it had been something that they didn't have access to. And now China was opening up and there were these foreigners here and they wanted to know about foreign stuff. So it was actually quite easy to start Bible studies with people.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] And you mentioned a lovely friendship with Gene in the book that I'm glad survived ultimately, your disaffection. I love the part of the book where you talked about Chinese culture and how they're more comfortable talking about certain things that we're not. Do you want to talk about that really briefly?

Amber Scorah [00:45:19] Yeah. I mean, I think this was related to the fact that I eventually started to wake up in that when you get to China and you're a person from the west, so the longer you're there and the more you understand the language, the more you understand that this place is like, opposite culturally in almost every way to what you're used to. And so even, like, things that seem very natural or polite to you as a Westerner could be very Weird and even rude to a Chinese person. So, for example, like from very, like everyday things, like in hot weather, they would drink hot water. If they saw you drinking, like a drink with ice, it was like a national incident.

Amber Scorah [00:46:01] Like, people would be like, what are you doing? It's so bad for your health. Another scene in the book, which is funny is when I take one of the sisters that is in China there now Jehovah's Witness with me to her Bible study, and she brings her a gift of a clock, like an alarm clock.

Amber Scorah [00:46:23] And that is like basically the worst thing you could give a Chinese person as a gift. It's so. It's considered so unlucky, like, morbidly unlucky. Because the word for clock, I think, is shi zhong, and that if you say it wrong, it sounds like the word for death. And they're very suspicious about talking about death.

Amber Scorah [00:46:44] I mean, things like number four, because also has a similar sound to the word for death. Like there's all kinds of things, all kinds of faux pas. A lot of Westerners would take their chopsticks and put it in the rice when they're not eating. Like, oh, seems like a convenient chopstick holder. Just stab your chopsticks into the rice. Like a restaurant would come to a standstill almost if someone saw you do that. Because it's also considered very unlucky.

Amber Scorah [00:47:07] So, yeah, I learned so much. And the product of that was that I started to sort of see that there was different ways of doing things. And like, I had a very obviously, from being raised a witness, I had a very black and white, quite rigid worldview.

Amber Scorah [00:47:23] Everything was, you know, this or that. And suddenly there was all these, like, other things that I was like, whoa. It kind of blew my mind.

John Dehlin [00:47:31] It's so ironic that that fundamentals religions send their adherence on foreign missions because, you know, Mark Twain's famous as having said that the travel is fatal to prejudice. And so it. It makes total sense that you would see this other beautiful, odd, strange, but also wonderful culture. And you go into the book about learning about Confucius and learning about Lao Tzu and how you just started putting the math, doing the math and saying, now wait a minute, how come these are good, honest, healthy people? And how come Confucius and Buddha and Lao Tzu are kind of saying similar things to what Jesus said? And it just makes so much sense

Amber Scorah [00:48:11] that for the most part.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] What's that?

Amber Scorah [00:48:14] And they came first, for the most part.

John Dehlin [00:48:16] Right? Yeah, it makes sense that it could do. And it could be the undoing of a fundamentalist religious person to be on a foreign mission. And yet that's just so classic that fundamentals, religions send people on foreign missions. But it turns out that was the beginning of the end for you, right?

Amber Scorah [00:48:34] Yeah, I think it's like a product of their overconfidence. You know, when you think you have the truth and I don't know, you just the hubris of just like we're gonna go to these people and change them all, the heathens, and like they'll see the truth of what we're saying. So, you know, when you have that mentality, you're not thinking about your own, the weakness in your own armor. You just think you're here to bring light and truth to, you know, all these unbelievers. But yeah, I wonder for Mormons, do they find that a lot of people leave when they're on their mission?

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Oddly, it happens sometimes. It was the beginning of my end, but it still took me another 15 years or whatever to leave. But no, the church has found that if they can get people on missions and then as soon as they get home, get them married and get them having kids, that maximizes the chance that they'll stay in the church. So it's kind of ironic. It's only some people that sort of are open to the types of thinking that you had. I have to say, one of the most powerful parts of your book for me, when you're talking about the preacher and how the preacher is sure of himself or herself, the preachers are bold.

John Dehlin [00:49:41] Do you remember what you wrote about the preacher? Because it was in for me, chapter 17. But your book, your chapters aren't numbered, so I was listening to the audiobook. But do you happen to remember what you said about the preacher?

Amber Scorah [00:49:52] There's no person so bold as the preacher. Because if you're a teacher, it's something to do with like, if you're a teacher, you know, you listen and you also learn. But when you're a preacher, you're not there to listen, you're there to tell and to have people listen to you. And you're so bold because you have no self doubt. You're not even considering what anyone else might be thinking or saying. And there's such a confidence that comes with that. And also I think because you sort of like, I wasn't consciously like elevating myself, but you know, people are sitting at your feet listening or something.

Amber Scorah [00:50:29] You know, it gives you a lot of confidence. And it's funny, I was just thinking about this the other day. But someone asked me on a radio show, on npr, I think it was. They asked me, what does it feel like to convert someone? And I said, it feels like winning an existential argument. It feels like it confirms that you were right. It feels like the best high there is in the world because you took this person who had no frame of reference and you taught them something and they got them to believe it. And now you're like, see, I'm right. You're on my side now. It's a very affirming feeling.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] Yeah. But that chapter is super powerful. They're both bold. Preachers are both bold and blind. They don't ask questions. These are my notes. They don't ask questions of themselves. They already have all the answers. So why would they ever ask a question? They do all of the talking and none of the asking.

Amber Scorah [00:51:23] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] So powerful. So tell us about how you started losing your faith as Jehovah's Witness missionary in China. How did that happen? And of course, we're going to be talking about Jonathan.

Amber Scorah [00:51:35] Yeah. So as I mentioned, there was a sort of cultural disorientation where I started to see there was other ways of seeing the world. And then I think there was also a bit of a linguistic disorientation in the sense that Chinese as a language, in order to speak it, as a person who has a background in English, and I would think any Latin based language, you can't just translate. Like when you learn Spanish, you know, you learn the vocabulary. If you have enough vocabulary, you can sort of like just probably speak. Even if you don't make complete sense. You can form sentences. But in Chinese, it is not like that.

