Introduction to the Episode and Guest

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's November 24, 2020, and I could not be more excited to have back with us on Mormon Stories podcast, Dr. Matt Harris. Matt Harris is a professor of history at Colorado State University, Pueblo. We recently had that or Dr. Harris on Mormon Stories podcast for an epic series on on Ezra Taft Benson. I highly, highly recommend you all check that out. But today we are going to be featuring yet another book that Matt Harris co edited along with the legendary Newell Bringhurst. The book is called the LDS Gospel Topic A Scholarly Engagement, and it is published by none other than Signature Books, one of the most important publishers in the history of Mormonism, if not the most important publishing houses in the history of Mormonism right now. Go buy this book, just one chapter alone, which we're going to be covering next. And the chapter is called Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings by Matt Harris himself is worth the purchase of this book alone. We're covering that chapter along with many other chapters in future Mormon Stories Podcast episodes, the one with Matt today. But today we're going to be talking about sort of a history of the Gospel Topics essays that is chronicled in the introduction to this book. The introduction is called why the Gospel Topics Essays? And it's basically Matt Harris's attempt to put together a timeline of many of the events that led to the creation of the Gospel Topics essays and part of what's a little bit weird. And I'm going to ask everyone's forgiveness on this. As an interviewer, one of the things I always like to try and do is get out of the way and just let my interviewees talk. And sometimes I like to jump in and sometimes that frustrates people. What's going to be a little bit complicating about this particular interview with Matt is is that I was probably a pretty important or big part to the events that led to the release of the essays. And we're going to talk about all that today. But I just need you to forgive me for interjecting myself at the beginning of this interview a bit because I have some parts of the timeline that I participated in that weave very importantly into the introduction that Matt penned. So without any further ado, Matt Harris, I'm over the moon. Thrilled to have you back on Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Matt Harris [00:02:56] Thanks, John. It's always a pleasure to be with you today, and I'm thrilled that you'll be able to participate in today's Conversation since you were part of these events.

Overview of the Gospel Topics Essays Book

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Okay, so anything you want to say about as an overview of this book before we dive into the introduction?

Matt Harris [00:03:14] Yeah, so just, just maybe a quick thought about how I came to this project. When the LDS Gospel Topics essays were released, there were 13 of them total over roughly a two year period. And I, like other members of the church and scholars, were interested in these essays both for what they said and what they didn't say. And really these essays are the most transparent effort in the history of the church to talk about problematic issues in LDS history and doctrine. So that's what drew me to this. And then our discussion today, we'll talk about how the essays came about and how they were released. And so it was the essays that initially drew me to this project. And then of course, I wanted to learn sort of the backstory on the essays, and that's what the introduction of this book is largely about.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] Okay, yeah. And I just have to agree with you. I agree that the LDS Church releasing this series of Gospel topics essays starting in 2013, is that right? Is something that we've been wanting and begging for, for decades, if not a century, which is the Mormon Church, to start coming clean about its history. And it was a miracle in many ways for everyone who experienced that. And so I'm just so thrilled that you, and signature books, along with Newell and all the authors of this, of the chapters in this book, tackle. Tackle this subject. Tell us just a bit about what the chapters are, kind of what this book covers. Give us an overview of the book, if you don't mind.

Matt Harris [00:04:52] Yeah, absolutely. So what Newell and I wanted to do is we wanted to produce a series of scholarly essays that looked at the essays and talked about what they did really well, and also talk about parts where they fell short. And one of the most important things in this project was, is that we wanted the tone to be right. We didn't want scholars with an axe to grind. It just really wasn't what we wanted to do. And the. So the tone had to be right. And I might say, parenthetically, that there were a couple of three different essayists that submitted essays and we just couldn't use them. It's not because the scholarship wasn't sound, it's just because there was just too much finger pointing and all of that stuff. And that just. So we had to move in a different direction from those three authors. But anyway, so we wanted to look at, go into more detail into these essays and talk about points of exploration maybe down the road and so the essays were interesting because they are geared to address issues that have been problematic in the church. But there are some essays that. That were not covered or topics that were not covered. I suppose we'll get into that this hour. But anyway, we just knew that I wanted to get our readers to think more carefully about these essays. And I want to say there's. There's a lot of positive things. It's so. It's so easy to be critical all the time, to sort of tear down the barn, if you will, and much more labor intensive to rebuild the barn. But I really do think that these, these essays are a milestone in LDS scholarship and I think they should be praised as such.

John Dehlin [00:06:42] Absolutely. Okay, so I guess, I guess the place to begin is with your introduction where you try and cover the history of sort of the events that lead to the release of the essays.

