Purity Culture, Predators, and End-Times Hysteria | Melissa Duge Spiers on Life Inside Adventism
Preacher Boys Podcast
Eric Skwarczynski
4.5 • 737 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Grab a copy of Holy Disobedience: Sex, Sin, and Secrets in the Biggest Church No One Knows: https://amzn.to/4s0pygn
As an Amazon associate, a small portion of every purchase made through this link helps support this podcast!
✖️✖️✖️
Melissa Duge Spiers is an award-winning essayist, screenwriter, and advocate for topics of religious and narcissistic abuse, utilizing her online platforms (TikTok and Instagram: “The Glory Whole”). Her memoir Holy Disobedience won the 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Nonfiction Manuscript prize, with excerpts featured in The Huffington Post. Melissa’s writing appears in magazines nationwide, and she’s a contributor to Take the Fruit: An Anthology of Religious Trauma.
Also a runner, cheese lover, and life-long vintage collector, Melissa holds a B.A. in English Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University and is based in California.
✖️✖️✖️
About Holy Disobedience:
“Spiers’s writing is propulsive and intelligent.” —Tia Levings, author of the New York Times bestselling A Well-Trained Wife
Holy Disobedience is a gripping, unflinching story by Melissa Duge Spiers about growing up in the shadow of control, silence, and secrets within the strict, fundamentalist Seventh-day Adventist Church. When Melissa learns that her father, a respected pastor, was a serial child predator shielded by the church, her world implodes. But this revelation is only the beginning.
From being beaten for resisting a childhood home perm to seducing a forbidden public-school athlete to reclaim her autonomy, Melissa’s early years were shaped by repression, shame, and indoctrination. Her escape from high-control religion launched her into a life of risk: Wall Street jobs, New York nightclubs, Hollywood hookups, and a series of abusive relationships. And yet, in these extremes, she was searching. Through self-reflection and finding her voice, and through an unexpected friendship with her father's first victim, Melissa slowly reconstructs the self she was never allowed to know.
Holy Disobedience is not just a survivor’s tale. It’s a story of fierce honesty, radical freedom, and the beautiful mess of becoming whole.
✖️✖️✖️
Support the Show: Patreon.com/PreacherBoys
✖️✖️✖️
If you or someone you know has experienced abuse, visit courage365.org/need-help
✖️✖️✖️
CONNECT WITH THE SHOW:
preacherboyspodcast.com
https://www.youtube.com/@PreacherBoys
https://www.facebook.com/preacherboysdoc/
https://twitter.com/preacherboysdoc
https://www.instagram.com/preacherboyspod
https://www.tiktok.com/@preacherboyspod
To connect with a community that shares the Preacher Boys Podcast's mission to expose abuse in the IFB, join the OFFICIAL Preacher Boys Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1403898676438188/
✖️✖️✖️
The content presented in this video is for informational and educational purposes only. All individuals and entities discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty through due legal process. The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers.
✖️✖️✖️
Music by Lou Ridley — “Bible Belt” | Used with permission under license.
This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/PreacherBoys and get on your way to being your best self.
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/preacher-boys-podcast/donations
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It has more members than the SBC. It's bigger than the Mormons. They have 23 plus million members. |
| 0:06.4 | Why did they so under the radar? It's quite calculated. They're one of those end times cults that |
| 0:11.8 | thinks that they're going to be persecuted by the government. So they kind of want to stay out of the |
| 0:15.9 | spotlight, I think, because of that. Also, you can live your entire life as an Adventist and really never go outside the bubble. |
| 0:22.8 | They've got publishers, they've got schools, they've got the fourth largest medical system in the |
| 0:27.8 | world. They've got the third largest educational system, I think, in the world. |
| 0:32.0 | Female Prophet founded the church. She was hit in the head with a rock when she was about nine, |
| 0:37.1 | 10 years old for the rest of her life. |
| 0:39.2 | She had hallucinations and seizures. To this day, they won't admit, oh, maybe traumatic brain injury. |
| 0:45.3 | And to this day, she's the prophet. She has the spirit of prophecy. |
| 0:49.6 | He advocated for female genital medulation to stop masturbation. She was three years old and an Adventist |
| 0:56.8 | doctor just sliced off all her body parts. She went to another Adventist doctor later and said, |
| 1:01.4 | what in the heck happened to me? And they gave her a pamphlet on masturbation and shoved her out the |
| 1:04.9 | door, basically. Walking away is just such a powerful thing to do and what it takes to get there. |
| 1:12.3 | Welcome back to the Preacher Boys podcast. I'm your host, Eric Skrzynski. I'm a former |
| 1:16.6 | fundamentalist who now sheds light on the dark side of the church, from the pulpit, to the |
| 1:21.0 | pews. Today, I'm sitting down with my new friend, Melissa Dugie Spires. Melissa is a former |
| 1:26.7 | Seven Day of Venice, an award-winning essayist, |
| 1:28.9 | a screenwriter, an advocate for topics of religious and narcissistic abuse. Her memoir, |
| 1:34.2 | Holy Disobedience, won the 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Nonfiction Manuscript Prize, |
| 1:39.5 | and by the time you're watching this, it's available to purchase wherever books are sold. But to help you out, |
| 1:45.1 | there's a link in the show notes for your convenience. So if you want to grab a copy and have a small |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Eric Skwarczynski, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Eric Skwarczynski and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.