Songs of Hope, Truth and awakening – The Album, The Songs, My story

As with all good lyrics, the words to the songs from the forthcoming album by Ancient Modesto can be interpreted on several levels by the listener, as is their prerogative. They could be about a friendship, a relationship, a government, an establishment. The possibilities are open and endless, and completely up to you the audience.

However perhaps a little unusually, I would like to share with you the story behind the songs, and the concept of the album. Songs of Hope, Truth and Awakening is the story of my life when viewed through the lens of my upbringing and my subsequent exit and leaving behind, of the religious group Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower organisation/society. I was born into this denomination in the mid 1960’s, and my earliest memories as a young child of the 1970’s, through my teenage years in the 1980’s, and into adulthood in the 1990’s, were completely dominated by the religious environment, teachings, beliefs, expectations, outlook, and worldview of that organisation. By the time I left in 1999 at the dawn of a new millennium, with a young child of my own, I would feel the sinister and publicly unseen side of the worldwide brotherhood turn its attention on me and my family, and label me as an “apostate” resulting in a rift in my family which still exists 25 years later.

I was 33 years old when I made the decision to leave the Watchtower organisation, and whilst the waves caused at the time have now subsided to just tiny ripples in the millpond that is life, the stone that hit the water, hit hard and sank deep. Life long friends were left behind and actively turned their backs. There were the cold hard stares, filthy looks and hurtful whispers, which cut deep at the time. My faith was challenged and my belief structure were shot to pieces. A lifelong feeling of “knowing I had The Truth” was replaced by a feeling of being completely unsure of anything you had ever known and everything I had ever been told.

If all that sounds a bit melodramatic, you’re probably right. But as a member of a religious group who categorically believe that they alone are the “One True Religion” (yes religion not denomination) and who deliberately withdraw from any engagement with nonJWs apart from surface unavoidable contact, suddenly realising that was not the case, was a rude awakening. A sense of invincibility was replaced by a terrifying vulnerability.

I can almost hear what you are thinking. That I was very naive. Rather arrogant in my previous worldview. And surely I wasn’t typical of how someone who decided they simply didn’t want to be a Jehovah’s Witness any more, behaved and responded to the situation. You would definitely think so. However in the 25 ensuing years, my experience has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times, by other members of the huge exJW community worldwide. In fact my personal experience was very tame compared to those who have experienced terrible shunning by parents, siblings, and their own children. Or been victims of hideous coverups of sexual abuse by their own family, the church leaders, or by the head offices of Watchtower both nationally and internationally.

This album is the story of both my own exit from this destructive cult (do not be fooled by the smiles and the outward harmless exterior of elderly people and young children on your doorstep) and of the brave, worldwide Ex-JW community that share my journey and that I am proud to be part of.