formerly fundie
August 30, 2016 10:46 AM Subscribe
Inside NYC's Social Club For The Formerly Devout
The group's earliest meetings were in food courts—DUMBO Kitchen on York Street in Brooklyn, and Whole Foods in Tribeca. Members turned off their phones and spent hours on introductions and discussing a wide range of topics, including dietary restrictions, dating and sex, and what it's like to wear pants for the first time.
The group's earliest meetings were in food courts—DUMBO Kitchen on York Street in Brooklyn, and Whole Foods in Tribeca. Members turned off their phones and spent hours on introductions and discussing a wide range of topics, including dietary restrictions, dating and sex, and what it's like to wear pants for the first time.
Well... I think from reading the article that this is really a group for ex-members of world-exclusionary religious sects. Many of the people in the group are in fact still religious, just not members of their sect.
It's a group that's explicitly not about conformity of belief, which the New Atheist community assuredly is.
posted by selfnoise at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
It's a group that's explicitly not about conformity of belief, which the New Atheist community assuredly is.
posted by selfnoise at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
Also, sorry, I forgot to say this was a good read. Thanks for posting!
posted by selfnoise at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by selfnoise at 11:12 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
"It's easy to get religious people to go somewhere. 'Oh, God says we've got to be there? Okay.' And they just got there," Abdallah, the former Muslim said. "Working with non-religious people is like herding cats."
I just loved that line, also I hope that this group is able to keep up it's multicultural/multifaith aspect.
posted by larthegreat at 11:13 AM on August 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
I just loved that line, also I hope that this group is able to keep up it's multicultural/multifaith aspect.
posted by larthegreat at 11:13 AM on August 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
I can dig it.
posted by Bob Regular at 11:16 AM on August 30, 2016
posted by Bob Regular at 11:16 AM on August 30, 2016
Seems like a great idea. The folks I have known coming out from under this kind of thing had taken some hit-points.
posted by thelonius at 11:24 AM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 11:24 AM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
I surely could've used such a group like this 25 years ago for support as I broke away from the fundy folk in my family. They were simply unwilling to focus on their own souls' salvation, but were all up in mine, you know?
I'm glad it's around, though! It's needed!
posted by droplet at 11:30 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm glad it's around, though! It's needed!
posted by droplet at 11:30 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
As a result of my studying Yiddish I keep brushing up against stories of people who leave Hasidic sects. Sounds tremendously difficult, because they are not that far removed from that woman who was homeschooled to the point that she can't prove she is an American citizen. Many have educations that do not prepare them for the secular job market, and so it is not simply that they must adjust to leaving a closed community -- which often means severing all relationships in the community, and its network of support -- but they also cannot easily join in to the non-fundamentalist world they are entering.
It sounds like it is, as mentioned in the article, especially hard for women, and every so often I read about an ex-hasidic woman committing suicide. But even among the men, there is a sort of underworld of ex-hasids who are just barely making it, sometimes addicted to drugs and engaging in scams to support themselves.
It also sounds like some of the groups that develop to support people exiting fundamentalist religions aren't especially effective, because they don't address the real, immediate needs of the people leaving, which are oftentimes quotidian and financial.
I am sympathetic to the hasidic movement in theory, even though I am a secular Jew and an atheist. But if the mechanism you choose to encourage people to remain hasids is to almost literally make it impossible for them to leave if they choose, you've become an abusive expression of religion.
posted by maxsparber at 11:35 AM on August 30, 2016 [11 favorites]
It sounds like it is, as mentioned in the article, especially hard for women, and every so often I read about an ex-hasidic woman committing suicide. But even among the men, there is a sort of underworld of ex-hasids who are just barely making it, sometimes addicted to drugs and engaging in scams to support themselves.
It also sounds like some of the groups that develop to support people exiting fundamentalist religions aren't especially effective, because they don't address the real, immediate needs of the people leaving, which are oftentimes quotidian and financial.
I am sympathetic to the hasidic movement in theory, even though I am a secular Jew and an atheist. But if the mechanism you choose to encourage people to remain hasids is to almost literally make it impossible for them to leave if they choose, you've become an abusive expression of religion.
posted by maxsparber at 11:35 AM on August 30, 2016 [11 favorites]
I'm glad this exists. I know that all too often when people leave fundamentalism, it's very difficult wrapping their heads around secular reality. Having peers say, "no, actually we don't all shoot heroin and have sex all day." is grounding, not to mention news to people who have been told that their entire lives. Hence the "push the button and sex comes out" comment.
