Transcript
Speaker: Life is so much better when you know what the fuck you're doing.
Speaker: Welcome to The Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the humanist lens.
Speaker: Welcome to the conversation.
Speaker: Well, hello, everyone. My name is Daniel Daco and I'm one of the hosts of the Voice of Canadian Humanism podcast. On this podcast, we like to feature the voices that are involved in leading or important to humanism in Canada and beyond. And today I'm very pleased to be joined by our guest, Dr. Daryl Ray.
Speaker: Hi, Daryl. Good to see you again. Yeah, good to see you again, too, Daniel. Thanks for having me on. Oh, it's ah it's a pleasure. And ah this isn't our first meeting, just for folks listening at home. Daryl and I actually met for the first time in April 2023, when we were both ah telling our so our personal stories of leaving religion in a Humanist Canada webinar, ah which was our our first time meeting, but not my first time hearing about you, because I'd already had a copy of your book by that point. Oh, okay.
Speaker: so that that That says instantly you're a very intelligent person. See, I like to think so. yeah It's always good when I've got the book ah in advance of meeting the person. I've done it occasionally where I've met someone and then I go out and buy their book and I think, gosh, it would have been great to have the book and he could ask so many questions.
Speaker: yeah um So yeah, and the the book, of course, is The God Virus, which will which will come up a little bit later. But um You and I have chatted ah a couple of times about you coming on the podcast and more recently there's been some developments in your ah in your professional life and in your in your activism that ah really kind of inspired me to reach out and say now seems like a really good time to to check in and to hear more about that. But before we get into What's new and exciting? ah One of the things that we like to do when we start these interviews is to ask our guests a bit about where they came from. Usually we're most interested in their religious or their cultural environment and upbringing. So ah for people who haven't had the privilege of hearing you talk before, could you tell us a bit about yourself and where you came from?
Speaker: Well, I'll give you the short version. If you want to listen to the long version, I literally did a three hour story for australians ah Australian RFR. Australia, come from religion stories.
Speaker: And they recorded three hours. I didn't realize I was going to do that until they got me, cornered me and made me sit down and do it. But I'll give you the short version. The short version is I was raised in the Midwest, Wichita, Kansas, in a fairly conservative family, religious family,
Speaker: My grandparents were pretty darn conservative, but my parents were less conservative. I wouldn't say they were liberal, but they were certainly not as done as far off in the fundamentalist side my grandparents were.
Speaker: And I had a great childhood growing up. I was outdoors a hell of a lot. I hunted and fished and played baseball and, you know, all the things that...
Speaker: I enjoyed it a lot. I had it um i feel like I had one better childhood. The only downside of the damn childhood was I had to be in church three times a week. And, and, and I'd be in, especially when I got in a little bit older, I would be in a baseball tournaments.
Speaker: And I always was the pitcher on the, on the church baseball team is actually fast pitch softball. And they had a hard and fast rule that you could not play baseball on Sundays, well which really, really cramped my style. I didn't like that at all.
Speaker: But, you know, what can you say? The coach is a Sunday school teacher, too. no But, yeah, growing up in Wichita was pretty, pretty good. And being in church three times a week, I always had an interest in religion.
Speaker: So i I studied pretty carefully. i read my Bible. I went to church camp, of course. I even as a first or second year in college, I was a church camp counselor. Even I was out there.
Speaker: trying to cor corral hormonal kids in ah in the woods. Oh boy, I know that challenge. Yeah, well, I was just as hormonal as they were. I was only like 19 years of age.
Speaker: ah so But i um I really got exposed to religion of a very narrow spectrum of religion early on with my with my parents' church, Independent Christian Church, as a branch of the Church of Christ.
Speaker: But I had a few formative things happen to me early on, and I do talk about that extensively in my other talks. Probably one of them was finding out that now as I was in college, there was a ah minister that was in college too. He was older than me, by like 10 years probably. He was black minister, and we got to be kind of, you know, we were friendly with each other, and I find out that he's a minister of the ah of the Christian church.
Speaker: in wichita and i think wait no you're you're a minister of the christian church that's the same church i belong to the christian church and what i find out is that there's a black christian church in wichita all the others are eight of them in total there's eight white white churches and one black church and that blew my mind nobody told me how did they keep that a secret from me here i'm 19 years old in college and i don't even know that there's a black christian church so that was kind of an eye-opener and Then when I became the the youth group leader, I decided to ask him and his youth group to come join us in in our youth group one Sunday evening. And i couldn I could never get parents to come and help me. Just couldn't. I would be the only person there with 20 hormonal kids running around, you know, behind the behind the building. And it was it was a tough job. And I was getting paid $5 a week.
Speaker: Even back then, that was horrible. So I got... um I invited him the day i the day it came and the bus showed up from the from the church, his church, and I had 10 parents there to help me, which and you if you can't see you can't see what I'm saying, I've got air quotes to help. And they proceeded to heard the white kids into the room and make them sit on the right side. And then as the black kids came in, they said that you're our guest. You sit on this side, on the left side.
Speaker: And they proceeded to make sure that there was no, no interaction, no communication at all between the white kids and the black kids. And I was, that was a pretty big eye opener for me. I was, because I was raised,
Speaker: You know, Jesus loves the little children, red and yellow, black and white. They're precious in his sight kind of stuff. And then I realized at that moment, they don't believe that stuff. Right. And that was it was downhill after that.
Speaker: But i I just became very I was always very liberal. I mean, probably was a very poor Christian because I was liberal. And I ultimately went on to seminary after college. My undergraduate was anthropology.
Speaker: And sociology, and double double major there. Well, you take an anthropology course, that's going to make you question a lot of religious stuff when you realize that you know the the religious beliefs of other cultures is pretty far far away from anything I was being taught or read in the Bible. Right. Right.
Speaker: so But I did go to Skerritt College for Christian workers after graduated from college. I got my master's degree, a two-year master's at Skerritt. It doesn't exist anymore. They went out of business about 20 years ago.
Speaker: and But by the end of the two years of master's degree, I kind of felt like it was all bullshit. Or as I discovered Paul Tillich, reading Paul Tillich's systematic theology, which is about three inches thick,
Speaker: I realized at the end of reading that entire volume for the class, I didn't know any more at the end than I did at the beginning. It was mental masturbation is what it amounted to. you made you feel good, but didn't accomplish anything.
