The Jehovah’s Witnesses who left the faith and never looked back: ‘I was 37 and had only ever held a boy’s hand’
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Micki McAllen speaks matter-of-factly about all the times she was told the world was about to end. The September 11 attacks. Donald Trump’s election. Covid. Each time, she and her family – strict Jehovah’s Witnesses – would wait with a mix of dread and anticipation for the salvation to come. Of course, Armageddon didn’t arrive on any of those occasions. But McAllen was told to always be prepared – it was right around the corner, after all. It was only when she was 35, and first began questioning her faith, that she asked herself a simple question: why prepare to die when I could choose to live?
The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for McAllen. Confined to her home during lockdown in Auckland, New Zealand, she found herself searching for answers online. Gradually, the doubt set in. “I started reading people’s experiences, especially going through Covid,” she says. “A lot of people were affected by not having to go to kingdom hall [a place of worship for Witnesses] or any meeting or field service. We all had time to slow down and to think.”
Witnesses who have left the organisation told me that abandoning or even questioning the faith has severe social consequences, particularly shunning. Driven by this fear, McAllen kept all “worldly” people – a term used by Witnesses to describe anyone outside of the religion – at arm’s length. But it did nothing to quell her desire to learn and think independently. “I want to be my authentic self, and have an authentic life,” she recalls saying to herself. “I don’t know who I am, but I want to begin and I want to figure this out.”
After just a weekend of poring over online forums and speaking to former Witnesses, McAllen decided to leave. Within a week, she had dyed her hair bright pink and began her dream career in dog grooming, something she says she would never have been able to do as a Witness, when she spent all of her free time preaching. The rest of her thirties were spent catching up on the firsts she’d missed in her teens and twenties, from late-night parties to first loves and even losing her virginity.
“Being able to do that took some time,” she says. “It wasn’t until two years after I left [the religion] that I had sex for the first time. I was 37.” Up until that point, McAllen adds, she had only ever held a boy’s hand. “I was so nervous. My friends were like, ‘make sure he uses a condom, and that you pee after sex’ – bits of information that I had missed out on that most people know by now.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/jehovahs-witnesses-leaving-apostasy-b2798731.html.
