July 1, 2025 • 57 mins
In this revealing and emotionally rich episode of Cults and the Culting of America, Cynthia Williams joins hosts Scot Loyd and Daniella Mestyanek Young to unpack her journey through—and out of—the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI). Cynthia shares how, like many others, she once believed that her local church was different. The rules were strict, yes, but they felt spiritually justified—until the cracks began to show.
As Cynthia puts it, the realization came slowly: “I think it's probably just in the last two years… that I finally was like, wait a minute, I think I was in a cult.” That moment of clarity is a turning point in the episode, as the conversation explores how UPCI and similar groups protect themselves through plausible deniability. “Not my church,” people say—oblivious or unwilling to confront the broader systemic harm.
Cynthia describes how Bible college exposed her to both a deeper version of indoctrination and—paradoxically—the seeds of her exit. Through theology classes and critical thinking challenges, she began questioning the very doctrines that once gave her purpose. The episode also dives into her experience witnessing the tragic death of a teenage girl at Bible school—a loss that the church quickly co-opted into a martyrdom narrative, silencing Cynthia’s voice and rewriting the truth.
Alongside moments of grief and spiritual disillusionment, the hosts discuss cult tactics like toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, gendered control, and the recurring pattern of falling into other high-control environments even after leaving religion. From the military to corporate America, Cynthia’s story traces how these systems echo one another—and how healing requires naming those echoes for what they are.
With warmth, honesty, and shared survivor wisdom, this episode is a candid look at what it means to say, “Maybe it was my church after all.”
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
For more info on me:
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd.
I'm here with Daniela Mestinick-Young, knitting cult lady herself.
As always, Daniela, it's been a minute, but it's good to see you again.
Yeah, it's good to see you too.
I'm excited for this conversation.
I've been having a lot of questions about the United Pentecostal Church, so I don't knowwhat's in the air, but I think this will be a well-timed episode.
(00:52):
Yeah.
And of course, for our listeners, that is my background emerging from that particular highcontrol uh cult group.
And I'm thrilled tonight to have a long time friend, Cynthia Williams.
Cynthia, it's so good to see you again.
And Cynthia shares my background, but I always preface my remarks when I talk about theUnited Pentecostal Church is...
(01:20):
Although it was bad for me, it wasn't nearly as bad as it was for women in the UnitedPentecostal Church.
And I'm sure we'll get into some of that tonight, but Cynthia, it's so good to have you,so good to see you again and to reconnect.
Why don't you introduce yourself to our audience?
Well, I don't even know what to say.
(01:43):
Cynthia Williams, I was part of the United Pentecostal Church from 10 to 20 to 23 ish.
And I'm still loosely affiliated because my mother is still a part of the UPCI.
My former in-laws who I'm really close to also still part of the UPCI plus just, you know,large
(02:09):
group of my friends um who I still somewhat interact with, still either belong or havebelonged or are on their way out somewhere on their journey.
um I left the UPC, oh gosh, 20, no more than 20, Lord, I'm old.
(02:37):
It's been, it's been.
older.
Wow, yeah.
the UPCA.
But, you know, after reading Daniela's book, which thank you so much for your story andyour vulnerability, because it is really helping me unpack a lot.
(03:03):
After reading Daniela's book and listening to
binge listening to your podcast because I couldn't stop listening once I started.
I was like, wait a minute, there's more, there's more, there's more.
I realized that after, before I was in the UPC, I was part of a family system that wasvery much cult-like, um or a cult, I guess.
(03:28):
And then after leaving UPC, I found myself in organizations that were cult-y.
uh
um I found myself, I find that I was in a one-to-one cult with my former spouse and so onand so forth.
uh It's just interesting to me how many times I found myself in similar situations andthat I've set this intention in this last year that I am ready to break these cycles for
(04:03):
myself.
And there you showed up with some of your content, Scott.
And I was like, wait a minute.
He's doing something.
And it made me get very curious.
So thank you for that as well.
Well, thank you for your vulnerability, for your strength, for your courage and sharingyour story.
And remind me, we met at uh the Bible school, is that correct?
(04:29):
So when I was uh 18, 19, graduating from high school, uh I was uh born and raised in theUnited Pentecostal Church and groomed from an early age that I would be a minister, a
leader.
And so the next obvious step
for young people in that particular group is to attend a United Pentecostal Churchendorsed Bible college.
(04:56):
And the one that I chose happened to be in Stockton, California.
uh And that's where we connected.
And I remember that particular class, there was a lot of us.
If memory serves, it was the largest freshman class uh to date for that particular Bibleschool.
And I believe that's right.
(05:16):
uh
But it was a large class.
I remember that, yeah.
we did have a really large class for sure.
I'm trying to remember, Scott, what year did you go into CLC?
Because were you the year behind me, or did we enter the same year?
89 89 fall of 89 Okay Okay, so maybe we had the distinction of being the largest class andbut you guys were close and for those that don't know talk a little bit about oh What was
(05:48):
expected of women in the United Pentecostal Church because there was a long list and itgoes beyond right dress and hairstyles
Yeah, wow, that's a lot to unpack.
So the obvious, the no cutting hair, no wearing makeup, no wearing jewelry, no wearingpants, no wearing immodest clothing.
(06:11):
And then there were caveats depending on who your pastor was.
And I didn't learn this until I went to Bible school, right?
Because I was in Colorado where there's not a lot of United Pentecostal churches.
So my experience of the UPC was rather small, even though I was a Bible quizzer, I'd beena Bible quizzer, I was a Bible quizzer for eight years.
(06:35):
So I traveled all over the United States and I visited other churches and I noticed thingshere and there that were slightly different.
Like I know there was one pastor that didn't allow women to wear red.
And then some people had the six inch rule.
where your skirt had to be six inches below your knee and your sleeves had to be sixinches or it had to be below your elbows.
(06:59):
um And then there was like how much could be showing here.
um And the hair up, hair down thing, I think that was also a thing.
Like in some churches, the younger women,
had to wear their hair down, the older women had to wear their hair up, or vice versa.
(07:24):
There were just all kinds of different caveats.
And it was all about who, what the man of God receives from God.
That's the only voice you listen to because that's your shepherd, that's your pastor, thatthey know what is right for you, and you were brought under that pastor for a reason.
(07:45):
Yeah, and.
never tell you about the shepherd analogy is that the shepherd always eats his sheep inthe end.
uh You know, it's interesting listening to you talk about it.
So first of all, I just wanna say, Cynthia, thank you for coming on here.
Like what a great treat, I think, for our listeners to have like a listener and a consumerof this content coming on to share your story.
(08:11):
uh
And you know, that's definitely what I wrote on culture to try to like connect some piecesfor y'all that were in these kind of like accepted American cults.
And as you're talking about how every pastor had his different thing, I think like that'ssomething we hear so often from these high control groups that are large, right?
(08:35):
We hear people kind of say, oh, well, each one was different.
Like, well, ours didn't do that, right?
Or ours didn't.
Yet we turn around and we think of these cults as like, they're monoliths and everyonedoes everything the same.
I'm like, no, like Children of God was 10,000 people all over the world.
Like your experience hugely differed based on where you were, you know, and the stuff youwere saying, right?
(08:59):
Like I grew up in Brazil and Japan's, which were like hubs of it, right?
And I was at the center and I was in the leadership and that was a very differentexperience than it was for like walking in River Phoenix who were over in Venezuela.
in like a satellite hub, for example.
And I almost feel like these groups use this, right?
(09:23):
To almost like hide or camouflage the extremism.
It's like, cause if we lifted it all, listed it all out and we say, have to do this, this,this, this, this, it would be like, well, that's a lot.
That's kind of, is that too much?
But we're like, oh well, that's just some, that's just this one.
That's just.
You know, and it's it's just striking me as you're talking about it that like that's justanother tactic to keep people from naming it what it is.
(09:50):
Yes, I think, yeah, I agree with that.
Like, if I think for a long time for me too, like, it's probably just in the last twoyears, maybe, maybe three, that I finally was like, wait a minute, I think I was in a
cult.
You know, I had that moment.
(10:10):
I'm like, wait, maybe the UBC is a cult.
And I have a cousin who is no, who was a preacher's daughter, you know, born and raisedin.
born and raised in it.
And she has left as well.
And I called her up and I said, do think we were in a cult?
And she said, I think I've been telling you this for a while.
(10:32):
And then she sent me like, all these links and all the you know, there's there's one videothat somebody did on the UPCI is a cult and it breaks it all down really well.
And she said that to me and she sent me some other
horrible things about the UPCI that I had never read before, I'd never seen before.
(10:56):
Scott, I don't know if you've had this experience, but when you start opening up thatlittle Pandora's box, there's a lot of names you know.
And that felt really weird.
It does.
And, you know, to your point about it being different around the United PentecostalChurch, and even when we arrived at Bible School, I remember my first day on campus, I got
(11:19):
there a few uh months before school started because I was so eager and excited to getstarted.
I was just walking around campus.
It was July.
It was hot.
I had a short sleeve shirt on.
I remember my first encounter with the groundskeeper.
He said, well, you need to go put on a long sleeve shirt because that's one of the ruleshere is that you can't wear short sleeves.
(11:41):
And it made sense to me at the time, right?
Because now I was going to Bible school and it made sense to me that their standards wouldbe more strict and robust and rigorous than what I experienced in a local church.
But if you think about it, every human organization has a progressive wing.
