The One Who Walked The Tightrope Of Belief And Resistance

00:18 - Sam (Host)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today. I recognise the deep connection that First Nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

00:58

Hey there and welcome to Beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control or cult communities and are deconstructing their faith. I'm your host, sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained. Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is Beyond the Surface. Welcome, josie. Thanks for joining me.

01:41 - Josie (Guest)

Thank you for having me.

01:43 - Sam (Host)

I am excited about this. If people don't know you, you are one of our wonderful advisory committee members for the collective, and so I already know that this is going to be a wealth of information and insight for people listening to this episode. I hope so, but for some context. I mean, people are already probably guessing if you're on our committee, you are in Australia. But for some context, where in the world are you at the moment?

02:10 - Josie (Guest)

Well, I'm on Gadigal land, which is Sydney, lovely, and more precisely, I'm on the east coast. Well, eastern beaches, part of Sydney, coogee, extra beautiful. Eastern beaches, part of sydney, coochie, extra beautiful, which is extra beautiful and that's an indigenous word meaning stinking seaweed.

02:33 - Sam (Host)

So there we go, and there is a lot of stinking so, yes, so that's where I'm beautiful, um, I love to start these episodes with a super vague question, um to kickstart the conversation. So where does your story start?

02:50 - Josie (Guest)

That is super vague. It could be my real story started when I left the church. Couldn't it yeah, that's kind of when I, you know, started to wake up. You know, started to wake up. But you know, for the purposes of your podcast, my story, let's say, in the church started at age 10 when I was converted and I didn't leave the church till I was 45. That's a long time, it is yeah, and a lot of people are very surprised by that, but there are plenty of people who go.

03:27 - Sam (Host)

they get it what are they surprised about?

03:30 - Josie (Guest)

that it's so long all right, yeah, you know that. But I think most people listening to this will know just how long it takes to figure a whole stuff, a whole lot of stuff out, and my exit exit was many years coming, probably 20 years. Yeah right, so you know, when you actually finally stop attending church, a lot of the work is done.

03:56 - Sam (Host)

Yeah yeah, yeah there is definitely a process of like physically in, mentally out, and all of that sort of process where it takes time.

04:06 - Josie (Guest)

yeah, Well, and then there's the physically out and sort of mentally out, and then there's all that spiritual residue for maybe five years when you wonder what you actually do believe and whether there is some bits that you still kind of believe, like a belief in the almighty or was Jesus sort of somebody worth knowing or somebody special? So there was a lot of that. And then now I'm 20 years later so I've got a whole different set of beliefs. So where does my story start?

04:44 - Sam (Host)

Plenty of kind of entry points to that yes, and I actually just um, I mentioned to you before we started recording that I'm reading your book at the moment and I just read the chapter where you had talked about your conversion, and so I'm curious, um, for people listening, what flavor of christ, of Christianity were you converted to and what? On earth drew you to it at that age.

05:09 - Josie (Guest)

I was what flavour.

05:12

I was converted to the Anglican Church, the Anglican Church of Sydney, sydney Anglican, which is very different from other cities, yikes. But you know it was a long time ago and it did. It didn't really kind of grab me by the neck until I was at university, yeah, so, um, my book is about my rather awkward and difficult and sometimes traumatic family background and my great affection for my elder sister who used to go off to Christian camps. Yes, and she went off on so many Christian camps and used to have the time of her life and would come back regaling us all with the adventures she had. So for me it seemed like exactly the place I wanted to be. I've never been away from home for longer than one night, I think. So you go off to these camps for seven days.

06:10 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

06:11 - Josie (Guest)

And everybody's making a fuss of you, and I think it was love bombing before we had the term love bombing. Yeah, it was the 70s, mm-hmm. The counsellors, as they were called, weren't very old, very old, maybe 17. I know that because I became one myself when I was 17. Yeah, but you had enormous responsibilities, these counsellors. You'd have maybe 10 children of age 10 that you would look after for a week. You'd sleep in the same room with them, you would do everything with them. So you developed a very strong bond with them, as I did with my counsellor. I still remember her name, her camp name, her real name. That week was so profound. The difference between me and my sister is that she just fell in love with the women from the camp, yeah, without realising, of course, at that time why she was falling in love with the women from the camp yeah, Without realising of course at that time, why she was falling in love with all the women until she was much older, but I fell in love with Jesus and she was horrified, as was my family.

07:16 - Sam (Host)

Yes, yeah, because I also was someone who did not come from a Christian family. I joined at the very developmentally ripe old age of 13. And so what was it like for you navigating that sort of my family thinks I'm batshit crazy believing this stuff. Yes, yes, but it feels really real to you at the time.

07:44 - Josie (Guest)

It felt so real. And I remember the counselor out the front and her camp name was zip and she was talking about you know, jesus was knocking on the door of your heart, and all these pictures of. Remember behold, I stand at the door and knock. I remember very well. And and she said you just have to open the door and I thought I've just got to do it. Yeah, because that's God. I never heard words like this before. And of course, now we realize that evangelical and conversion strategy is to get you when you're young. Yeah, so they got me first. Come to Jesus moment, moment, one of many. Yeah, down the front I went, got my scripture union notes. Do we still do scripture union?

08:32

Yes, yeah, got my scripture union notes, was told to read the Bible every day, came home and told my family that none of them were Christian and they were all going to hell. So there was plenty of that going on, to my mother's profound indignation. She was kind of, you know, nominal anglican and my father was jewish, converted to anglican, and they thought this was ridiculous. But you know, I was in a complicated family and I didn't feel as though I understood what my place was in the family, who I was in life. I'd had a difficult year in year five. I didn't seem to be doing very well, I seemed to be getting into trouble a lot and the teacher was always crying when she spoke to me. I wouldn't have thought a 10-year-old had that much power. Oh about my bad behavior was crying.