Amber Scorah [00:52:12] You cannot directly translate from English. You have to basically like reform your mind in order to speak it. You have to think in a different way. So what would happen is, I think over time I would be teaching these same materials I had taught my whole life, these same brochures that we use them in 200 languages. So I have the same pictures, the same text sitting in front of me with them, except in Chinese characters. And I would, you know, get my student to read the paragraph as we always did when we were doing this, entertained like of a Bible study. And as I would listen to the way it sounded.

Amber Scorah [00:52:45] And Chinese is also like a very direct language. It doesn't have a lot of articles or conjugation of verbs. It's quite straightforward because it's such an old language. And I think there was just something about hearing my beliefs in this other language.

Amber Scorah [00:53:00] It started to, I Would hear it with new ears. Like I saw it with new eyes. And there were moments where I would. I would feel embarrassed, like, this is crazy. Like this sounds a little crazy. And also because the people didn't even have a Christian background. Like it was something if anyone I studied with in Canada, if that ever happened, was not often, but they had a frame of reference. Like they understood the story of Adam and Eve and these types of, you know, there was this crossover culturally, but in China there was like, how do I even start? They don't even like, believe in the Bible.

Amber Scorah [00:53:29] They don't even know what the Bible is. And then here I am going into these very nuanced, crazy Witness beliefs, like you can't have blood transfusions or you can only marry in the Lord. In China, there's no Jehovah's Witnesses. Who are these people gonna marry? Like, all of this stuff started to just seem.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Or that you shouldn't get an education. Right?

Amber Scorah [00:53:47] For Chinese people, that is nuts. Like, you know, hard they work to get into universities. I mean, that was crazy. So I started to notice, like, this, this doesn't work for everybody. Like, this might work for me, but how is this gonna work for these people?

John Dehlin [00:54:04] You mentioned that some would view your teachings as quaint. I imagine them kind of patting you on the head, viewing your teachings as quaint and silly, like the One True Path. And then you talk about the ethics of God choosing this very narrow religion for mostly white people, mostly in the United States, and the theological implications of the fairness of that. Do you want to talk about that?

Amber Scorah [00:54:29] Yeah. That was a big thing for me too, where I knew a lot of these people were not going to convert. Like, I could tell they were enjoying the ride. But to actually I was. It was far fetched. I thought it would not be a really high conversion rate.

Amber Scorah [00:54:46] So to sit there and think, okay, the reason these people aren't going to convert is because this sounds wacky to them. Like they've been raised in a completely different cultural context. Their education is completely different. Their ancestry, like the whole cultural heritage, the way of looking at life is different. So I'm like, well, of course they're not going to be able to cross over this far. It's going to be hard for someone to do that. And then I started to think, well, if this really is the requirement for salvation that you follow these beliefs and these Watchtower books to a T, and it's basically these people, it's not their fault.

Amber Scorah [00:55:20] They were born in a different culture where they don't even have any frame of reference for these things. How on earth would that be fair of God? So if I was born in America or Canada and I was raised around the Bible, and even if I wasn't raised a witness, it'd be like less of a far cry for me to be like, oh, maybe, you know, I can sort of change my beliefs 25%.

Amber Scorah [00:55:39] But yeah, it started to occur to me that it, it was, it made no sense if you looked at it from a perspective of God, that we believe God was fair and all loving and unbiased. I'm like, there's a lot of bias here saying that this is what we have to follow. So you think about it.

John Dehlin [00:55:56] Preferential treatment, it's kind of unfair.

Amber Scorah [00:55:58] Think about it, like a billion people in China. How many people are in America? Like 300 million or something. Like the proportion of witnesses in America versus what would be the proportion in China? I mean, after Armageddon, it's gonna be very white bread. Not to say there aren't witnesses in other countries now because they proselytize so much. But like, if you're talking about Muslim country and China, that's like 2 billion people right there that don't even have a chance and, you know, to be saved.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] Yeah, I had those same questions to me anymore. I had those same questions as a youth, but I kind of just stuffed them down. What about the theological implications of an Armageddon where a loving, all powerful God is murdering everyone who doesn't follow the right, you know, choose the right religious path? Talk about that.

Amber Scorah [00:56:48] You know, it didn't seem weird to me because I think from childhood we had these Bible storybooks that had pictures depicting this happening. So it was sort of like a normal event in my mind. But also we always, the witnesses always use these examples from the Bible, Biblical examples of where God had wiped out, like, big populations of people because they weren't following his word or they weren't doing the things that, you know, he commanded. So as much as it felt a little like cruel or traumatic, a little,

John Dehlin [00:57:23] I wrote in my notes, God as murderer is what I wrote. But go ahead.

Amber Scorah [00:57:27] Like, it's basically genocide, but when you're indoctrinated, you're kind of like, well, we want paradise and we don't want to have crime and we don't want to have, like, bad stuff. So they got to go.

John Dehlin [00:57:41] I love how in so many of your chapters, you end with these really subtle but profound statements. And at the end of what I have is chapter 18, you write curiosity is a bad quality for the preacher. What if it's the preacher that needs saving? You know, those are my words.

Amber Scorah [00:57:56] But yeah, that's the essence of it.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] What if it's the preacher that needs saving?

Amber Scorah [00:58:01] Yeah, it never occurred to me, that's for sure. But I am a curious person, so that's maybe a problem.

A Relationship That Unraveled Her Faith

John Dehlin [00:58:10] So tell us about Jonathan, your undoing.

Amber Scorah [00:58:12] Yes, it was definitely like the nail in the coffin, so to speak. So I, yeah, during, in the podcast job that I had, I at the time didn't have my own podcast yet, but I was the person who I did translating and then I was the person who looked after the online community. And so that meant I interacted with tons of worldly people, which, you know, and not with the premise of preaching to them, it was just my job. So suddenly that was right, you know, right before social media. But the whole Internet was like on the cusp of talking to each other and it was amazing.