The Swedish Rescue Fireside Origins

Matt Harris [00:07:00] Yeah. So that, you know, I remember we start out the essay with something called the Swedish Rescue Fireside or Swedish Rescue Mission. And for those on this who are listening, who don't know what that is, it was a faith crisis that Latter Day Saints of Sweden had in 2008, 2009 and into 2010. And I know, John, you can say more about how this began in just a moment, but it became such an enormous ordeal that, that general authorities in Salt Lake City dispatched Marlon Jensen, who was then the church historian and also a member of the first quorum of the 70, and then Rick Turley, who worked for the church, who was the assistant church recorder and historian at the time. Anyway, they dispatched Turley and Jensen to Sweden in 2000, November 2010, to, in a special fireside, to listen to the concerns of these Latter Day Saints. And when Turley and Jensen were there, they were not caught unaware. They knew what they were walking into, that these Latter Day Saints had questions. I mean, really challenging questions. And so Turley and Jensen had been preparing for this, and their whole mission was to try to answer their questions and to try to prevent these folks from leaving the faith. And so really, one of the main participants is a guy named Hans Matson, a one time Area Authority 70 in Sweden and also a former stake president. So he really had clout in the church and he's one of the catalysts who was responsible for this fireside, meaning that he had been talking to people in his ward and stake about his faith crisis. And because he had such a high stature in the church, people listened to him. And that's what precipitated Jensen and Turley to come from Salt Lake to Sweden in the special fireside. So it really was a high stakes mission. And Hans told me that there were over 600 Latter Day Saints who were there. And I read somewhere it was by invitation only. So they didn't want to open this up to everybody in Sweden, especially those who were not having a faith crisis. It was really people who had a faith crisis. And when I read that Han said that there were over 600 people there, I was just absolutely astonished. I can't think of anywhere in the church today, the contemporary LDS church, where such a fireside has occurred, where there are a large group of Latter Day Saints who have special concerns about the church, and then they dispatch a general authority and a church employee, a church historian, to try to assuage those concerns. It really isn't a. It's a monumental moment in LDS Church history.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] It absolutely is. And so if it's okay, Matt and I'll ask my listeners for forgiveness, this interviews with Matt, but I'm just going to provide a tiny bit of background because I think it's kind of interesting, maybe a little bit fun and kind of important. So. So we all know that, you know that BH Roberts had his thing in the, in the 20s and 30s. We all know that Fawn Brody comes out with her with her book in 1945 called no Man Knows My History. And then we all know about, you know, dialogue starting in the 60s, the Leonard Arrington years in the 70s, you know, Sunstone starting in the 70s, and then it all getting kind of shut down in the 80s, and then we all know about the September six in the 90s. So like all of that happens. And basically what it says is there have been these small groups of people talking in depth about Mormon history for decades and decades and decades. But somehow, curiously, miraculously, perniciously, all of this conversation sort of remains hidden from the general church membership for almost that whole period. It's always just sort of these strains of Mormon intelligentsia or critics, but the larger church membership is sort of unaware of all this stuff, in my opinion. And so when I have my faith crisis, you know, I watched the September 6th at BYU in 93, you know, I get married and have kids. But then in 2000, when I had my faith crisis, the Internet's just starting to come out. I'm working at Microsoft, the Internet's out, I have my faith crisis, I try and get support and there's no one to support me. And by the way, I could not have had my faith crisis if it weren't for signature books. You know, Simon Southerton, Grant Palmer, Michael Quinn, Richard Bushman, all these authors, Fawn Brody, all these authors that had written these amazing books that, again, almost no one's read unless you're just really into this stuff. So by 2003, 2004, I'm just depressed, thinking I have to dedicate my life to helping people become aware of these issues. As a church, we need to talk about it. We need to come clean. The Internet is the way. You know what I mean? So I leave Microsoft in 2004. I go to Sunstone that summer. In 2004, I meet Dan Witherspoon. I meet with the Dialogue Board. I join the Sunstone board, and I'm like, hey, Dialogue Sunstone. We need to use the Internet to get all this amazing history out to the world. And so I start Mormon stories in 2005. And the only reason I'm mentioning all that is because this was a really important moment that led to the Swedish rescue, as I understand it. And so from 2005 to 2006, I interviewed Greg Prince, I interviewed Richard Bushman, I interviewed Grant Palmer, I interviewed Darren Smith, I do a bunch of LGBTQ interviews. I interviewed Darius Gray and Margaret Young, Richard Bushman by 2007, Claudia Bushman. And the goal is to just like. And this happens in parallel with all these Mormon blogs that are coming out. So there's Times and Seasons blog by Common Consent Blog. So the blogs thing starts happening, then the podcast thing starts happening, and we start to get traction on the Internet about all these issues. And even in 2006, I created a little prototype webpage called the Top 10 Tough Issues in Mormonism. And it's a precursor to Mormon Think. And I basically put out a call to my listeners. It's like, hey, we need a website that lists all the tough issues in Mormonism and explanations for and against why these are problems. So all this stuff starts cooking in 2014, 2006, 2007, when I receive an email from this incredible woman. This is January 6, 2008. Christina Anderson Hanke from Sweden reaches out to me, and she basically says, hey, John, I just found your podcast, and I can't tell you how much it means to me. I've been having a faith crisis, and my bishop encouraged my husband of like, 25 plus years to leave me over my faith crisis. And I shared that email with you this morning, Matt. But for me, that's when I started realizing, whoa, that's interesting. I've got listeners in Sweden who knew, right? And from there, Christina Hanke and I should mention Hans Mattson's released as an area authority in 2005, and at some point he meets up with Christina. So by 2008, 2009, there's like, this Swedish study group where they're starting to study the Bible, but also they start studying problems with church history. And then Mormonthink is born in 2008, I meet with Elder Holland about faith crisis issues in June of 2009, and then in March of 2010, and all this stuff starts boiling. By the time I receive. I'm friended by HANS MATTSON In November 18, 2010, which is 10 days before the Swedish Rescue meeting happens. So this is kind of just a little bit of backstory about how I'm pretty sure that a combination of the Internet, Mormon stories, Christina Hinke Hans starts this festering group in Sweden that leads to the Swedish Rescue that happens in 2010, which you. Which you told me about, which you mentioned at the beginning. But also, it was so fun because Christina and I were in contact at this point, and she sent me minutes of her meeting at the Swedish Rescue just within a week after it happened. She types up all her notes, she sends it to me. I find out that they did an audio recording of the Swedish Rescue. And. And this is all, like, was really exciting stuff at the time. Now, one other thing I'll just mention is earlier on, one of my listeners reached out to me named Travis Stratford. Travis is this brilliant graphic designer, PR marketing guy that started a company with a bunch of BYU grads called Studio Case in New York city in the mid 2000s. And Travis Stratford actually designed the Mormon Stories logo that I used very early on in Mormon Stories. So Travis and I become friends, and it turns out that Travis had served his mission in Sweden. So when Hans reaches out to me, by 2010, Travis gets in touch with Hans, and Hans says, you know, we got to do something about all this. And so, you know, Travis and I are following the Swedish Rescue meeting. You know, we get the audio and we start thinking, what can we do? You know, how do we connect with Hans? And is there any opportunity here? And long story short, at some point, Hans reaches out to me, and Travis, he introduces himself to us and he says, I want to hold a meeting. I want to hold a meeting in New York City, and it's going to be me, Hans, you, Travis, John Dehlin, and Marlon Jensen. Because Hans Madsen had met Marlon Jensen during the years Marlon Jensen was working in Europe while Hans Madsen was an area authority and Jeffrey Holland was there back at the time as well. And so this is really exciting for me because I'm like, oh my gosh, finally I'll have audience, you know, with Marlon Jensen, church historian, and we'll be able to let him know that there's serious, serious problems with people losing their faith and the church's disclosure of history and all the carnage, all the family and personal carnage that's happening as people lose their faith and the church just acts like this doesn't even exist and they keep hiding their history. So in March of 2011, that's when, that's when this meeting takes place. And in preparation for that meeting, Travis and I realized that there needs to be, you know, data, that it would be a much more powerful meeting if we actually go to that meeting with data. And so I designed, Travis and I, along with Greg Prince's help design a survey that we release on the Internet. And like over 3,000 followers of Mormon stories, people on Facebook, people in ex Mormon world, they all respond to this survey. And we assemble. I pull together a team of researchers, Morgan McCune and Scott Holly and all these amazing statistics minded PhDs, we crunch the numbers and we come up with a bunch of data that gets packaged by Travis into a presentation that gets presented in New York City to Marlon Jensen by Travis and Greg. And one of the huge sad points for me was that I got disinvited from that meeting. My understanding is that Greg Prince felt like Marlon would feel more comfortable if I wasn't there. So I got disinvited, Greg replaced me. And that super important meeting happened in New York City where Marlon Jensen was sort of put on notice that this was a huge problem. And what I understand about that meeting is that his eyes bulged when we showed the education level and the average income of the people who are losing their faith because it was the most highly educated and, and the highest income members of the church who were losing their faith. And I remember Travis and Greg telling me that Marlon Jensen's response was we're losing our best and our brightest. And that was sort of that first initial wake up call that happened in New York City. That, that was a big impetus for, for all of this stuff.

