How to Humanist
Guest: Alyssa Grenfell, Ex-Mormon and Author of How to Leave the Mormon Church

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SHAY: Welcome back to How to Humanist. It's Shay Leonia. I'm actually recording this inside a kava shop in Los Angeles. Right now I am here visiting family for Passover Seder. For those of you who care, my family came from Lithuania and established very strong roots here in Los Angeles — about 11 brothers and sisters. And so my family is pretty massive, but I live on the opposite side of the country. So, a pandemic aside, I was able to come most years and actually spend some quality time with my amazing family.

But what was really cool today is that some cousins took me to — hold on, let me look at the name of this so I don't screw it up. Oh, well it's called the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine. That's a mouthful, but if you get a chance, if you see photos of this place, it is absolutely incredible. I had such a wonderful time. It was like two hours long that we stayed there, just because we really truly took our time. But it had some chunky swans, some ducks, turtles. They have this space where it's like an ode to Islam, an ode to Christianity, an ode to Judaism, an ode to Buddhism, and an ode to Hinduism. And I was like, oh, humanists, we gotta get on the map. Who do we have to call? So anyway, it was a really, really beautiful space.

And while we were there, my youngest cousin said, you know, we need more places like this that are just so much more accepting. And that gave me an opening to tell him, well actually, you know, I work at the American Humanist Association and this is one of the things that we're trying to do — is give everyone the right to believe what they want to believe, and to not believe what they don't want to believe.

So anyways, kudos to all of you humanists out there who are continuing to make that a reality for us day to day. And without further ado, let's get into this conversation that I had with Alyssa Grenfell. I should have preceded that by saying none other than Alyssa Grenfell, who is an ex-Mormon and she's written a book about her experience. She's just really trying to give people information that they might not have otherwise had from the inside, so that people are able to safely leave. And this conversation was just eye-opening. I learned so much. So after you listen to this episode, be sure to leave a comment or include it in your review what you learned in this episode, because I know that there was plenty that I had no idea about.

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ALYSSA: Because I've only been doing this for like a year and a half, I don't have a strong sense of like, who even knows who I am, because sometimes —

SHAY: Only been doing what for a year and a half?

ALYSSA: Like content creation. I guess I'm almost coming up on two years. My oldest YouTube video is like almost — I think at May it'll be two years.

SHAY: What?

ALYSSA: I know.

SHAY: Wait, wait, wait.

ALYSSA: TikTok is like two and a half years.

SHAY: Do you understand how quick that is to have built this — like, no pressure, but like this empire? Because every partner that we work with has been able to build this multi-platform audience, and you've managed to do that most of the time by yourself.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

SHAY: I didn't realize it was only two years.

ALYSSA: I know it is. It's definitely been a weird two years, that's for sure. I mean, I remember still when my first TikTok video went off and I was like, oh, I think I can do that again. And then I just did it again. So I mean, it has been kind of like — I was talking to someone else who does content creation and they were like, what's your plan next? And I was like, I think I'm just gonna keep going for like this slow growth, one video a week. And they were like, the fact you're calling it slow hurts my feelings. I was like, I'm not trying to be annoying, but it is. Sometimes I feel like, because I'm almost — it's not like I knew content creators before this. Like it's not like I have a lot of reference points for what's normal. So yeah, it is weird.

SHAY: I'm really bugged out right now. Because that to me says so much about you. Like, have you always been this super ambitious person?

ALYSSA: I would say I'm very hardworking and I would say I'm very creative. So it's very easy for me to come up with content ideas. It's more like I'm constrained by the hours in the day than I am by coming up with things to talk about or things that people might be interested in.

I know like before, when I was a teacher, I was also an assistant principal. So at 28 I was an assistant principal. So I do feel like I've always had an inherent kind of interest and drive and wanting to just be the best, trying to really show up every day. So I would say ambitious — maybe it's because I'm a woman it sounds almost too ladder-climby or like I'm doing it for the views. But I would say I am definitely very dogged. Especially when I really like something, I'm very like waking up every morning, getting it done, checking off my to-do list type of thing.

SHAY: How do you balance though — so clearly you're really enjoying doing this, but how do you balance it with liking the doing of it, but not liking the Mormonism of it?

ALYSSA: I think what fills my cup, what's empowering to me, is I feel like I love sharing my ideas. And so even if it's not fun to talk about Mormonism, because it's a lot of dark and heavy stuff, it is the element of like — I've had so many ideas in me for so long, and the idea that I finally get to share them with people, and not just share them with a few people but with a very large group of people, that's what's exhilarating to me. I finally can have my voice be heard, especially after so many years of not having my voice heard in the church. Being a woman, not being in leadership positions, viewing myself as like, my greatest ambition will just be to be a mother — which is a beautiful ambition, but can I not have more? Can I not have many things about me?

And I am a mother, obviously. I have two kids. But

SHAY: Yeah, you did this in two years with two kids. My goodness. Wow.