Amber Scorah [00:58:44] I thought it was so fun because here I was in this community of people who were all learning Chinese and we had this thing in common and I had a lot of answers, like, knew more Chinese than they did and I could answer their questions and tell them about things I had learned in Chinese culture.

Amber Scorah [00:58:58] And so I was sort of just you know, primed for the first time in my life to have some relationships with worldly people, even though they were online relationships. And then in walked Jonathan, who was just like any other of the people, our customers that I would interact with on a day to day basis. But for some reason he was very funny.

Amber Scorah [00:59:17] I didn't know anything about him, I didn't know where he lived. But we just started talking and engaging. It was my job, I wasn't doing anything wrong. But it definitely started over weeks of time. It just started to become a daily thing. And I would get to work. He lived in Los Angeles. I later found out I was in Shanghai. The time zone was exactly opposite. So at the time of day when I got to work, it was the end of his workday and we just started talking all the time.

John Dehlin [00:59:43] What was the age difference? Can you say that, Jonathan? Yeah.

Amber Scorah [00:59:46] Oh, time difference.

John Dehlin [00:59:48] Age, age, age difference.

Amber Scorah [00:59:49] Oh, age difference. He's just a couple years older than me.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] Okay, I was wondering that.

Amber Scorah [00:59:53] I'm not sure exactly.

John Dehlin [00:59:55] Yeah, I'm like, as I'm listening, as I'm reading this, I'm like, she is slipping into an emotional affair. There's just no question.

Amber Scorah [01:00:01] And I had no idea, like I, for one thing, like, I didn't know what that looks like. Like, it just. The Internet also was. It definitely was like, it masked it for me because I was like, well, I can't even see this person. And as a, you know, in this religion is obsessed with bodily pureness, suddenly, you know, if that was a man in a coffee shop, I would never have kept talking to him. But when there's no body and you're like, well, that guy is like thousands of miles away, you just kind of don't think of it.

John Dehlin [01:00:29] Nothing will ever happen.

Amber Scorah [01:00:31] Yeah. And it's also like, I'm not even attracted to him. I mean, I don't even know what he looks like. It's not like a. It's not any kind of chemistry thing. It's just an intellectual dialogue, which was fun.

John Dehlin [01:00:42] You must have been starving for emotional intimacy because you were in a marriage that wasn't really a love affair. It wasn't even a close friendship. It seemed.

Amber Scorah [01:00:51] Yeah, I mean, it was sort of like a mild friendship. It was. I think what happened was, as you say, you're on this train track of a relationship together that, you know, you're doing the God's will together, and that. That is something in common. It can hold you together. Plus, you're not allowed to get divorced in Jehovah's Witnesses unless someone commits adultery. So you also know you have no choice. So when you get married very young and then you come to realize, like, oh, like a year later, we should not be married, there's nothing you can do about it. So all you can do about it is just keep going and doing stuff in the church. So I wouldn't say we, like, we didn't have a terrible marriage. It was just not really like a marriage. It was not an intimate relationship, really,

John Dehlin [01:01:30] which is a terrible marriage.

Amber Scorah [01:01:35] It wasn't like a lot of fighting and drama. It was just sort of, we're here together. Well, we can't leave, so we'll just continue on.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] Yeah, I mean, we all. Marriage is always hard. Even the best of marriages are super hard. I don't mean to set people up for unreasonably high expectations, but ideally you end up with your best friend. And ideally you're emotionally and sexually intimate and compatible and you really enjoy being together. And I know you guys had a moderate friendship, but it's clear you were both lonely or at least you were desperately emotionally starved. Right?

Amber Scorah [01:02:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:10] Yeah. So, Jonathan Philbad.

Amber Scorah [01:02:13] There's so many things when you're a religious person that you sort of like, you don't acknowledge. You sort of like I didn't really think about that. I just sort of accepted it.

John Dehlin [01:02:23] Right. So how. So how did things grow with Jonathan?

Amber Scorah [01:02:27] Oh, yeah. So I don't know. We just started talking more, and it was always about work stuff or Chinese or. He just loved hearing all the stories because so much stuff would happen every day in China. So much crazy stuff. I mean, it's a city of 20 million people.

Amber Scorah [01:02:41] So many fun things would happen. I would always just start sharing with him, and he would come online and be like, what happened today? And something weird always happened. So then it kept going, and then I don't know how long it was, but slowly the conversation started to shift to more deeper topics. And one of those topic topics ended up being spirituality.

Amber Scorah [01:03:01] And of course, in China, the government monitors the Internet. So we never talked about what we did on the Internet because the government could see if they wanted to spy on your Gchat or whatever. But I sort of told him in code. Eventually we had become close enough that I kind of wanted to share. I never told anyone my secret of why I was there. And it sort of started to feel like, oh, here's this sort of abstract person I can finally share with him. I mean, I was sharing with him all this other stuff about my day.

Amber Scorah [01:03:33] It got to a point where I kind of wanted to share others, like the preaching stuff. And also every witness kind of has this thing in the back of their mind when they make a friendship is like, oh, well, my friendship is to try and convert this person. So, you know, maybe if I talk about my religion, he'll become a witness.

John Dehlin [01:03:53] And you use code words for religious words. Tell us what those code words were.

Amber Scorah [01:03:57] Yeah, it was like, I don't know, just like A for Army, Big A for Armageddon, JZ for Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:04:05] What about jws?

Amber Scorah [01:04:07] We didn't say JW because that was too close. I think we just called it Wit W I T or something. But when I first told him about it, I was like, he wanted to know what religion I was. And I was like, oh, like, don't even say that word. But then finally I told him, like, think of a court case witness. And then he knew. And then funny is that he reminded me. I've been talking to him since the book came out, and he reminded me, which I left out of the book, that when I told him, he said, oh, that's my fifth favorite, my fourth favorite cult.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] What was his favorite?

Amber Scorah [01:04:35] I think, well, he lives in Los Angeles, so I think it was Scientology.

John Dehlin [01:04:40] I hope Mormonism is second or third What?