09:24

Do you hate me? That one of those teachers see these things? Yeah, so I went on this camp and thought I'm all right now. Yeah, all right, and I did a lot better for a few years and I, you know, joined Sunday school and I found Christian friends when I was in year 12, you know it's it, steadily became part of my DNA, as it does just infiltrated the bone and marrow till I was really fully immersed yeah.

09:59

I was always very conscientious, so when I did something, I just did it so properly yeah, go hard or go home go hard or go home, and I just went so hard and we're able every day. This, the self-discipline, was incredible. Yeah, I suppose that's one good thing I did learn, self-discipline, yeah. Yeah is sort of drifting off now.

10:24 - Sam (Host)

That's all right, it can.

10:26 - Josie (Guest)

It serves its purpose, it can, it can flow, yeah, yeah.

10:30 - Sam (Host)

I mean, I think and I talk quite a lot about this, because one of the pivotal things in my story was that I did Year 13 with the Sydney Anglicans at YouthWorks and so I know a little bit about the Sydney Anglicans and just how conservative and fundamental they are.

10:48 - Josie (Guest)

Were you doing a gap year or something.

10:50 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I was doing the gospel gap year.

10:52 - Josie (Guest)

Oh, the gospel gap year. Well of course I went to Camp Howard. That became Anglican Youth Department, that became YouthWorks Right. So I was just an early incarnation.

11:04 - Sam (Host)

Right, okay, yeah, you did the an early incarnation.

11:05 - Josie (Guest)

Right, okay, yeah, oh man.

11:10 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, it was like it was a pivotal moment in my downfall as well, but I'm asking this question because I talk about how conservative and fundamental Sydney Anglicans are, particularly in comparison to perhaps some other Anglican groups particularly in comparison to perhaps some other Anglican groups. Is that the style of indoctrination you had when you were younger? Is that the type of messaging you had?

11:42 - Josie (Guest)

Now, as I say, it was not sort of fully born in my person until I was at university. So during my teenage years years I joined my local church in Arabeen and you know we had a lot of fun and what was interesting is a lot of those kids weren't from church families, we were a little bit on the outer and we had quite a lot of fun and quite a lot of dating and you know, quite a lot.

12:05 - Sam (Host)

A very un-Anglican of you.

12:07 - Josie (Guest)

Breaking rules but also, you know, playing music and playing Christian bands. It was still, you know, we were still very much part of the church, but we weren't sort of so rabidly evangelical. We certainly didn't get into all of these distinctions between men and women. It was when I went to university that I unwittingly joined the campus Bible study and, of course, anybody who knows about the University of New South Wales campus ministry. It was run by Philip Jensen and it was incredibly rigid and that's when my true commitment was tested and we had the.

12:51

Billy Graham crusade in the 80s that I was a part of um. You know I did a lot of training in one-to-one evangelism. I was a bible study leader. I was a cell group leader in my faculty, went to campus Bible study every week, sometimes twice a week. I mean, I really was saturated at that time.

13:14 - Sam (Host)

What impact did that saturation have on you and just the way that you felt about yourself and the world around you? What impact did it have?

13:24 - Josie (Guest)

Well, there were some very notable and very bad times. I felt this kind of burden of evangelism so heavily, yeah, and and so what it meant was my friendships with my fellow students were always sort of contaminated by this feeling. You know, like you were an amway salesperson, that you were kind of involved in this pyramid selling all the time of trying to convert people so I lived on campus and I was pressured to run evangelistic dialogue meetings in my college.

14:01

So everybody in the college I lived with then they knew that was me, yeah, so I was completely tainted with that. There was no hiding any of it. I also was going out with one of my the boyfriend that I had from Narrabeen, and things weren't going well. And you know we got engaged, but you did that when you were 19.

14:24 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, particularly if you're 19 and in the church.

14:27 - Josie (Guest)

It doesn't matter if it's going well or not, you just get engaged. Yes, and we had some so-called couple counselling Right I won't say who from somebody involved in this university church ministry, and it was so terrible and it was so condemnatory of me as a woman that I didn't know how to submit. I had a dominant personality. Did I had I ever read that verse about the quiet and gentle spirit? It was a sort of about an hour barrage of my you know faults and shortcomings and that affected me so badly that night. It was a very traumatic night and, as a lot of people know, when you have a traumatic event, you remember it very clearly. And I then spent weeks reading the Bible and pondering on the fruit of the spirit, trying to change. You know this terrible person I was. I mean, the shame story was so dominant. Yeah, um, as it turned out, we did break up, which was probably good for both of us, but I was carrying a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and a lot of sense of failure as a woman, and you know that I couldn't submit. So I think that affected me very badly.

15:53

One good thing was I was invited to do ministry training after I completed my degree and, unlike you, I didn't do a gospel gap year year. I didn't join the ministry training scheme, and I just knew that it would be a disaster, even though that was quite subterranean, I think. I just knew Because women weren't paid to do ministry training, only men were paid. Because paying women was a waste of time, because they just went and got married and had a baby, and so why would you invest in them? Yeah, and so they were talking about that. I would raise my own funds in this ministry training and I just thought this is just going to be so horrible.