Speaker: So that was um that was probably my first step to... to I'm now an atheist. i've been an atheist for many decades, but that was my first step out.
Speaker: Even though I now had kind of a license to preach, I actually did... My wife was religious, her parents were super religious. ah So we kept going to church, wherever we lived, we always lived went to the most liberal church we could find just about. and ah it was it It was a journey as ah as a couple, we were having children, we weren't she wanted to make sure we raised our children in some kind of religious environment.
Speaker: I wasn't so wild about that, but I wasn't atheist either, I was kind of liberal Jesus-y. And I ended up um with, you know, with opportunities to preach. I actually preached off and on for several years.
Speaker: I sang in the church choir. I i was a tenor soloist. i was pretty I'm a pretty good singer. So I i actually got paid to sing in weddings and things like that. i don't I don't anymore. But um but that's one thing i do miss about being an atheist is we don't have a church. We don't have any music. I wish we had more atheist music besides what...
Speaker: you but Well, we are getting some. It's starting to come out, I know. now Dan Barker's doing some good stuff. Anyway, um by the time I was 38, I got divorced.
Speaker: And that was like liberation. i ah I was no longer tied to this religious family. I didn't have to pretend anymore. Right. I mean, even though I was religious, even though i was very liberal, I still felt like I had to pretend all the time, around especially around her family.
Speaker: And but getting out really liberated me. And that was the second step out of atheism or out to atheism. And my my mother asked me who I was dating one day after I'd gotten divorced. I told her I was dating a really nice, nice lady. And she says, well, I hope she's a good Christian woman. and I say, well, if she's a Christian woman, I'm running as fast as I can. because i don't want to be involved in that at all.
Speaker: um So that's that's kind of my early life. I don't want to take all our time talking about now where're that you know where I came from there. ah m No, that's that's totally all right. And we'll we'll link to that. If that video is available for Australia.RFR, we'll link to it in the show description. And I do encourage people to to check it out because it's ah i've I've seen longer versions of your personal story and it's... ah It's an interesting ride. I appreciate ah your your candor and your sense of humor as you talk about it. And i I also am struck continually how there's many parallels in your story and my story. I i also went to seminary. i also kept going to church for years after the belief had kind of faded and preached in churches and preached at Christian conferences. And that was... ah
Speaker: you know And then all kind of came undone for me around the same time it did for you in life. and Although I i ah noted when you told the story before how your your experience really...
Speaker: um you you You really had a lot more that social pressure because of your your in-laws and your ah your community. and um where i didn't i didn't have quite the quite the same I also note that you said that you're a tenor, and I'm, if people can't tell from the the audio, definitively not a tenor. Right, right. But ah maybe, you know what, we could actually start some kind of quartet, I bet. oh There you go. There you go. I always wanted to be a bass, at least a base a baritone, but I wanted to be a bass and I never... and But tenors are far more popular. but It's a lot easier to get a job as a tenor oftentimes. so
Speaker: Well, you get all the melody. so Yeah, yeah. You always get to sing them know harm the melody and everybody else sings the harmony. But anyway, I enjoy singing. I do i do karaoke pretty well these days.
Speaker: i i I do love getting to karaoke. this is just We're going to have to actually be physically in the same location at some point so we can well we get together and sing. You can come to our Recovering Religion Fall Excursion that happens every September. And we always have karaoke. We have we even have two nights of karaoke sometimes after the fall excursion.
Speaker: And we can sing a duet. I do a lot of John Denver. I'm very good at John Denver. i I'll have to brush up on my John Denver. So ah out of your experiences, and and yeah know you said that you you left around the time you were 38, it was some years later when you founded an organization that's helped, i don't know how many people, but it's in the thousands certainly, ah recovering from religion.
Speaker: and ah And I've heard you talk a bit about how that, how that all kind of started very unexpectedly um back in 2009. Do you mind telling people a bit about how, like what was recovering from religion and where did it come from?
Speaker: um Well, um'm i'm I'm an organizational psychologist and I've worked in fortune 500 companies organizing and helping and teaching and training. I'm,
Speaker: 35 years of that. And I was, I was very successful at it. I did it for 35 years. You don't stay in that business that long. If you're not doing somebody, some good somewhere. Right. So I, I know how to organize. i I had started some other previous things, actually organized church camp back way back when, when I was only in my, uh, uh, mid mid twenties, I organized a church camp.
Speaker: So I knew how to organize. And, um, I wrote the God virus in 2007, 2008 to do the research and write the write the book.
Speaker: And it came out in early 2009. And nine and i ah I hired a a publicist who would turned out to be absolutely worthless. He was very expensive and didn't do a damn thing for me, or at least it didn't nothing I could put my finger on that was worth the money I was paying him. But he did come up with this one idea. He said, as we're brainstorming on how to promote the book around January or February 2009, he said, why don't you start a group called Recovering from Religion and use that as a and use that as a way to sell books?
Speaker: So thought, well, that's an interesting idea. So I announced on meetup.com, early days of meetup, I was going to have this meeting an ihop IHOP restaurant, not the religion. Right, right.
Speaker: That's a problem because I live in Kansas City where the IHOP headquarters for the religion is. Right, so it could go either way there, yeah. Yeah, it could go either way. So the ihoper um the IHOP restaurant, and we we got the room from the manager, and 11 people showed up, and I only knew one person of the whole 11. Everybody else was total strangers.
Speaker: And I just asked a question. I said, how did religion hurt you? And second question was, how have you benefited from leaving? And three hours later, i got people crying, hugging each other, you know, just telling stories. They said, I've never told this story to anyone in my life.
Speaker: And it was incredibly emotional experience. I'm a good, I was trained to group therapy, so I know how to do group therapy. And I know how to facilitate groups. And I've trained many people in group facilitation over my career.
Speaker: But this one took me by surprise because it was so damn emotional. And three hours later, the um them manager's kicking us out because he's closing the room.