ALYSSA: And with the great support of my husband. He's been my number one champion. None of this would've been accomplished without him being incredibly supportive.

But yeah, I think to some extent I feel like sometimes the Mormon side of me — which, Mormons are very into optimization and goal setting and having your day super planned, that's something missionaries learn to do — it's almost like I'm taking that Mormon side of my brain and just applying it to this. Which, if you know Stephen R. Covey, he wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Mormons obviously love that book. So I feel like it is funny to use that thing that was really trained into me, which is sometimes a voice I can't turn off. Like, I'm always on the hamster wheel. But applying it to something — it's like I'm using it for good, I guess.

SHAY: Right. Are there other things that you feel like have stuck around since your deconstruction that have kind of been useful?

ALYSSA: I think part of my book that I wrote, which is How to Leave the Mormon Church, is very much about taking everything that's still in your brain after you leave the church and pulling it apart and asking yourself like, what is still valuable? What still aligns with my ethics or morality?

To-do list making is definitely something that has stuck with me. I think being a mother is something that was very trained into me, but I feel like I've been able to work through what it means to me to be a mother, not just what's the religious responsibility that I was taught, if that makes sense. And even within marriage — marriage is obviously also heavily trained into you as a Mormon. Coming out of the church and figuring out like, okay, marriage and just love is not Mormon. That's a human thing. And being a mother is not a Mormon thing. That's a human thing. So I think reclaiming what parts of this are really beautiful and what parts of this are not healthy, and trying to separate the two, which can feel really difficult, honestly.

SHAY: You shouted out your husband. Was there any — 'cause he deconstructed as well, right?

ALYSSA: Yes. Yeah. We both left the church around the same time.

SHAY: Did you find that you were moving at different paces of your aha moments?

ALYSSA: Yeah, which was really scary. I think anyone who lives in an interfaith marriage, or one believing, not believing, is in a very complicated situation, especially with a high demand religion like the church, because even just the question of like, one person wants to pay 10% of the income to the church and one person is like, I don't want to do that anymore. So there are a lot of difficult conversations.

I do feel like me and my husband got pretty lucky because I raised it first. I was like, I'm questioning. And then he was like, hmm. And he kept going to church for like a month, and then he was kind of like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. So it was almost like I brought it up, but he was ready to leave first. I probably took like six months, which even still feels like a pretty quick amount of time. So it was almost like the rabbit and the hare — he was like, alright, let's go. And I took a little longer. But we did, like, we had our first drink of alcohol together. We had our first coffee together. So we were pretty much in lockstep during that time.

SHAY: I love — it's so funny because in East Asian cultures, tea means so much, like tea ceremonies, and I'm picturing like this ceremony of you two having your first alcohol and your first coffee together.

ALYSSA: Yeah. Yeah, we have like selfies. We actually — it's funny, we didn't — coffee felt like a way bigger deal, which is kind of ironic. It's almost like by the time you try coffee you might as well try alcohol and whatever else. I feel like in my mind, all substances were on the same plane. Not now, obviously, but in my Mormon mind, heroin and coffee might as well be the same thing.

Yeah, like I don't have any pictures of us trying alcohol because coffee was like, that's the big moment. We were like, let's take some pictures, like your first coffee, you know? So it is funny because you would think it'd be the opposite.

SHAY: Yeah. What, okay. What is the big deal with coffee with Mormons?

ALYSSA: So it's basically a rule that was implemented by Joseph Smith. It's called the Word of Wisdom, though if you go read the Word of Wisdom, it doesn't actually say coffee. It's kind of like a lot of the church really changed throughout the years in how seriously people take that specific thing as a rule. Like Brigham Young, for example, had a distillery — like he made liquor. So obviously Mormons weren't always how they are now.

But around the 1920s I think they added that question about, do you drink coffee, to the temple recommend list. And once it's on that list, it means you can't enter a temple if you're drinking coffee. So that's when it became a lot more — this is kind of the bellwether for if you're a good Mormon or not, along with all these other rules.

And there was like a talk in a big Mormon meeting, a speech, where this woman was telling a story about how this kind, good woman was a good Latter-day Saint, but because she drank coffee, it meant that none of her children stayed faithful in the church and she couldn't qualify for a temple recommend.

And so it's kind of like coffee is — to me it's like the most nonsensical rule. A lot of people are like, I get alcohol, like alcoholism is a real thing. But I like to point to coffee as the most, as proof that a lot of these rules really make no sense, because it's not connected to a real world impact. It's just arbitrary.

And so for me growing up, coffee was always — I saw it as just almost satanic. Like if I was in the same room as coffee, I would be like, oh my god.

SHAY: I'm sorry. I'm picturing a coffee bean like trying to seduce you, you know.