Marlin Jensen's Reaction to the Crisis

Matt Harris [00:20:23] Let me say something. Just jump in real quick, John, that Travis told me, and this is, this is in the book, but Marlon Jensen was absolutely floored when he saw some of the data that Travis had presented in New York City. He was just stunned. And I think it's important to know that Marlon Jensen, he didn't do this on his own accord. He went with the blessing of Apostle Boyd K. Packer. And this is how serious, at least internally, they're starting to take this, is that Jensen didn't think he could do this without his superiors signing off on it. And if we can just go back to the Swedish rescue just for a moment, that when the Swedish Latter Day Saints, they had a three hour meeting and they were just. It started out with Elder Jensen bearing his testimony, I mean, really spending a lengthy amount of time bearing his testimony about the church. And finally one of the Swedes became impatient and they basically said, look, we've heard you bear your testimony. Can we ask our questions now? And so they just. Over the next three hours, there was just a barrage of questions about the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon, polygamy, polyandry, any kind of hot spot in the church. It came up and it was at that meeting where Elder Jensen and Rick Turley, they said they tried to do their best, the best that they could to answer the questions. It was mostly Rick Turley who was addressing the doctrinal questions. But Jensen said that there were answers to their questions and they were forthcoming. There was a committee underway putting some of these answers together. And the committee again was led by Boyd K. Packer at his authorization. So this was really being done at the highest echelons of the church. And the questions that Jensen and Turley had talked about that were forthcoming at this November 2010 Swedish fireside, those would later become the Gospel Topics essays. So just to give you a timeline in all of this, this is in November of 2010, and the first essay is not released until November of 2013, three years later. And so there's a lengthy process and we can talk about, you know, some of the, the problems and difficulties with all of this. I want to share something that's, I think, important to the story is you have a backstory with Travis. I want to share with your listeners, John, how I came in contact with Travis, because quite frankly, I couldn't have probably have done the introduction in this book had I not had the assistance of Travis, who gave me his questions or his surveys. And there's probably three different ones. I mean, they're really thick files and really they should be published somewhere if they haven't already been yet. But anyway, so I gave a. A talk at the Mormon History Association Conference in Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, in I think, 2017, June of 2017. And there's a lot of people in the room. And obviously in the Mormon scholarly community, the Gospel Topics essays are important. And I noticed that there are a couple of general authorities in the room. There were several employees of the LDS Church History Department. And no pressure, right? Writing, talking about contemporary events of which you were not a part. But yet the people in the room were, and I used to be. In my first part of my career, I wrote about the Founding fathers and people from the 19th century. And they were easy to write about because they were dead. They didn't fight back. But with current people in the room, you know, there's. There could be some pushback. So one of the things I said was, as I began my remarks, I said that I understand that there are several people in the room, including general authorities, who participated directly in the construction and dissemination of this project. I welcome feedback. I welcome criticism. I want to get this story right. So after my talk today, please, please, please come see me if I said something wrong or I misconstrued something, or just come see me, please. So I gave the presentation, and the first person who came up to me after my remarks was Elder Stephen Snow, who had replaced Marlon Jensen as the church historian. And like Elder Jensen, Elder Snow was a general authority. He's now retired. He retired, I think, last summer. But anyway, Elder Snow came up and he pulled me aside in the corner, and he.

John Dehlin [00:25:07] He.

