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434 – Melissa Duge Spiers – Holy Disobedience

Melissa Duge Spiers shares her harrowing journey of growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist church, a community she describes as cult-like, and the painful deconstruction that followed. Her story takes a dark turn when she uncovers a devastating family secret that forces her to confront the systemic failures of the institution she once trusted.
Spiers details her strict upbringing in a high-control religious environment, leaving the church at 18 but only beginning to deconstruct years later. Her deconstruction was triggered by the discovery that her father, a youth pastor, was a serial child predator, leading her to uncover the church's systemic cover-up of abuse. She explains how the church's obsession with controlling sexuality through purity culture created a culture of repression that enabled abuse, while prioritizing the salvation of predators over protecting victims. Spiers discusses the lifelong process of healing from religious trauma, using modalities like psilocybin therapy and somatic work, and emphasizes that personal experience does not define a church—its history, leadership, and policies do. She also shares the 15-year journey of writing her book 'Holy Disobedience' and her hope for justice and exposure of the church's dark secrets.
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Holy Disobedience discusses her upbringing in the Seventh-day Adventist church.
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Systemic cover-up of child sex abuse in the church
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Repression leads to abuse.
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The church prioritizes saving predators' souls over protecting victims.
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Leaving religion didn't automatically heal everything