ALYSSA: Yeah, no, seriously. In the grocery store, when we'd walk past the coffee aisle, we'd be like — my mom would be like, we're not going down that aisle. Or like, she told this story once that there was a lady in our congregation who really liked the smell of coffee, and she would go to the coffee aisle at the grocery store and take a deep breath in. And my mom told this story almost like, how sinful of her for even having the appearance of evil.

And so yeah, like coffee — especially for more devout people, like they won't even have coffee cake. We didn't call it a coffee table growing up. We called it —

SHAY: Oh my —

ALYSSA: Like the living room table.

SHAY: Oh, I don't mean to laugh, I'm sorry. This is so — I've never heard this before. Okay. I'm so glad there isn't a hell, I would totally be going. Wow. You wouldn't call it a coffee table? Coffee cake.

ALYSSA: Yeah, my sister drank coffee once on accident when we were at, I believe, the hospital in the lobby. They had coffee and I think she saw it on a table. It was when she was like six or seven, it was on accident, and the whole family was like — I still remember it. Oh my goodness. She drank coffee and it was like, does she now need to be admitted to the hospital? Which, I mean, kids aren't supposed to have caffeine, so that is its own issue. But it was more like, because she drank coffee specifically.

SHAY: Oh, wow. So okay. What's your favorite coffee drink now?

ALYSSA: If I'm at a coffee shop I will get a latte and I like to try the different seasonal drinks, like the lavender lattes or the Christmas drinks. If I'm at home, we do have an espresso machine, because what are we if not ex-Mormons at heart. So at home I'll just make like an Americano with some cream.

SHAY: Wow.

ALYSSA: Every day.

SHAY: I'm also a floral syrup latte person.

ALYSSA: It's so nice. It's a nice little treat.

SHAY: Yeah. And it's so cool too because like these days, I don't know about you, but my bestie and I are obsessed with coffee shops that really nail the ambiance, like somewhere warm and inviting. I could just stay there all day with my laptop and just work and sip on my coffee.

ALYSSA: I mean, having been into some really phenomenal coffee shops where people are like drawing on their iPads and reading their books, and it just feels like such a creative space. And the idea that as a member of the church I would've been like, that's the same as walking into a dive bar. Mormons are really missing out on coffee shop culture because it's such a fun energy to go into a really good coffee shop.

SHAY: It is. I have to shout out one of my favorite ones, Char and Stave. They have two locations — one is in Chestnut Hill in Philly, and then the other one is in Ardmore that I always go to. And in Ardmore, you could just be sitting there and people will start walking around and talking to one another. Even if you're at work on the iPad drawing something, they'll be like, oh, what are you working on? And then they'll have trivia nights and guitar nights. You're right, like coffee shop culture is its own thing. And that really sucks that Mormons are missing out on that.

ALYSSA: Yeah. For what? Like it's — you know, that's why it's like one of the most Googled questions about Mormons is why can't Mormons have coffee. And there's no good answer. It's truly just about rule following.

On my mission, I'd have to get people to commit to giving up coffee to get baptized. It's a requirement to get baptized. And people would just be like, so why do I have to give up coffee? And it was so — I remember even asking my mission leaders like, how do you teach this principle of giving up coffee? Because you can't easily connect it back to, well, alcoholism or other things. You know, lung cancer for cigarettes. And they were just like, it's just a rule. We have to show that we're willing to follow rules based on faith and nothing else. It's like a way for God to test our faithfulness. It's not because we know why. Sometimes the Lord gives us rules we don't understand and it's a test of our faith.

I was like, okay. I don't know if that's gonna go very well.

SHAY: Was that kind of the thread that started it all for you? The deconstruction process — like the Lord giving us rules that we don't understand?

ALYSSA: Yeah, no, I feel like I actually really loved following the rules. I think that when I was faithful, even if the rules didn't make sense, it wasn't really about logic to me — which is like all of religion. It was more like, I felt like I had a list of here's how you know you're a good person, here's how you know you're right with God. So it felt almost easy for me to know if I was a good person, because as long as you're following the long list of rules, you're gonna go to the Celestial Kingdom. As long as you have the temple recommend, basically, it's a signifier that all is good with you.

I always was a huge rule follower my whole time as a member. I never was one of those like secret lives of Mormon wives women who are playing fast and loose with the rules. I always wore my garments. I always read my scriptures, prayed, read the Book of Mormon. I served a mission, went to seminary, went to church, went to youth group.

I think for me, why I started questioning the religion — and really religion in general, not just the Mormon religion — was I just had all these experiences where I would pray and feel the spirit, which in Mormon doctrine the spirit can teach you messages. It can testify that the Book of Mormon is true. It can testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet. And I had these experiences of following through on inspiration given to me by what I thought was the spirit, and then it just not being true or turning out the way that the spirit had manifested to me.

And it felt like, well, God can't lie. So why is it that this revelation I've received is not in line with my lived reality? And that happened to me enough times that I started to feel like maybe it's the underpinning assumption of what God is that's wrong, not that I'm receiving the messages incorrectly, if that makes sense.

