Banished by Lauren Drain

Banished: A Memoir, Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, Lauren Drain with Lisa Pulitzer.  New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013.  e-book, 267 pps.

Lauren was a regular teen in Florida who was doing regular teen stuff.  She had a little sister, a mom, and a dad.  Her mom was a Roman Catholic and her dad was an atheist.  Lauren's parents had an early bout with a fundamentalist religion when she was young and her sister had just finished a successful treatment for a rare childhood cancer.  That lasted for a short time.  Dad had a falling out with his Christian Bible Study buddy over the idea that Christians will live forever.  Lauren's dad then became a sort of hippie and continued being a professional student.  Her mom was upset over financial debts incurred from this and also over his friends, especially the younger women.  Lauren's dad finally completed a Master's degree.  

In high school, Lauren made the dance team but her dad refused to allow her to do this.  He used the word "slutty" in his description.  That was rather upsetting but she continued to excel academically and on a softball team.

Dad decided to do a docu film on the Westboro Baptist Church.  He objected to their intolerance of homosexuality.  He figured that he could get exposure through such a film.  So he went off to D.C. and came back in the throes of some sort of religious fervor.  He was then invited to Topeka to interview some members of the church and he went.  When he came back, he got each member of the family a King James Bible.  There was now family Bible time on Sundays.  Lauren wanted to date and her dad said no dating.  He wanted Lauren to report straight home after school and dump her friends.  Her dad became verbally abusive.  Then he pulled her out of school and enrolled her in a home school sort of thing on the Internet.  He cut off Lauren's internet privileges and began slapping her around in addition to calling her names.  Lauren became isolated.  Her little sister Taylor was still allowed to attend public school and to have friends.  Through her dad's intercession, Lauren became pen-pals with some of the W.B.C. girl teens.  Then her dad decided to move the family to Topeka to a small house on church property.  So off they went.

In order to survive, Lauren had to buy into the ideology of the people around her in Kansas.  Most of the folks at the Westboro Baptist Church were related to Fred Phelps, the pastor.  Under his tutelage and the guidance of various others, Lauren began to go on pickets.  She hung out only with the other girl teens from the Church enrolled in the high school-- who all happened to be Phelps'.  But she got in trouble anyway because she like any regular teen wanted to date.  After high school, Lauren was told that she could study to be a dental hygienist or a nurse.  She picked nursing and went off to college.  Two more kids were born in the family and she took on much of the day to day care of them.  After college, Lauren got a job in the hospital and a long distance boyfriend.  The Church decided to dis-fellowship her and Lauren was forced to live on her own.  Similar to dis-fellowshipping in the Jehovah's Witnesses faith, Lauren was cut off from her mother, father, sisters, and brother.  She was not allowed to talk with anyone still in the church.  She had a difficult time adjusting to not being told what to do or think, or where to go and how to get there.

In spite of everything, Lauren managed to move away and get a new job in the new state.  She met some regular Christian folks.  She studied the Bible with one woman in particular.  She remained a Christian but successfully broke away from the beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church.

sapphoq reviews says: Banished was an easy but interesting read.  Although Lauren didn't go much into the cultish aspects of the W.B.C., the signs were clearly in evidence throughout the book.  Her dad also fit the profile of an abuser, something which his conversion to fundamentalism did not help at all.  Not all fundamentalist Christian faiths are cultish and not all fundamentalists are abusive.  But Lauren's dad was.  And so was the W.B.C.  The culture of abuse surrounding the Westboro Baptist Church was most evident by the treatment Lauren got at the hands of folks that had been family and friends to her after she got dumped.  Recommended.  

 

Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life inside Scientology and my Harrowing Escape, Jenna Miscavige Hill with Lisa Pulitzer.  New York: Harper Collins Publishers/William Morrow, 2013.  e-book, 356 pps.

When I spied Beyond Belief, I immediately got on the list to buy it the first day it was available to the general public.  I've read a bunch of books on Scientology, Mormonism, gurus, and thought-blocking in connection with some extended research that I've been doing.  I was curious about this latest entry in ex-Scientologist memoirs and waited rather impatiently for the thing to load on my e-reader.

[To those who are against e-readers: I don't like the idea of them either.  The problem is that I cannot read regular printed books for any length of time due to the brain damage and resultant perception problems].

Beyond Belief started out with Jenna as an infant and toddler living an average life until her dad impulsively decided to join up with Sea Org and signed a billion year contract.  Her mother then had to join also.  Couples could not remain married if one was in and one was out.  Thus started apartments and nannies and then living and working at The Ranch for Jenna and her older brother.  Jenna included very specific information about her relationships with her family, including her uncle David Miscavige, which served to underscore the difficulties that she had in untangling herself from the Sea Org and from Scientology itself.  Although Jenna was not aware of the human rights violations carried out under her uncle's predecessor, she gradually woke up to the things that were happening under her uncle's reign.  It is to her credit that she was able to get out at all.

Jenna addressed the role of Anonymous in her awakening and specifically thanked Anonymous for picketing and getting the word out about Scientology and its' history of human rights violations.  None of the other memoirs that I read did this.  I was surprised and happy that Jenna had thought to include Anonymous in her memoir.  

I came away from Beyond Belief with a visceral sense of who Jenna Miscavige Hill is as a human being.  I was delighted to discover that she is one of the co-founders of the most excellent website http://www.exscientologykids.com/

sapphoq reviews says: Although Beyond Belief didn't detail the abusive nature of Scientology in the same manner that other memoirs did, this book is a valuable addition to the library of anyone seeking information on the subject matter.  Jenna was in a unique position as the niece of the current head of Scientology, and this position would of course reflect the differences in her experiences from those of other ex-Scientologists who also authored books.  There were some familiar names in Jenna's book.  Beyond Belief is a story of the coming of age of a sheltered Scientology kid.  Worth a read for anyone struggling with the hold of any abusive religion as well as for those who enjoy unusual memoirs about experiences that are beyond the realm of "average." Highly recommended.