they would make an announcement at the congregation meeting. On being 'disfellowshipped' as a teenager for having sex with her boyfriendĭisfellowshipping is a means of excommunication, and what happens effectively is that when the elders determined that you were not repentant enough. I chose it, because I couldn't continue on in something I didn't believe in anymore.' And the weirdest part of it all was that it was my own doing. 'I felt like everything that had mattered to me was gone. She eventually moved to New York and had children with a new partner, but the transition wasn't easy. In the new memoir, Leaving the Witness, Scorah reflects on her to decision to leave her faith and her marriage. 'And here I was, across the table, coming here, this person from the West telling them to throw all that away in favor of this a-hundred-or-so-year-old new American religion.' the more I realized their culture had thousands of years of rich wisdom and cultural tradition and history,' she says. 'The more I got to know and learn about Chinese culture. Scorah went on to marry an elder in the church, and she and her husband traveled to China as missionaries. 'When my father died, it just gave me more impetus to want to go back to the faith,' Scorah says, 'because I knew that the only way I would see him again was if I were a Jehovah's Witness who survived Armageddon, because after Armageddon, the faithful would be resurrected to Earth, in our beliefs.' Rather than pulling away at that time, Scorah doubled down.

Blood Runs Green by Gillian O'Brien