Matt Harris [00:25:07] He proceeded to tell me the backstory of the gospel topics essays. He said, we took a lot of heat for trying to push these essays out and get them published. And I played stupid. And I said, who's we and who's giving you the heat? And he said, boyd Packer. And then he lifts up his shirt to show me a scar mark that he had, you know, from. From Packer. And by that point, I took out my phone and I said, okay, can you speak in the record here? I want to get you on. And he laughed, and we both laughed. But so after we exchanged some banter between us, he said, have you ever heard of Travis Stratford? And I said, no, I don't know who he is. He said, you really, really need to get in touch with him because he was instrumental in getting these essays released to the public. They were not going to release them. And Travis was instrumental. I won't tell you any more than that. Talk to Travis. And so I tracked down Travis, and it was nice to hear you, John, talk about your relationship with Travis, because once I called Travis and I said, you know, a general authority said I had to get in touch with you, that you've got some important things to say. Then Travis and I had numerous conversations over the course of Oh, I guess might have been 2018, the summer of 2018. We talked at length. We shared a lot of emails. And he was instrumental in not only releasing all of the surveys to me with some very useful qualitative data, but also he constructed a timeline that you're corroborating, John, about who did what and where and helping me keep everything straight. And so Travis was really pivotal in all of this. And one of these days I understand that he's going to go on record and share this story. But. But what you find in the Gospel Topics essays is Travis is doing. And I have to say that I try to keep people's names out of it. I talk to general authorities about my work and especially behind the scenes stuff. And sometimes they request, you know, anonymity, which is great, always try to honor that. But I had two different general authorities pull me aside at different various occasions. And they said Travis is the guy who pushed this forward and got him released to the public. That was sort of what they said. And anyway, so that was, I think that's an important part of the story. It was the, it was the work of a diligent Latter Day Saint who had experienced his own faith crisis, who wanted to get the church to take this seriously. And the fact that the Boyd Packer was aware of this and had commissioned the essays and had allowed Elder Jensen to go to New York City to meet with Greg Prince and Travis and Hans Matz. And I think that's really, I mean, it's important. It's an important detail that's, that's lost to the church body. But certainly the apostles were aware of this. And I want to say something else too is. So these are the essays that start to germinate in 2010, and they're not officially released until 2013. But the church had been experiencing these issues for a number of decades. And just to build. What you said, John, is that, you know, in the 20s and 30s and 40s, you see the church, church apostles like John Widtso and Joseph Fielding Smith, they publish answers to gospel questions in the church magazines like the Improvement Era Now. Notice what they say. Answers to Gospel questions. They don't say difficult gospel questions, but certainly gospel questions. And if you look at some of these in the Improvement Era from Widtsoe first and Joseph Feeling Smith, who was also a church historian, if you look at them, some of them were just speculative, you know, stuff that most people might not care about. Some of it would be considered controversial. They're asking about Adam, God did Brigham Young really teach that Adam is God. So you do get some of that in the church ensign. This is in the 30s, 40s, 50s and well into the 1960s. And then after the 60s you mostly get private letters from apostles to concerned church members about various doctrinal issues. And then by the 1990s, and there could have been earlier books and somebody will correct me if I, if I, if I'm remiss here, but by the 1990s you start to get books by Deseret Book, the LDS Church publishing house publishing books with the term difficult or problematic in the title Answers to Difficult Gospel Questions. I'm thinking of Joseph Fielding McConkey's book in 1998. And I remember reading that book. I was in graduate school at the time in New York and, and I read the book and I had a number of questions and so I wrote Joseph Fielding McConkey a note. Basically the questions were, you know, you're saying X, what about apostle Y? And typical Joseph Fielding McConkey was a chip off the old block, basically blew it off. You know, it's whatever my father said in my grandfather. And of course his grandfather was Joseph Fielding Smith. So Joseph Fielding McConkey was not surprisingly wedded to his father's teachings and his grandfather's teachings and when they contradicted other apostles teachings, didn't matter, we can just shove those aside. But anyway, answers to difficult gospel questions. And this is 1998 and then after 2004, the advent of the the Internet if you will, or the rise of the Internet at least with among Mormons. When Mormons start to read on the Internet the Journal of Discourses for the first time previously only known to scholars or people who had access to those that multi volume set at a research library, for example, or if they were visiting Salt Lake. But for the most part, the Journal of Discourses and other challenging Mormon documents from the 19th century, they weren't available to the average member until the Internet. And so when the Internet started to publish the Journal of Discourses and other challenging LDS writings from earlier church leaders, it creates this incredible challenge for the church, which is to say that Latter Day Saints can concede directly stuff online from Brigham Young's own mouth. And if an apostle was saying something otherwise, then it became a challenge. So Bruce McConkey is a great example. In the 1970s he wrote a member just a private letter between an apostle and a member of saying that Brigham Young did not teach that Adam was God. Later he would revise that and, and backtrack and admit to it and say that Brigham Young was wrong. But initially Bruce McConkey, Apostle McConkey, denied that. And. But today, of course, you can spend two seconds and go find the many discourses that Brigham Young talked about that Adam was God. And so that's really a challenge that the Church has never, ever had to deal with prior to the advent of the Internet. So what happens is after 2004, you get this steady stream of books that pop up and I'll just read a couple of them that I think the readers might find. In 1998, Joseph Hilly McConkey, as I mentioned, it's called Answers, Straightforward Answers to Tough Gospel Questions. And then six years later, BYU professor Bob Millett published a book called Getting at the Truth, Responding to Difficult Questions about LDS Beliefs. And then it was followed by no Weapon Shall Prosper, New Light on Sensitive Issues. And then after the faith crisis stuff starts to trickulate out in 2015, we get a new sense of books. The givens is