(12:01):
It has a conservative wing.
And it can still be a cult, even though some of the churches may be more lenient when itcomes to dress codes or behavioral codes than others.
And what it does, it provides plausible deniability for people, right?
Because they can always say, well, not my church.
(12:23):
We don't do that here.
You should come check out my church because we're different.
But it's all within the same parameters of controlling behavior, especially.
Yes.
And it is this plausible deniability and it's almost like naturally built in, right?
So I say this to people, I'm like the children of God had tons of members who onlyexperienced the good stuff, right?
(12:48):
They only experienced the community and the Bible and the singing and then they went backhome and they would go to their graves swearing that we were good people and nothing bad
ever happened, right?
And so it's like, yeah, that
You know, one of the things I've started, first of all, when people say I've never heardof that, I just started looking at them and going, wow, that's lazy.
(13:10):
You should you should go ask some people, you know, because like if I've heard of the badstuff in your group, then, you know, um but I just I think, you know, it's interesting the
moment you describe Cynthia where you're like, were we in a cult?
You know, and kind of I think.
Scott as describes, you know, a similar sort of moment.
(13:32):
And this is, this is kind of what I felt like Uncultured in a way was kind of like my 20year gift back to the evangelicals, ex ex-vangelicals that I've known who have always been
like, well, your thing was really extreme.
And I'm kind of like, okay, but mirror, you know, and
(13:57):
And also just the understanding that like, it's not the same for everyone.
As Scott said, know, women have different experiences.
People of color have different experiences.
And those can be very significantly different based on power dynamics and how youexperience that, you know.
At least, uh you know, in my personal experience, like growing up in the children of God,like who you were related to absolutely mattered in like...
(14:26):
how your experience was gonna go.
it didn't always mean higher the better, you know, but like there was these very specificthings, but one of the things that I have learned with realizing that all these patterns
are the same is when people start going into their justifications of like, but it was forthis or oh, was just like, we just talk about the tactics here, right?
(14:50):
Like I actually don't really care about the details of like,
what the rules were, it was about the control.
You know, like...
And I think there's a part of that, that control piece is probably how and why I was ableto leave when I did and have what I'll call a graceful exit.
(15:14):
em Yes, I did.
I did.
And a lot of that had to do with things that I started to question while in Bible school.
And Scott, I don't know.
how you'll feel about this, but I feel like a lot of the people we went to Bible schoollearned a different version of critical thinking thanks to people like Yaden and
(15:45):
Seagraves.
Like these were some of our teachers who I feel pushed us to question and to think more.
And even though they were indoctrinating us at the same time,
I feel like every time I asked a question, they would say, go search it out, go figure itout.
(16:06):
And I would go search it out and I would be like, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.
Had they also been raised in UPCI, these teachers?
Because that's interesting to me.
I think sometimes this is like the second generation's almost like pushback.
(16:29):
Like Scott, your other friend Scott, think, was he your friend who came to talk, who wrotethe Asian American Apostate, who stayed in because he could just like help.
people think, help the students think.
the conundrum, right, of everybody that's in these groups.
You hear people all the time, are you going to be more effective endeavoring to change theorganization from within or without?
(16:58):
And our teachers would have argued that they are leading a change, that they areendeavoring to be progressive.
But at the end of the day, right, there were lines that they would not cross.
uh
served under some progressive pastors for a while and their line was, a few more peoplehave to die.
(17:21):
We have to go to some more funerals before we can see that change.
Well, guess what?
Here we are some 20 to 30 years later and if anything, the organization, the UnitedPentecostal Church is becoming more conservative and more dogmatic, not less.
But Cynthia, to your point, I often tell people that the United Pentecostal Church gave methe tools and the ability to see things and to understand things that eventually led to my
(17:54):
exit.
And I just simply started doing what they told us to do, right?
I started taking the Bible seriously.
I actually read it.
And I actually, you know, started thinking deeply about these doctrines.
And eventually that led to my exit.
(18:14):
But as a woman, you were in the situation where I know that I was sitting under a lot ofthose sermons, sitting in a lot of those lessons where women were called out specifically.
And I often tell people in the United Pentecostal Church and in a lot of these groups, forwomen, there are basically two categories, right?
(18:37):
You're either...
angelic or a saint or you're uh a Jezebel, uh a whore, right?
So there's nothing in between really, depending upon how you dressed, how you acted, howyou behaved, and God forbid you had a mind of your own that you would think for yourself,
(18:58):
immediately you were labeled and ostracized a lot within our group.
Does that jive with what you experienced somewhat?
I'd say yes and no and I feel like there are a couple reasons why my experience may havebeen a little different than that.
First and foremost is the church that we were converted into um was Loving Way Church inColorado.
(19:25):
Our pastor Maurice Gordon, he was biracial and he had eight children, six of which were
women.
And the women took really big leadership positions in the church.
And in fact, one of his daughters now is the pastor of that church.
(19:50):
So I think there was that I got a little bit before going to Bible school, I had some ofthe reprieve of
not so much of the white supremacy kind of stuff going on for me and not so much of thesexism.
(20:10):
There was a degree of it, but it was different.
you know, I was preaching when I was 13.
I was being, you know, in leadership positions.
was leading youth group.
was doing a lot of different things.
So really the shock.
to my system was going to Bible school and realizing that, a minute, I'm the only or oneof two women that are majoring in theology.
(20:41):
And it was almost offensive that I wasn't in Bible school to get an MRS degree.
And I think some of the other Bible school things that really like shredded things openfor me.
was in the bylaws or the bylaws for the school, the rules that we had to sign, they hadthat you could not have interracial dating without your pastor's permission.
(21:11):
And so that made the pool of people that I could date in Bible school about two, maybethree.
And I just ignored it.
Like I didn't care.
And I think for
1990s, not the 60s, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
88, 89, So, I mean, that was something I kind of ignored, but also I feel like there's apart of me that was like, okay, fine, I'm just not going to date in Bible school because
(21:39):
I'm here to be a preacher anyway.
And I don't have time for that nonsense.
You know, I'm spending all my time in the prayer room.
I'm not really up to what everybody else is up to.
I'm doing something different.
I don't know if you remember Marilyn Gazowski in San Francisco.
(21:59):
I would go to, almost every weekend I would go to San Francisco and I would just go sit inher prayer closets.
And that for me was enough.
I was dating Jesus.
Yeah, and can we just acknowledge for just a moment that what you experienced and what youfelt like at the time was a sincere desire to please God was something that was robbing
(22:28):
you of experience, that was robbing you of life, that was robbing you of an opportunity,right, to meet people, to get to know people.
And that's what these groups do.
Even though looking back on it, there's certain parts of us, we talked before we startedthe program that there are feelings of nostalgia, there are feelings that are complicated
(22:55):
when we start talking, or at least for me, when I start talking about my youth, because atthe time, was genuinely, it felt like a genuine desire.
This is something that I want.
This is something that I'm pursuing and I am...
disciplined, am dedicated, I'm going to do this for God.
But in retrospect, what the group did was rob me of opportunities to experience life andto normalize in the world like everyone else experienced it.
(23:27):
and and when I tell you that hearing y'all talk about Bible college like that sounds justlike West Point Right, right like very And and like an actual West Pointer would be like
no, right?
But again like the details differ but this like fervor and this dedication and even youknow my mom from the children of god would relate to this like teenage hood of just
(23:54):
feeling like so
in love with Jesus and in love with the family and the mission and the everything.
And then I would sort of feel that way about the army.
That I can throw myself into this and do this and sort of what Cynthia was saying, right?
Like be the woman that breaks the glass ceilings and is different and does what the boysare doing.
(24:20):
it's just.
So much of that programming is the same, but you know, one of the things I talk about inCulting of America in the Exit Cost chapter is stuff like when you leave those groups,
it's like you didn't just lose the actual group, the actual job or thing or whatever itwas, right?
(24:44):
You also lost certainty.
You also lost that passion, right?
Like that.
dating Jesus passion, right?
Like that just sort of those sorts of things, right?
And I really feel like that like loss of certainty, know, loss of like, I think this isreally gets soldiers, right?
(25:06):
It's like you were sold so hard a message that what you did mattered, right?
You're doing this for America and you're getting that messaging from all sides.
And then you get out and you're just supposed to go like.
work at Microsoft for money?
You know, that just seems so like blah, what am I doing?
(25:28):
Yeah, yeah, you're not saving the world because you know, we were saving souls from hell.
we don't, you know, one of things I keep saying is like, I just wrote this book that has a36 page bibliography, right?
So like I reviewed everything out there on cults.
And one of the things they all say is all cults are the same.
(25:50):
Which I think means there's this cult, this cult baby experience, right?
This generic cult baby experience.
And one of those, hey, sir, we have to excuse the dog.
He's a Republican.
So it just goes off sometimes.
ah But like the experience of when you walk away from these intense childhoods, but likeyou've lost those references, you know?
(26:23):
So I'm gonna give you an example that you too will get, right?
So I was walking with like my child and her normal friend and normal mom in the normalworld.
and I was walking and I was knitting and then a branch just ran right into my knittingcult lady bun.
And I seriously just out loud was like, and there's nobody around that I can make anAbsalom joke to, really?
(26:50):
Right?
And like Bible cartoon references and just like, you law, we are.
So as cult babies, I like to say like we are invisible immigrants, know, like we didn'treally grow up in the culture.