Speaker: Right. And as I'm walking out, I'm thinking, I brought a bunch of books, but I didn't sell any. Right, right. but at the same time i thought this is there's there's a ah real need for this people need to be able to tell their stories people need this kind of support so that led to the idea of of just starting the it was it was originally a gimmick to sell some books that's what i'm saying right and and i i was i wasn't out of the room hardly until i realized well book selling is not the purpose of these groups and that's
Speaker: ah Within days, I was recruiting some local people I knew to start groups here in town. At one point in time, right here Kansas City, we had three different groups meeting at least once a month. And then I got a woman in San Diego to start a group. I got another one in Cleveland to start a group.
Speaker: I got a social worker in New York City to start a group. it was It was like effortless. All I had to do was reach out to people that I knew. Oftentimes people who had read my book, The God Virus, you know they would call me and say, I like your book.
Speaker: And I'd say, well, hey, I'm starting something. You want to help me? and what And I've learned in my lifetime that, and I don't know what it is that I've got. There's some kind of something something I've got. Because when I ask people to help me,
Speaker: I frequently get help. Not everybody helps me, but I think it is if i if i if I come to people with a clearly defined need and they they see themselves fitting into that need, then they want to help.
Speaker: And, you know, maybe one in 10 people that I ask actually helps. I'm not saying everybody does, but I've had i've done really well over the years. helping getting people to volunteer for things. And that's what happened here before, you know, and I had, you know, we had something like plus a 20, 20 groups meeting face to face around the nation. and And I didn't train any of them. I couldn't have the infrastructure.
Speaker: ah But what I was doing at the time is I was going around the country on book tour and speaking. So I was ah speaking on the God virus. That my book had just come out, of course, excuse me.
Speaker: And, um, I'd come across people, you know, in Toledo, Ohio, and they say, yeah, I'd like to help you with that. So I was recruiting people even as I'm on speaking tour.
Speaker: And, um but I didn't know how serious people were going to take this. It took me a couple of years to believe this was really um a good place to, to put my priorities and my time.
Speaker: Plus I was concerned about promoting my book. You know, if you don't get out there and promote the book, you're not going to go anywhere. Yeah. author Authors who think they can just sit back and rake in the royalties or just fooling themselves.
Speaker: Plus, within ah within a year of writing The God Virus, I realized I needed to write another book on sex. And that's when I wrote my book Sex and God. And both sold. I mean, I just cashed my check today.
Speaker: I get royalties. Those books are 16, 17 years old, and they're still they're still paying royalties. And they're still selling, yeah. They're still selling, which blows my mind. Yeah.
Speaker: But that's good. um I try to write a book people want to want to read. but um So anyway, that's that's how it all got started. And then it took about three years, um about a year after I'd written the Sex and God book that we finally got incorporated as a nonprofit in the state of Kansas.
Speaker: And that really helped a lot because then we could start actively soliciting for donations. And we were very fortunate fairly early on. We weren't officially a corporation more than a year or two when we got a very generous donor came to us or sent us a check unsolicited to this day we don't know who it was but out of the blue we got we got a big twenty thousand dollar check and man that just that just lit us because then we we were having to ask our volunteers for example to pay for the meetup sites right and many of them were happy to do that but
Speaker: you know frankly, I don't want my volunteers having to volunteer and pay to volunteer if you can avoid it. But it also, that $20,000 allowed us to create a helpline with a phone call-in system and then not long after that to develop a chat line.
Speaker: so So we were within within a year or two after we got that money, we were We were hitting on all eight cylinders about 2014, 2015 with with the Helpline chat. And people were literally chatting in from all over the globe, which that surprised me.
Speaker: How many people from ah internationally were chatting in and calling in? We had, even today, we've still got five direct phone lines from five different English speaking countries, but you can also web dial us from anyway just about anywhere on the planet.
Speaker: So it just told me there's an enormous um need for this out in the real world, internationally and in North America as well. And that's led to all sorts of growth, expansion.
Speaker: i went on a speaking tour of Australia back in 2022. I'm sorry, 2023, I think it was. And as a result of speaking literally all around that whole continent, I went from Sydney to Melbourne to Perth to Brisbane.
Speaker: And as a result of that, we were able to attract a strong group of people that now have incorporated in in Australia is ah as a nonprofit.
Speaker: And it's a horrible, horrible experience to try and get incorporated in Australia as a nonprofit. I've never seen it. It's it's a bureaucratic nightmare. took them two years to get there. In the United States, i don't know what it's like in Canada, but in the States, you just go get online and incorporate within an hour or two. You can have a nonprofit, but that's not the way it is in, uh, in Australia.
Speaker: Well, I haven't tried in Canada yet, but, uh, maybe someday. Yeah. Well, it's, um, so, so we expanded in Australia and then this year, or just this past fall, uh, took us a year to plan it. We planned a unit United Kingdom speaking tour on religious trauma and raising awareness on recovery from religion and our services.
Speaker: So, uh, we went to, um, Ireland and spoke in Dublin, then went up to Northern Ireland and over to London where we had a mental health. we I spoke at the mental health for apostates conference in in London with the yeah with the UK humanists. It was sponsored by the UK humanists and we partnered with them to to put that on. Two of us went to speak and then I finished, I think I did nine talks in like 17 days all around them around the United Kingdom. It was quite an experience.
Speaker: But we know there's a need there. And we went to find more volunteers. As a result, we got more volunteers. As result, we got more groups. we We're also getting interest from Germany, from Lithuania, from France.
Speaker: And we're expanding we're expanding into non-English speaking areas. And we've got quite a few people, quite a few volunteers that speak Spanish. So that's that's pretty cool. it allows us to answer phones somebody speaks Spanish and wants a Spanish speaker, we can usually provide it.
Speaker: Among other things, we have a Polish volunteer. We have a Lithuanian volunteer. We had a Roman, a Romanian volunteer. It's pretty cool. Well, and that's, first of all, that's such ah an amazing and fascinating story. And so many people, they think of leaving religion and they think of the the consequences, like the negative consequences. They think about losing family and friends and the mental health consequences. But, I mean, there's been research even in the last five years that shows if people are done, if they stop believing and they stick around and they try to tough it out in their religious circumstance, it's actually worse for their mental health. It's better if they... have
Speaker: You're absolutely right. Yeah. and ah and And that was my experience. and And so to know that there was ah you know there was an opportunity that you that you saw and you took and it ah it just sort of went off like ah like a grass fire, it it makes complete sense. I think that the one of the reasons why so many people were willing to volunteer is because they knew that well it was something that they could have used.