I feel like the Mormon principle of revelation is quite different than in a lot of religions, so it can be a little difficult to describe. Mormon revelation, after talking to a lot of religious people, does seem to be a different concept than the ministering type of affirmation. Like you can get an affirmation that God is real or that Jesus saved your soul, but revelation in Mormonism is a different thing.

SHAY: Yeah, and I am struggling to understand, and I hate to ask you to elaborate further because you're plainly saying it's hard to describe, but I'm not familiar with Christian revelation either. So I think I'm probably further distanced from having a grasp on either one.

ALYSSA: Yeah. I would say talking to other people from other Christian religions, it's more like you can have warm feelings that God is real, you can get a confirmation. Like, yes, Jesus saved you. But Mormon revelation is more like he reveals your life path to you. He speaks messages to you. So it's past just confirmation about something. It is like direction.

A common story in the church might be like, I was walking down the street, I got a revelation that I should talk to someone, that someone needed my help. So I called them on the phone. So it's more like directional advice from God than it is just like, yes, the Bible is the word of God. That's how I think of it.

And so an example for me is, when I was going to serve my mission, I got a really strong revelation that I was going to serve my mission in Italy. I wrote in my journal — and it was, to me, I felt like almost like a voice in my head. I was sitting in the temple about to do baptisms for the dead — that's a whole other thing. The temple is supposed to be the holiest place on earth. So I was like, if I get a message from God in the temple, it must be true. So I wrote in my journal, I'm as sure that I will serve my mission in Italy as I am sure that God is real, because it was such a strong moment. I cried, I felt overwhelmed.

So then my letter came. You don't get to pick where you go on your mission, it's assigned to you. So my letter came, and I'm opening it up just like, I don't even need to read this because I already know I'm going to Italy. I opened the letter and it says I'm going to Denver, Colorado. And I'm just like, I remember just looking around almost like, am I dreaming? I would've bet a million dollars that I was going to Italy because of this revelation I had received.

So I still went on my mission. I went to Denver. I think I put in the back of my head like, why am I not in Italy right now? But I had multiple experiences like that throughout the years where I would interpret my feelings as being God talking to me, which I was taught to do. Joseph Smith also — that's how he came up with a lot of the church, is his direct revelation from God.

I had enough experiences like that that I was finally like, I just feel like it's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And so I started to question, well, if this is how I'm figuring out how to move forward with my life, if this is how I'm figuring out how to believe in this religion or believe in the scriptures, if it's all being affirmed to me by this warm fuzzy feeling in my heart, maybe warm fuzzies aren't actually the best way to determine objective truth.

SHAY: It's not like scientists are like, how do I feel about this experiment?

ALYSSA: Yeah. Yeah. So then, how does one start questioning that? And then, because I guess there are extremes to all religions — I'm just so curious about what leads somebody to start questioning their religion and then not do like a hop, skip over to a different one and instead be like, I'm not a believer now.

I think maybe had my faith crisis had a closer connection to questioning the faith, maybe I would've done that. Because I do think that's fairly common. If all that I had ever questioned was, is Joseph Smith really a prophet? Then maybe I would have just been like, I just want to find a nice non-denominational church.

But I think because the foundation of my questioning began with God himself —

SHAY: Mm.

ALYSSA: That's why when I started to go and look at the history of the church, and even just the history of religion, it was much easier for me to be like, well, I'm already questioning if God is even real. So then it is easier to maybe say, I don't — like I feel like if I compare me and my husband, he's not religious, but I would say he is more spiritual than I am. I think he has more belief than I do, even if it's not in any organized religion.

SHAY: Kind of like the everything happens for a reason type.

ALYSSA: Yeah. More like into where the universe came from, the idea that there is a power moving out there, even if it's not like God per se or what we imagine God to be. Maybe just more of a general interest in the mysticism of the world. And I don't know, he would explain it better than me.

But I am, when it comes to really anything that is outside of just reality, I'm just not interested. Which I feel like is often a great disappointment to many people. And I would never try to take it from someone else, but don't push it on me though. Like, I'm not trying to tell you not to believe anything. Maybe sharing information about the Mormon church and saying like, oh, it doesn't look great. But I don't see myself as actively preaching to say like, this is the way to be or believe. It's more like, here's information I never got that I wish I had.

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ANNOUNCER: Sometimes it can feel like there's so much going on in this country that you don't even know where to start. Like no matter what you do, it won't be enough. That's exactly why the American Humanist Association is doing something about it. On May 2nd, the AHA is supporting a hundred community service projects across the country, and this is your invitation to be part of one.

The American Empathy Project is an effort to help everyday Americans push back against our country's crisis of cruelty. It's about meeting your neighbor where they're at and coming together with your community to build habits of connection and compassion. If you're someone who likes to live your values, this is for you.