Like I think one of the things going on right now in the country is that millennials whowere allowed to read Harry Potter don't understand that it's our people in the White
(27:17):
House, you know, like they truly think there's some sort of difference between David Bergof Children of God and Donald Trump.
And they're just, there isn't, right?
But like,
Anyways, so this shared experience of just like, not only are we living in a world that weweren't raised in, right?
We don't have the references for.
We didn't get to experience, like Scott said, like all the normal things that other youngpeople our age were doing at that time.
(27:44):
But now we've also lost those experiences and those references.
And when you said you're still surrounded by people who are connected with that, like.
I get it and it's comforting in a lot of ways because like, at least it's from the outsideit seems.
(28:04):
Because you might still have like some of that shared almost like nostalgia or I don'treally know what else to call it.
I totally get that, the nostalgia part.
I frequently break out into song.
don't know about you, but I have a song for just about any situation or a scenario.
(28:25):
em I went last year, it's actually been, today I got the email for my one year anniversaryactually.
I went to a program.
for childhood trauma.
And it's addressing trauma zero to 17.
(28:48):
And I didn't get into the church stuff in that program, because I had so much to impactbefore church, before I was 10.
So there was enough there for me to deal with it.
I didn't really get into the church stuff.
(29:08):
So I said, this year I'm going to address the spiritual abuse.
And I need to deal with that.
And I need to talk about it.
um But in that process, I would pop off into song or whatever.
And the therapist, we're in groups of five people.
Therapists would say, Cynthia, you really should check in on that.
(29:29):
Where's that coming from?
What are you defending?
What are you deflecting?
And I'm like, oh, wow, that's kind of interesting to think about.
But I'm sure there's some stuff under there.
And that's an important.
sounds maybe like you need to just write songs for the cult baby musical.
Absolutely, absolutely.
(29:52):
And you know, that's an important point, Cynthia, because uh I talk a lot about this ideathat in the United Pentecostal Church, if our problems, whatever they were, and this
applied to anyone who walked off the street or just your average person attending a UnitedPentecostal Church, if our problems
(30:16):
could not be solved by an emotional release at the altar during the choir singing or inresponse to a particular sermon, then we didn't get much help, right?
uh All of our problems, the solution was reduced to, you just need to pray through.
(30:37):
You just need to speak in tongues.
You just need to shout and dance and worship your way out, right?
And that was the...
the mantra that we repeated over and over again.
So it makes perfect sense, right?
If you're revisiting a traumatic situation, that those grooves that have been, you know,uh paved in our brains will show up again.
(31:01):
We'll just start singing because that's how we were taught to deal with m our problems,which of course uh is disassociation, right?
We're not dealing with anything.
um And then, you know, even if you zoom out of that, all of the problems of the world, wedon't have to worry about climate change.
We don't have to worry about racism.
(31:23):
We don't have to worry about sexism.
We don't have to worry about what the government's doing.
Why?
Because Jesus is coming soon and we're leaving it all behind.
you know, sucks, wouldn't want to be you, see you, and we're out of here.
And so that's how we were taught to deal with either personal problems or larger world.
problems.
(31:44):
Yeah, I told you I was at a funeral this weekend at one of the UPC churches.
And that song, In His Hands, they were singing it.
And I rewrote the words in my head from, in his hands, there's only safety, to in hishands, there's dissociation.
(32:05):
That works, absolutely, right?
and then the other one was, turn it over to Jesus and you'll smile the rest of the day.
Good old talk positivity coming in there for the win.
Yeah, and we experienced that so much.
let me tell you this, like, okay, so the Children of God had a really bad car accidentonce where like seven teenagers who were out proselytizing were killed, right?
(32:38):
Just like horrible, right?
In Austin, Texas, like, you know, survivors were staying at the Ronald McDonald House,right?
Like all this stuff.
And I, so first of all, like I remember the cult just like almost like trying to justifyit.
And then they just kind of couldn't, right?
(33:00):
Because they were just, there was nothing.
There was no, like these were motivated, into it teenagers that were just slaughtered,right?
And so then they just went into the toxic positivity, right?
And of course I didn't have any of the language for that, but.
probably a year ago, somebody on one of my social media channels was like, yeah, I was atthe Ronald McDonald House, like during this Children of God accident.
(33:28):
And he just said, I've never seen parents more narcissistic, right?
Like they were just smiling and talking about Jesus and how blessed they were becausetheir children were gone.
right?
And you think about it and it's just like.
Yes on the narcissism and all that right like but like these were also just cult Memberswho had just lost their children and the only answer Given to them by their community at
(34:03):
all was give it to Jesus, you know And in our world we got prophecies straight from Jesus,right?
So they could just talk to their kids like why were you so upset, know and just the amount
of dissociation and also going, no, go ahead.
(34:25):
Speaking of of like that kind of an event and having an impact.
And I'm sure Scott, you remember this when we were in Bible school, there was a 16 yearold girl who was shot and killed in front of the church.
I was just thinking about the same thing, but yes, tell that story.
happened that I was mentoring this young girl.
(34:47):
I was 19.
She was 16.
I was mentoring her.
um Kind of had been assigned to to to like be her big sister of sorts.
She was a visiting pastor's daughter from Canada.
And she had a lot of things going on.
(35:07):
And we were at all night prayer meeting.
And she and I decided we were going to go outside and play a practical joke on the youthpastor.
And just to add before you continue that, just to add some cooperation to your story.
That night I was working an all night uh shift at the radio station, right?
(35:30):
I was not security, but the radio station.
you remember KCJH had those big glass.
And so I was actually questioned after the murder uh if I saw anything, but at the momentI was, I had my back turned, but I remember.
looking out that window and seeing the young lady in a pool of blood, the first responderscoming there.
(35:54):
And yeah, it was tragic, but continue because you were there firsthand.
Yeah, mean similar, similar situation.
So she and I were gonna go outside together.
And when I went to leave, go out the doors, I just got this overwhelming, hey, I didn'twanna go outside all of sudden.
(36:16):
And I said, you know, I think I'm just gonna go back in and pray.
And she said, well, I'm gonna go do this.
So she went outside, I went in, and I think you can remember, you know, the four-year andthen,
the church, you know, separate church area.
And I got down on my knees and I was praying and there's some sequencing that I don'tquite remember.
(36:37):
I remember hearing what sounded like the backfire of a car.
And then I remember the youth pastor coming over to me and asking me where this youngwoman was.
And I said, she went outside and he's like, what is she doing?
And I said, she went to go play joke on you.
And then he left.
(36:57):
came back in, he said, she's on the ground, she's been shot.
And I ran out, I didn't even think like one minute about safety, about anything.
I just ran out to her and then she died.
um It was the afterwards of this story that I think really
(37:22):
had such an impact on me on multiple fronts.
And so one was, you know, we had, had FBI people trailing me because they thought it couldbe a hit.
We were working on getting kids out of gangs and you know, there was this whole, thiswhole piece.
And so I had to go live with the family that she was living with so that they could keepan eye on us, blah, blah.
(37:46):
There was that piece.
There was a piece of, hey, will you speak at the funeral?
And so I spoke at the funeral at the church and then also went up to Canada to speak ather funeral.
And then there was the piece where the church did not allow me to talk to the press or totalk to anyone.
(38:07):
They like cut me off from the story and they spun a narrative.
That was not what happened.
And when I read the story in the paper and when I heard the story that was being told, Iwas like, that is a lie.
That is actually a lie.
(38:29):
And the story they were telling, right?
They were super spiritualizing this.
As I remember, they were making it all about the church that this, this, yeah, this was asatanic attack that, you know, this obviously God was doing something great through the
church and, you know, he sent his executioner.
I remember that word being thrown around a lot.
(38:50):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They made up a whole dream that she didn't have.
Now she did tell us that she had a stalker in Canada and nobody believed her.
And she said the stalker had three identities and there was a whole story about that.
None of that ever made it into, I don't even know if it made it into the police file,honestly.
(39:13):
I know that I was questioned for seven hours and I could not tell you.
I don't remember one second of from the time Sharit, from when the ambulance came to getSharit.
I remember like I was holding her.
I remember like this air going out of her, like a balloon being released.
And.
(39:34):
you guys from afar.
I remember it's branded in my memory.
And I remember asking if I could go with her in the ambulance because she didn't have anyfamily.
They said no.
They said, have to stay here and be questioned.
And that's the last thing I remember.
The next thing I remember is a group of the Bible school girls coming in crying andhysterical.
(39:56):
And I was looking at them like, what is wrong with you?
Like, I remember those are like the key memories for me from that night.
And one other memory.
that was just weird of sitting in the youth pastors office and he had these moccasins onand he was talking to the young woman and I who died that night and he looked down and he
(40:19):
said every time I wear these moccasins someone dies and that that's another thing thatjust like stuck in my head forever
And you know, the point of this story was it was a tragedy all the way around.
But when it came time to tell the story, the youth pastor who is now the pastor of thatparticular church in California, and everyone got on board, right, with this story that
(40:54):
diminished what happened to her.
and diminished her as a person and suddenly used it and leveraged that story uh in anattempt to proselyte others.
And that's what these high control groups do.
No matter what is happening, it's always about them.
(41:16):
And it's always, uh to Daniela's point earlier, that we have some sort of supernaturalcalling, a purpose that is beyond us.
and we are chosen.