Speaker: when they were leaving. i would say 80% of our volunteers say, i wish this I wish I had this when I was coming out. Or right here's here's the cool thing, and this is really cool.
Speaker: there's a We have quite a few volunteers and even volunteers in significant positions now who started off as our clients. They called in for help one day and a year or two later, they're volunteering for us.
Speaker: In fact, the director of our support groups ah less than two years ago was called in. And now she's the director of the whole program.
Speaker: and I think it's amazing. Yeah, it really is. And one thing that I i learned about your call-in service ah pretty early on, I think shortly after you and I met, and I was doing some ah doing some poking around your web website and and looking at some of the ah you know testimonials of people who had called, and I found out that when people call in for help, if they're struggling with you know belief or doubts or they're not quite sure about what they are going to do with their religious ah environment anymore, if they want to stay, if they want to go, your volunteers don't actually try to convince them to leave.
Speaker: No, that's not our purpose. We're here. yeah We say you shouldn't go the journey alone. And we're not here to convert or deconvert. We're here and to help you with your journey. And you don't need to take the journey alone. So people may, we have people go back to church. We have people say, I want to stay in church, I just want to stay in the church I was raised in.
Speaker: And we'll help them find a Unitarian church or a Quaker church or, you know, there's there's other churches that are, for example, so many people are leaving because LGBTQ issues.
Speaker: Yeah. And they don't want to leave their religious belief, but where can they find community and support? Mm-hmm. For example, right here in town, another thing I helped start, although I don't take much credit, I shouldn't take i can't take much credit, is Oasis.
Speaker: We've got a Oasis here in Kansas City. It started in Houston in 2013, and Oasis in Kansas City started the next year here. There's like 10 or 11 of them around the country. But that's it's a non-religious, it's a second organization, like Sunday Assembly, but it's very friendly and supportive of LGBTQ people. So We get a lot of of minority people. We get a lot of LGBTQ people come to Oasis because it's safe there.
Speaker: We welcome everybody. we're We're much more Christ-like than any church, I think. ah ah Yeah. And out of those ah supportive interactions, you like you said, sometimes people do go back to a church, but they go back to a more affirming church or a more welcoming church. Usually. And I think it's it's interesting how that is really kind of going against the idea that many people have when they, many religious people may have when they think about activism on the secular end of the spectrum,
Speaker: maybe thinking that that activism would all be about trying to get people to leave religion, but it isn't. And it and really you're from everything I've learned about ah recovering from religion,
Speaker: It's about helping people where they're at with what they need help with. Right. Exactly. And speaking of which, I know that a few years after you started that recovering from religion journey, ah you actually started ah another initiative called the Secular Therapy Project, which...
Speaker: i i I learned a lot about very quickly ah when I was referring to some people through it a few years ago, just telling well telling them, hey, you need a therapist. I suggest using this service to find one as they were leaving their religions behind. ah Could you tell us a bit about what made you decide to start the secular therapy project and and a bit about what it is? Yeah, well, after the God virus came out, i I was getting phone calls. I was getting emails. Help me, help me, help me. and
Speaker: and were And we come from religion. We were we were developing the the support and help system. But the one thing they wanted help in oftentimes help me find a therapist. And they'd say, I've been to two therapists, and both of them told me I probably was depressed because I didn't have Jesus in my life or some bullshit like that.
Speaker: And that just, that pissed me off. But so I said, oh, i'll try to help you find a therapist. So I would get online and I'd look in their local community. I'd try to find a therapist. And I'm a psychologist. I should know this. I didn't though.
Speaker: I could not find a therapist. I couldn't go to the internet and find somebody that I could guarantee was going to give them good therapy and not bring Jesus into it or woo-woo or bullshit kinds of therapeutic therapy.
Speaker: so ah So I said, well, and this comes from being single. i was' I've been single since 2001 at that time. And um I dated quite a bit online.
Speaker: I dated through match.com. I dated through several different websites. And so I saw that you have to be careful as a therapist in advertising if you're secular.
Speaker: Because the minute you say I'm an atheist as a therapist or I'm secular, you'll lose all your clients. You'll lose your referral base, hospitals, judges, ministers. They won't send anybody to you.
Speaker: So that has to be kept quiet. On the other side, clients are reticent to just talk to anybody for obvious reasons. And they need to have some anonymity as well.
Speaker: So that's the way that's the way dating sites are set up. You right know, you got anonymity between the two people until you decide to meet for coffee or something. Well, that's so I set the whole thing up. I i found a guy. ah I structured it out. I wrote it out you know on paper.
Speaker: what i wanted And I found a guy, Han Hills, out of North Carolina, who had the computer skills to to do that. the And he he created a website for us. And and it worked adequately.
Speaker: And it got me going. I had 24 of my, 24 colleagues that were psychologists or social workers, or counselors, and I recruited them to join me. And I've created this criteria.
Speaker: Well, first of all, you have to be secular. Second of all, you have to be using evidence-based science, some scientifically-based therapeutic methodology. And third, you have to be licensed in your in your area under whatever governmental structure you're supposed to be licensed in. And I set those criteria up and started with 24 therapists.
Speaker: And we're now at 1,087 therapists in 11 different countries and 48, 47 U S states right now. I think we've got 23 or four in Canada. We've got 14 in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in South Africa. we got two in Argentina.
Speaker: So, yeah and one in Brazil, one in Ecuador. We just got a new therapist from Ecuador the other day. That's pretty cool. Anyway, it, it It's grown and there's over 38,000 registered clients.
Speaker: You go on, you register, you don't have to put your name in. You can use a you know you get a burner kind of email or whatever if you want to maintain your confidentiality. And then you you look for a therapist. You can search, say, I want a therapist within 50 miles of me 10 miles or whatever.
Speaker: And if you find one, then you can interact with that person through our system without revealing who you are. And then you can make an appointment if you think they fit with with what you need. And virtually all of them, almost all of our therapists are very well-versed in LGBTQ issues and they're well-versed in religious trauma issues.
