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Rachel Bancroft was a good Mormon for most of her life. She grew up the fifth of seven children in Springfield, Ore., and had a strong faith.
“I did all the Mormony things,” she says. She went to youth group, girls’ camp and Brigham Young University for college and served as a missionary. She met her husband through the church, had children and raised them to be Mormon, too.
But as the years went on, doubts about the church’s teachings started creeping in; for a while, she was able to “put them on a shelf.” The big doubt was about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ doctrines and beliefs about queer people. The church does not allow its members to act upon same-sex attraction, and marriage is defined as only between a man and a woman. After Bancroft’s two children both came out as teenagers, this was a deal-breaker.
“My shelf was breaking, and then it all came tumbling down.” (The shelf metaphor is a common one among ex-Mormons.)
Leaving the Mormon faith was an excruciating 10-year process, says Bancroft, 54. When she was in the depth of her spiritual crisis, around 2021, she bought a bunch of canvases and paint and went out on her Beaverton patio and had at it. (She studied graphic design at BYU and now practices calligraphy, so the artistic expression didn’t come out of nowhere.) Bancroft painted a bunch of abstract, intuitive paintings with elements of collage and calligraphy—“some of it’s angry, some of it’s about questioning, and that’s the way I got through it,” she says.
Bancroft will exhibit three paintings at a group art show she is coordinating called Leaving the Fold that runs Sept. 18–23 at Art Design Xchange, or ADX, on Southeast 11th Avenue. In about 2023, she got the idea for the art show and it stubbornly refused to let go, even though sharing her art and story felt vulnerable. The titles of her own work refer to her spiritual crisis, such as The Last Song and Scrupulosity, which means obsessive thoughts about religious morals.
Leaving the Fold will showcase 21 artists working in a variety of media: painting, sculpture, calligraphy, video and fiber arts. Four musicians will share original songs at the opening reception Sept 18. The show will also include readings, a panel discussion with a cult intervention specialist, a collage workshop, tarot readings and a guided meditation.
All participating artists have left either a high-demand religion (which is how Bancroft identifies LDS) or a high-control group, such as a cult. Some of them are Christianity-based, some are secular, some are New Age. Bancroft is struck by how many commonalities the groups all have, even though the exact teachings could be wildly different: Don’t question. Don’t trust yourself. Stay away from the outside world. Don’t leave.
“It’s a lot of those same teachings across the board,” she says.
A handful of the artists asked to remain anonymous. One such artist has compiled a book using the pages from the handbook of their former group but blacked out most of the words except for a few—creating poetry from the words formerly used to control them.
Another artist, Seva Bauer, shares three paintings of courageous women, always with an animal or bird somewhere on the canvas as a metaphor for freedom and wildness. Bauer’s work is informed by her experience leaving a New Age spiritual group in 2020 after being a member for several decades.
Musician Esther Herniz, 32, found out about the art show through a support group she’s in called People Leave Cults. She will perform three songs on opening night, including “Fly,” which she wrote while leaving a small Christian fundamentalist cult in Ohio, where she’s from. She’s lived in Portland since 2021.
“It’s a song to myself in a way, like, ‘You gotta get out of here and leave this in order to really find yourself and to find safety and to find peace,’” Herniz says.
Being a part of Leaving the Fold has been a way for Herniz to find solidarity and connection with other people who have left cults. Leaving the Fold is a double whammy because participants are not only cult survivors, but also artists.
“I feel incredibly honored and excited to be part of something like this,” Herniz says.
SEE IT: Leaving the Fold at Art Design Xchange, 417 SE 11th Ave., instagram.com/leavingthefoldart. 11 am–8 pm Sept. 18–23. Opening reception 5–9 pm Friday, Sept. 18. Free.