Terrell and Fiona, his wife, called the Crucible of Doubt, Reflections on the Quest of Faith. Then we get Planted Belief Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History from Utah State scholar Patrick Mason. We get Letters to a Young Mormon by a Mormon philosopher named Adam Miller. And so and then we also get a really a push to look at apologetic websites like the Interpreter foundation website, the Neal A. Maxwell website. So the Church is trying to use its resources to combat the Internet. And it's, it's really, it is a challenge because there is so much out there on the Internet there, there are so many primary sources out there that one can go to. It's one thing to have a secondary source written by a scholar who didn't live in the period, and quite another to go see the Horse's mouth and people could read it, you know, the, the writings unfiltered. And so that's the challenge that the Church has had to deal with. And this is one of the many reasons why they decided to release these Gospel topics essays is because they wanted the membership to know that they understood that these issues were out there and they wanted to acknowledge them, whereas previously they had either not acknowledged them or significantly downplayed them. And so I think it's important to recognize that these LDS Gospel topics essay questions or essays, it's a good faith effort for the Church to come clean about its past and the remarkable set of essays. Let me just give you one example why it's important and then we'll talk about the Race and Priesthood essay later. But for years, Latter Day Saints had been teaching that after the priesthood revelation in 1978, the Brethren tried to get away from some of those past teachings and about the curse of Cain and are blacks less value than pre existence? The, the revelation itself says nothing about any of that stuff. So what's left after the revelation is you've got all of this residue in the street or debris in the street that's not been cleaned up, it's not been addressed. And the idea is that blacks can go to the temple now and worthy men can hold the priesthood. That's all fine and well, but what about all of this racial baggage, this racial doctrine that had been accumulating over time? What about that? And this is what the church has to deal with in the 80s and 90s. And you get a number of Latter Day Saints, well intentioned, to be fair, well intentioned Latter Day Saints who would say to black people, hey, don't worry about the curse. God lifted it in 1978. And they don't realize how deeply offensive it is to think that your skin color is a sign of a divine curse. And so for years, as these stories begin to trickle into church headquarters, mostly by devout black Latter Day Saints bearing their souls to the apostles about how offensive it was to be told that they were less valiant and they were cursed. And the story was always, don't worry brother, you can hold the priest and go to the temple. And then they would write back and they would say, I understand that I can go to the temple and hold the priesthood. That's not what this is about. What I want to know, does the church still teach that I'm cursed? And this is the predicament the brethren are in. So what you get by the late 80s and into the early 90s is you get private letters by apostles like Dallin Oaks and Neil Maxwell and Gordon Hinckley who was then LDS Church president. They're writing black people and they're saying that basically that's not a church teaching, don't worry about it. Well, this is done in private. And the larger church body does not have access to these private letters. And so when somebody would say something racist at church, like, you know, black people are cursed or less valiant, of course it's so offensive to our black and our brown brothers and sisters. And other than to say this is racist and wrong, they had nothing to appeal to. If they went to Deseret Book, they could still see Mormon doctrine on the bookshelves. They could still see Joseph Fielding Smith's doctrines of salvation, all of which talked about the Curse and so, and also progressive Latter Day Saints too. I want to be clear who are fetted by this and so but they didn't have anything to appeal to. And now by 2013 when the race and priesthood document comes out, it explicitly condemns and repudiates this notion of a divine curse and that black people were less valiant. So that if somebody says a church that, that you know, they're quoting some general authority from years past about the curse, a proper position would be hey look, that's not true. We've got a document that says otherwise. And I, I, I, I don't think that can be understated about how important that is to give Latter Day Saints an authoritative document to which they could use when some of their well intentioned Latter Day Saint brothers and sisters utter racial epithets towards them.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] Absolutely. So, so I want to just do, do my part to give, give a couple shout outs and then we can move on. I want to talk to you just about the essays in general. But, but Travis was absolutely kind of like the, the mastermind. I think Greg Prince played a really important role in advising. I think Greg had a friendship with Marlon and I think Greg played a really important advisory role. I think the Swedish, all those Swedish Saints, those Swedish progressive and post Mormons and Hans and Burgita Matson, they were crucial. And frankly, Marlon Jensen, what a courageous guy to want to take this on. And then I'm very grateful to have been able to play a role both, both with the Swedish rescue with Hans, but also with Travis and doing the research, recruiting for the sample. And then I met with Marlon Jensen as well prior to, you know, the essays I think being formally approved. And I just want to say it's one of, and all the research team that helped us crunch that data that then got presented to church headquarters. And I want to talk a little bit more about what you say in your book about how you know, Travis brought, brought the book to Uchtdorf and others and, and what that led to. But I just want to say that, you know, I, I, that's one of the things I'm most proud of and all the things that I've done is to be a part of that team with Travis, Hans, Marlon, you know, Greg Prince, all the Swedish rescue people because that was an exciting time and, and our hope was, was that the church would come clean because from Our Perspective By 2011, I've seen how many suicides had taken place, I've seen how many divorces had happened. I'd seen how much family carnage because of my role in Mormon stories and all the people that reached out to me, it was becoming untenable, the amount of pain and suffering that this faith crisis issue was causing. And so it was a really heady time to be working with the former area authority, to be working with Marlon Jensen, to be working with Travis and Greg Prince to make all this happen. And so talk, if you don't mind, and so shout out to Travis, you're the man. Everyone else talk about what, what you say in your book, if you, if you happen to recall, I know you wrote it a couple years ago, just about, you know, Quentin Cook and, and Uchtdorf and how they play into this story.