16:40 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

16:40 - Josie (Guest)

So I declined and went into social work, which was my degree, and it's one of those sort of sliding door moments where I am so grateful to my wise mind buried deep inside me that I didn't do that. Because, it sets you on a path to then go to more college, then be in full-time ministry, just don't have a career. So you know, but it did leave me with a kind of a nasty legacy, that experience. And then, of course, after I finished university, I still kept going to the university church. So I didn't leave.

17:21 - Sam (Host)

I was there for years years and years.

17:25

It's interesting that you talk about, I guess, the pressure and the conditioning around that evangelical nature to just be out converting everybody, and I think a lot of people don't quite necessarily understand fully that that is not a choice right, like that is an expectation of yes yes one of the biggest stories that I talk about of my time in year 13 was our mission trip to fiji and I literally drank pool water to be physically sick and ill, because it was the only way I was going to get out of walk-up event that would have been better yeah, I know, but it was like they literally was wanted to be in there seeing me vomiting into the in the bathroom, because it was the only way I was getting out of walk-up evangelism in a colored christian nation.

18:18

As a white woman, I was like that is not happening well you.

18:21 - Josie (Guest)

There was a part of you that knew that it was gross and offensive and terrible and you didn't want to participate. But perhaps you didn't have the language at that point to say fuck off you know yes.

18:36

No, you can't. And the trouble is that it's an expectation. And I certainly did sort of cold evangelism we called it cold evangelism or whatever. Walk up on the library lawn. We'd go up and say, hi, oh, it's just so appalling, can I talk to you about Jesus, sort of thing. And it was so awful. But it was the external pressure, but it was also the internal pressure that I thought if I've got the words of life, I'm a bad person for keeping them to myself. And there were these hordes of unsaved all on the highway to hell. So it's my responsibility.

19:17

I just wore that responsibility like sort of a terrible heavy garment you know, like a stinking garment in the end, that you couldn't shake off, because if you really did believe it, the only right thing to do was to talk to people about it all the time.

19:38 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, and what did it say about me if I didn't want to do that?

19:43 - Josie (Guest)

Right, like what did it say about you? That you were drinking full water. Yeah, I know it was. It was desperation, josie, it was desperation well, it was nice, a nice piece of subversive kind of resistance really yeah, it's all we had available to get sick, and then perhaps it's held your conscience as well.

20:03 - Sam (Host)

Look, I'm sick, so I can't do it yeah, it was the only way that, like I could reconcile it, but I could also make it okay to my leadership team as well it was like this jewel thing but um, what? What was it like for you? You know, you sort of said that that relationship and the horrible counselling session. Yes, and let's just get it very clear that not all pastoral counselling is not counselling.

20:36 - Josie (Guest)

No, no, no, it wasn't counselling, it was just a shaming thing. It was just shaming yeah.

20:41 - Sam (Host)

What impact did that have on you in terms of building and forming other relationships, moving forward even?

20:47 - Josie (Guest)

friends. Well, it was very hard and I was very nervous about, you know, love relationships going forward and you know that.

21:01

I did have sort of a couple of boyfriends. But I was very nervous and I was always kind of putting the stops on sexual activity because you know that was increasing my shame. So they just felt constrained and, you know, burdensome and just didn't have the joy that you should be having when you're 20 or 21, when you're dating and and feeling sexually free to just experiment and figure things out. So and and then, when I was living on campus in college, I kind of fell for the most rigid, incredibly devoted, devout Christian there was in the college Nice guy, don't know if he's listening Nice guy, but so devout. So I wanted to be as devout as him and he used to do memory verses, bible memory verses.

22:06

He was part of Navigators. I don't know if you remember the Navigators, no Well, I don't know if they still exist, but the Navigators were even more extreme than we were. Okay, so I then memorised verses. I've still got the little box sitting over there of all the memory verses that I remember. I'd have box after box of them. So I really tried to increase my devotion, my discipline. You know, it was only perhaps um years later, when I was working and I met my now husband which is a miracle that we're still together.

22:45

But I sort of started to relax a bit, although I was terribly censorious with him and spoke to him that he had to be the head of the family and he had to be the head of the family, you know, his kind of little face was. I don't know how to do any of this and why should we anyway? Yeah, yeah, so I think it had a very negative impact. Yeah, for many years trying to work out the, the way that you can kind of relate in a healthy and respectful and sophisticated and emotionally kind of diverse and mature way with someone, yeah these rigid stereotypes of men and women was so constraining yeah, was that amplified?

23:33 - Sam (Host)

because also, singleness is not ideal, like marriage is put on a pedestal. Unless you know, you have the quote-unquote gift of singleness. You, you are expected as a woman to get married and have babies right, that's right.

23:48 - Josie (Guest)

And then you know, certainly I've met in my counseling work lots of those women who didn't marry, enter in their 30s and 40s. No sex, no baby, no partner. And quite reasonably, there's a lot of bitterness about this. Yeah, because you know that's a cruel burden to put onto people yeah, I mean no less cruel than, of course, the burden put onto queer people about how they express their sexuality.

24:17 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, um, yeah, so your question again.

24:21 - Josie (Guest)

Oh, that's okay, you kind of answered it anyway.

24:23 - Sam (Host)

Um, but I I like asking this question because it sort of mirrors a question I usually ask later on, which is during this period of time where everything was very, your faith was heavily saturated yeah who was god to you in the, in your bedroom alone, when you didn't have any expectations? Who was he to you?

24:46 - Josie (Guest)

Well, all the time I was trying to be obedient to the God of the Bible.

