1087: Lloyd Evans - How I Became an Ex-Jehovah's Witness Activist Pt. 2

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2019

⏱️ 88 minutes

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Summary

Concluding our interview with Lloyd Evans, we focus on his journey from devout Witness youth to outspoken ex-Witness activist and atheist. Lloyd shares the circumstances leading to his "awakening" with startling honesty and reveals how the heartbreaking loss of his mother played a profound role in keeping long-held doubts suppressed.

Lloyd is the founder and senior editor of JWsurvey.org—a website that promotes freeness of thought among Jehovah’s Witnesses. He is also author of “The Reluctant Apostate,” a book that chronicles his experiences growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness and his journey to freedom from Watchtower indoctrination. His wildly popular Youtube channel “John Cedars” hosts a range of videos aimed at dissecting the various teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as new developments in the religion.

Transcript

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0:35.2	So in 2009, what were the resources available to a doubting questioning Jova's witness?
0:57.2	Were there podcasts, were there websites, were there reddit groups, were there email forums,
1:04.2	Facebook groups, were there famous known ex-Jova's witness sort of evangelists or missionaries?
1:12.8	What resources were available to you ten years ago or not? I don't remember YouTube being a massive
1:18.9	thing back then, but there was obviously crisis of conscience. There was JWFATs and there were forums
1:25.8	and so in 2010, moving into 2011, I can't remember exactly when, but I started going on forums.
1:35.4	I think this was, although I think this was after I've been on JWFATs, the very first thing I did,
1:41.0	to be honest, John, is I went on Wikipedia because I thought, well Wikipedia is a quote-unquote
1:49.4	neutral source, so I'm not going to just be listening to apostate rantings. I just want to kind of
1:56.4	get an objective viewpoint on my religions so that I can understand whether I'm crazy or not.
2:04.8	And what I found on Wikipedia was fascinating and by the way, Wikipedia is something like of a
2:10.8	war zone between JWs and ex-JWs who are kind of racing to edit articles according to their own
2:18.7	ideas, but there was just enough on Wikipedia to make me think, no, no, I'm on the right track here,
2:26.6	because there were one or two points that were made about the governing body and the faithful slave,
2:30.9	and that kind of thing, which I thought, no, that's absolutely right. I am on the right track.
2:35.6	And then one side- What was wrong with the governing body and the faithful slave?
	...

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