So that even that young lady's death became a part of the narrative to spin thisparticular lie to gain more converts that they could then control their behavior and their
(41:43):
thoughts, cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
And this makes me think of, wasn't there a thing out of Columbine or one of those earlyschool shootings that was like completely made up where they said that he walked up and
said, you a Christian?
And she said, yes.
uh
do you believe?
(42:04):
And she said, yes.
United Pentecostal.
Yeah, so I don't know if y'all have heard of this uh singer Candy Carpenter and I don'tknow if she's United Pentecostal but she is clearly deconstructing evangelicalism and like
her music is the bridge between Children of God and y'all's stories and it is so good.
(42:28):
I'm hoping she's gonna come on the podcast but like I think both of you would really
Because she literally, she talks about some of this stuff, right?
Like I sat in math class and fantasized about being killed because I stood up for Christ,you know?
And it's just like these things that were used, I mean, the children of God, right?
Murder, suicide of a kid who had been sexually abused his whole life.
(42:50):
And when I tell you like his mother getting prophecies from him in heaven, right?
Just like.
Again, making it all about the group, right?
Making it all about, I was damaged and I was this.
just like, it's, I think it's actually like the worst thing about obviously these highcontrol groups.
(43:13):
And it's, you know, when our brothers and sisters are driven to take their lives becausethey just can't anymore in these high control systems.
And then it's made out to be like, oh, it was the devil.
you know, or heaven forbid it's after they've left the group, right?
Then it's, well, because of the world and not like, no, it was because of the cult.
(43:39):
You know, I lost my brother as a 30 year old man.
It was because of the cults.
was a veteran too, so we got both of those.
So Cynthia, we, that's a heavy moment.
I think we need to all acknowledge that.
When we return to your story, were there some key points, some key instances in your lifewhere what we were taught in the United Pentecostal Church, it began to unravel?
(44:10):
And much like me, your identity as a preacher, as a minister, as someone that was chosenby God to share this message,
our identities were forged in that particular group and they were melded together.
So I know that when I left and even though my deconstruction was over a period of time andstill continues in a lot of ways, I know one thing that I struggled with that I can
(44:39):
continue to struggle with is this loss of identity and purpose.
But were there some key moments for you and then what does it look like?
for you now on the other side.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, Bible school is just a big turnkey for me all the way around, youknow, from the Sharif incident to learning how to translate the Bible in Greek and going,
(45:04):
wait a minute, like all those, all those moments, those wait a minute moments, an instantwhere my roommate was being sexually abused by her boyfriend.
Me turning that them in and then then making her take responsibility for what he did Wasthat was a deal that was a big deal breaker for me?
(45:30):
um and then after I left Bible school hearing of another sexual assault instance and Itnot being dealt with appropriately.
I think both of those things just kind of
overtime added up and then the very weird thing that happened is I married a preacher sona legacy preacher son and He was a big heathen.
(45:57):
He the first thing he did when we got married is buy me pants like he was like let's golike So that I you know between all of these things he made the the jump for me really
easy because you know
He didn't have any of the hangups that I had myself.
(46:18):
I was like, you mean I could show some cleavage?
Like, this feels weird.
You mean I can wear something that shows part of my thigh?
What?
And he was another one of the people that just was kind of like, yeah, those rules aredumb.
I'm like, your dad preaches those rules.
(46:40):
And he's like, yeah, they're dumb.
So, you know.
an interesting point because a lot of times I encounter, and as you do as well, people whoare maybe still part of the group or they left the group, but they were a pastor's son, a
leader's son, something of that nature.
And what I have to remind them is that your experience, although similar in many ways, wasalso different from the rank and file, so to speak, right?
(47:14):
Yes, you were right there up against the leadership and all that was happening.
But in a lot of ways, you were also sheltered from what a lot of us had to experience onthe receiving end of your dad's preaching or of your mom's insistence that we dress or act
(47:35):
or behave a certain way.
uh Because for whatever reason, there was that family connection.
that either sheltered or was more lenient for their own children than they were with therest of us.
Yes, yeah.
And I, you know, a lot of my friends were preacher's kids.
(47:56):
And so I definitely saw the difference in how they lived and how I lived.
But also I think the big, the other thing for me that probably created another turnkey wasthat I was Hispanic and I didn't speak Spanish.
(48:17):
So
They couldn't just shove me off to the Spanish speaking church.
But I also got a little bit of freedom, guess, or liberty in that I didn't seem to havethe same expectations of me that the white women had of them.
So I got away with things that they didn't get away.
(48:38):
I got away with majoring in theology and wanting to be a preacher.
And nobody really
Questioned it too hard.
They were like, oh, you know, whatever, you know, we don't have this high expectation ofyou to be a preacher's wife So go do your thing
Yeah, and what you were experiencing was.
(48:59):
it's almost because you couldn't achieve the perfect skinny white woman status.
They're like, yeah, okay, we'll like, you know, give you more freedom.
It's, you hear it with the Mormons women sometimes, the ones that don't get married youngend up going on the mission trips and then they're the ones that like break with the
church and all that, you know, because they like have this different experience.
(49:22):
Yeah, I'll get the mold.
the meta cult of white supremacy, right?
Because they didn't know what to do with you.
And so they said, well, she'll never achieve this, which in our circles, the pinnacle fora woman, right, was to be that preacher or that pastor's wife.
But because you were a nonconformist and you weren't interested in that, then they didn'tknow where to put you.
(49:49):
And so that gave you a little bit more liberty.
than if you were wanting to be that skinny white woman next to the charismatic leader thatDaniela always talks about.
Yeah, exactly.
I think I was looking for my skinny white woman maybe, I don't know.
I love it.
Love it.
Love it.
(50:10):
So Cynthia
who is white, says that he will be my skinny white woman if I want him to.
There you go.
So Cynthia, on this side of it, where do you find yourself these days?
What does life look like for you?
And how are you dealing with what all of us are dealing with?
(50:33):
I have had a wild ride.
I went into a high controlled organization after that, worked in IT, which is a maledominated field for nearly 20 years and found myself on the outskirts of that.
It was another very much cult situation that I can't go too much into right now.
(51:02):
And then, you know, I've done the different things.
I've dabbled with some AA, or really L and on, and have been in these different groups.
was, my ex-husband went into the military, because that was the only place he couldfunction after being a preacher's kid, imagine that.
And he's still in the military.
(51:24):
My son went to the Air Force Academy.
So...
you know, when you share these military stories, I'm like, yeah, I get it.
I get it.
And I'm so glad I didn't have to live it the way you did.
em And just being on the outside of it and seeing it was really interesting.
(51:44):
all of that combined, living in Alabama, living in Indiana, being in the UnitedPentecostal Church and having this military family that I'm now a part of forever because
USAPHA is that way.
em has put me in a place where if you look at my Facebook, the people in my Facebookgroup, I think it really represents uh a good em sampling of America because my husband,
(52:17):
my current husband, is in the cannabis industry.
So I have all these people from the psychedelic cannabis space on the far left in my groupand I have very far right people in my group.
And I live in Colorado.
I'm back in Colorado where I was born.
Born and raised here, but I've kind of lived, know, lived and worked all over the place.
(52:40):
I've worked a lot in Texas.
I think they would.
I would love for our husbands to meet.
oh Yeah, I have, I have the best husband in the world.
I just, he's, he's so.
amazing at being on this journey with me and kind of just rises to every challenge and Ijust appreciate him so much.
(53:06):
um
I was gonna say impossible, because I have the best husband in the world.
this is what I of describe it in the same way, right?
And at one point he really did feel sort of concerned that I was changing too much and Iwas gonna leave him behind.
(53:27):
And I literally said, babe, I left a whole cult.
I was like, I read about 60 books a year.
Every one of them changes me, right?
Like, I'm not gonna stop changing.
Like, I left a whole cult that didn't want me to read.
be on this journey with me.
And we both uh kind of, feel like, committed to being on this journey in a very realdifferent way than five years before when we had gotten married.
(53:50):
And now it's just like, yeah.
And I always say one of my strengths, why I can do this work, why I can do the hard stuff,is I have the strongest partnership.
Because we're just on this journey to do life together and support each other and figureit out.
And not like.
feel that very much.
have the answers or who we're gonna be at the end of this, just.
(54:13):
Yeah, I love it.
that so, so much, so much.
And when I hear your stories and when I hear you talk about Mr.
Knitting Cult Lady, I'm like, oh yeah, I think these guys are a lot like, and my husbandwas also in the military, he was Army, his dad was a Navy, he was a Navy rat and his dad
(54:38):
went to the Naval Academy.
So there's just.
all of that all around.
Yeah, my son was an intelligence officer.
There you go.
So I'm so glad to have met you and for sure when we drive knitting cult van throughColorado, we'll have to like come come say hi.
(55:01):
You'll definitely have to come stay at our house.
We love to have house guests.
We have a rotation of many people that come through.
So yes, we would love to have you.
back to that like nostalgia thing though.
I always say, you know, like there's no sisterhood like the ex cult sisterhood.
(55:23):
It's like, cause we have to be careful.
We have to be careful.
And I think brotherhood, sisterhood, know, let's include Scott, but like we obviously haveto be careful, but it's like, it's kind of the same way with the veterans.
It's like, we know like we've been through these hard things and we know we are like, Idon't know.
There's a level of camaraderie and understanding.
(55:45):
think there's something about feeling understood that is so nice.
And I don't care what space you're in or who you're talking with.
When you have that moment of awake, they really actually get me.
That feels really good.