24:54 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

24:55 - Josie (Guest)

So always, you know, I wouldn't let myself be kind of dominated or influenced by my feelings. The God of the Bible was good and kind and just and merciful, but, you know, vengeful. It was kind of this incredibly complicated and paradoxical and toxic mix who the God was. So I used to try and pray with a formula. Thanksgiving had to go. I've forgotten now.

25:30 - Sam (Host)

There was a kind of a mnemonic, an acronym yeah, there used to be an acronym and I can't remember it too.

25:36 - Josie (Guest)

How nice is it when you forget it is it was thanksgiving to start with, because then that just showed your unworthiness look I did this even in the privacy of my own mind, yeah, and then it went to adoration. I don't know what it was you only were allowed to do requests.

25:54 - Sam (Host)

At the end was it like tear or something something like that something like that.

26:00 - Josie (Guest)

But yes, you couldn't ask anything until you got to the end and I remember, I remember I couldn't get pregnant and of course the big thing was to get pregnant, because if you couldn't get pregnant, who were you? Yeah, and so I remember praying desperately to God, but then you know, not your will but my will, and all of this just thinking I'm never going to get pregnant. I was really desperate and I think back now I was only 25. Yeah, it wasn't really that urgent, no, no.

26:36

And then I said to myself if I ever get pregnant, I'll have to call the baby Samuel, because it means heard of God. Oh my gosh, I haven't said this on any other podcast. You know, like Hannah praying in the temple and Eli hears her the book of Samuel.

26:58 - Sam (Host)

So I thought I'll oh my goodness, I have him.

27:05 - Josie (Guest)

I don't know if he even knows that to this day, but he might now a very little chance you'll listen to this podcast, being the absolutely died in the wool atheist that he is and always has been oh, I love that.

27:19 - Sam (Host)

Oh, it's so funny because there are those random little things, like you know, naming children after someone in the bible and it's just insane.

27:30 - Josie (Guest)

it's all, it's all through your you know it's. It's all through your decision making. Yeah, and I think my husband was a new convert. When I met him and I think that was very good A lot of people said, oh no, no, you can't date him. He's too new a convert. But he was kind of fresh and raw and a bit different and I kind of liked it. And again, another subversive moment like drinking pool water, I dated him anyway. Yep, despite being told by my minister I shouldn't date him and he didn't want me to date him and he wasn't right for me, did?

28:08 - Sam (Host)

it anyway, yeah, what do you think that was that allowed you to defy the person that you are supposed to divert that authority?

28:16 - Josie (Guest)

from. That's right. Look, I do think that there develops within you perhaps, as I've sort of written about this in my first book about there is some other self that you have, that you cultivate. That is subversive, that doesn't believe it. And I think I always really liked him and like a lot of my friends who married men that were kind of chosen for them by the minister or by others because they were kind of godly or whatever they were they're not together anymore, and they were miserable.

28:52 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I liked him.

28:53 - Josie (Guest)

And I think we had sexual chemistry and of course, that was regarded as like not right, no. So I stuck with it and, yeah you know, got married despite being told don't do it, don't do it by everybody. So there you are a very wise, subversive mother, and he also wasn't like my father. That was very important to me because I had a father with a very volatile temper and very uncertain and very unpredictable, and that affected my childhood very adversely and I thought if I'm ever going to marry somebody, it's got to be somebody who your children are never, ever going to be scared of yeah and he certainly is somebody they've never been scared of.

29:40

I think he's scared of them.

29:44 - Sam (Host)

I actually. I want to ask a question on that, but I'm sure because if I was listening to this podcast, you said that you liked him and I've got to ask do you still like him?

29:53 - Josie (Guest)

I do still like him. I do still like him. I like him a lot, and I think we've had sort of um rocky patches. Well, he hasn't yeah, anybody who wants to know about it can read in the book you know it is a little bit honest, a little bit raw, yeah, frank, yeah, um, but one of the times that I was most concerned is when I really was deconstructing very strongly and I thought he was much more devout than me yeah and when we finally said where do you stand, we realized that we were both pretty much going in the same direction and thank goodness for that, thank the goddess, that we did, because it meant that we didn't have to deconstruct the marriage like lots of people do.

30:43

Yeah, yeah, and you know, and I know many people whose Christian marriages founded on the rocks. Yeah, I mean, it was inevitable. The reasons for getting married were spurious. Yeah, one deconstructs one, doesn't? It's incredibly challenging. I do think I was just a bit lucky. Yeah, a bit lucky and a good subversive choice back in the day yeah.

31:08 - Sam (Host)

I want to get to the part where you start questioning things, but I want to ask you a question because you brought up your dad, and I'm curious because I, when I often talk about my own story, I will draw comparisons, in that I was drawn to God as a father because my own father was shithouse, right.

31:29 - Josie (Guest)

That's a nice clinical term, shithouse. I haven't heard that since the 70s. Very good yeah.

31:36 - Sam (Host)

So I'm curious whether that was something that you like. Is there a comparison there for you as well? That you were drawn to? You know, I would have back in the day, would have referred to it as like the father heart of God yes. I think you're absolutely right.

31:52 - Josie (Guest)

And when you said before, in the privacy of my own room, who was I praying to? Well, it was this whole conglomerate of whoever God was said to be, but it was also overarching, this loving Heavenly Father who, no matter what, would love me. Yeah, wouldn't be harsh with me, because, of course, after all, I was born again, yeah, and I had a father who was unpredictable, harsh yeah, I'm not going to use a stronger word as shithouse, because there were good things and I only published my book after he died so I could be very frank.