Speaker: So and we don't ask them that. That's not a requirement, but they, you know, seems to be who we attract as as therapists. And if anybody listening here today wants to join us, all you have to do is go to seculartherapy.org, hit the, hit the, um,
Speaker: um apply to apply as a therapist. And it is a fairly rigorous ah application process because we are serious about the quality of therapists, their training, their background.
Speaker: and and you can come from a religious background. I don't care long as you're not religious now. mean, we early on, we had we had a PhD from Brigham Young University apply and another PhD from Regents University.
Speaker: And a master's level person applied from Liberty University. And boy, those are red flags. you know, what the hell? But what we found out is they're all atheists now. Right.
Speaker: Which is great. I love it. And so they're... they're the So the whole system... And that we put a system, a structure together. And we promote it everywhere, as you know.
Speaker: And it's really, really working well. I'm i'm very thrilled we've got... We've got seven people on our vetting team. We got a director, Dr. Micah Reese, just brand new director. Our ah past director, Dr. Travis Voorhees, McKee Voorhees. He's been our director for five years, but he just stepped down this month.
Speaker: He's still with us. He's still volunteering. We just didn't want to be director anymore. so we we Micah has taken on that position, and we've got seven people, two in Australia, The rest are in that in North America. And they look at every single application.
Speaker: They look at the qualifications. They look at the training, the kind of practice. And then they vote. And so generally we like to see you know a unanimous vote, but it isn't always that. And that that makes sure that we're getting the right people in there. We do we do have a rejection rate somewhere between 10% and 30% on any given month.
Speaker: And we probably we probably get I don't know, 10 applications a month right now of therapists. And we get hundreds, we get two or 300 client registrations every every month for sure.
Speaker: So that was the second thing. Yep. Yeah. That is incredible. 38,000 registered clients and then some. And i Man, that that's just inspiring as someone who ah used to do ah clinical work with with clients in a counseling setting. i I know it's a challenging ah it's a challenging role. And so I admire people who do it professionally. ah People who are signing up to to do it in this context,
Speaker: ah Yeah, I i think it's it's such a necessary thing. And the fact that your client base has exploded the way it has is ah just evidence of that. And to think that you have some who are applying that aren't ah making it past the process just shows that your your vetting process is very necessary still. There's possibly some people who are maybe applying in bad faith or not qualified. Yeah.
Speaker: um one of the things that I thought was very interesting about the secular therapy project is that you're ah your goals are to provide safety for people who might not be able to get that kind of safety elsewhere. And when I mentioned this earlier,
Speaker: this project to somebody ah recently saying, oh, and this is one of the things that the Secular Therapy Project does. They said, well, but but a trained therapist is going to be able to put all that aside. You know, it doesn't really, you don't really need to have a a whole organization for this, do you? And i said, well, you know, we had a bit of a back and forth about it. And then a couple of days later, and this just happened just this December, this conversation, a couple of days later,
Speaker: um i I was browsing some of the recent ah literature that had come out in in these research areas. I'm a PhD student myself. And i saw an article entitled, ah quote, I fear coming out as an atheist more than as queer, unquote.
Speaker: exploring the presence and nature of non-religious microaggressions in U.S. mental health therapy, which was a mixed-method study examining that secular clients' experience in – well, it wasn't always secular clients, but client experience in – therapeutic settings and they found that half of their sample well almost half of their sample experienced ah microaggressions from their counselor related to their non-religious identity so assumptions that they were religious endorsing religion as part of their treatment which negatively impacted their ongoing therapy and oh yeah that was just that that was just two months ago
Speaker: you know this So of course it's still in c incredibly necessary. And, and what a, you know, what a, what a difference it's making in the world right now. um We have so many people.
Speaker: Go ahead. we have i've Over the years, there's had so many people come say that I've, I went to two, i went to three therapists and every time I'd be there three, three weeks, I go to three sessions and the fourth session, they, they'd bring a religion up or they'd say, we should, do you want to pray about it? Or,
Speaker: or Or they have a Bible on their on their desk as we were talking. and Just stupid things like that. and And then now that we've, nothing turned nothing makes my day more than to go out and give a speech somewhere. And in the audience, somebody will come up to me afterwards and say, I had three different therapists try to put jesus push Jesus down my throat until I found a therapist on the secular therapy project.
Speaker: I love that. That just makes my day when I hear that. And I hear it a lot. and I mean, much more now than I did a few years ago, of course. The ripple effect of those yeah those things is just, it it's all it's always amazing to me how ah how those choices can just continue to influence lives and impact lives we've never even met.
Speaker: No. I think that's so wonderful. i Well, we've got... ahead. We've got... We've got people like you letting people know about the Psychotherapy Project and about Recovering Religion. So it's it's it's we have a lot of help from podcasters. Podcasters really help us a lot. I'll i'll just tell you that.
Speaker: Well, I, I, I'm glad, uh, it's a, it's a modest little podcast, but we like it up here. Uh, there's, you know, there, there's good guests and good people and, uh, we get to stay in Canada with all the other things going on. So that's, uh, it works for us.
Speaker: Um, I know you and I could, well, you can come stay if you want. Like there's lots of room. Uh, So there's ah you and I could probably talk about the secondary therapy project for another couple of hours. But the the reason why I reached out to you when I did um is you recently started something now and if i get the name wrong you'll have to correct me the institute for secular leadership have i got that right good um i kept calling it the secular leadership institute when i was talking about it earlier today i had to correct myself the institute for secular leadership and uh when i when i read about it and i read your description and and why you were trying to do it um
Speaker: knowing your background in organizational psych. And i've taken I've taken a bunch of organizational psych courses over the years. I know how necessary it can be and challenging it can be to do that. um when i saw When I saw that ah go live online, I have to admit, I cheered just a little bit because I'm i'm one of those people who, when i was when I was religious, I was involved in various ministries and church things. And I was working with boards and working with church leadership and all this stuff.
Speaker: And when I when I left that behind, i you know, I thought about and reflected on my experiences in church leadership and nonprofit leadership and board leadership and just thought, well, all those toxic things and those terrible decision making processes and those that's all going to be left behind because that was just part of those religious systems.
Speaker: and And I just, I'm so glad that's in the past. And then I joined a board of directors for a different non-profit, ah ah a secular non-profit, or at least not a directly religious one. And I started working in government and all these things. And I thought to myself, oh no, it's everywhere.