Head to americanempathyproject.org to find if that's happening near you, or learn how you can support more initiatives like this at the AHA.

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SHAY: When you found out that you weren't going to Italy, is there something another Mormon possibly would've interpreted that situation as — that you had been sent to Denver instead of Italy?

ALYSSA: So yeah, and that's the other problem with revelation is that you can always spin it to be another way to interpret it. So you might say like, well, maybe someday I'll go to Italy and while I'm there, I'll teach someone about the church, and that's the mission that I was supposed to be getting from God.

Or there's something called a senior mission. Sometimes you can go on a senior mission when you're in your fifties, sixties, or seventies. So another interpretation is like, oh, that Italy revelation was for your senior mission. So you're just waiting another four decades and then the revelation will come true.

I think a lot of people do that where they're like, well, maybe if I just wait around long enough the revelation will come true. It's just fantasy. It's kind of like Oracle reading. It's almost like having a horoscope — you can really read meaning into it. And the more you push yourself to find a meaning, the easier it is to just be like, well, I was just wrong. I just misinterpreted it.

I think maybe because I had that experience so many times. Another example is like, I got a really strong revelation that I was going to marry someone, and then I ended up marrying someone else. I remember like I was praying and God was like, you're going to marry him. Keep writing him on your mission. Stay in contact, keep a close relationship. And I was like, okay God, that's my future husband. When I got back from my mission, we didn't even date. He was already interested in someone else, which is totally fine, but it was just like, but God said I was supposed to marry you.

And then that's another one — how can you think your way out of that? Like, oh, he's gonna get divorced someday and then I'm gonna get married to —

SHAY: Yeah, a lot of these, it sounds like you're just waiting around until you have no more teeth and you're just gumming together, I knew what would happen, you know.

ALYSSA: Yeah. It's like, I'll see what happens, maybe in heaven. And that's the other really frustrating thing. People will be like, well, it'll be a mission in heaven. And I'm like, I have to wait till I'm dead to figure this all out. It's fine if you say I don't have enough faith. I'm not waiting around for that.

SHAY: Wait, so they think missions happen in heaven, but isn't the mission to get people to be Mormon? So then how would those people be in heaven?

ALYSSA: So maybe you might say like, when I am an angel in heaven, I will go to Italy as a spirit and I will intervene and help someone accept the gospel.

SHAY: And you can be in Italy but not have any of their espressos.

ALYSSA: Yeah. Oh, painful.

SHAY: Painful thought.

ALYSSA: Yeah, I know. I can imagine. Where, so —

SHAY: So where were you for your mission?

ALYSSA: Only in Denver, Colorado. You only have one assigned area and you stay there the whole year and a half.

SHAY: Oh, oh.

ALYSSA: Not Italy.

SHAY: For the whole —

ALYSSA: My husband, for example — men go for two years. He went to Sweden. So when we talk about our mission experiences, it's always like, yeah, well I didn't get to go to Europe.

SHAY: Oh my goodness. Oh, wait. Why do men get to go for two years?

ALYSSA: I think it's just arbitrary sexism. And now they've changed the rule some, but they've also typically historically made it so women can't go until they're older. So 19 and 21 used to be the ages — men would go at 19, women would go at 21. Like I said, they've changed the ages over the years, but the rationale given was always that women's mission was getting married. It was more important for women to take those fertile years trying to get married. And then if you're an old spinster at 21 and no one's picked you up yet, you might as well go on a mission and do some good in the world.

And then the year and a half is because you gotta get home to go get married so you can start making some babies. So women have always had less responsibility when it comes to missions because a woman's responsibility is meant to be available for marriage. You wouldn't find that in a handbook, but that was always the context or the subtext of when we would talk about it.

SHAY: Hurry home and get pregnant.

ALYSSA: Or just never go and be pregnant.

SHAY: Right. Right. So with the mission, what is the day in the life of somebody that's doing a mission?

ALYSSA: It is honestly super grueling. I think one of my biggest beefs with the church is how they have these young people serve missions. I try not to even use the word serve because it makes it sound so gracious, like a wonderful thing that these young people are doing. I'm serving a mission, like a service project, when it's actually just trying to get people to get baptized.

Missionaries have really grueling schedules. They never get a day off the whole year and a half or two years. There's a P day — preparation day — but that is not really a day off. It's meant for doing laundry, cleaning your car, writing letters. And I have a place in my mission journal where I wrote that in the entire year and a half of my mission, I never took a nap. It's never in the schedule that you're supposed to be following.

Even like, you're only allowed a certain amount of time for eating, and then you have to go back and proselyte. A lot of people get mad because missionaries knock on their door at like 8:30, but that's still a time where you're required to be out finding people to teach. We'd be like these young women knocking on doors wherever it was at night when it was dark out, knocking on random people's doors. Some missionaries have died on their mission — car crashes, attacks. You can find videos online of women who had people break and enter and try to rape them. They are put in really dangerous situations, put in places where it's not common for Americans to be. They really do not take a lot of care with the missionaries' safety or lives.