32:29

Yeah, there were very good things and there was some good legacies from him, but just in terms of my own stability, emotionally as a kid, that was very disrupted yeah and it means that I struggle, you know, even now, with lots of triggering around, shouting around, people losing their temper about atmospheres that don't feel right, where somebody is going to get angry, I'm still struggle a lot with that and that's just the legacy of an abusive household, really yeah, when did you start questioning things and did you only ever stay in anglicanism, or did you? Only ever anglican, because then the other ones were not quite you know they're wrong, they're not the right ones.

33:17 - Sam (Host)

Well, the united church.

33:20 - Josie (Guest)

you know, we we had a little saying about what happened with other churches. Like the Pentecostals, their faith is in the Spirit. Yes, the Catholics their faith is in the Pope.

33:34 - Sam (Host)

Or in Mary yes, or in Mary yes.

33:37 - Josie (Guest)

The United Church is in reason, but the Anglicans, we know where we're going. It's in the Bible. Yeah, we're the only ones that really base what we think on the Bible. So there was lots of, you know, covert and overt comments about other churches, very negative about roman catholic church almost always.

34:04

that was always used as an example in church of kind of the worst possible example of being christian and in fact probably not christian yeah um, the pentecostals got a very raw deal too, and I did go as a teen to a pentecostal church a few times and we did do the talking in tongues and everything.

34:26 - Sam (Host)

But I just knew that was all bunged on yeah, I remember going to my first Pentecostal church and I didn't my. I was not in Anglicanism, I was in the open brethren church, but um, still, pentecostals are like just not a thing. And I remember going to my first Pentecostal church with my now wife and they were doing like falling on the floor, like all of that sort of thing, oh yeah, and. I turned to her and I was like what the fuck is this?

34:55 - Josie (Guest)

Yeah, it was really disconcerting, wasn't it? Yeah, it was really for those of you who've grown up in this very state and you know I went to churches that had kind of you know the c of e liturgy, you know. So we'd had liturgy and prayers and the apostles creed.

35:14

It was quite formal yeah, yeah so no, no, I always stayed in the Anglican church. But when did I start questioning? And of course this is always so interesting because when I wrote my first book I wrote down all the events that I could think of. That were my kind of subversive moments, or I think I called them sites of injury, where I actually had some dislocation with the church, with the teaching, with the congregation, and you know, they started very early. So, of course, the decision to marry my husband. But then that was rectified because of course once we're married, then that was that yeah. And then there were some very difficult moments with my elder sister, which I do write about in the book, because she was gay and I was very condemnatory of her and her choices and she at times called me a Bible-wanking little Pharisee Pretty fair.

36:17 - Sam (Host)

Oh goodness, it's good, isn't it yeah?

36:19 - Josie (Guest)

it is actually oh goodness, it's good, isn't it? Yeah, it is actually and was absolutely appalled that I would stick up for, you know, the exclusion of women from ministry, that I would actually sort of talk about marriages between a man and a woman, that I would talk in these incredibly homophobic and misogynistic ways. So I kind of knew what I was saying to her was horrific and damaging and disastrous to our relationship. But back then I still thought, well, once she's converted, she'll get it. Once she's converted, it get it. Yeah, once she's converted, it's all going to be okay.

37:05

So all these moments you can kind of string them together of the deep disquiet in relationships, decisions you make that are sort of not really part of the church. Another very important thing that happened is that I had two friends who got pregnant when they weren't married. Ah, and they both got the most unbelievably cruel pressure to give their babies up for adoption. Yeah, and neither of them did. And I think something kind of cracked in me that the church could do this to these women, that they could be so pressured to do something and they didn't want to do it. It would have been a forced adoption and I actually did work in my social work capacity within adoption for many years and I was so horrified that they would do this.

38:05

inal death knell wasn't until: 2005

38:32

It was a therapy conference and very unexpectedly, I was being interviewed in front of a group. I just burst into tears about being a woman and what a disaster it was to be a woman. And how could you be a woman in this life when all I wanted to do was to be a man because men can make choices and this group was sort of sitting my whole sense of self in a very devastating, deleterious way.

39:08

yeah, and that's when I first said to my husband we just have to leave this university church, we have to go to a church that honors women. It's going to kill me. So that was a big catalyst to leave the university church, to leave that very fundamentalist church, because I believe it was fundamentalist, and we did go to a another anglican church but women did preach in this church.

39:34 - Sam (Host)

It was somewhat more progressive yeah full of kind of people yeah, well, all of those moments of um dissonance, I guess, between what you had always been taught versus what you were suddenly feeling as to whether they were right or not. Yeah, were you conscious of that at the time, or was that something that you reflected on later?

39:57 - Josie (Guest)

when you're conscious, at the time, of extraordinary dissonance and discomfort. I knew at the time and I, you know, was crying at this conference. And then, um, this is the days before mobile phones. So I rang up my husband from a public phone, a pay phone, yeah and said something's got to change, something's got to shift so I did know but of course, words like deconstruction and all that we're not even and weren't even a part of anybody's language.

40:29

nd you know that was in about: 1995

41:14 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, so what happened in: 2005

41:20 - Josie (Guest)

Oh look, there was a kind of a conflict within the church which I just want to go into, all of that but I think it was just another sort of catalytic event that allowed me to leave, because I've been thinking about it for ages. I had we'd had some marriage problems. None of my kids were going to church anymore. They'd all given it up when they were about 12 or 13, very, very summarily, yeah, um. So they gave it all up and there we were persevering, my husband and I leading the worship and the singing, and I was so over it I think it was just general fatigue and realising that it just didn't fit, and all the homophobia. And you know, my sister at this stage had been diagnosed with cancer and I just kind of knew she could die and the whole thing about her going to hell became absolutely ridiculous because I thought this is nonsense.