It's very comforting.
(56:06):
Yes it does.
that note, Cynthia, wow, thanks so much for joining us.
And we look forward to maybe having you back in the future to continue to unpack thisjourney.
And it was great to reconnect with you and uh thank you so much.
And a shout out to Haley.
They do a great job weekend and week out keeping us on track here at the uh Culting ofAmerica podcast.
(56:31):
So Haley, thank you for all that you do.
We appreciate you very much.
Daniela, it's been a pleasure as always.
And thank you all for tuning in.
Do us a favor and rate, subscribe, share, do all the things that are necessary to get thisshow out into the zeitgeist because uh Cynthia was out there listening and now she's on
(56:55):
the show.
This could happen to you as well if you're listening.
So make sure you keep listening, rate, share.
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to another edition of Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd.
I'm here with Daniela Mestinick-Young, knitting cult lady herself.
As always, Daniela, it's been a minute, but it's good to see you again.
Yeah, it's good to see you too.
I'm excited for this conversation.
I've been having a lot of questions about the United Pentecostal Church, so I don't knowwhat's in the air, but I think this will be a well-timed episode.
(00:52):
Yeah.
And of course, for our listeners, that is my background emerging from that particular highcontrol uh cult group.
And I'm thrilled tonight to have a long time friend, Cynthia Williams.
Cynthia, it's so good to see you again.
And Cynthia shares my background, but I always preface my remarks when I talk about theUnited Pentecostal Church is...
(01:20):
Although it was bad for me, it wasn't nearly as bad as it was for women in the UnitedPentecostal Church.
And I'm sure we'll get into some of that tonight, but Cynthia, it's so good to have you,so good to see you again and to reconnect.
Why don't you introduce yourself to our audience?
Well, I don't even know what to say.
(01:43):
Cynthia Williams, I was part of the United Pentecostal Church from 10 to 20 to 23 ish.
And I'm still loosely affiliated because my mother is still a part of the UPCI.
My former in-laws who I'm really close to also still part of the UPCI plus just, you know,large
(02:09):
group of my friends um who I still somewhat interact with, still either belong or havebelonged or are on their way out somewhere on their journey.
um I left the UPC, oh gosh, 20, no more than 20, Lord, I'm old.
(02:37):
It's been, it's been.
older.
Wow, yeah.
the UPCA.
But, you know, after reading Daniela's book, which thank you so much for your story andyour vulnerability, because it is really helping me unpack a lot.
(03:03):
After reading Daniela's book and listening to
binge listening to your podcast because I couldn't stop listening once I started.
I was like, wait a minute, there's more, there's more, there's more.
I realized that after, before I was in the UPC, I was part of a family system that wasvery much cult-like, um or a cult, I guess.
(03:28):
And then after leaving UPC, I found myself in organizations that were cult-y.
uh
um I found myself, I find that I was in a one-to-one cult with my former spouse and so onand so forth.
uh It's just interesting to me how many times I found myself in similar situations andthat I've set this intention in this last year that I am ready to break these cycles for
(04:03):
myself.
And there you showed up with some of your content, Scott.
And I was like, wait a minute.
He's doing something.
And it made me get very curious.
So thank you for that as well.
Well, thank you for your vulnerability, for your strength, for your courage and sharingyour story.
And remind me, we met at uh the Bible school, is that correct?
(04:29):
So when I was uh 18, 19, graduating from high school, uh I was uh born and raised in theUnited Pentecostal Church and groomed from an early age that I would be a minister, a
leader.
And so the next obvious step
for young people in that particular group is to attend a United Pentecostal Churchendorsed Bible college.
(04:56):
And the one that I chose happened to be in Stockton, California.
uh And that's where we connected.
And I remember that particular class, there was a lot of us.
If memory serves, it was the largest freshman class uh to date for that particular Bibleschool.
And I believe that's right.
(05:16):
uh
But it was a large class.
I remember that, yeah.
we did have a really large class for sure.
I'm trying to remember, Scott, what year did you go into CLC?
Because were you the year behind me, or did we enter the same year?
89 89 fall of 89 Okay Okay, so maybe we had the distinction of being the largest class andbut you guys were close and for those that don't know talk a little bit about oh What was
(05:48):
expected of women in the United Pentecostal Church because there was a long list and itgoes beyond right dress and hairstyles
Yeah, wow, that's a lot to unpack.
So the obvious, the no cutting hair, no wearing makeup, no wearing jewelry, no wearingpants, no wearing immodest clothing.
(06:11):
And then there were caveats depending on who your pastor was.
And I didn't learn this until I went to Bible school, right?
Because I was in Colorado where there's not a lot of United Pentecostal churches.
So my experience of the UPC was rather small, even though I was a Bible quizzer, I'd beena Bible quizzer, I was a Bible quizzer for eight years.
(06:35):
So I traveled all over the United States and I visited other churches and I noticed thingshere and there that were slightly different.
Like I know there was one pastor that didn't allow women to wear red.
And then some people had the six inch rule.
where your skirt had to be six inches below your knee and your sleeves had to be sixinches or it had to be below your elbows.
(06:59):
um And then there was like how much could be showing here.
um And the hair up, hair down thing, I think that was also a thing.
Like in some churches, the younger women,
had to wear their hair down, the older women had to wear their hair up, or vice versa.
(07:24):
There were just all kinds of different caveats.
And it was all about who, what the man of God receives from God.
That's the only voice you listen to because that's your shepherd, that's your pastor, thatthey know what is right for you, and you were brought under that pastor for a reason.
(07:45):
Yeah, and.
never tell you about the shepherd analogy is that the shepherd always eats his sheep inthe end.
uh You know, it's interesting listening to you talk about it.
So first of all, I just wanna say, Cynthia, thank you for coming on here.
Like what a great treat, I think, for our listeners to have like a listener and a consumerof this content coming on to share your story.
(08:11):
uh
And you know, that's definitely what I wrote on culture to try to like connect some piecesfor y'all that were in these kind of like accepted American cults.
And as you're talking about how every pastor had his different thing, I think like that'ssomething we hear so often from these high control groups that are large, right?
(08:35):
We hear people kind of say, oh, well, each one was different.
Like, well, ours didn't do that, right?
Or ours didn't.
Yet we turn around and we think of these cults as like, they're monoliths and everyonedoes everything the same.
I'm like, no, like Children of God was 10,000 people all over the world.
Like your experience hugely differed based on where you were, you know, and the stuff youwere saying, right?
(08:59):
Like I grew up in Brazil and Japan's, which were like hubs of it, right?
And I was at the center and I was in the leadership and that was a very differentexperience than it was for like walking in River Phoenix who were over in Venezuela.
in like a satellite hub, for example.
And I almost feel like these groups use this, right?
(09:23):
To almost like hide or camouflage the extremism.
It's like, cause if we lifted it all, listed it all out and we say, have to do this, this,this, this, this, it would be like, well, that's a lot.
That's kind of, is that too much?
But we're like, oh well, that's just some, that's just this one.
That's just.
You know, and it's it's just striking me as you're talking about it that like that's justanother tactic to keep people from naming it what it is.
(09:50):
Yes, I think, yeah, I agree with that.
Like, if I think for a long time for me too, like, it's probably just in the last twoyears, maybe, maybe three, that I finally was like, wait a minute, I think I was in a
cult.
You know, I had that moment.
(10:10):
I'm like, wait, maybe the UBC is a cult.
And I have a cousin who is no, who was a preacher's daughter, you know, born and raisedin.
born and raised in it.
And she has left as well.
And I called her up and I said, do think we were in a cult?
And she said, I think I've been telling you this for a while.
(10:32):
And then she sent me like, all these links and all the you know, there's there's one videothat somebody did on the UPCI is a cult and it breaks it all down really well.
And she said that to me and she sent me some other
horrible things about the UPCI that I had never read before, I'd never seen before.
(10:56):
Scott, I don't know if you've had this experience, but when you start opening up thatlittle Pandora's box, there's a lot of names you know.
And that felt really weird.
It does.
And, you know, to your point about it being different around the United PentecostalChurch, and even when we arrived at Bible School, I remember my first day on campus, I got
(11:19):
there a few uh months before school started because I was so eager and excited to getstarted.
I was just walking around campus.
It was July.
It was hot.
I had a short sleeve shirt on.
I remember my first encounter with the groundskeeper.
He said, well, you need to go put on a long sleeve shirt because that's one of the ruleshere is that you can't wear short sleeves.
(11:41):
And it made sense to me at the time, right?
Because now I was going to Bible school and it made sense to me that their standards wouldbe more strict and robust and rigorous than what I experienced in a local church.
But if you think about it, every human organization has a progressive wing.
(12:01):
It has a conservative wing.
And it can still be a cult, even though some of the churches may be more lenient when itcomes to dress codes or behavioral codes than others.
And what it does, it provides plausible deniability for people, right?
Because they can always say, well, not my church.
(12:23):
We don't do that here.
You should come check out my church because we're different.
But it's all within the same parameters of controlling behavior, especially.
Yes.
And it is this plausible deniability and it's almost like naturally built in, right?
So I say this to people, I'm like the children of God had tons of members who onlyexperienced the good stuff, right?
(12:48):
They only experienced the community and the Bible and the singing and then they went backhome and they would go to their graves swearing that we were good people and nothing bad
ever happened, right?
And so it's like, yeah, that
You know, one of the things I've started, first of all, when people say I've never heardof that, I just started looking at them and going, wow, that's lazy.