Amber Scorah [01:04:43] Oh, favorite as in most hated. Because he just is a person who, like.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] Yeah, but hey, let's. A love hate relationship. Let's just admit it. We all love hate our cults, right?

Amber Scorah [01:04:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:56] Okay. So, yeah, the relationship tenor turns, and he starts really challenging you, you know, you being in a cult. And I'm just thinking, number one, I was just thinking, why didn't you just immediately run away? Right. How could you let some stranger start assaulting you about being in a cult? And you keep coming back for more? What was going through your mind that let you allow him to start the deprogramming process?

Amber Scorah [01:05:24] Yeah, it's funny. I think, you know, I definitely think that I started to enjoy the interaction. It was fun. I mean, it was interesting. He was interesting. He was smart. And I can't remember when exactly we start to sort of collaborate on things that were. It started to feel like an entanglement. And so this became one part of that.

Amber Scorah [01:05:47] And I think that. Here's the thing. It's like. It's also a personality thing. Like, some people might have been, like, that jerk and, like, never spoken to him again. But I come from a family of people who are quite direct, and I actually prefer just knowing what people think, and I prefer honesty, even if I don't want to hear it. I actually would just rather know where I stand.

Amber Scorah [01:06:09] So, yeah, he started to, like, sort of criticize or tell me things about my religion that I didn't agree with. And I would just argue. Like, I would say, that's not true, and I'd get mad. But what would happen is I would turn. Like, he'd go to bed, and I would work, and then I would just find myself thinking about what he said.

John Dehlin [01:06:31] You would stew?

Amber Scorah [01:06:32] Yeah. Or like, even just do. In the sense where I'd be like, I can. I can disprove him. But, you know, it was getting harder and harder to refute what he was saying sometimes because it was true.

John Dehlin [01:06:44] I had to believe that, you know, I had to believe that somewhere in your heart or in your emotions, you were finding that the Jehovah's Witness lifestyle or the beliefs weren't working for you. And I'm sure it was the missionary work that kind of softened you up, but in my experience, working with orthodox, progressive and then post Mormons, you kind of have to. Your heart has to be softened. And what I mean by that is there has to be something either emotionally not working for you in the tradition or something emotionally engaging outside of it that makes the soil fertile for those sorts of seeds of doubt and questioning.

Amber Scorah [01:07:24] Yeah. Have you ever read that book by Alexandra Stein?

John Dehlin [01:07:29] No.

Amber Scorah [01:07:29] Love and Terror?

John Dehlin [01:07:31] No.

Amber Scorah [01:07:31] So I found that book recently. Not at the time, just recently. And one thing that she says is that almost like one of the only ways or most effective ways anyway, for someone to get out from a culture or indoctrination like this, especially a very close community, is to that there be an intimate relationship with someone on the outside.

Amber Scorah [01:07:54] So sometimes for people that's like a family member, it could be someone from their old life before they became that, that would be converted to the church. But interestingly, when I read that, I was like, that is why I needed Jonathan. Because what happens is if it's an. If it's a close enough relationship, if any other person on that forum at work started saying that stuff to me point blank about my religion, which people do, I mean, people make fun of, tell Joe's witnesses they're wrong all the time, I could just dismiss it. But when there is like an intimate relationship formed already, it means that you trust the person.

Amber Scorah [01:08:37] And so even though you might argue you're inclined to take in what they're saying, even if it's on a small scale and reading that after the fact, because, you know, I did feel some shame, like, as much as, yeah, sure, there was no way to get out of a marriage unless you, like, committed adultery. I mean, I still didn't want to be that kind of person. Like, you don't sort of have an image of the kind of person that you are.

Amber Scorah [01:09:03] But reading that was kind of a revelation because I was like, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have been able to fully pull the trigger, even though there were other factors that kind of were making me have doubts unless I had some sort of like, beacon like that on the outside that was showing me that there was some path out and that I trusted.

John Dehlin [01:09:25] And what was ironic was that you were a missionary, but in so many ways, Jonathan was. Was acting as a missionary to a missionary just for a different. Different approach to life. Right?

Amber Scorah [01:09:37] Yeah. It's funny, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:09:39] I don't want to. You know, that's one of the really fun parts of the book to learn about what happened with Jonathan and how that relationship evolved or didn't evolve or ended or didn't end. We'll let you listeners.

Amber Scorah [01:09:53] Yeah, we'll hold back.

John Dehlin [01:09:54] We'll let you hold back on that. But do you have a sense. Did you ever talk to him about his motives? Because, you know, was he just. Was he just really juiced about saving someone from a cult. Well, or did he just develop, you know, feelings for you and wanted to help you? Like, he spent a lot of time helping you. He was like a missionary. Real service. Right.

Amber Scorah [01:10:18] I think, like, and it's funny because we're friends now and it's been, you know, a number of years. And so I feel like I know him on a different level now because we're friends and we don't, you know, we still talk sometimes, but now we're on more equal footing. You know, he's not trying to save me anymore.

Amber Scorah [01:10:33] And I think he has a personality in that he's. He is a very intense person. He's a person that really believes that people should have freedom of choice. It really upsets him to see people throwing away their power of reason and turning over their minds to someone else. So I think, you know, those things were already sort of fundamental parts of his character.

Amber Scorah [01:11:03] But, yeah, I mean, he. He does say at some point along the way where I'm like, why are you. Why do you spend so much time, like, doing this? And he says, because I like you. So, you know, if you like someone, you also care about them. And so you're going to have some kind of emotional, you know, pull to help them more than maybe the average person. However, I mean, I don't know. I think to this day, when, for example, when I have TV appearances and I was telling Jonathan about it the other day, he starts texting me. And he's just like, the old days, he starts, like, saying, oh, you gotta tell him this.

Amber Scorah [01:11:38] Like, that these people are trading in your. I don't know, like, they're using fear and they cage you in. And like, they. He's emotional blackmail. Tell me all this stuff. And he kept saying, you got to coin the term collision. Don't call it a religion. Cult was religion. So he's still very intense on these topics, even, you know, this many years later.

