A Little Bit Culty
Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames
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Holy Disobedience: Melissa Duge Spiers on the Seventh Day Adventist Church (Part 2)
Part 2 with Melissa Duge Spiers picks up at the “WTF moment” when a call about her beloved father—a once‑celebrated Adventist youth pastor and doctor—exposes him as a child predator and shatters the good‑dad/bad‑mom story she’d carried her whole life. She walks listeners through confronting her parents, befriending “Dr. Z,” a former teen congregant who details the grooming and abuse, and realizing how deeply the Seventh‑day Adventist structure protected her father from quiet removal deals and put him back in the pulpit despite promises to keep him away from children. She zooms out to the broader SDA pattern: stories pouring into her social channels, the church’s historic role in conversion therapy and even female genital mutilation, and how these institutional obsessions with sex and control shaped her own relationships, including a dangerous “cult of one” partnership she ultimately escaped with the help of a religious‑trauma therapist and psychedelic‑assisted work. As she finishes her memoir audiobook and helps launch a new mass‑tort case against the Adventist Church, Melissa shares what real healing has looked like—naming crimes as crimes, accepting there may never be full closure, and doing the slow, ongoing deconstruction that turns “I left” into genuine freedom on the other side. To file an abuse claim again Seventh-day Adventist Church with Pintas & Mullins: https://www.seventhdayadventist-claims.com Be sure to pick up Melissa’s memoir, Holy Disobedience, when it launches this week, and follow her at The Glory Whole on Instagram and TikTok or on her Substack page: substack.com/@melissadugespiers Trigger warning: This episode contains frank discussion of child sexual abuse, grooming by a clergy member, institutional cover‑ups, religious and spiritual abuse, conversion therapy, circumcision and female genital mutilation, and narcissistic/abusive relationships. Also…let it be known that: The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty f*****d. Buy the A Little Bit Culty book on Amazon! Check out our amazing sponsors Join A Little Bit Culty on Patreon Get poppin’ fresh ALBC Swag Support the pod and smash this link Check out our cult awareness and recovery resources Watch Sarah's TED Talk and buy her memoir, Scarred CREDITS: Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames Production Partner: Citizens of Sound Co-Creator: Jess Tardy Audio production: Will Retherford Production Coordinator: Lesli Dinsmore Writer: Sandra Nomoto Social media team: Eric Skwarzynski and Brooke Keane Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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