And the missionaries are usually working like 11, 12, 13 hours a day, six days a week. And then they get that preparation day where they still have a list of responsibilities they're supposed to complete. And they pay to do it. They don't get paid.

SHAY: They pay to do it?

ALYSSA: Yes. That is like the other dark part of it. I believe about $10,000 for men and like $8,000 for women. They are not paid. So they're doing all of that uncompensated and they're actually paying to do it.

SHAY: You had to pay eight grand to go to Denver.

ALYSSA: Yes. Oh yes. Yep. When you put it like that, it feels even worse.

SHAY: I'm so sorry.

ALYSSA: It's okay. But that's why I hate the term serving a mission, because it valorizes this activity of paying to do sales for your church. It puts it in this other realm of like, I am serving the Lord, when you're actually doing sales for the Mormon church.

And there are so many little kids activities. I have countless memories of being an eight-year-old and, you know, called to serve. You sing all these songs, they talk about how great missions are. So you're really trained and indoctrinated to view missionary work as being incredibly important, like the most hallowed thing you can do. By the time you're ready to do it, it's not like I was like, I'm paying eight grand to go to Denver. It's like, I am a servant of the Lord called to serve his flock, to bring them unto Christ. You don't think of it how maybe an outsider would.

SHAY: And you're talking about it being like sales for the church, which — yeah, I totally agree. In marketing terms, we always think of like the solution awareness ladder. You think of somebody out there in the world who is thirsty, but they aren't anywhere on the solution awareness ladder to know that there is a solve for being thirsty, which is a bottle of water. But then you have people that go up the ladder, and you start thinking, okay, I know that bottles of water exist, but I can't find the one that's right for me. And then at the top of the solution awareness ladder, they're like, oh, I found the bottle of water that would work for me. It's portable, it has a straw, it has a handle, and I can take it everywhere. I'm buying this bottle.

How do you knock on someone's door, potentially at 8:30 at night, and find them at the top of that solution awareness ladder where they're like, I am primed and ready for you to baptize me?

ALYSSA: Well, I think that's where sales tactics come in, because a lot of sales is convincing someone they need something where before they were just living their life. And I'll also say, a huge reason Mormon missionaries say that the reason they're there is to convert themselves. So even if you go for the whole two years and you never baptize a single person, you tell yourself, well, I converted myself. And that was the most important thing. Like I believe now more in the church and I'm more committed than I've ever been before. And so I am my own convert essentially.

But as far as being on the doorstep, there are like — I actually have my little missionary handbook right here. This is like our training manual that we would use. It's very old because this is my actual one I had on my mission. It's basically like how to teach this in a compelling enough way that people are willing to say yes.

Like, when we'd ask people to be baptized and they're like, oh, I've already been baptized — we trained and role-played to practice teaching someone that their baptism was invalid because it wasn't done with a proper priesthood authority. So we'd have a role play like, okay, Shay, you pretend to be Mike who we're teaching right now. I'll pretend to be Sister Grenfell, and let's role play — you tell me why you don't think you need to be baptized, and I'm going to practice teaching you how to understand that your baptism is false so that you know you actually have to get baptized in the Mormon church.

So that's just one example. We'd role play how to teach the Word of Wisdom, how to knock on doors, how to pitch the church in 60 seconds or 30 seconds or two minutes, like elevator pitches. We practiced all of these things. And it still wasn't super effective, but I would say I participated in the baptism of about 30 different people across that year and a half.

SHAY: That you managed to — I don't know the right way to say it. Talk into —

ALYSSA: Yes. Which, a lot of those were not through knocking on doors. That's actually the least effective way to do it. That's another thing — you have different tactics to figure out how to find people. So you might ask for referrals. They have something called an area book, I think it's now on a phone, but for us it was a big book where previous missionaries would keep really meticulous records and say like, on January 1st, 2021, a woman named Marcy said she was interested in a visit. And then you'd see that in the area book and say, let's go visit Marcy. And then you'd go to her house — we wouldn't even pretend to know how we got her name. We'd just knock on her door and be like, hi, we're in the area inviting people to church. And maybe Marcy would be like, oh my goodness, I've actually had missionaries before.

You see people online being like, I don't know why I keep getting mission visits. It's like every six months I get a visit. And it's because they're actually trained to write your information down in their book or their phone so that whenever new missionaries get called into the area, they're like, oh, this person has been visited multiple times. Let's go back and visit again. So the return visits are because they're actually writing down your information.

SHAY: Wow. That's so interesting, because I recently learned that the creator of ancestry.com was Mormon, and every single piece of research I was seeing was always commending Mormons for their data collection.

