Using My Words
Growing up Black in a small Georgia town was hard enough. But Miriam Delaney Heard also had to break the chains of the religion she was raised in. Her salvation came from writing her own story.
In her classic novel, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison exhorts, “Stop sniveling. Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage.”
Before I could take advantage of my disadvantage, I first had to deconstruct my faith.
I was born into a Jehovah’s Witness family in a small town in Georgia. My family was devout, and the restrictive tenets of the faith fit me — an outspoken, nerdy Black girl — as uncomfortably as a turtleneck two sizes too small. So. Many. Rules. No birthday parties. No holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Independence Day…). Jehovah’s Witnesses’ children are strongly discouraged from playing sports, from socializing with non-Witnesses, from attending college.
Jehovah’s Witness youths are constantly directed to do just one thing: proselytize.
If you lived in western Georgia or eastern Alabama during the 1980s or ’90s, chances are I appeared unsolicited on your front porch on a random Saturday morning, smiling brightly and asking canned queries designed to pique your interest before you decided to slam your door shut:
“Have you ever wondered why God allows evil and suffering?”
“Since God is almighty, do you think that he should be held responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world?”
The Governing Body issues edicts that affect every aspect of the personal lives of Jehovah’s Witnesses: the music they can listen to, the movies they can watch, the medical treatments they can accept, the people with whom they can be intimate, even the types of intimacy they can experience.
The Governing Body issues edicts that affect every aspect of the personal lives of Jehovah’s Witnesses: the music they can listen to, the movies they can watch, the medical treatments they can accept, the people with whom they can be intimate, even the types of intimacy they can experience. Ask any Witness how these men are selected and what the qualifications are, and you will receive a vague reply about the divine appointment by Holy Spirit. The truth was, we didn’t have a clue. How these white men, who direct members’ actions from the cradle to the grave, are chosen for the job is shrouded in secrecy.
Trying to form my Black identity in a deeply segregated small town was difficult enough. In the LaGrange, Georgia, of my youth, there were whites-only libraries, swimming pools, and tennis courts. Only the coming of the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta changed things. Having to explain my family’s unconventional religious beliefs simply added another layer of difficulty.
Choosing to leave the Witness faith is even harder. Many former Witnesses paid high prices for leaving. Jehovah’s Witnesses are directed to shun friends and even relatives who leave the faith. Those who break the religion’s rules and are excommunicated or disfellowshipped. This is not at all the same type of cajoling a church-going Methodist mom might give her lapsed Methodist child. If your family is comprised of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and you decide that the tenets of the faith are not for you, it is very likely your mom will no longer take your phone calls. Your adult children will reject you. You will not be allowed to meet your grandchildren. Your sister will not invite you to her wedding. And the only friends you were allowed to cultivate in childhood will not even make eye contact with you in a Starbucks.
If your family is comprised of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and you decide that the tenets of the faith are not for you, it is very likely your mom will no longer take your phone calls.
Dozens of books and documentaries confirm these experiences. Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz, Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life by Amber Scorah, Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself by Linda A. Curtis, and more.
My break from the religion was gradual. After tiring of low-paying jobs, I rebelled against the Jehovah’s Witness’s restrictions and decided to attend college when I was in my 30s. At Salem College, a woman’s college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, smart, outspoken women taught me to analyze my belief system critically, to challenge my understanding of gender roles, and to reimagine my future possibilities. After I graduated with a degree in English literature and creative writing, I attended law school. For the last 12 years, I have worked for nonprofit law firms. As an attorney, I have represented hundreds of clients who live below the federal poverty lines, helping them gain access to disability benefits, educational support and services, and adequate health care.
I learned to blog about my faith deconstruction. And then, I began to reflect my own story in fiction. Fiction has always been both my escape and the medium that helps me make sense of the world. During the 2020 pandemic timeout, I developed a story about a fictional fundamentalist sect, True Antioch Believers, who live in a rural North Carolina hamlet. True Antioch Believers reject all portals to the Devil: stylish clothing, social media, secular music, and college education. And they take 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 very seriously: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”
To adhere to Paul’s edict, Antioch women take a vow of silence when they marry. From that point on, only their husbands and children ever hear their voices.
I spent the greater part of 2020 creating this fictional religious cult — an insular, controlling faith with customs and doctrines that fell somewhere on the spectrum between the strict evangelical doctrine and Margaret Atwood’s Gilead dystopia. I created my religion’s origin story, its leaders’ back stories, and its unique misogynistic doctrines. I found the writing oddly empowering. Developing characters was extraordinarily cathartic as I centered the perspectives of intriguing women:
— Ellen, a single teen mother of a biracial girl named Cara Grace. Ellen converts to the Antioch faith and marries a prominent elder, Joseph Dupree.
— Cara Grace, later a precocious teen who would rather leave Antioch and attend college than marry and become an obedient and silent wife.
— Juanita Boston, a Black social worker who bonds with Cara Grace and who crosses boundaries to introduce the young woman to life beyond the rigid confines in Antioch.
In my own life, I had been that precocious teen, that dutiful wife, and that driven advocate. Telling my characters’ stories helped me to understand my own journey.
My pandemic project became a manuscript and now my manuscript has become a novel, Sunless and Silent and Deep. My novel was published by Moonshine Cove Publishing.
Today, I am a single mom still paying off student loans, and I realize that my story is one of the few things I own outright. My regrets and successes, my missteps and corrections are uniquely mine. Telling my story in my own way gave me power. I hope it resonates with others who have had to leave a way of life to find themselves.
Miriam Delaney Heard was raised as a devout second-generation Jehovah’s Witness. Now, however, she is a lawyer, writer, and part-time apostate. Miriam strongly believes that faith deconstruction is much easier when it is served with a side of cheekiness and a heaping helping of affirmation from a supportive community. She blogs at Call Me Vashti.