John Dehlin [01:11:57] Wait, collusion. What is it?

Amber Scorah [01:12:00] Collision. I was like, that's why I can't use it.

John Dehlin [01:12:02] Which is what. What are the two words?

Amber Scorah [01:12:04] Cult plus religion.

John Dehlin [01:12:05] Collision. Oh, my gosh, they don't deserve to

Amber Scorah [01:12:07] be called a religion. And I'm like, well, cult is so charged. Some people, if you're trying to get a Joseph Witness out, you cannot call it a cult because they will just close their mind. Right?

John Dehlin [01:12:16] And yet he did with you, and it worked with you.

Amber Scorah [01:12:19] Which, you know, honestly, I give him a lot of credit. But so much of my book is set in China and about China And I have to say he helped. But China was just a big character in my eventual demise as Jonathan. I couldn't have left without both of them.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] Yeah, yeah. And there were one of the most powerful parts of the book. You asked the question, if I had been through the Cultural Revolution, and those who don't know a little bit about Chinese history won't understand the Cultural Revolution. That sounds awesome. More culture. What it is is, it's Mao, if I'm right, and millions and millions of people being killed and imprisoned and enslaved. And you ask the question, if I had lived in the Cultural Revolution, would I have been someone. What? Finish the sentence.

Amber Scorah [01:13:11] Oh, if I would have been the first. So what do I say? Well, there's a few things. I think I said. Oh, yeah, there was in the Cultural Revolution, like, people were under the cult of Mao, and he. At some point, he would give these decrees, and at one point, he gave a decree that all the flowers and gardens were bourgeois and they had to get rid of them. So people would just go and start pulling up the flowers from the flower bed because they were too beautiful or whatever. They were making people soft.

Amber Scorah [01:13:42] So I was like, yeah, who would I have been? Like, I probably would have pulled up the flowers. Because once you're in that headspace of indoctrination, it's scary to think, because where would you. Where do you draw the line? And even recently, the Jehovah's Witnesses released a magazine. And in the magazine, it said something to do with. Even if at some point the directions we give you as the governing body don't seem to make sense from a human standpoint or from human reasoning, it doesn't matter. You should still follow it. And that was the first time I'd ever seen them so blatantly come out to say directly what they always kind of danced around saying, which was, if we tell you to do something, you have to do it.

Amber Scorah [01:14:24] And funnily enough, when I watched, I read something about in the New Yorker about the Branch Davidians, and you remember the Branch Davidians, that they were in there.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] Yeah, David Grish, you know, the apocalypse

Amber Scorah [01:14:35] of their own making. But the Branch Davidians came from the same sort of. Like when you read what his beliefs were, they were very similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses, just maybe more extreme and on a small scale. So that's the thing is, like, if you have that mindset, suddenly, what could it happen? That suddenly the Armageddon that never comes is created. It's a question I ask because how long can you put it off. And that was with the Branch Davidians. He kept saying the Armageddon was coming. And then in the end, the apocalypse came, but not in the way that anyone thought.

John Dehlin [01:15:07] Right.

Amber Scorah [01:15:08] So I do think that that is really being in China made me see that parallel the ability for humans to. Wonderful, nice people can do terrible things.

John Dehlin [01:15:21] Yeah. You said it takes ideology to make wonderful people do terrible things.

Amber Scorah [01:15:25] Yeah. It's a strange thing because.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] And you asked, would I have been in the. In the Cultural Revolution, the person pushing others out of the building, or would I have been one of the ones being pushed out of the building? Right.

Amber Scorah [01:15:37] I think about this stuff a lot. Like, what is it that makes people. Some people follow the crowd and other people stand up and say, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do what's wrong. It's wrong. So, yeah. It's funny when you think about morality after you leave a religion, that's one question I've thought about a lot. And to me, one underpinning of my current morality is always, like, I always want to make sure that I'm keeping my moral compass and thinking for myself that I'm not just doing what everyone else is doing.

The Process of Leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses

John Dehlin [01:16:06] And so tell us how. You tell us your process for leaving as we kind of get to the, you know, the end of your time as Jehovah's Witness. What was that like to have been a missionary, to have been married, to have already been through shunning once? What was it like to contemplate leaving again this time for the final time?

Amber Scorah [01:16:25] I mean, I felt so different this time because I had started to not believe before I even left. So it was more permanent feeling. Basically, this is how I sum it up, is that it was nothing heroic on my part or brave. It just got to the point where staying was more uncomfortable than leaving. And, I mean, I did not want to lose my friends, much of my family. That is the last thing I would have chosen.

Amber Scorah [01:16:55] But the problem is that Jehovah's Witness religion requires you hand over your mind, your time, your life, and if you don't believe in it, you just can't do it anymore. And I do know people who can stay in and sort of fake it. But that's another thing, is that my personality is just. I'm too open, as we thought. You know, as you'll find out in the book, at the sort of climax when I actually leave, I probably could have kept my mouth shut and not ended up in the position I'm in, but I just. I'm too honest, I think. And it's important to me to live an honest life.

John Dehlin [01:17:34] And you talk about one of those really short chapters. You mention what you lost and what you've gained. Can I read that or do you want to read it on page 213. Do you want to read it? Why don't you read it?

Amber Scorah [01:17:46] Sure. 213.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] This is. Yeah, this is page 213 of Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah. Things I had lost, things I still had.

Amber Scorah [01:17:57] Oh yeah, I had exited without an exit plan. I was an ex preacher stuck in China with no education beyond high school, no profession, no home to go back to. In my home country. I took stock of things, things I had lost. Family members, all my friends, my future, my past, my life with my friends and family in it. My faith, my certainty, my hope, my purpose in life. And then you look at the things I have and it ain't pretty.

John Dehlin [01:18:28] It's like two pots, some books, a hockey bag, suitcase, a bicycle, some Ikea towels. And then you write my health.

