If not for all that had happened here, I would not have left my religion. I would certainly still be a Jehovah's Witness had I not come to this country and learned its ways. Perhaps I would have been happier. But no matter what it took to get here, to this breezy corner, or how alone I was among these 1.3 billion people, I felt ecstatic to be free, to have this life. I didn't know who to thank anymore, so I thanked the sky, the trees, the smiles, the sounds – the things I knew to be true.
There was a group of Jehovah's Witnesses that came around to call on me when I was a young mother – smiling sweetly at my girls as they tried to convince me to let them into my home for deeper talks, month after month – and because I believed that they were honestly interested in the state of my soul and salvation, because I believed that they honestly feared for the everlasting future of my children, I couldn't bring myself to be rude to them beyond saying no thank you to more information, I had my own beliefs, thanks; they persisted until they didn't, but I was never mad at them for trying. Amber Scoran kind of sours that memory for me with Leaving the Witness – describing the JWs as a cult whose members would have thought of me as a "worldly" mouthpiece for Satan; people who were mostly interested in logging their obligatory monthly proselytising hours, knowing we apostates were actually beyond saving.
Scoran herself seems to have given up on converting hopeless Westerners, and because she had been taught that Armageddon couldn't come until Jehovah's word had spread all around the world, she decided to learn Mandarin and take the message to untapped China – a move that involved a three year stay for her and her husband in Taiwan for language lessons, and then a covert move to establish themselves in Shanghai, where the Chinese government had outlawed the organisation. Because the JWs in China had to operate in secret (with fewer meetings and virtually no community oversight), Scoran found herself no longer under the direct mind control of the Governing Body, and after making an online connection with a man who forced her to confront the fact that she was, indeed, in a cult, she was compelled to take the frightening move of leaving her church, her husband, friends and family – being disfellowshipped for apostacy meant that everyone she ever knew (all of whom were JWs) were no longer allowed to acknowledge her existence. Not only was she now utterly alone, in Shanghai, but Scoran had the niggling fear that she had actually made a mistake and shut herself out of paradise. I can't imagine the bravery that it took Scoran to leave everyone and everything behind.
As a narrative, Leaving the Witness gives some biographical information about Scoran's upbringing in Vancouver, a bit of the history of the Jehovah's Witness organisation and a look at life inside its culture, quite a bit about how hard it is for Westerners to learn Mandarin and adapt to Chinese life, and because Scoran found a job on an early podcast (and eventually launched her own popular podcast on adapting to life in China called “Dear Amber”), there's some interesting info about that industry. Eventually Scoran does leave everything behind, and the end of the book jumps ahead months and years at a time to share how her life has worked out – if I had a complaint it would be that she glazed over so much at the end that had obvious dramatic impact (and I don't know if I was interested in everything she had to say about China), but it's Scoran's story to tell and she told it well. Introspective, candid, written with refined prose, it's hard to believe that Scoran left her church with no higher education (what's the point in pursuing a profession or saving for retirement if the world could end any day?), and the obvious improvement in her intellectual engagement with life is enough to argue that she's better off out of the JWs. With the insight Scoran gives here into how life operates as a Jehovah's Witness – the control, the sexism, the clamping down on curiosity and participation in society – makes me think that when those seemingly sweet women used to come to my door, I should have shouted at them, “You're in a cult and you're not taking us with you!” (But, of course, that would only prove that I was speaking for Satan.) Overall, a fascinating and well-told life story. I'm just going to preserve here some of Scoran's most startling passages:
• I knew that my explanations of the world made more sense than anything else I had come across, if only I could find someone who had the right heart and would listen. I was as confident in my mission as a suicide bomber is of his: God would help me, and one day I would be in paradise for having done it.On the fact that there's an organisation through which JW's can buy a fake university degree for $3000 in order to work in foreign countries:
• In fact, it was encouraged by some of those in higher-up positions, who reminded us of a Bible principle I have since seen the Governing Body use to lie in child abuse court cases: theocratic warfare. Meaning, if being dishonest will do something to advance Jehovah's will, then it's okay to make an exception and keep one's clean conscience.
• One night, when I had a particularly long-lasting case of insomnia accompanied by my usual terrors of the Armageddon I heard so much about during my visits to the Kingdom Hall, I went out to my dad in front of the TV and asked him if he might be able to spank me, since crying myself to sleep had generally worked well in the past. This was the only kind of help I knew to seek from my parents.
• Witnesses were the only ones who would be allowed out of Hitler's concentration camps if they would renounce their faith. And they didn't. In China, a Jehovah's Witness missionary had been imprisoned in solitary confinement for years in the 1950s, for preaching after Mao came to power. Kids with cancer chose death rather than take a blood transfusion. My culture was one of biblical proportions: men sacrificing their own child at God's request, fathers that allowed angry crowds to rape their daughters to protect God's angels.On the affair that sealed her break from her husband and church:
• My apocalypse hadn't looked like I thought it would: no oceans turning to blood with every piece of clothing taken off and pushed onto the ground, no skies turning darker with each penetration of my body, no giant hailstones raining down through the roof, no vultures picking clean the bones of our violating carcasses. It had been a fevered drive on a dark highway, fast, muddled bodies, a shower smelling of unfamiliar soap, an earring left behind on a black sheet. The closest thing to the Four Horsemen was a Trojan condom wrapper on the floor.Recommended for fans of Tara Westover's Educated, Jenna Miscavige Hill's Beyond Belief, or Miriam Toewe's Women Talking, Leaving the Witness was a fascinating and enlightening read.