ALYSSA: They're very good at data collection. It's creepy, honestly. They collect data on anything that you could collect data on, it seems like — how many people are in church, how many people are in Sunday school, how many people are attending the temple regularly, anything about your membership. I mean, you can see on the exmo subreddit sometimes posts of people screenshotting from the insider's view of the church's data collection on their website. And they have so many things they're collecting data about all the time.

Qualtrics — that might sound familiar — it's a data collection, like a survey company. It's a big company and that was started in Provo, Utah. Double, triple check that, but I'm like 99.5% sure. So Mormons love data. That's why people say Mormons are good at business too, because they're not messy. Usually they don't drink, they don't smoke, they're just like, they like following authority. And they've been trained like little sales machines.

A lot of call centers are based in Utah because they're very good at sales, door to door sales, summer sales — also because of the mission thing. Mormons speak every language. And so you can have a call center in Utah where all of these Americans speak — I think in the MTC they teach over a hundred languages. And so in Provo, Utah, you have fluent speakers for all these languages, and then you can call and it's like a whole funnel that they figured out.

SHAY: This might just be my ignorant outsider brain, but I've never met a Black Mormon. But you're going on missions — is anybody going on a mission to speak to any Black people?

ALYSSA: Yeah, I mean, actually the church has a huge effort right now in Africa, which I've actually been thinking about doing a video on. I got an email the other day that was talking about how they are impacting a lot of the legislation in certain countries that is anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ. Because basically, and same with the Philippines — the church very much seeks after countries that are more impoverished, because it's easier to get people to say yes. It's easier to conceal.

Like all of my videos are in English. I actually really want to get my videos translated, because a lot of the information that might dissuade you from joining, or might give you at least a better picture of what the church is, is just in English. So the church definitely wants to have the upper hand when it comes to the information funnel, or like who has the information about the church.

When I have seen online members of the church who are Black, oftentimes they are adopted — in an adoption program, adopted by a white Mormon couple. And then when they share their story, it's like, yeah, I didn't find out a lot of this until I was an adult. Or maybe like, I was living in Utah and someone made fun of me or talked about how Black people didn't get the priesthood till the seventies. They joined the church because of adoption, not because of conversion — which is not to say that no Black person ever converts, just that the majority of the stories I see are usually adoption.

SHAY: Is there an actual reason you can cite as to why it's so white?

ALYSSA: Yeah. The church's history is super racist. For a very long time there was a doctrine that basically said anyone who was Black had, in Mormon doctrine — I don't believe this obviously, but this is what was taught — the curse of Cain. Mormons didn't invent the curse of Cain. This is something pre-Mormonism that was kind of in Christianity in general. But basically because of the sin of Cain in the Bible, God put a mark on Cain, and it was believed that Black skin was that mark. And so even in the Book of Mormon, there are verses that say that the Lamanites, which is supposed to be the Native Americans, were also cursed with dark skin because they were sinful.

And so that is one of the reasons why Mormonism is primarily white — that is where the church grew from, out of this curse of Cain doctrine. And then — it's actually funny, I have this here — this is the first Black man ordained to receive the priesthood in the seventies, Joseph Freeman, 1978. And you can see it says, in the Lord's due time. The Lord just changed his mind, I guess, which is a line in the Book of Mormon musical. And so in the seventies they changed the rule to say Black people could get the priesthood and participate in the temple.

I mean, there's so much. Joseph Smith taught that faithful Black members would turn white — like their skin would turn white — in the afterlife. And when the church was trying to expand into different countries, it became increasingly hard because a lot of people had a mixed heritage. It wasn't clear who was white, who was Black. They would literally make people submit their family genealogy to prove they had not one drop of Black heritage. So it's worse than doctrine — it was fully part of the integrated bureaucracy of the church, to root out and make sure no Black members, no one would ever get the priesthood if they were Black.

I have a whole YouTube video about it. It's such a disturbing history to read because of the length they went to to make sure Black people weren't involved. It's past doctrine into — the racism just goes very deep. So to this day I think Black students at BYU are less than 1%, and there are very few Black people in Utah as well.

SHAY: So that was all part of a culture shock for you when you left, or did you feel kind of already well integrated into the outside world of Mormonism?

ALYSSA: On race specifically or just like all of it?

SHAY: I guess all of it. Because I imagine that there are many different lengths to the culture shock of leaving.

ALYSSA: Yeah. I mean, as soon as we decided to leave the church, I was basically like, I do not want to live in Utah anymore. I just knew it was going to be really challenging to be in Utah and have kids and have them face the level of judgment for not being in the church. And I knew it's also a very common story for young people who are in their teens to get love bombed by Mormon kids, Mormon teenagers, and then want to get baptized because they're like, I can't get invited to the sleepovers because I'm not in the church, or I'm not invited to the fun parties, or I'm an outsider.

