I Fired God: My Life Inside—and Escape From—the Secret World of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult

by Jocelyn R. Zichterman

I realized that sometimes we fail to get through to people because we don’t understand their background and culture and, by extension, their language triggers. You might be telling the truth, but if you say it the wrong way, your audience won’t hear you.

People who have no experience with cults often find it hard to understand how an intelligent person could be brainwashed so profoundly. But a child’s conscience is easily trained and if you spend your entire life in a cloistered community, isolated from dissenting viewpoints, there are almost no limits to how much your mind can be manipulated.

It’s one thing to have a personal moral belief based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. It’s something entirely different to demand that the rest of society adopt your beliefs.

Children who make a different religious choice than their parents should be able to walk away from their faith traditions with minimal consequences. It’s hard enough for people to leave a cult—the financial, emotional, relational, and spiritual damage is dramatic. The least the government can do is protect their basic human rights.

I know for sure that God is not a fat, white, angry, Republican, Baptist, male pastor in the sky—with a wooden dowel in one hand and a Bible in the other. I know for sure that She/He/Energy/Source/The Divine is good, loving, kind, and compassionate and there is order and purpose in everything.