Speaker: He's everywhere, you're right. What's what's going on? ah Like, what's the problem? I felt like that that guy in that old Soylent Green movie. It's people. It's people. People are the problem. It wasn't the fact that it was a religious board. It was just a board. And and this is how they are when they're untrained. It wasn't the fact that it was a religious nonprofit.
Speaker: It was a nonprofit. And people were making terrible decisions because they just didn't know any better. And yeah so I have to admit, I cheered just a little bit. And I thought this would be a great time to to say...
Speaker: ah what inspired you to start the Institute for Sector Leadership and what what is it designed to do? Well, and after after publishing The God Virus, I basically lost my entire consulting business because um ah many of the people I interacted with were HR people were religious.
Speaker: And even though they knew I wasn't overtly religious, coming out as an atheist, writing a book that wasn't about 18, just clobbered my business. Right. so I was forced to retire early. even The beautiful thing was the book sold enough to make up for the lost income for about three or four years.
Speaker: So that's rare. Books don't usually make that much money, but the God virus is really, really did. So, So i'm I'm going around touring. i've I've been forced into retirement. I got time on my hands.
Speaker: i'm I'm speaking. i'm I'm interacting with groups all around the country. I even went to Australia. I went to England. And everywhere I go, Daniel, i'm I'm seeing horrible leadership within these secular groups. They're bringing me in to speak.
Speaker: And I'm hearing complaints after complaint, and they're all the same complaint. I don't care if it's ah Sydney, Australia, or it's and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was hearing the same complaints.
Speaker: we We've been an atheist or a humanist group for 15 years, and we haven't grown past the 40-membership I mean, we've we've been stuck there for 10 years.
Speaker: And then when I started looking around and asking some questions, I realized, well, no wonder you're stuck. You're making all these mistakes. ah You're not very welcome welcoming to younger people. You're not very welcoming to the minorities. ah You don't have programming that would attack attract families.
Speaker: In fact, I went and went to a humanist group. I will not say where, but a humanist group that's been around for like 40 years. therere They had the best attendance they've ever had in their entire history, as far as they can tell, when I spoke, which was about 45 people. Now, you've been around for 30 or 40 years, and you can't get more than 40 people to show up.
Speaker: And So I started talking to him. In fact, we had a meeting afterwards with their main board members and they wanted to kind of use, ah you know, use me as a consultant, I guess, for free, which is I was fine. I love helping groups.
Speaker: Yeah. And I've just, i I guess said one thing, nobody in that group today with a couple exceptions was less than 50 years old. Now it is close to a retirement community, but it's also close to a major metropolitan area with plenty of young And they say, yeah, we just can't get young people to come. I say, well, have you ever considered childcare?
Speaker: Oh no, no, we couldn't do that. It's too expensive. Okay. Well, you're not going to get the next generation of humanists. If you don't have childcare, it's that simple. It's a pretty simple idea.
Speaker: none More difficult to in execution, of course, but I'll just tell you right here in Kansas city, the Oasis organization has childcare. We've had childcare from the very first day we started, um,
Speaker: back in 2014, and that brings young families in. Well, if you're serious about growing the next generation of humanists, those people are having, they need a place to bring their kids.
Speaker: And there's a lot of lot of pressure to bring those kids to church. Because the in-laws, if you don't take your kids to church, the in-laws will. I know that for a fact, I saw it in my own, and I see it all over the place.
Speaker: But if you can tell your endos, oh, no, we've got to we go to this Oasis thing on Sunday morning. They can't argue with you too much that way. But we've got great child care. And I'm not going to hang on that. i'm just saying 13 years ago, i was seeing this. And I talked to i talked some folks around dan Shia out in San Francisco. He was very interested in the leadership problems that we're seeing in the secular world.
Speaker: in the secular world So I said, I'd really like just to do something, but I don't have time. i'm um I've written these two books. I'm touring all the time. I'm running Recovering from Legend. I've got a board to deal with. I'm starting second or third project.
Speaker: I didn't have time to do all that. so So I just kept delaying it. And have you ever talked to Gail Jordan, our executive director? She's been our director for 11 years. And i'll I'll say there hasn't been probably um three months go by in those 11 years that I haven't told her I really would like to do something about the leadership issues.
Speaker: But finally, recovery religion is just running like like a top. It's really running well. It doesn't need me near as much as it used to.
Speaker: and of course, you know as as a leader, you're successful if they can live without you. They don't need they shouldn't need me. Secondary therapy project. It's just gone through some big transition recently, but they seem to be running fine. They don't need me anymore.
Speaker: And so i' I've got the time for this. so After 13 years, I finally got it. And i I found somebody to help me, ah soon to be Dr. Sharon McKean. ah She'll finish her doctorate. She is Dr. Sharon McKean this month. She just fit defended her dissertation a week ago.
Speaker: Oh, congratulations to her. We can call call her Dr. McKean. But anyway, she is really good. And her doctorate degree is in organizational psych.
Speaker: The irony of it was she came to she came to recovery from religion to to volunteer as a helpline agent. And the director of the helpline, got to they got to talking and the director was her trainer too. Sometimes that's not always the case.
Speaker: And she says, oh, you need to talk to Daryl because Rachel, our director, knew that I was starting this new leadership thing. and So i ah I commandeered Sharon. I don't know if Sharon will ever volunteer for RFR because I'm going to keep her if I can.
Speaker: Anyway, ah I really, ah sat down with I sat down and I just, I spent a month, i so I spent a month this last fall outlining everything I think I could offer someone on an online internet based class live. We're doing it live though. We're not, we're not, it's not a self-paced kind of thing.
Speaker: And, you know, I just put, put every problem I've seen, And I looked at what skills I can teach and I just matched those two together. And I've matched them now with there's we're where we've got course number one has four sessions and that's, that's what we're kind of like the the foundational courses.
Speaker: And then we've got four more courses we're calling intermediate courses, but throughout all of that, people are going to learn. We're to learn about conflict management, going learn about problem solving skills. You can learn about how to manage boards, who to have on boards, how to recruit board members,
Speaker: we're going to look at finances. We're going to look at the rules and guidelines that you should always, always use. If you're going to, you're going to run a group and you're going to, if you want people to give you money, you have to show them you're using that money responsibly.