42:34

Yeah, so I did what lots of people do. You just gradually stop your responsibilities, fade out, stop leading women's bible study, stop doing the worship. Say you're wanting to have a break from the worship, yeah, singing. Say you're wanting to have a little break. Next thing, you're not going to church, yeah, and then there's a few people who go. Where are you and I? I'm just having a little break. People don't persevere that hard with you. Just never went back, never went back. And then I had a friend at another church who seemed to come with me for a while, but every time I went, I started crying and I think people just know that experience.

43:18

Yeah, because you can't sing the songs, you can't say the prayers, everything is like ash and dirt in your mouth. It's so horrible. Um, and then you know spoiler alert my sister does die. Yeah, and you know. And then I start to reflect on my life, absolutely completely. Yeah, and never, ever, ever, I mean, except to go to weddings and funerals. Yeah, have I been back in church?

43:50

Yes, I am, yeah, yeah, I'm not even wrapped in the weddings and funerals. Having said that, I haven't been to any kind of overtly evangelical events where like at my own wedding, where there was a 45-minute sermon to try and convert the kind of the trapped in the church, yeah, and I thought that was a good thing.

44:13 - Sam (Host)

That were. We got married in: 2019

44:43

So 20 years? Yes, so, despite not necessarily having the language of deconstruction, what? Was that period of time, like for you, pulling apart the doctrine, and do I believe this? Do I that All of that sort of oh well, enormous relief.

45:03 - Josie (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, you know I do think it's complicated, but as I've discovered in my counselling and in my research because I did a PhD on this is that people's mental health improves, yeah, so the idea that we were fed the idea that if I leave the church my mental health will deteriorate, that people who go to church have the most robust mental health, they're the happiest people this was said to us. I mean, this is just bullshit. So mental health improved. Then I had to deal with the grieving of my sister and then I started to really think how is this affecting my counselling? Because I was still counselling a lot of Christians and over the years, of course, I've been scrubbed well and truly off all the recommended lists for Christian counsellors, the more college-recommended counsellor list, yeah, I was the go-to person.

46:01

o I started researching it in: 2010

46:30

So that's when I thought I've got to make sense of what happened. So that's when I did my PhD into religious deconstruction and how people reinvent themselves and rebuild themselves. So that's why I did that. I mean, I was doing it for me as much as anything else.

46:48 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I'm thinking like what did you learn about yourself throughout that research?

46:52 - Josie (Guest)

Well, of course, it was so incredible because I was seeing myself and the people I interviewed and then, of course, as people asked me about my story, that interview that influenced their story, so I had to write all about this in the book about. There was this sort of interactive iterative process that my stories and their stories were affected by hearing each other, because that's what happens so, and then I had to analyse everybody's stories and that's what happens so, and then I had to analyse everybody's stories and that's when I came to understand that deconversion or disaffiliation follows all these different paths. But for a lot of people, for many years you kind of live a double life where you have something else going on that you dare not admit to, even to yourself, until eventually you're very relieved that it's all there. It's kind of all there, quite intact. Yeah, and I don't call it authentic self because I see that as kind of as though what was happening before? Was it not real? I think it's too atomised or essentialized to call it that. I I've always called it a preferred self okay I find the preferred self yeah

48:10

I found mine, yeah, and you know I think there is relief, but also there's, you know there's all that grief of all your friends and all the networks. This is groundwell trod, everybody knows this about the loss, that residual longing to be back, to be a part of stuff. Why aren't your friends wanting to be your friends anymore? And since I've written this most recent book, I have to say I thought because it's had a bit of publicity I thought some of my old church friends might just drop me an email and say oh well, congratulations.

48:55

They don't have to say they like it. Guess how many I've heard from? I've heard from people I went to school with yeah. I've heard from people from my old church fellowship at Narrabeen. They were pretty fun. I knew them when I was 15. Yeah, but how many from?

49:15 - Sam (Host)

Saint. Matthias, or yeah, anyway well, I mean, if there are anything yeah, I was gonna say, if there anything, like I suspect you heard from a big fat, zero, big fat zero.

49:26 - Josie (Guest)

Yeah, it's as if I haven't been born.

49:29 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, it's as if.

49:30 - Josie (Guest)

I don't exist.

49:31 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, yeah. What was it like for you to explore and find that preferred sense of self?

49:38 - Josie (Guest)

Yeah, Well, you know, I loved actually doing the research because of course you know the parallel process with my own.

49:47

And that's why I've really enjoyed doing the counselling with people doing the religious changes, deconstruction, people who are trying to figure things out. I mean, people can be in all ages and stages and I'm just happy to hear those stories. Can be in all ages and stages and I'm just happy to hear those stories and I kind of felt a new courage. Yeah, and all of that, you know, the walk-up evangelism, the having to be the right kind of woman. I felt a new courage to just say absolutely not. And there was one moment where I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald which really outed myself about the homophobia of the Anglican church. So I was absolutely out of myself and I remember seeing it published and feeling my hands were shaking because I thought people are going to read that and go oh Josie, look at her, she's going to hell.

50:54

I was very, very frightened yeah and so I kept putting one foot in front of another with that courage to just keep expressing my own ethical frame, my own ethical substance, my whole new set of values. Yeah, and so, without sounding a bit sort of um virtue signaling about it, I feel as though now I can speak on behalf of people who are too scared to speak. Yeah, because you know I'm older now. I'm, you know, not a kid, and so I'll speak out because you're frightened.