Amber Scorah [01:18:41] I mean, if only we could look back, you know, years later and I feel like it was a really special time. It was an amazing time in my life. It was a great country to be in, but it was traumatic. Like I did not know how I was going to get out of China. I didn't know where I was going to live. I didn't know how I was going to earn a living. I didn't know any people. I didn't have a relationship. So it was definitely a stressful, scary time.

John Dehlin [01:19:10] So we'll leave the final plot points to people to actually read the book because this is a phenomenal book everyone should read. Read it again. Leaving the Witness, exiting religion and finding a life in our final moments together. Amber Skora so what has been the reaction to this book by the people in it and by your family and friends who you knew during the time? Have you been hated? Have you been celebrated?

Amber Scorah [01:19:36] It's so funny because I was just thinking this morning I'm still in the honeymoon period between the book having just come out and all the people who ordered it or heard about it who are reading it. And most people say they can read it in a couple days or you can listen to the audiobook in just six hours or whatever it is.

Amber Scorah [01:19:55] So I've got all these people who are interested and a lot of ex members who have read it and they're just so happy and they feel like someone has a voice and has put voice to the things that they feel and sent me a Lot of very encouraging kind words. But I'm in that honeymoon period because I think the ripples of, like the press and everything haven't reached the ex. I mean, sorry, the actual Jehovah's Witness community.

Amber Scorah [01:20:21] So I'm expecting the onslaught because, I mean, you know, it's, you know, it's coming. People do not like it when you leave and talk about it. I'm sure as a Mormon it's the same, but for Jehovah's Witnesses, it's also particularly rare. Like, there's not that many people who have really openly written about it. An experience like this, someone who was sort of like, you know, very into the church for like a long time and gone to the point of being a missionary. Like, they feel it's a real betrayal. And I'm sure that happens in your community too. And they don't understand. When you're indoctrinated, you don't understand why anyone would tell the story. They think you have some nefarious motive. It's hard to understand until you get out how important it is to tell these stories.

John Dehlin [01:21:10] And so you haven't received the super negative, mean reactions yet?

Amber Scorah [01:21:15] No, not yet. Which has been surprising, but I'm expecting it. In fact, maybe I'll check my email right now.

John Dehlin [01:21:22] No, I mean, I mean, to be honest, and you were on like the Daily show just two days ago. Most Mormons don't read these books. Like you mentioned a book, a memoir that was written. They won't know about it. They won't even know that it came out because that's part of that bite methodology. Have you met Steven Hassan yet? Learned about his work? Yeah, Behavior. They control behavior, Information, thoughts, and they manipulate you through emotions. The stranglehold of information on members in high demand religions is kind of profound.

Amber Scorah [01:21:55] And as I say, even when it came to sin or anything, you police yourself. I did it. I would never have read it. I'm sure some people will sneakily read it, but even in the very fact of its existence, you know, will make them upset even if they don't read the content. Because I don't think the content is particularly. I tried to be fair. I tried to be not, you know, like ranting and raving. I tried to be balanced about the way I presented things. But they'll just. Just the fact of it, that it's here and the fact that physical form. And also, you know, it's been in mainstream media and that that is media that Joe Bist has listened to, like the radio.

Amber Scorah [01:22:29] So. Yeah, but. Yeah, if any of them are watching, I encourage you just to read it because I think it's just. It's. It's presented not as some sort of, like, apostate book trying to ruin your faith. It's just basically a story that kind of reveals things along the way that, you know, might make a person think and.

Writing the Memoir and Reclaiming Identity

John Dehlin [01:22:47] So who were you? It's hard to write a book, right? How long did it take you to write this?

Amber Scorah [01:22:52] It took me two years and a bit, but I had a day job at the time, so that I was writing at night. And I had a. Yeah, I was. I had written a couple of chapters earlier just myself, so those are in there, too. But I would say, all in all, it's like two years.

John Dehlin [01:23:08] That's a big commitment. And what. What was your intent in writing it? Who are you trying to help? Did you have a primary, secondary, tertiary audience?

Amber Scorah [01:23:17] Well, the funny thing is that I actually just tried not to think about the audience when I was writing it because I didn't want. There is, of course, some residual. I still care about people that were used to my friends, even though they don't talk to me anymore. And I knew that if I thought about that, it would prevent me from being as truthful as I needed to be. So I never really wrote it with the intent of, like, I want to, like, get exposed Jehovah, or I want to make my friends see the light. I think that in the end, the book could do all of those things if it reached the right people.

Amber Scorah [01:23:47] But I didn't think about it at the time. I just felt like I needed to write a truth. My truthful experience. And that was as far as I would allow myself to sort of thing. And then the funny thing is, is that the day I finished and, like, you know, I handed it off to the editor, it was done. It came back in, like, proofread form. And then I saw it. I was like, oh, my God. Then you're like, even my boss is going to read this. Everybody's going to read it. But I think when you're writing a memoir, you have to detach yourself from that, otherwise you're going to be hiding things.

Amber Scorah [01:24:17] And, like, I don't feel like I spared myself in this book. I tried to be, you know, honest about things I did as well. And I didn't want to sort of, like, sugarcoat my own behavior.

John Dehlin [01:24:29] For those, it's super brutal to get a book contract with the top, you know, publishing house. For those who would want to write their own memoir and have a Shot at this level of exposure. Any tips you want to give people of how you made that happen, because that's probably not easy.

Amber Scorah [01:24:47] Yeah, I live in New York, so that helps because this is the land of publishing. But one of the things that actually got me my very first agent meeting was that I wrote a piece that got published in a magazine called the Believer. It's not even a very well known magazine, but that piece, it was like a very short, abridged essay about my story.

Amber Scorah [01:25:08] And if you get published, it doesn't have to be, you know, 2,000 words, 3,000 words. It doesn't have to be huge. But if you get a piece published and it's well written and it's engaging, it definitely helps as a way. As a path forward to getting a meeting with an agent. The other thing to know is that you don't have to write the whole memoir. Publishers don't want the whole book. When they're shopping. When you're shopping it around, they want a proposal. So having a very good master plan is more important than writing the whole book. So that's really important, too.