So I knew if we stayed in Utah, even if we didn't teach our kids about the church, the church would still invade our lives. Our kids would probably still end up wanting to get baptized and maybe even resenting us for not having them be in the church, because it's just such a pressure cooker.

So yeah, we moved to New York — that's where we moved, to Brooklyn. That was like a huge culture shock, but also very —

SHAY: Coffee shops.

ALYSSA: Yeah, I know. Lots of coffee shops. And gentrification.

SHAY: And gentrification.

ALYSSA: Yeah. So I mean, I really loved living there. It was such an exciting place to live. There's so much energy. I feel like even just like Mormons with their like fake niceness versus like New Yorkers, which are like, get the fuck out of my way. It was like, whoa. Nobody is nice in New York, but it was almost good. I feel like it was good for me to practice taking up space and be like, yeah, you can't walk all over me. Almost like learning some of the New Yorker energy, which is to not just be like a nice Mormon girl. So I feel like it helped me come out of Mormonism very well.

And also so many people in New York don't even know what Mormons are. So I think I would talk to the people I was meeting in New York and tell them some of these stories, like about the temple endowment, garments, Mormon missions. And seeing their jaw on the floor helped me realize like, maybe I have been in something that was more extreme. Like the fact that I had religious underwear isn't just, oh yeah, like everyone does that. Or you're chanting in a circle in the temple. I would tell these stories and I remember telling someone once, like, this is like the third beer I've ever had, and everyone was like, what?

Or even just being married. No one in New York I would ever meet was married or even like had a long-term partner or something, because it was mostly young people. We checked in for our ten year anniversary, we were checking into a hotel in Austin, we were like, it's our anniversary. And he was like, what year is it? What are you celebrating? And we were like, we've been married for ten years. He looked at me like, has he robbed the cradle with you?

SHAY: Oh no.

ALYSSA: Like, is this a child bride situation? Because I got married when I was 23, but I think people see how old I am and they assume I could still just be single. Most people have not been married for ten years when they're 33.

SHAY: So when you're introducing yourself to new people, what was that like? Because I imagine that being Mormon might've been your personality before. How did that fall away for you when you were meeting new people and reintroducing yourself as this new person?

ALYSSA: It wasn't too strange. I feel like I also benefited from moving around a lot as a kid. I was born in Utah, but then we quickly moved to North Carolina, then Montana, then Texas, then Kentucky. So I had already had to live outside of the Utah bubble and learn to just have friends and relate to people in a way that didn't involve being Mormon. So on that level, it wasn't hard for me because most of the people I interacted with growing up were not Mormon.

SHAY: Are the rest of your family still Mormon, like your sister and parents and everything?

ALYSSA: Most of them are, yes. Two siblings still are, one is not, and both my parents still are.

SHAY: Feel free to share whatever you're comfortable with, but are you still able to maintain a relationship with them?

ALYSSA: Yeah. It has been a good long journey. My parents are divorced, so that means — and my dad is a convert. I think because everybody almost has their own levels of how devout they are, it's been difficult in different ways. I feel like breaking the news that I was leaving was very difficult, and then breaking the news I was writing my book was very difficult. And then being online is like a new level.

I do think mostly we all don't really talk about it. I know that I've not been invited to certain things, which does hurt. But I was so devout that I understand — I kind of knew the day I chose to leave the church, I'm forever the black sheep now. Growing up and hearing the way people would talk about anyone who left, and how judgmental and almost hateful people were towards them. It was like, everything that I grew up hearing people say about people leaving is about to be said about me. And so I almost had to just go into this whole new life knowing and expecting, like, I know they still love me, but I also know they may only be able to go so far with me.

We all still talk and love each other, but I think there's a whole part of myself and my life that I just know I'll never be able to connect with them about. And I feel like making peace with that has been challenging. But I think I have enough of myself that doesn't revolve around any of this, that there's still a lot we can connect over. And so I've made peace with just saying like, well, it's okay if we have that much of a relationship and the rest of it is a no-go zone. I have enough people in my life that I can connect with about these things, like my husband for example, or many other friends. So it's okay if they can't give that support to me.

SHAY: The emotional fortitude that you have built — I mean, between everything you just shared, along with the fact that you're still able to stay in, keeping an eye on what the Mormon church is up to and being able to tap back into that, while being able to exhibit very strong boundaries to protect yourself and your emotions behind it. I'm just so in awe of you.

ALYSSA: Well, thank you. I do think it's been a long journey. I was out of the church for almost seven years before I decided to write my book. I think I've just had a lot of time to think about this. I've had friends who have gotten divorced. I've had friends who've cut their family off. I've had friends who've stayed in the church just to keep the peace. And so I've seen almost every way you could choose to leave the church or stay in it. I think seeing what my friends have gone through and having conversations and asking myself like, okay, it's never gonna be perfect. So what can I do with what I have?

SHAY: Yeah. Well, thank you for joining me, Alyssa.

ALYSSA: Yes. Thank you for having me.