(13:10):
You should you should go ask some people, you know, because like if I've heard of the badstuff in your group, then, you know, um but I just I think, you know, it's interesting the
moment you describe Cynthia where you're like, were we in a cult?
You know, and kind of I think.
Scott as describes, you know, a similar sort of moment.
(13:32):
And this is, this is kind of what I felt like Uncultured in a way was kind of like my 20year gift back to the evangelicals, ex ex-vangelicals that I've known who have always been
like, well, your thing was really extreme.
And I'm kind of like, okay, but mirror, you know, and
(13:57):
And also just the understanding that like, it's not the same for everyone.
As Scott said, know, women have different experiences.
People of color have different experiences.
And those can be very significantly different based on power dynamics and how youexperience that, you know.
At least, uh you know, in my personal experience, like growing up in the children of God,like who you were related to absolutely mattered in like...
(14:26):
how your experience was gonna go.
it didn't always mean higher the better, you know, but like there was these very specificthings, but one of the things that I have learned with realizing that all these patterns
are the same is when people start going into their justifications of like, but it was forthis or oh, was just like, we just talk about the tactics here, right?
(14:50):
Like I actually don't really care about the details of like,
what the rules were, it was about the control.
You know, like...
And I think there's a part of that, that control piece is probably how and why I was ableto leave when I did and have what I'll call a graceful exit.
(15:14):
em Yes, I did.
I did.
And a lot of that had to do with things that I started to question while in Bible school.
And Scott, I don't know.
how you'll feel about this, but I feel like a lot of the people we went to Bible schoollearned a different version of critical thinking thanks to people like Yaden and
(15:45):
Seagraves.
Like these were some of our teachers who I feel pushed us to question and to think more.
And even though they were indoctrinating us at the same time,
I feel like every time I asked a question, they would say, go search it out, go figure itout.
(16:06):
And I would go search it out and I would be like, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.
Had they also been raised in UPCI, these teachers?
Because that's interesting to me.
I think sometimes this is like the second generation's almost like pushback.
(16:29):
Like Scott, your other friend Scott, think, was he your friend who came to talk, who wrotethe Asian American Apostate, who stayed in because he could just like help.
people think, help the students think.
the conundrum, right, of everybody that's in these groups.
You hear people all the time, are you going to be more effective endeavoring to change theorganization from within or without?
(16:58):
And our teachers would have argued that they are leading a change, that they areendeavoring to be progressive.
But at the end of the day, right, there were lines that they would not cross.
uh
served under some progressive pastors for a while and their line was, a few more peoplehave to die.
(17:21):
We have to go to some more funerals before we can see that change.
Well, guess what?
Here we are some 20 to 30 years later and if anything, the organization, the UnitedPentecostal Church is becoming more conservative and more dogmatic, not less.
But Cynthia, to your point, I often tell people that the United Pentecostal Church gave methe tools and the ability to see things and to understand things that eventually led to my
(17:54):
exit.
And I just simply started doing what they told us to do, right?
I started taking the Bible seriously.
I actually read it.
And I actually, you know, started thinking deeply about these doctrines.
And eventually that led to my exit.
(18:14):
But as a woman, you were in the situation where I know that I was sitting under a lot ofthose sermons, sitting in a lot of those lessons where women were called out specifically.
And I often tell people in the United Pentecostal Church and in a lot of these groups, forwomen, there are basically two categories, right?
(18:37):
You're either...
angelic or a saint or you're uh a Jezebel, uh a whore, right?
So there's nothing in between really, depending upon how you dressed, how you acted, howyou behaved, and God forbid you had a mind of your own that you would think for yourself,
(18:58):
immediately you were labeled and ostracized a lot within our group.
Does that jive with what you experienced somewhat?
I'd say yes and no and I feel like there are a couple reasons why my experience may havebeen a little different than that.
First and foremost is the church that we were converted into um was Loving Way Church inColorado.
(19:25):
Our pastor Maurice Gordon, he was biracial and he had eight children, six of which were
women.
And the women took really big leadership positions in the church.
And in fact, one of his daughters now is the pastor of that church.
(19:50):
So I think there was that I got a little bit before going to Bible school, I had some ofthe reprieve of
not so much of the white supremacy kind of stuff going on for me and not so much of thesexism.
(20:10):
There was a degree of it, but it was different.
you know, I was preaching when I was 13.
I was being, you know, in leadership positions.
was leading youth group.
was doing a lot of different things.
So really the shock.
to my system was going to Bible school and realizing that, a minute, I'm the only or oneof two women that are majoring in theology.
(20:41):
And it was almost offensive that I wasn't in Bible school to get an MRS degree.
And I think some of the other Bible school things that really like shredded things openfor me.
was in the bylaws or the bylaws for the school, the rules that we had to sign, they hadthat you could not have interracial dating without your pastor's permission.
(21:11):
And so that made the pool of people that I could date in Bible school about two, maybethree.
And I just ignored it.
Like I didn't care.
And I think for
1990s, not the 60s, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
88, 89, So, I mean, that was something I kind of ignored, but also I feel like there's apart of me that was like, okay, fine, I'm just not going to date in Bible school because
(21:39):
I'm here to be a preacher anyway.
And I don't have time for that nonsense.
You know, I'm spending all my time in the prayer room.
I'm not really up to what everybody else is up to.
I'm doing something different.
I don't know if you remember Marilyn Gazowski in San Francisco.
(21:59):
I would go to, almost every weekend I would go to San Francisco and I would just go sit inher prayer closets.
And that for me was enough.
I was dating Jesus.
Yeah, and can we just acknowledge for just a moment that what you experienced and what youfelt like at the time was a sincere desire to please God was something that was robbing
(22:28):
you of experience, that was robbing you of life, that was robbing you of an opportunity,right, to meet people, to get to know people.
And that's what these groups do.
Even though looking back on it, there's certain parts of us, we talked before we startedthe program that there are feelings of nostalgia, there are feelings that are complicated
(22:55):
when we start talking, or at least for me, when I start talking about my youth, because atthe time, was genuinely, it felt like a genuine desire.
This is something that I want.
This is something that I'm pursuing and I am...
disciplined, am dedicated, I'm going to do this for God.
But in retrospect, what the group did was rob me of opportunities to experience life andto normalize in the world like everyone else experienced it.
(23:27):
and and when I tell you that hearing y'all talk about Bible college like that sounds justlike West Point Right, right like very And and like an actual West Pointer would be like
no, right?
But again like the details differ but this like fervor and this dedication and even youknow my mom from the children of god would relate to this like teenage hood of just
(23:54):
feeling like so
in love with Jesus and in love with the family and the mission and the everything.
And then I would sort of feel that way about the army.
That I can throw myself into this and do this and sort of what Cynthia was saying, right?
Like be the woman that breaks the glass ceilings and is different and does what the boysare doing.
(24:20):
it's just.
So much of that programming is the same, but you know, one of the things I talk about inCulting of America in the Exit Cost chapter is stuff like when you leave those groups,
it's like you didn't just lose the actual group, the actual job or thing or whatever itwas, right?
(24:44):
You also lost certainty.
You also lost that passion, right?
Like that.
dating Jesus passion, right?
Like that just sort of those sorts of things, right?
And I really feel like that like loss of certainty, know, loss of like, I think this isreally gets soldiers, right?
(25:06):
It's like you were sold so hard a message that what you did mattered, right?
You're doing this for America and you're getting that messaging from all sides.
And then you get out and you're just supposed to go like.
work at Microsoft for money?
You know, that just seems so like blah, what am I doing?
(25:28):
Yeah, yeah, you're not saving the world because you know, we were saving souls from hell.
we don't, you know, one of things I keep saying is like, I just wrote this book that has a36 page bibliography, right?
So like I reviewed everything out there on cults.
And one of the things they all say is all cults are the same.
(25:50):
Which I think means there's this cult, this cult baby experience, right?
This generic cult baby experience.
And one of those, hey, sir, we have to excuse the dog.
He's a Republican.
So it just goes off sometimes.
ah But like the experience of when you walk away from these intense childhoods, but likeyou've lost those references, you know?
(26:23):
So I'm gonna give you an example that you too will get, right?
So I was walking with like my child and her normal friend and normal mom in the normalworld.
and I was walking and I was knitting and then a branch just ran right into my knittingcult lady bun.
And I seriously just out loud was like, and there's nobody around that I can make anAbsalom joke to, really?
(26:50):
Right?
And like Bible cartoon references and just like, you law, we are.
So as cult babies, I like to say like we are invisible immigrants, know, like we didn'treally grow up in the culture.
Like I think one of the things going on right now in the country is that millennials whowere allowed to read Harry Potter don't understand that it's our people in the White
(27:17):
House, you know, like they truly think there's some sort of difference between David Bergof Children of God and Donald Trump.
And they're just, there isn't, right?
But like,
Anyways, so this shared experience of just like, not only are we living in a world that weweren't raised in, right?
We don't have the references for.
We didn't get to experience, like Scott said, like all the normal things that other youngpeople our age were doing at that time.
(27:44):
But now we've also lost those experiences and those references.
And when you said you're still surrounded by people who are connected with that, like.
I get it and it's comforting in a lot of ways because like, at least it's from the outsideit seems.
(28:04):
Because you might still have like some of that shared almost like nostalgia or I don'treally know what else to call it.
I totally get that, the nostalgia part.