I'm surprised at the 19 year old, Celia. For someone who lived in New Square and Kiryat Joel, she seems remarkably self-possessed and not completely messed up. Often women from these particular communities don't speak more than enough English to get by and have a very difficult time transitioning into secular society. Good for her (yasher koach).
posted by Sophie1 at 12:03 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm surprised at the 19 year old, Celia. For someone who lived in New Square and Kiryat Joel, she seems remarkably self-possessed and not completely messed up. Often women from these particular communities don't speak more than enough English to get by and have a very difficult time transitioning into secular society. Good for her (yasher koach).
posted by Sophie1 at 12:03 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]
Seems like a great idea. The folks I have known coming out from under this kind of thing had taken some hit-points.
That's a good way of putting it.
I was "lucky" in that I was a girl, so my sin was preemptively established just after the world was created and my worth was only what others in the church said it was. Our fundamentalist evangelical church encouraged parents to send their children to public school so that we would "bear witness" to others. The aforementioned sin and worthlessness taking precedence, I was a lost cause who was left to herself while waiting for me to get old enough to bear Christian children to a Christian man. I also got lucky in that my parents were the only ones in our rural area to be members of said fundy church, which pulled most of its membership from nearby Springfield and Eugene. In other words, I was basically free at school. I remember learning very quickly indeed to keep my school life separate from home. I never told my parents the true depths of the friendships I made.
It was like having a split personality. Monday, Bible study. Wednesday, Children Of The Holy Spirit play group. Friday, Bible study. Saturday morning, Bible school. Sunday morning, church service. Sunday afternoon, Bible school. It basically turned me into someone who can quote the Bible backwards and upside down. Nowadays this translates to being approached for proselytization by Mormon missionaries and making them weep within five minutes. (Yeah. Ahem. Well. They literally ask for it when they open with "do you know Jesus?" Yes, yes I do. You want to know how? Yes? Let me tell you the ways.)
The hardest was when I hit university. Our local K-12 public schools were (still are) heavily Christian, though not fundamentalist. More of a catch-all Protestantism, which had its own hellish influences on LGBT friends. But university... that was where I felt hated by both worlds. Hated at university for appreciating the egalitarian, compassionate, joyous, life-affirming parts of the Bible, aka "being Christian" in their eyes, and hated at home and church for being a whore (yes, they call young women who question their faith this, to their faces). It would have been so nice to have a middle ground. As it was, it took me a decade to piece through all of it. There's just so much.
And that's the rub – fundamentalism/extremism seeps into every nook and cranny. They don't want you to be an individual, they want you to be a clone. How do you learn to be an individual when your existence since birth has been defined in terms of a clone? Girls are clones of Eve; boys are clones of God himself (helloooooo patriarchal superiority complexes). As I mentioned, I was lucky – at school I was treated like a person, up until university and I had to face the horror of vast swathes of the self-proclaimed secular world treating me with just as much blind disgust and objectification as the fundamentalist world.
If there's one thing I wish people who have a savior complex about religious folk would really comprehend in their bones, it is that the savior complex is called that for a reason. If you think "rationality" and "straight talk" will save someone from themselves, or worse, an entire group from themselves, you're using the exact same rationale as extremists. What "saved" me was being treated like a human being. No more, no less.
posted by fraula at 12:29 PM on August 30, 2016 [44 favorites]
That's a good way of putting it.
I was "lucky" in that I was a girl, so my sin was preemptively established just after the world was created and my worth was only what others in the church said it was. Our fundamentalist evangelical church encouraged parents to send their children to public school so that we would "bear witness" to others. The aforementioned sin and worthlessness taking precedence, I was a lost cause who was left to herself while waiting for me to get old enough to bear Christian children to a Christian man. I also got lucky in that my parents were the only ones in our rural area to be members of said fundy church, which pulled most of its membership from nearby Springfield and Eugene. In other words, I was basically free at school. I remember learning very quickly indeed to keep my school life separate from home. I never told my parents the true depths of the friendships I made.
It was like having a split personality. Monday, Bible study. Wednesday, Children Of The Holy Spirit play group. Friday, Bible study. Saturday morning, Bible school. Sunday morning, church service. Sunday afternoon, Bible school. It basically turned me into someone who can quote the Bible backwards and upside down. Nowadays this translates to being approached for proselytization by Mormon missionaries and making them weep within five minutes. (Yeah. Ahem. Well. They literally ask for it when they open with "do you know Jesus?" Yes, yes I do. You want to know how? Yes? Let me tell you the ways.)
The hardest was when I hit university. Our local K-12 public schools were (still are) heavily Christian, though not fundamentalist. More of a catch-all Protestantism, which had its own hellish influences on LGBT friends. But university... that was where I felt hated by both worlds. Hated at university for appreciating the egalitarian, compassionate, joyous, life-affirming parts of the Bible, aka "being Christian" in their eyes, and hated at home and church for being a whore (yes, they call young women who question their faith this, to their faces). It would have been so nice to have a middle ground. As it was, it took me a decade to piece through all of it. There's just so much.