John Dehlin [01:25:39] So were some of the chapters in this book part of your proposal?

Amber Scorah [01:25:43] Yeah, you have to submit usually two sample chapters. One of mine got thrown out. The editor didn't want it. And it was a chapter on. I had toured the Jehovah's Witness battle in Brooklyn as a member back, you know, many, many years ago. And then when I lived in New York after leaving the religion, I went back and toured it again, sort of undercover. So it was a chapter like that. But it didn't really fit into the narrative of my book. But what it does essentially is show them that you can write. And, you know, even if you're writing your own piece, it's always good to have someone else look at it as an editor, because more eyes on the thing always makes it better. So that's my other writing advice. Every writer needs an editor.

John Dehlin [01:26:23] Yeah, for sure. Do you have plans? What are your plans going forward related to this book and you being now a prominent ex Jehovah's Witness? Do you have. Do you want to be an activist? Do you want to save other people from cults? Do you want to move on and just write about other things and leave all this behind? How do you think about your future now?

Amber Scorah [01:26:44] It's funny because before I wrote the book, I always felt like I was trying to outrun my past. Like I didn't have a degree. I'm still trying to finish my degree because I've been Working and had a child, have children.

Amber Scorah [01:26:55] But when I wrote this book, finally, I feel like I just owned it. Like I owned my past. And it felt really good because it felt like it stitched together the past with the present in this way that now it didn't feel like the time before was wasted where I used to feel like wasted all this time in this cult, but now it suddenly feels like, oh, no, this is like part of my identity.

Amber Scorah [01:27:14] So I have a few ideas. I have another book idea that I might try. I also am taking a lot of classes, religion classes right now. So I'm planning to finish my degree in religion and then maybe go on to get a master's. And I was considering doing something like, you know, sort of counseling. Not YouTube, not like an activist in this sense, but I was thinking of becoming a therapist to try and help people to get out, because I think it is a way of sort of knitting together your own storyline. And I can't help it. I still have that preacher's impulse, I think, to help people. It's. It's nice to help people. So maybe something like that. We'll see what happens.

John Dehlin [01:27:52] Yeah, there's a. I just have to tell you, one of the things I'm most proud about in Mormonism is this uber Post Mormonism is this uber robust Mormon community of progressive and post Mormon themed podcasts, of progressive and post Mormon Facebook group groups, of a really robust ex Mormon Reddit page with over 100,000 members.

John Dehlin [01:28:15] We're starting to have workshops and retreats and even conferences for healing and growing after Mormonism. And I just. It's an area I just want to just throw my two cents in. That's it. You know, I wondered about whether you would ever want to start an ex Jehovah's Witness podcast.

John Dehlin [01:28:39] I told Tova Mirvis the same thing. There needs to be an ex orthodox podcast. The Mormon stories model has really worked of just having people tell their stories about having been Mormon and now how they left Mormonism and then how they built a life afterwards. So I just want to give you my two cents, man.

Amber Scorah [01:28:56] Oh, you like an idea podcast.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] Being a therapist, a coach, there's so much need out there. And I just want to personally thank you, Amber Skora, because sometimes people in one faith tradition need the experience of someone in a totally different faith tradition to kind of wake up. And Mormons and post Mormons are going to see themselves a thousand different times and a thousand different ways in this amazing book.

John Dehlin [01:29:24] The book is leaving the Witness, exiting a religion and finding A life which. One last thing. I'm going to ask you one last question. It's going to be a little bit hard. The last chapter of your book. You talk about ending up finding a partner, having a baby and then losing the baby.

Rebuilding Life After Religion and Coping With Loss

John Dehlin [01:29:42] It's a sober topic. But you know, when people are rebuilding a life and without religion and then you're confronted with the sort of tragedy that is what creates religion in the first place, the certainty, the comfort, the theology about an afterlife. How did you. And do you cope with sort of some of those real life hard tragedies without a religious framework? And maybe we can use that as a way to just sort of final thoughts for our listeners as they're trying to pick up their lives and rebuild and they'll face tragedy too.

Amber Scorah [01:30:17] Yeah, that's the thing. It's like when I left the religion, I kind of felt like, oh God, all that bad stuff's behind me and like, everything's gonna be okay now. So when that happened after I finally felt like I was on my feet again, it was really hard to deal with. It was hard to accept. And I will say this, anyone who has lost a child, religious or not, it is very difficult thing to cope with.

Amber Scorah [01:30:42] I think a lot of what helps people who are religious cope with death is the community of the religion. And I will say this, is that when I was a Jehovah's Witness, I thought that that was like the trademark of being a Jehovah's Witness, that you had all this loving community. And I was led to believe that that only existed in the Joe's Witnesses, but outside it was even more. There was so much love shown to my family.

Amber Scorah [01:31:04] And that's only what gets people through this kind of tragedy is other people. There were people who, strangers who had also lost children who contacted me. There was a therapist who helped me, which was very important. And just the love that people showed. So there's like that. I think that that's like religion. A big part of religion is that community and that's a big part of what helps people through. Then there's of course, the imagined future that you're going to see that person again. And that for me is very difficult because obviously the thing I want most in life is to see my child again.

Amber Scorah [01:31:35] But the reality is, is that I can't manufacture that belief now that it's gone. And I'm not going to trade it in for something else because it. I just have a fundamentally different sense of life and God and reality now than I did as a Religious person.

Amber Scorah [01:31:52] So I just have to find ways to cope. And one of the ways I did that was by being in the real world. For example, after my son died, I started a campaign for parental leave because he was a small child and he died on his first day in childcare. So as a Jehovah's Witness, we're not allowed to get involved in politics trying to make the world better. That's God's department. But now here I have this opportunity to keep my son in the world by trying to change the policies around parental leave in this country, which are dismal. So there's that. And that, surprisingly, was a very healing thing, because the one thing that a parent that lives as a child fears most is that their child will be forgotten.

Amber Scorah [01:32:32] And, like, their life doesn't matter because it was short. And so to this day, if you ask, like, I could meet people all around New York at least, and maybe other parts of the country, if they know the story of my son. Carl is his name. And a lot of people actually know his name, and they know the story.