Speaker: And if you do that, you'll get more money. If you don't, you won't. And the worst thing, the worst thing that an organization can have is a financial shenanigans. You know, somebody absconds with some money.
Speaker: so we'll we'll talk about those kinds of skills we're going talk about what it what it means to be a leader you it is not natural to drive a car it is not natural to fly an airplane but yet we do it it is not natural to be a leader most people are not quote natural leaders but you can learn all the skills are available and that's that's what i want to teach um it's what i am teaching the course has already started we we've got a class tomorrow night i mean meet the first class for the second time. And the next class starts on March 3rd, a week from and the 22nd of this month. We're having an introductory a meeting. If anybody's interested, they contact me and I'll give them the link. But we're just on Sunday, Sunday evening on the 22nd at seven o'clock central time.
Speaker: I'll just be having an open meeting. Anybody can attend and I'll tell them, I'll and answer all the questions. I'll go through the the syllabus for the whole course. Tell them why we're doing all these eight eight different sessions, two hours long.
Speaker: And it'll be very interactive. You'll learn. I tell the group, you're going to learn as much from each other as you are from me. But that's the first that's the first goal of the Institute, Daniel. The second goal is to create a network of leadership that are all graduated from this program.
Speaker: And once they've graduated, they'll have a common language. They'll have some a common skill set. they'll um and they'll and They'll have contacts with each other. So I can pick up the phone.
Speaker: I can call the humanist leader in San Diego and say, are you having this problem? Or what's some resources to help in some area? And in my experience, I have an enormous network of people that I can call upon to to help in any number of things. to Just today, I've probably connected at least three people to each other, three two pairs of people to each other around various things, not always related to what I need.
Speaker: But I found that money is not necessarily the answer. ah Knowledge and skills and networking is far more important because you're not going to get money if you're not doing the other things.
Speaker: So you need the skills, the knowledge, and you need the network to plug into it. And that network will lead you to to donors. by the way. But we run, we run, we come from religion on a shoestring. We're 16, we're going on 17 years now.
Speaker: We run it on a shoestring. And I'm very proud of that because only one person gets paid and that's Gail. Nobody else in the whole, but we, we are generous with how we, how we support our programs. For example, the fall excursion, if a volunteer is going to come and,
Speaker: ah our board members, we make sure they can come because we so we supplement them you know we supplement the cost of going to those things because they put in 200 hours that year.
Speaker: i ah One thing I just hate is organizations that abuse their volunteers, take them for granted. And you can do all the recognition programs you want. I don't think recognition works very well.
Speaker: People, what really works well is when you show them direct support for what they're doing and a good, and a thank you. a thank you that says, we're not just saying it to, to blow smoke up your ass. We're, we're telling you cause you've done good, good work all year and coming to the fall excursion or getting a supplemental help to come to a national conference and table.
Speaker: If you come to, we're going to be coming to the ah international humanist conference in Ottawa. Are you going to be there? I'm planning on being there. You're going to there too. I will be there. fact, i put us I'm even trying to become a speaker. I've put in my app application to speak on on this very topic, leadership, leadership development in the secular world.
Speaker: By the way, we had, and i was shocked at how many people um expressed interest in the course from England. And I think it's directly related the fact that I was speaking there. Some of it at least was.
Speaker: Yeah, we had like eight or nine people put their names in said, well, when you do it at an hour that's friendly to the United Kingdom, we'd like to to take the course. so I sincerely hope we can meet in Ottawa this summer.
Speaker: We will. We'll be tabling there. Recovering from Religion will be tabling there. And hopefully I'll be speaking on on leadership issues. You know, ah one of the things that stuck out to me as you were talking is how close the ah the design of this project is to so many of the knowledge mobilization projects that I've ah seen over the years working in public health, mental health and addictions, working in government, working in nonprofit. um the
Speaker: ah the knowledge transfer, the things that you're trying to teach people is one, you know, one major component, but the community of practice, that's where, ah you know, that's where the learning really happens because you agree you can receive information all day long, but until you're able to work those things out with the people around you, with people who can, you know, mull it over and chew on it and and then send it to you and say, like, what do you think? And, and you could give your feedback and they can give it to you. The,
Speaker: that's where That's where we actually grow. And I think that's a big piece of what gets missed when organizations are trying to to grow, is they just insert knowledge and assume that competency will follow.
Speaker: Absolutely. you're you're throwing You're throwing a lot away when you do it that way. people, people don't learn by listening. They learn by doing. And so what we're trying to structure in effect, that's one of the reasons that we've ah created the system.
Speaker: The courses themselves are two weeks apart. They'll like the, for example, this first course has been every Thursday night, every two weeks. And we do that intentionally because we want you to go back and practice some of the things you learned in the class.
Speaker: And once you talk to each other and we've got a common, a common, um, so place in a, we have a courseware kind of thing where people can go and interact and talk to each other. And then once they've graduated, only, only graduates of the course are are allowed to join the network.
Speaker: When I was letting anybody come in, cause that dilutes the learning. We only want people who've got a common language, common skills, skillset, because they will then teach each other. And I, I'm, what I'm teaching people with Sharon and our our teaching folks,
Speaker: You know, um half of them will hear and the other half won't. But when they sit down and they talk to each other, they'll fill in the blanks, probably. I mean, that's just the way we are as humans. we We don't hear everything. Plus, what I'm teaching on ah on class ah session number three may not feel relevant to you today.
Speaker: But two years from now, it may be relevant because you'll have that problem come up. or you're in a new organization or you're building a new board. There's, there's reasons. And so you'll be able to go back and look at your notes and call some other folks up. And I think that you're right. The community of practice is what we're after. i like that, that and characterization. That's a good way to put it.
Speaker: Can you tell I'm excited about this? It's just, this is actually a very exciting, um, opportunity And i I just want people to realize that life is so much better when you know what the fuck you're doing.
Speaker: Gosh, that's the quote of the episode.
Speaker: That is not to denigrate any of the leaders out there. I have some great friends that are leaders of all these major organizations. It's not, it's it's that the next generation, and and many of them are doing everything I would teach anyway.