And that's the rub – fundamentalism/extremism seeps into every nook and cranny. They don't want you to be an individual, they want you to be a clone. How do you learn to be an individual when your existence since birth has been defined in terms of a clone? Girls are clones of Eve; boys are clones of God himself (helloooooo patriarchal superiority complexes). As I mentioned, I was lucky – at school I was treated like a person, up until university and I had to face the horror of vast swathes of the self-proclaimed secular world treating me with just as much blind disgust and objectification as the fundamentalist world.
If there's one thing I wish people who have a savior complex about religious folk would really comprehend in their bones, it is that the savior complex is called that for a reason. If you think "rationality" and "straight talk" will save someone from themselves, or worse, an entire group from themselves, you're using the exact same rationale as extremists. What "saved" me was being treated like a human being. No more, no less.
posted by fraula at 12:29 PM on August 30, 2016 [44 favorites]
I wrote a screed here and got bored with it -- I've written it before, and no need to re-invent the wheel. Not quite from the exact angle that this article comes from, but close.
It's from a thread that got a lot of traction in 2011, which focused upon a video depicting a woman writing her family members and laying down her boundary against their intrusions into her life and their condemnation of her for not believing as they do.
If nothing else, it's worth it to watch that video, and it's an interesting thread, too, with a lot of good interplay between thoughtful players on this site.
posted by dancestoblue at 5:09 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's from a thread that got a lot of traction in 2011, which focused upon a video depicting a woman writing her family members and laying down her boundary against their intrusions into her life and their condemnation of her for not believing as they do.
If nothing else, it's worth it to watch that video, and it's an interesting thread, too, with a lot of good interplay between thoughtful players on this site.
posted by dancestoblue at 5:09 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I wish I had had something like this group when I left fundamentalist Christianity. I count myself extremely fortunate that I was born into the age of the internet, before fundamentalism realized the danger. Blogging took off when I was in high school, and podcasts started when I was in college. Through these I encountered lots of decent people who did not share my faith, which was a real comfort after my own faith shattered.
Still, those were dark and lonely times. I realized I couldn't be a fundamentalist during my college years attending Bob Jones University, but I (foolishly, in retrospect) rode it out and got my degree. But I couldn't make deep friendships; I always had this secret. I felt like I couldn't leave without breaking ties with my family and what I counted as my friends, but I couldn't be real with them either.
Online culture helped, and still does. But a real-life group like this might have saved me from a lot of misery. Fortunately, now, I have moved across the country and found a group of people who are actual friends, people who accept me just as I am.
There's still damage. I particularly find dating confusing; I started off shy and socially anxious and then I was taught a whole set of rules that just don't apply to the real world, which is paralytic. And think about how much people bond over music and movies and TV shows from their childhoods and adolescent years. I've had so many conversations that are just floods of proper nouns that I can't identify.
But that's slowly healing over time. It feels mild compared to the more abusive cults that some of these others have escaped. I'd love to see groups like this one in more cities. Fundamentalism only works if it can isolate its members, telling them if they leave, they leave behind all their friends and family. Ending that isolation is the first step to helping them recover.
posted by JDHarper at 7:21 PM on August 30, 2016 [5 favorites]
Still, those were dark and lonely times. I realized I couldn't be a fundamentalist during my college years attending Bob Jones University, but I (foolishly, in retrospect) rode it out and got my degree. But I couldn't make deep friendships; I always had this secret. I felt like I couldn't leave without breaking ties with my family and what I counted as my friends, but I couldn't be real with them either.
Online culture helped, and still does. But a real-life group like this might have saved me from a lot of misery. Fortunately, now, I have moved across the country and found a group of people who are actual friends, people who accept me just as I am.
There's still damage. I particularly find dating confusing; I started off shy and socially anxious and then I was taught a whole set of rules that just don't apply to the real world, which is paralytic. And think about how much people bond over music and movies and TV shows from their childhoods and adolescent years. I've had so many conversations that are just floods of proper nouns that I can't identify.
But that's slowly healing over time. It feels mild compared to the more abusive cults that some of these others have escaped. I'd love to see groups like this one in more cities. Fundamentalism only works if it can isolate its members, telling them if they leave, they leave behind all their friends and family. Ending that isolation is the first step to helping them recover.
posted by JDHarper at 7:21 PM on August 30, 2016 [5 favorites]
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Fortunately, this group exists, and I hope it works for them to keep everyone happy, healthy, and safe.
posted by SansPoint at 11:05 AM on August 30, 2016 [9 favorites]