I frequently break out into song.
don't know about you, but I have a song for just about any situation or a scenario.
(28:25):
em I went last year, it's actually been, today I got the email for my one year anniversaryactually.
I went to a program.
for childhood trauma.
And it's addressing trauma zero to 17.
(28:48):
And I didn't get into the church stuff in that program, because I had so much to impactbefore church, before I was 10.
So there was enough there for me to deal with it.
I didn't really get into the church stuff.
(29:08):
So I said, this year I'm going to address the spiritual abuse.
And I need to deal with that.
And I need to talk about it.
um But in that process, I would pop off into song or whatever.
And the therapist, we're in groups of five people.
Therapists would say, Cynthia, you really should check in on that.
(29:29):
Where's that coming from?
What are you defending?
What are you deflecting?
And I'm like, oh, wow, that's kind of interesting to think about.
But I'm sure there's some stuff under there.
And that's an important.
sounds maybe like you need to just write songs for the cult baby musical.
Absolutely, absolutely.
(29:52):
And you know, that's an important point, Cynthia, because uh I talk a lot about this ideathat in the United Pentecostal Church, if our problems, whatever they were, and this
applied to anyone who walked off the street or just your average person attending a UnitedPentecostal Church, if our problems
(30:16):
could not be solved by an emotional release at the altar during the choir singing or inresponse to a particular sermon, then we didn't get much help, right?
uh All of our problems, the solution was reduced to, you just need to pray through.
(30:37):
You just need to speak in tongues.
You just need to shout and dance and worship your way out, right?
And that was the...
the mantra that we repeated over and over again.
So it makes perfect sense, right?
If you're revisiting a traumatic situation, that those grooves that have been, you know,uh paved in our brains will show up again.
(31:01):
We'll just start singing because that's how we were taught to deal with m our problems,which of course uh is disassociation, right?
We're not dealing with anything.
um And then, you know, even if you zoom out of that, all of the problems of the world, wedon't have to worry about climate change.
We don't have to worry about racism.
(31:23):
We don't have to worry about sexism.
We don't have to worry about what the government's doing.
Why?
Because Jesus is coming soon and we're leaving it all behind.
you know, sucks, wouldn't want to be you, see you, and we're out of here.
And so that's how we were taught to deal with either personal problems or larger world.
problems.
(31:44):
Yeah, I told you I was at a funeral this weekend at one of the UPC churches.
And that song, In His Hands, they were singing it.
And I rewrote the words in my head from, in his hands, there's only safety, to in hishands, there's dissociation.
(32:05):
That works, absolutely, right?
and then the other one was, turn it over to Jesus and you'll smile the rest of the day.
Good old talk positivity coming in there for the win.
Yeah, and we experienced that so much.
let me tell you this, like, okay, so the Children of God had a really bad car accidentonce where like seven teenagers who were out proselytizing were killed, right?
(32:38):
Just like horrible, right?
In Austin, Texas, like, you know, survivors were staying at the Ronald McDonald House,right?
Like all this stuff.
And I, so first of all, like I remember the cult just like almost like trying to justifyit.
And then they just kind of couldn't, right?
(33:00):
Because they were just, there was nothing.
There was no, like these were motivated, into it teenagers that were just slaughtered,right?
And so then they just went into the toxic positivity, right?
And of course I didn't have any of the language for that, but.
probably a year ago, somebody on one of my social media channels was like, yeah, I was atthe Ronald McDonald House, like during this Children of God accident.
(33:28):
And he just said, I've never seen parents more narcissistic, right?
Like they were just smiling and talking about Jesus and how blessed they were becausetheir children were gone.
right?
And you think about it and it's just like.
Yes on the narcissism and all that right like but like these were also just cult Memberswho had just lost their children and the only answer Given to them by their community at
(34:03):
all was give it to Jesus, you know And in our world we got prophecies straight from Jesus,right?
So they could just talk to their kids like why were you so upset, know and just the amount
of dissociation and also going, no, go ahead.
(34:25):
Speaking of of like that kind of an event and having an impact.
And I'm sure Scott, you remember this when we were in Bible school, there was a 16 yearold girl who was shot and killed in front of the church.
I was just thinking about the same thing, but yes, tell that story.
happened that I was mentoring this young girl.
(34:47):
I was 19.
She was 16.
I was mentoring her.
um Kind of had been assigned to to to like be her big sister of sorts.
She was a visiting pastor's daughter from Canada.
And she had a lot of things going on.
(35:07):
And we were at all night prayer meeting.
And she and I decided we were going to go outside and play a practical joke on the youthpastor.
And just to add before you continue that, just to add some cooperation to your story.
That night I was working an all night uh shift at the radio station, right?
(35:30):
I was not security, but the radio station.
you remember KCJH had those big glass.
And so I was actually questioned after the murder uh if I saw anything, but at the momentI was, I had my back turned, but I remember.
looking out that window and seeing the young lady in a pool of blood, the first responderscoming there.
(35:54):
And yeah, it was tragic, but continue because you were there firsthand.
Yeah, mean similar, similar situation.
So she and I were gonna go outside together.
And when I went to leave, go out the doors, I just got this overwhelming, hey, I didn'twanna go outside all of sudden.
(36:16):
And I said, you know, I think I'm just gonna go back in and pray.
And she said, well, I'm gonna go do this.
So she went outside, I went in, and I think you can remember, you know, the four-year andthen,
the church, you know, separate church area.
And I got down on my knees and I was praying and there's some sequencing that I don'tquite remember.
(36:37):
I remember hearing what sounded like the backfire of a car.
And then I remember the youth pastor coming over to me and asking me where this youngwoman was.
And I said, she went outside and he's like, what is she doing?
And I said, she went to go play joke on you.
And then he left.
(36:57):
came back in, he said, she's on the ground, she's been shot.
And I ran out, I didn't even think like one minute about safety, about anything.
I just ran out to her and then she died.
um It was the afterwards of this story that I think really
(37:22):
had such an impact on me on multiple fronts.
And so one was, you know, we had, had FBI people trailing me because they thought it couldbe a hit.
We were working on getting kids out of gangs and you know, there was this whole, thiswhole piece.
And so I had to go live with the family that she was living with so that they could keepan eye on us, blah, blah.
(37:46):
There was that piece.
There was a piece of, hey, will you speak at the funeral?
And so I spoke at the funeral at the church and then also went up to Canada to speak ather funeral.
And then there was the piece where the church did not allow me to talk to the press or totalk to anyone.
(38:07):
They like cut me off from the story and they spun a narrative.
That was not what happened.
And when I read the story in the paper and when I heard the story that was being told, Iwas like, that is a lie.
That is actually a lie.
(38:29):
And the story they were telling, right?
They were super spiritualizing this.
As I remember, they were making it all about the church that this, this, yeah, this was asatanic attack that, you know, this obviously God was doing something great through the
church and, you know, he sent his executioner.
I remember that word being thrown around a lot.
(38:50):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They made up a whole dream that she didn't have.
Now she did tell us that she had a stalker in Canada and nobody believed her.
And she said the stalker had three identities and there was a whole story about that.
None of that ever made it into, I don't even know if it made it into the police file,honestly.
(39:13):
I know that I was questioned for seven hours and I could not tell you.
I don't remember one second of from the time Sharit, from when the ambulance came to getSharit.
I remember like I was holding her.
I remember like this air going out of her, like a balloon being released.
And.
(39:34):
you guys from afar.
I remember it's branded in my memory.
And I remember asking if I could go with her in the ambulance because she didn't have anyfamily.
They said no.
They said, have to stay here and be questioned.
And that's the last thing I remember.
The next thing I remember is a group of the Bible school girls coming in crying andhysterical.
(39:56):
And I was looking at them like, what is wrong with you?
Like, I remember those are like the key memories for me from that night.
And one other memory.
that was just weird of sitting in the youth pastors office and he had these moccasins onand he was talking to the young woman and I who died that night and he looked down and he
(40:19):
said every time I wear these moccasins someone dies and that that's another thing thatjust like stuck in my head forever
And you know, the point of this story was it was a tragedy all the way around.
But when it came time to tell the story, the youth pastor who is now the pastor of thatparticular church in California, and everyone got on board, right, with this story that
(40:54):
diminished what happened to her.
and diminished her as a person and suddenly used it and leveraged that story uh in anattempt to proselyte others.
And that's what these high control groups do.
No matter what is happening, it's always about them.
(41:16):
And it's always, uh to Daniela's point earlier, that we have some sort of supernaturalcalling, a purpose that is beyond us.
and we are chosen.
So that even that young lady's death became a part of the narrative to spin thisparticular lie to gain more converts that they could then control their behavior and their
(41:43):
thoughts, cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
And this makes me think of, wasn't there a thing out of Columbine or one of those earlyschool shootings that was like completely made up where they said that he walked up and
said, you a Christian?
And she said, yes.
uh
do you believe?
(42:04):
And she said, yes.
United Pentecostal.
Yeah, so I don't know if y'all have heard of this uh singer Candy Carpenter and I don'tknow if she's United Pentecostal but she is clearly deconstructing evangelicalism and like
her music is the bridge between Children of God and y'all's stories and it is so good.
(42:28):
I'm hoping she's gonna come on the podcast but like I think both of you would really
Because she literally, she talks about some of this stuff, right?
Like I sat in math class and fantasized about being killed because I stood up for Christ,you know?