Matt Harris [00:40:37] Yeah. So before I do that, John, I want to just. So you're absolutely right, there are a handful of people in this story, you included, of course. And as I note in the essay, and Travis is central to a lot of this, as is Marlon Jensen and Greg Prince, with whom I worked putting this together. He shared some valuable insights about his experiences. But also, I want to just give a shout out to one other person. I try to honor confidences, so. So I can't release the name of this person, but there was an LDS professor who played a role, both funding and otherwise. It's. It's an enormous undertaking to put together a. A rigorous sample size to make some meaningful conclusions about anything, really, in this case, why people are leaving the church. And so it's not just, you know, something that a couple of amateurs can do on their own. It just takes a lot of money. So anyway, this LDS professor had ponied up some of his own cash and also consulted on the design of it and the kinds of questions that needed to be asked. And I want to be clear to your readers, there's probably three different samples going on here. One of the ones that, of course, John, you did with Travis early on and that Craig participated, Greg Prince participated in, but also there were a couple of other later ones, and that was enormous for me to sort of straighten all this out. Why were there three different samples and who's doing what and where do they go? And so Travis was instrumental in helping me to untangle all of that. But anyway, but there was an LDS professor that played a role in this, that wanted to remain anonymous. So that's going to honor that wish. So. So this is all about connections, working personal connections. And Elder Jensen, of course, I think we've talked about it already, that there were connections, worked with him, that Hans Matzon knew him, put him in touch with you And Travis Greg Prince knew him. And it was also about. I want to back up just for a moment that, that after the essays were talked about at the Swedish Rescue fireside, that the church leaders knew they had to put these essays together. There's no question this was only going to get worse before it was going to get better. It was not something that you could just sort of shove aside and tell the Swedes what they want to hear and, and then just don't produce the essays. So, and that's not what I'm implying. I think the church was sincere from the get go to do these essays. The question is, what do you say in these essays? What subjects do you tackle and what do you not say? Because of course the church is about producing faith and testimony and it's already challenging enough to deal with some of these thorny topics about polyandry and polygamy and Adam, God, or, or just choose one. And the reason why it's thorny is because as I said at the onset of the show today, that the church leaders had either deliberately said that they, they weren't doing these things or teaching these things, or they had significantly downplayed them and now they're going to go on record and go in a different direction. And they were worried about producing a faith crisis. The irony of all of this is it's supposed to stave off faith crisis, but they were worried about producing a faith crisis that Latter Day Saints would be exposed to polyandry for the first time when they had never heard of it. And now they spiral out of control and ultimately leave the church. That was a real issue for the authorities. They did want to do more damage. And so, so what. What happened was, is that Elder Jensen and Greg Prince, who knows some of the apostles, they decided that Uchtdorf would be one of the. Dieter Uchtdorf who was then in the First Presidency. He would be one of the most open to receiving these essays. And also Quentin Cook got a, a copy and. But Uchtdorf in particular, and Travis shared an interesting story with me that it was August of 2013. So just to give you a sense of the timeline, this is just a few months before the essays were released and they didn't know. Can.