Amber Scorah [01:32:51] So there's that. I think there's things you can just do in the present, and then the other side of it is just trying to. Exactly that. I'm not trading in a future of some fantasy future that I had, you know, that I'll see him again. I have to live in the now and just by appreciating life. Because one thing that losing a child teaches you is that life is very short and it is very fragile and nothing is guaranteed.

Amber Scorah [01:33:15] So although it is still very painful, it is painful every day to not have my child. But I do just try to move forward. And I also have a daughter now, which definitely helps as well. So, yeah, I mean, there's no answer. There's going to be pain in life. I mean, I think religion can numb some of that pain. But religion also brings different pain with it sometimes especially more culty religions.

Amber Scorah [01:33:42] So, yeah, I think that's it. Like, there's no way to escape death. And so we have to just live with it. And that's what I have to do.

John Dehlin [01:33:50] You also write about pain making you more compassionate person, a deeper person, and a more grateful person.

Amber Scorah [01:33:56] That's true. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:57] And that's something that if it's numbed, then you don't get that development. Right.

Amber Scorah [01:34:02] That's very true. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:03] Yeah. Where. Last question. Where have you landed on kind of God and Jesus and the afterlife? Or have you even landed anywhere?

Amber Scorah [01:34:12] You know what I believe in now? I believe in magic. Like for me, I can't not. I wrote a recent article in the New York Times, actually, about grieving without religion. And a lot of people interpreted what I said to mean that I was an atheist, but I'm not an atheist. I just don't believe that we know. And I don't think there's any evidence of life after death. So I don't believe in life after death until someone tells me something. Something gets proven different. But I do believe that there is some creative force. There's no way to me that everything can be so magical and beautiful for no reason.

Amber Scorah [01:34:48] I don't know. And also just having, like, seen a child grow inside of my womb and like, how the miraculous. The miraculousness of life when you give birth to a child. It's impossible for me to believe. It's completely random. But I don't think there's, like, an interested God figure sitting up in heaven looking down on us. And I don't believe that the God that, you know, we worship from the Bible is an actual representation of actual God. I think it's a human constructed, you know, as you will learn in a sociology class, socially constructed God. I think people create God because they need that, but it's not the kind of God that's been created in mainstream religions, is sort of. I'm sort of. Yeah, I'm kind of over that. I don't. I don't really think that that's true.

John Dehlin [01:35:35] And the afterlife is just a question mark for you?

Amber Scorah [01:35:38] Yeah. I think we'll know when it. If it happens.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] And are you okay with that? Uncertainty? That seems to be the theme of the book, is that certainty is the. Is the villain.

Amber Scorah [01:35:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:49] Right.

Amber Scorah [01:35:49] I mean, I'm okay with it because I have to be. I wish. I wish that I could live forever in paradise on Earth, but, you know, I don't think that's happening. I mean, I don't want to die. I don't think most people want to die. I would love to live on forever, but I also don't want to live my life for something that's not true. I don't want to pin everything because it changes how you live life. So basically, at the point where I'm like, I take what's in front of us as reality.

John Dehlin [01:36:19] Yeah. Well, beautiful. Well, Amber Squirrer, I could have had you on for 5, 10 hours easily.

Amber Scorah [01:36:25] Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [01:36:27] What's that?

Amber Scorah [01:36:28] Thanks for having me. It was great talking to you.

John Dehlin [01:36:30] We're so grateful for your time and we're so grateful for this book. Leaving the Witness, exiting a religion and finding a life. Amber Skora is the author. You are a gift to us all. We wish you fortune and success and popularity beyond your wildest dreams. Please don't forget about us. If you ever want to come to Salt Lake City, I will personally help bring you here. I mean that. I've done it several times and I'll do it again. So thank you for sharing your story with us, not just Mormon stories, but with the world. And please stay in touch and we wish you so much success.

Amber Scorah [01:37:09] Yeah, I would love for your listeners, if they want to talk, like have just like engage in discussion. I'm online. Just my name. I'm the only Amber School in the world, so I'm easy to find. But I love talking about this stuff.

John Dehlin [01:37:21] How do they reach you? What are the ways?

Amber Scorah [01:37:22] I'm on Twitter, Amber Skora. I'm on Facebook. All you got to do is I have a website. Everything's under my name.

John Dehlin [01:37:28] So you have an email address?

Amber Scorah [01:37:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] What is it?

Amber Scorah [01:37:31] It's Amber Scoramail.

John Dehlin [01:37:33] And Scorah is S C O R A H. For those listening and not viewing.

Amber Scorah [01:37:38] You can also find on my website if that was too quick.

John Dehlin [01:37:40] Yeah. Tova Mervis said Tova Mirvis says that the reaction to. Oh, what's the website, Amber?

Amber Scorah [01:37:46] Ambersquir.com ambersquiro.com yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:48] Okay. Beautiful. Tova actually has told several people that and again, ex orthodox Jew, that her engagement with Mormonism, Mormons, ex Mormons and liberal Mormons has been the most meaningful part of her memoir.

Amber Scorah [01:38:01] I would love to know more.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] So listeners progressive and post Mormons, let's make Amber Score's engagement with Post Mormons the best part of her memoir experience as well.

Amber Scorah [01:38:14] Thank you so much. I hope you guys like the book.

John Dehlin [01:38:16] All right, Amber, you take care. Thank you so much. Have a great day and thanks to all our listeners for joining us today on Mormon stories, mormonstories gmail.com if you want to email us, please donate@mormonstories.org 10, 15, 20, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford, keeps this nonprofit alive and allows us to keep bringing you stories like this. If you want to bring Amber to Salt Lake City, reach out. We'll fund a trip and we'll schedule it and we'll bring her out and we'll get some more time with Amber like we did with Tova and with Tara Westover. So please reach out. Please support us on Mormon Stories. Take care, everybody, and we'll see you soon, Amber.

Amber Scorah [01:38:57] Bye.

John Dehlin [01:38:58] Take care.

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