And it's just like these things that were used, I mean, the children of God, right?
Murder, suicide of a kid who had been sexually abused his whole life.
(42:50):
And when I tell you like his mother getting prophecies from him in heaven, right?
Just like.
Again, making it all about the group, right?
Making it all about, I was damaged and I was this.
just like, it's, I think it's actually like the worst thing about obviously these highcontrol groups.
(43:13):
And it's, you know, when our brothers and sisters are driven to take their lives becausethey just can't anymore in these high control systems.
And then it's made out to be like, oh, it was the devil.
you know, or heaven forbid it's after they've left the group, right?
Then it's, well, because of the world and not like, no, it was because of the cult.
(43:39):
You know, I lost my brother as a 30 year old man.
It was because of the cults.
was a veteran too, so we got both of those.
So Cynthia, we, that's a heavy moment.
I think we need to all acknowledge that.
When we return to your story, were there some key points, some key instances in your lifewhere what we were taught in the United Pentecostal Church, it began to unravel?
(44:10):
And much like me, your identity as a preacher, as a minister, as someone that was chosenby God to share this message,
our identities were forged in that particular group and they were melded together.
So I know that when I left and even though my deconstruction was over a period of time andstill continues in a lot of ways, I know one thing that I struggled with that I can
(44:39):
continue to struggle with is this loss of identity and purpose.
But were there some key moments for you and then what does it look like?
for you now on the other side.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, Bible school is just a big turnkey for me all the way around, youknow, from the Sharif incident to learning how to translate the Bible in Greek and going,
(45:04):
wait a minute, like all those, all those moments, those wait a minute moments, an instantwhere my roommate was being sexually abused by her boyfriend.
Me turning that them in and then then making her take responsibility for what he did Wasthat was a deal that was a big deal breaker for me?
(45:30):
um and then after I left Bible school hearing of another sexual assault instance and Itnot being dealt with appropriately.
I think both of those things just kind of
overtime added up and then the very weird thing that happened is I married a preacher sona legacy preacher son and He was a big heathen.
(45:57):
He the first thing he did when we got married is buy me pants like he was like let's golike So that I you know between all of these things he made the the jump for me really
easy because you know
He didn't have any of the hangups that I had myself.
(46:18):
I was like, you mean I could show some cleavage?
Like, this feels weird.
You mean I can wear something that shows part of my thigh?
What?
And he was another one of the people that just was kind of like, yeah, those rules aredumb.
I'm like, your dad preaches those rules.
(46:40):
And he's like, yeah, they're dumb.
So, you know.
an interesting point because a lot of times I encounter, and as you do as well, people whoare maybe still part of the group or they left the group, but they were a pastor's son, a
leader's son, something of that nature.
And what I have to remind them is that your experience, although similar in many ways, wasalso different from the rank and file, so to speak, right?
(47:14):
Yes, you were right there up against the leadership and all that was happening.
But in a lot of ways, you were also sheltered from what a lot of us had to experience onthe receiving end of your dad's preaching or of your mom's insistence that we dress or act
(47:35):
or behave a certain way.
uh Because for whatever reason, there was that family connection.
that either sheltered or was more lenient for their own children than they were with therest of us.
Yes, yeah.
And I, you know, a lot of my friends were preacher's kids.
(47:56):
And so I definitely saw the difference in how they lived and how I lived.
But also I think the big, the other thing for me that probably created another turnkey wasthat I was Hispanic and I didn't speak Spanish.
(48:17):
So
They couldn't just shove me off to the Spanish speaking church.
But I also got a little bit of freedom, guess, or liberty in that I didn't seem to havethe same expectations of me that the white women had of them.
So I got away with things that they didn't get away.
(48:38):
I got away with majoring in theology and wanting to be a preacher.
And nobody really
Questioned it too hard.
They were like, oh, you know, whatever, you know, we don't have this high expectation ofyou to be a preacher's wife So go do your thing
Yeah, and what you were experiencing was.
(48:59):
it's almost because you couldn't achieve the perfect skinny white woman status.
They're like, yeah, okay, we'll like, you know, give you more freedom.
It's, you hear it with the Mormons women sometimes, the ones that don't get married youngend up going on the mission trips and then they're the ones that like break with the
church and all that, you know, because they like have this different experience.
(49:22):
Yeah, I'll get the mold.
the meta cult of white supremacy, right?
Because they didn't know what to do with you.
And so they said, well, she'll never achieve this, which in our circles, the pinnacle fora woman, right, was to be that preacher or that pastor's wife.
But because you were a nonconformist and you weren't interested in that, then they didn'tknow where to put you.
(49:49):
And so that gave you a little bit more liberty.
than if you were wanting to be that skinny white woman next to the charismatic leader thatDaniela always talks about.
Yeah, exactly.
I think I was looking for my skinny white woman maybe, I don't know.
I love it.
Love it.
Love it.
(50:10):
So Cynthia
who is white, says that he will be my skinny white woman if I want him to.
There you go.
So Cynthia, on this side of it, where do you find yourself these days?
What does life look like for you?
And how are you dealing with what all of us are dealing with?
(50:33):
I have had a wild ride.
I went into a high controlled organization after that, worked in IT, which is a maledominated field for nearly 20 years and found myself on the outskirts of that.
It was another very much cult situation that I can't go too much into right now.
(51:02):
And then, you know, I've done the different things.
I've dabbled with some AA, or really L and on, and have been in these different groups.
was, my ex-husband went into the military, because that was the only place he couldfunction after being a preacher's kid, imagine that.
And he's still in the military.
(51:24):
My son went to the Air Force Academy.
So...
you know, when you share these military stories, I'm like, yeah, I get it.
I get it.
And I'm so glad I didn't have to live it the way you did.
em And just being on the outside of it and seeing it was really interesting.
(51:44):
all of that combined, living in Alabama, living in Indiana, being in the UnitedPentecostal Church and having this military family that I'm now a part of forever because
USAPHA is that way.
em has put me in a place where if you look at my Facebook, the people in my Facebookgroup, I think it really represents uh a good em sampling of America because my husband,
(52:17):
my current husband, is in the cannabis industry.
So I have all these people from the psychedelic cannabis space on the far left in my groupand I have very far right people in my group.
And I live in Colorado.
I'm back in Colorado where I was born.
Born and raised here, but I've kind of lived, know, lived and worked all over the place.
(52:40):
I've worked a lot in Texas.
I think they would.
I would love for our husbands to meet.
oh Yeah, I have, I have the best husband in the world.
I just, he's, he's so.
amazing at being on this journey with me and kind of just rises to every challenge and Ijust appreciate him so much.
(53:06):
um
I was gonna say impossible, because I have the best husband in the world.
this is what I of describe it in the same way, right?
And at one point he really did feel sort of concerned that I was changing too much and Iwas gonna leave him behind.
(53:27):
And I literally said, babe, I left a whole cult.
I was like, I read about 60 books a year.
Every one of them changes me, right?
Like, I'm not gonna stop changing.
Like, I left a whole cult that didn't want me to read.
be on this journey with me.
And we both uh kind of, feel like, committed to being on this journey in a very realdifferent way than five years before when we had gotten married.
(53:50):
And now it's just like, yeah.
And I always say one of my strengths, why I can do this work, why I can do the hard stuff,is I have the strongest partnership.
Because we're just on this journey to do life together and support each other and figureit out.
And not like.
feel that very much.
have the answers or who we're gonna be at the end of this, just.
(54:13):
Yeah, I love it.
that so, so much, so much.
And when I hear your stories and when I hear you talk about Mr.
Knitting Cult Lady, I'm like, oh yeah, I think these guys are a lot like, and my husbandwas also in the military, he was Army, his dad was a Navy, he was a Navy rat and his dad
(54:38):
went to the Naval Academy.
So there's just.
all of that all around.
Yeah, my son was an intelligence officer.
There you go.
So I'm so glad to have met you and for sure when we drive knitting cult van throughColorado, we'll have to like come come say hi.
(55:01):
You'll definitely have to come stay at our house.
We love to have house guests.
We have a rotation of many people that come through.
So yes, we would love to have you.
back to that like nostalgia thing though.
I always say, you know, like there's no sisterhood like the ex cult sisterhood.
(55:23):
It's like, cause we have to be careful.
We have to be careful.
And I think brotherhood, sisterhood, know, let's include Scott, but like we obviously haveto be careful, but it's like, it's kind of the same way with the veterans.
It's like, we know like we've been through these hard things and we know we are like, Idon't know.
There's a level of camaraderie and understanding.
(55:45):
think there's something about feeling understood that is so nice.
And I don't care what space you're in or who you're talking with.
When you have that moment of awake, they really actually get me.
That feels really good.
It's very comforting.
(56:06):
Yes it does.
that note, Cynthia, wow, thanks so much for joining us.
And we look forward to maybe having you back in the future to continue to unpack thisjourney.
And it was great to reconnect with you and uh thank you so much.
And a shout out to Haley.
They do a great job weekend and week out keeping us on track here at the uh Culting ofAmerica podcast.
(56:31):
So Haley, thank you for all that you do.
We appreciate you very much.
Daniela, it's been a pleasure as always.
And thank you all for tuning in.
Do us a favor and rate, subscribe, share, do all the things that are necessary to get thisshow out into the zeitgeist because uh Cynthia was out there listening and now she's on
(56:55):
the show.
This could happen to you as well if you're listening.
So make sure you keep listening, rate, share.
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
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