Speaker: I look at Fish Stark and I look at Nick Fish, American Atheist. You know, I look at some of the, big leaders of all these and they're already, whether they learned it, some I don't know where they learned it, but they're doing good work, right?
Speaker: It's the next generation I'm worried about. That's that's who I want to hit. That's who I want to attract to these courses, not the top people in the American humanists or the or the you know any other major organization.
Speaker: It's the next generation. And those generation that generation is the ones that's going to be running the humanist group in Dallas, Texas, or the Oasis group in Denver, Colorado, or the hub in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker: And there's good examples. And that leads me to one more piece within the structure of the coursework. We're going to take there'll be four different instructional classes. Then there'll be an optional class every course where we will get online on a Zoom and we will talk to a group of people who are on the board of successful of a successful organization.
Speaker: So in two and a half weeks or three weeks from now, we will be talking to the board of Oasis Kansas City, an organization that's been around for 14 years, and it's getting 70 to 100 people showing up every Sunday.
Speaker: And it's got activities going on 20 days ah a month. you You could almost do something within Oasis ah three or four times a week if you want to.
Speaker: Everything from feeding the homeless to um to filling bottles with, with the or homeless people, filling bottles with medicine and stuff, to ah playing games or having board games or going to dance class.
Speaker: That means all this. to Oh, and the coolest thing about Oasis here is that we bought our own building. We own our own building. Isn't that interesting? That is. We got it two years ago, but it took us 14 or 12 years to get there.
Speaker: Well, that's the goal of a lot of organizations. They'd like to have their own building because I'll tell you, when you've got a building, it really helps you start building community quickly. And it's an old Methodist church they converted. it It's kind of funny. Oh, man. Life comes full circle, doesn't it? Well, I think it's proof that there is karma. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, i I could tell you're excited. i think ah I think it's exciting. And I hope that our listeners who are are following us will take a look in the show notes, see the link to the website and go check it out and go think about signing up.
Speaker: As we're coming up on our our time here, i I promised you at the beginning i was going to ask you this. We've been asking everybody. ah What's one book and one band that you'd recommend people check out?
Speaker: Well, it's a hard question to answer because I'm going to say my own two books I think are the best books. So I would recommend i would recommend those. um You know, i I love Cat's Cradle.
Speaker: I don't watch, I don't read very many Kurt Vonnegut. I don't read burn me very much ah fiction, but of all the books that I've read over the years. i love Kurt Vonnegut, but I really, really love Cat's Cradle. I'd probably reread that book about every two years.
Speaker: It is that one of the best books on political theory, religious theory, and sex, sexuality. It's got it all. And it's gotten a way that's just humorous, but really enlightening about how we look at all those things.
Speaker: And the second thing is banned. What banned? Yeah. Yeah. Well, obviously, the Eagles. I'm old enough to remember I was working as a counselor in a juvenile facility, and my my coworker came up. He was he was in he had a um a radio show on the local radio show there in Nashville, Tennessee, where I was working.
Speaker: And so he it was a jazz show. But this guy, what he didn't know about music wasn't worth knowing. And one night he comes in and says, you've got to listen to this new group. i I think they're going to be as big as the Beatles.
Speaker: Well, that caught my attention because I love the Beatles, of course. And it was like 1972, 71. I can't remember. And I sat down and listened that whole album, that first album they put out. of a Damn, this is good.
Speaker: And just a month ago, My partner and I took a nice long vacation. We went down to went from Kansas City to Gallup, New Mexico on the train, on the Amtrak.
Speaker: We took a sleeper car. We had a lot of fun. It was very different kind of vacation. Then we rented a car. And our first stop after we left ale Gallup, Texas was Winslow, Arizona.
Speaker: Hmm. And I stood on the corner of Winslow, Arizona. Such a fine sight to see. And they do have a flatbed forge setting right there at the corner. of And every store within a block is nothing but Eagles paraphernalia. bet that is. it Millions. that That song has generated millions of dollars of income for that little tiny town. news I don't think there's a thousand people living in that town. It's really tiny.
Speaker: but yeah Is there a Seven Bridges Road ah near that town too? Or how is that not related? Seven Bridges Road is my favorite Eagles song. i'd I don't know. I don't know. I'd never been to Winslow before. but That was just fun. Now I've got to go find that that road now you've ah said that. Well, a couple of classics. I love Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five is my favorite. Oh, yeah. Another really good one. ah But the Eagles, yeah. I like i could listen to them.
Speaker: They're a good band. You are, you are. so Well, my real love, though, is classical music. So if you really want to know who my favorite is, it's Rachmaninoff and his third piano concerto and the fourth piano concerto.
Speaker: So if I was really honest, that's what I would say. I've got a couple of kids who know their way around a piano. Maybe I'll see if I can't get them to try it. Yeah. oh but but Just remember, Rachmaninoff's hands were about twice as big as mine. Okay, so maybe they won't try it very fast, but... So, Daryl, as we wrap up, I just wanted to express ah my gratitude to you, not ah not just for this podcast, um but ah my gratitude and admiration to you for your work in advancing so many causes that are important to us, not just to the secular community, ah but to humanity and to, I think, the the future of humanity. I noted that so many times in your stories, ah it started with you seeing a gap, seeing a need, and then you just had to go try to try to fix it, try to fill it, try to help it. And for the past few past few decades with these specific organizations, ah that's been... your contribution and at every turn you've been finding new ways to help people. um
Speaker: I think that these organizations which are gonna, they're gonna outlast you and I think they might even outlast me. ah Those things are, i don't use this word lightly, a legacy and and a testament to your dedication and commitment to the betterment of our species. um I for one hope to live up to your example.
Speaker: And ah so you you have my gratitude and admiration. And I'm so grateful to you that you came on this show to spend some time with me today. And I want to just say thanks again for all you've done and all you do. Thank you for your kind words. Those are, those very moving. i appreciate that.
Speaker: Thank you, Daryl. Yeah. Thanks for joining us today and we'll see you all next time.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to The Voice of Canadian Humanism. We would like to especially thank our members and donors who make our work possible. If you feel that this is the type of programming that belongs in the public conversation, please visit us at humanistcanada.ca and become a member and or donate.
Speaker: You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.