John Dehlin [00:44:52] Can I back up for just one second?

Matt Harris [00:44:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:55] Okay. Just, just because I think it. And you mentioned this in your book. Just because I think it's an important part of the timeline. So. So as I understand it, the meeting in New York City happened in the fall of 2012.

Matt Harris [00:45:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:09] That's when we presented the findings of, of the, the research called that, that, that I and and a group of researchers put together called Understanding Mormon Disbelief Survey. That was the data that was released and was given to Marlon Jensen at the time. That was the first study of the studies you reference. Right.

Matt Harris [00:45:29] And then, and your study John, by the way, was published in I think the spring of 2012. It was put online.

John Dehlin [00:45:37] Yeah, it was May. May of 2012.

Matt Harris [00:45:40] May of 2012. And this is the first time that I found, and nobody's corrected me on this, but this is the fir. Your study initially with, with, with Travis is the first systematic attempt by any Latter Day Saint to try to quantify why people are leaving the church. And I think that's an important issue. The church has been tracking this stuff internally for a long time, but this is stuff that's thrown away in the vault under lock and key and they don't want to know any of this. Let me if I can give it just a quick, quick backstory. In the late 1990s I remember going to a priesthood meeting with Apostle Holland, is at a meeting with Elder Holland. So this would have been 97 maybe. And he, he said at this priesthood meeting. So this is a private meeting before the Internet. And Elder Holland said that his, his, he was in town because his, his daughter and his son in law lived in our ward in New York. Anyway, so I got to know him a little bit and I used to teach a Sunday school class and he used to, he would come to my class and I would always turn to him and just ask him questions. The worst, most annoying thing you could do, just sit there and pick on an apostle. But anyway he was good natured about it. But I went to this priesthood meeting and he recognized that there was a faith crisis. And this is 97 or 98 probably 98 recognized there is a faith crisis then. And that was really interesting to I think probably most of us in the room because here you have an apostle that is really giving you a sneak peek behind the curtain which sort of belies the church narrative that the, the, the, the kingdom is like one big rock rolling down and getting stronger and more powerful as it goes. Well, during that session the kingdom was a pebble and it wasn't doing very well. And he was very honest and forthright about some internal documents that he referenced in his, his priesthood. It wasn't a lesson but his, his talk about that the church had been doing research. So this is all internal stuff. And so fast forward to March of 2012 and the stuff that you were working on. John, when you release this on the Internet in May of 2012, that's the first look where people a chance when people get a look to think this is why people are leaving. They're leaving over doctrinal issues and transparency issues. And the reason why that's important, important is that if you look at the writings of general authorities prior to that point, what it always talked about was they left because they got their feelings hurt, they were offended, they wanted to go party, they wanted to drink, they wanted to. All of this stuff. It put the onus on the member. It was somehow their behavior that had made them leave. And really what the surveys, you. Yours first and then the subsequent surveys were revealing was, is that the onus is now on the church. And I think that for. For not being more transparent about its teachings. And that is a fundamental point. And that's why I think that these. These surveys are really important.

Jensen's Warning About Unprecedented Apostasy

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Yeah, yeah. And. Yeah. And so I wanted to talk about Cook before we talk about Uchtdorf, just because I think that was important in your book. So. So the meeting happens in fall of 2011. I'm just trying to get my dates right. Then I meet, but then it's kind of silence and we don't hear anything. And then in January, I meet with Marlon Jensen at Utah State University. And that's at the same time that Marlon Jensen gives that little lecture on Utah State University campus. I had a friend record that lecture. And that's when. That's when Marlon Jensen makes that comment that the church is experiencing its greatest apostasies since the time of Kirtland. And that was a significant statement, right, Matt?