51:33 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I don't mind copying it anymore, it's been incremental, sam, yeah yeah, that kind of change doesn't happen overnight, right? Sure doesn't.

51:45 - Josie (Guest)

It's happened over 20 years, and so when people say to me why am I so upset? And they've left the church two years ago, you know, I kind of gently need to say it's very early days and I think some people have some story of I should be over it, which is a very disabling kind of story to be telling yourself when really you're never over it.

52:12 - Sam (Host)

It's part of who you are now yeah, I think like I have been out of my home church now for, I think, about nine years and there are still days where I could easily burst into tears about the grief and the loss around that, and I think that's right to put that unrealistic and really unfair expectation that you should just be over it, yes, just um. Not realistic and and it's not fair for yourself because it was real at all yeah.

52:44 - Josie (Guest)

I think there is a bit of a vulnerability in me Now I think about it and other people might relate to this that because of all that rejection from the church maybe nice rejection, but also rejection, nasty rejection, and also that is if you've never been born stuff yeah, I think there is a vulnerability. I feel in myself that when people ghost me or don't um friendships that go awry, I'm kind of pretty sensitive to that because I've had so much loss. It really hurts when people who I think are okay aren't, the relationship isn't okay. Yeah, I think that probably leaves you with a little bit of a vulnerability yeah, absolutely yeah what has uh, or how do you view spirituality now?

53:41

um. People always ask this question, don't they?

53:44 - Sam (Host)

yeah, I mean, this is why I asked the question of, like, who was god to you? Because, like, I like to ask, yeah, how people's version of spirituality, or whether they've thrown it in the bin altogether, looks like well, you know that very rigid view of god with the acronym of how you were supposed to pray.

54:02 - Josie (Guest)

Do you know? I still find myself in moments of trouble going help me God. And I actually don't know what I believe in.

54:13 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

54:13 - Josie (Guest)

So it's kind of, is it habitual? Is it crying out to the universe? I have kind of been quite persuaded. But, like my sister, I've got a little bit superstitious. Um, I'm a great bird lover and bird watcher. No, and she, like the ancient egyptians, thought that birds came back as a people, came back as birds. People's souls are in birds. And after she died I saw a lot of birds and I and I do write about this I actually had a bird speak to me and told me write the book. Yeah, I wonder about that. Yeah, wonder spiritually. Are people around and they use birds or whatever to come back and tell us things. You see, so my spirituality is a little bit nebulous, yeah, but I've always kind of believed in, you know, the numinous, the unknown. Yeah, I've always thought perhaps there's another world, but it's definitely not that kind of say jesus is the lord of your life and you'll go to heaven and everybody else doesn't know, yeah, yeah, so maybe there's just extinction.

55:47 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

55:48 - Josie (Guest)

And maybe I just want to believe this about birds. But no, I don't know, maybe I'm feeling I've become a bit psychic, maybe I'm a bit like that. Why not? So there you are. That's me today, yeah, but I know that, um, in your, in the other podcast which you know about the boys who do I was a teenage fundamentalist they speak about the comfort in not knowing yes, and all of that, don't know, don't know, don't know, yeah, so I relate to that too, yeah.

56:28 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, and I think I talk a lot about the freedom that came when the words I don't know didn't instinctively instill fear and panic, and that the I don't know was okay all of a sudden. Yes, yeah.

56:41 - Josie (Guest)

And the fact that you don't have to give an answer for what you believe to old church people who want you to give an answer, like the old days, like you know apologetics, so they can argue with you, yeah, you can just say I don't know and I don't really want to talk about it. Yeah, you can say that as well. Yes, absolutely.

57:04 - Sam (Host)

I want to ask one question before I get to the, my final question for every episode, which is what would you say to little Josie as she is about to give her life to Jesus?

57:16 - Josie (Guest)

Well, you can't. I don't want to say don't do it, yeah. I don't want to say don't do it because good. I don't want to say don't do it because good things happened. Yeah, you know, I met my husband. I wouldn't meet him otherwise I, as my Sam, my big Sam, says to me it wasn't all bad, mum. We did have community. Yeah, they didn't get it as bad as me, because obviously they left.

57:47

so I don't want to say don't do it, but I want to say don't sign up for campus bible study like. Go along to youth fellowship, be in the christian rock band, yeah, don't go so rigid. Don't go so rigid. Don't go so far, right, don't hang out with these people who want to tell you who to be and how to act and who shame you, yeah. If you can kind of hold on to some spiritual beliefs slightly, I mean, maybe if I joined the liberal church, if I'd kind of been in the liberal church, I might still be in it. I don't know. So I don't want to say don't do it, but I want to say don't go so far, don't do that, yeah.

58:36

But it is what it is, isn't it?

58:39 - Sam (Host)

And I think that that's important for some people to hear, though, because I'm not sure that I would tell my you know, 12, 13 year old self not to do it either, because I talk pretty openly about the fact that that decision literally saved my life at that point. Would there be parts? Absolutely, but I think it's important sometimes for people to hear that not everything has to be all good or all bad. We can move out of that binary thinking, embrace the middle, embrace the nuance, and take both we don't, I agree, and I think it also helped me in my difficult family.

59:21 - Josie (Guest)

it helped me to find something that was mine, that wasn't anybody else's, and I was very staunch and I was so conscientious and you know that gave me quite a lot of solidity in my adolescent years.

59:35

I've got a part of me that really regrets that I didn't experiment with drugs and sex more just on the edge, you know, because we sort of managed to experiment a bit, yeah, and on the other hand, I'm glad that I did have the structure, because it actually gave me some meaning to my life and I did have a lot of meaning.

:: 00:02

Yeah.

:: 00:02

A shame. So, in any way, it's where I'm up to now, yeah. And look, there are regrets, though of course I've got a lot of regrets. I've got regrets about some of the dreadful things I said to people about their sexuality. I've got regrets about all those nights spent in one-on-one two ways to live, oh, evangelistic bible studies with people trying to convert them, yeah, and I've got regrets about that, yeah. So, yeah, that I mean I've got regrets.

:: 00:40

Yeah, I wouldn't say you know, don't, don't, do it, don't have you come to Jesus moment yeah, and I think sometimes that is one of the hardest things to navigate in deconstructing is to actually realize the part that you played in a harmful system. And I know, like for myself, like even as a queer person, I was, so I was. I would have described myself as like the obnoxious black and white Christian.

:: 01:09

Oh, me too.

:: 01:10

Yeah, I know fun, but like, even as like a suppressed queer person, I would have sat there countless times with people helping them to suppress their own sexuality and that is like one of the most painful things to sit on the other side with.

:: 01:29

And so, like you said, regrets, absolutely yes I was a part and the group, yeah, to convert people, like not quite it was conversion therapy, gay conversion therapy, not quite electric shocks, but you know, you know it was called Liberty and we were praying for, you know, gay people to pray the gay away and all of that. It was very much a part of that.

:: 01:55

Yes.

:: 01:56

So regrets, I've had a few, yes, but don't you think it's interesting that those of us who were the most devout the most black and white? And now the most ferocious in our deconversion. That's who we are. See, they shouldn't have put so much energy into us and we're using it against them.

:: 02:16

Oh goodness. Okay, I like to finish these episodes with some encouragement for people, which is particularly for those who are very fresh in their deconstruction or they've potentially just been kicked out of their community um, something like that. What would you say to someone who is in those very early stages of deconstructing?

:: 02:37

well, as we've been saying, it's very important to appreciate the effects of shame and guilt upon you. Now, you might not be aware of it, but it will be acting upon you, those sort of stories of shame and guilt. And so, if there is any way even that there can be cultivated, a very small part of you could cultivate some self-compassion. That might help you, because there's going to be a lot of confusion and worry and fear. And if there can be self-compassion, like I'm doing the best I can, I'm just going forward, I don't know, I don't know, don't know, I don't know, yeah, that just might mean that you won't be too self-horrified or self-condemnatory.

:: 03:31

Yeah, and also to remember that these things take time, and you know I'm talking about myself 20 years later. So I also think that it's important if you can start cultivating new and different types of friends. You probably have them already. Yeah, one of the big regrets that I have is because I left the church in my mid-40s. You know there was many, many years where I could have had friends that were, you know, subversive, politically left, different, and I didn't cultivate them because they weren't Christian. And the Christian friends, you know, they all dropped like flies and they didn't really care about me.

:: 04:22

Anyway, I don't think, and what I've had to do and I've been doing it steadily is to cultivate new friendships yeah so when I met somebody I really liked in a Spanish class, a really nice guy, I got to know him and his boyfriend and made a real effort to be together. Yeah so, even if it was later in my life, and so now I'm lucky enough to have friends that aren't churchy or don't have a church history. I also was lucky enough to have another married couple, my husband and I, another married couple who deconstructed the same time as us and left the same time as us. So we've been friends since that time.

:: 05:10

Yeah.

:: 05:11

So we have a lot of memories together about very bad times, so we've kind of moved together through this. That was a bit of a stroke of luck, but I do think to understand that you can't do this alone in community, whatever that means even if it's the whole, the old online communities I mean, I never had any of those all the facebook and instagram communities, they're all there yeah and you can do that anonymously just listen to what people are saying.

:: 05:42

And then, of course, there's so many books. I read every single book about losing your faith that I could have. I've got them all. I must have 20 different books, all the different ways people have lost their faith.

:: 05:56

So I've read them all.

:: 05:57

And all of that helped me as well, because you could think, oh yeah, and it just gave you a sense that it was going to be all right. There was lots of people like you, yeah, and all that stuff, that you're going to be the worst person in the world and you're going to go off the rails morally and you're going to have a miserable life and you're going to treat people really badly. You realize that's all a complete lie. Yeah, and there's lots of people out there living really good, proper, contribut, contributory, virtuous lives that are ex-Christian. Yes, so I think, stay connected, find community. It doesn't really matter how, but that's been very helpful to me, yeah absolutely.

:: 06:39

I think it's also one of the biggest pain points. So I think it's. You know. We often talk about finding um community again, finding that belonging, that you know it's hard, so hard.

:: 06:52

Yeah, it is. Yeah, but once I kind of realized that my church connection failed yeah, it was spurious, I don't know how significant it really was yeah, and that became easier. I'm not saying that it was all terrible and that, um, the whole thing was bad, but yeah, they're kind of interesting. You, once you drift off, yeah, it feels from you.

:: 07:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so, um, now, speaking of books, I will have links in the show notes for people to be able to grab your books. Um, thank you, um. And so thank you for joining me and thank you for being such a wonderful australian voice, because for a very long time there was not a lot. Thank you for being one of the Australian trailblazing voices in this space and for coming on and sharing your story.

:: 07:49

My absolute pleasure and I hope it's been helpful to somebody listening. It was lovely talking to you. Thank you, Sam.

:: 07:59

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.