Matt Harris [00:49:35] That is huge. And the reason why it's huge is that Elder Jensen, of course, is speaking to a private group of Latter Day Saints at the institute. And again, I. I don't. I'm not here to be critical today. It's just not. Not what I want to do or who I am. But the church has tried to put out this message that all is well, right? That the church is going down the mountain like a big rock and getting stronger. And. And it didn't help that when a sociologist from the 1980s predicted there'd be 50 million Mormons by 2020 or 2030 or something like that. So there's a lot of hoopla with church growth and testimony building. And really what you got with Elder Jensen is the same thing we got with Elder Holland, that there, there are problems and they're recognizing them privately. And when Elder Jensen made that comment, it's an extraordinary comment that the church is having the greatest faith crisis since Kirtland. And that's huge because in LDS Church history, of course, a lot of Latter Day Saints, including church leaders, had left the church in Kirtland in the 1830s. So for him to use that Kirtland as a symbol, as a comparison was extraordinary. And once it got taped, and John, I'm sure you can add a detail or two to this, but once it got taped and that tape was put on the Internet, of course the media picks up on this and they publish stories about Elder Jensen's talk. Now, keep in mind, this is supposed to be private. And Elder Jensen, I haven't talked to him about this, but I can only imagine he was just crushed when this is talked and leaked to the public, because this is something that was not supposed to be for public years and especially in the media picks up on it. And I'm told through a mutual friend of, of ours, Jensen and of mine, that that Jensen got in a lot of trouble with that, that when he said that and it got leaked to the public and the press picked up on it and wrote about it. This is a confession that, that the church leaders did not want confessed in public. And we'll get to Uchtdorf in a minute. But this is the same thing that will happen to Dieter Uchtdorf when he does something similar in October of 2013.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] And of course, just like Richard Bushman had to walk back his statement that, that the, that the, the church's prevailing narrative, you know, was untrue and, and it was unsustainable. And then he walked that back. Once that got released, I think Marlon Jensen tried to walk back or recontextualize his comments as well, because he gets in trouble. And this is, this is one of the things that is a constant theme on Mormon stories is that the brethren just don't come clean. And they always have to try and hide and spin and recontextualize instead of just telling the full truth, which is, ironically, what the Mormon Church taught us to do is to tell the full truth. Right.

Matt Harris [00:52:32] So, yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say real quick, this is how big this is. I can't, I don't think we can underestimate how important the, the media coverage is from Jensen's talk. So let me give you the quote now. This is in the book, the quote and then the exact quote and then the, the newspaper coverage. So he said, quote, this is to the LDS Institute students at Utah State in January of 2012, Elder Jensen said Quote, not since Kirtland have we seen such an exodus of the church's best and brightest leaders. So that's the, that's the statement that really said a ripple effect throughout the LDS community. And then the Washington Post picked up on this story. So it's like this, this admission or this confession had initiated a wave of unflattering news coverage. The Washington Post ran a story, story about, talked about Jensen a little bit, but then talked about a former BYU student who, quote, spiritually exploded when confronted with challenging material on LDS history and doctrine. And then the Salik Tribune ran a story that said that, quote, more and more members of the Utah based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are leaving the fold feeling betrayed by what they find online. And then finally, a special Reuters report stated that Mormonism is being besieged by the modern age. Those three news reports prompted Terrell Givens, a respected LDS scholar, to concede that, quote, this is a real crisis. It is an epidemic. And then Joanna Brooks, another well respected LDS scholar, she wrote, quote, that it is time to come to terms with church history. And so all of these, these writings were published in newspapers within just a few weeks after Elder Jensen made this comment. And one of the things that the brethren don't like, of course, is who does really? But they don't like unflattering news coverage. And I guess I'm gonna, I don't usually do this, but I'm gonna do it today. You know, it's. Honesty is always, always, always, always the best policy. If you're honest, you really don't have to worry about as much as you do if you're not honest. And what I mean by that is if the church would say, yeah, we've got some challenges ahead of us. We, some of our leaders taught things in the past that we no longer teach today. And, and some of our members find this out on the Internet and we, we have to deal with it. We have to work with them to let them know that this is, that was the church then in, say, the 19th century, and here is the church today in the 21st century. And instead of taking that policy, I think most people are forgiving. I think that most Latter Day Saints can understand that the church was different, that if a leader ushered a racist statement or said something crazy about something sexist or whatever from a different time period, we can chalk that up to a function of their generation. And I don't think that that's hard to process. The difficulty is when you're trying to pretend that something is not going on when you know that it is. And that's really the challenge with church leaders today, is how do they recognize and deal with some of the controversial things that leaders had taught in the past without destroying somebody's faith? And even as we speak today on this podcast, leaders in Salt Lake have different views about how to do this. Some are more open and transparent, and some are less transparent. And one of the, your, your listeners might find this interesting, but one of the, the people that was, that wanted and advocated for a transparent history was, oddly enough, Bruce R. McConkey in the 1980s. He took a much different view than his good friend Boyd Packer, and also Ezra Jeff Benson. Bruce McConkey said that if we don't tell our history by our own historians, and we're not honest about it, somebody else will tell it for us. We would rather have our people do it than them. And for whatever reason, Elder Packer and Elder Benson won the day. And that's. They're the two biggest proponents of telling a faith promoting history. And they're also the two of the biggest proponents who wanted to shut down the church History Historians office and relegate church historian Leonard Arrington to the margins. So anyway, there's been some different voices among the high church leadership about how transparent one needs to be. And I know from various friends that I have, who know some of the apostles, the brethren, that some of those conversations are still taking place today.

The Challenge of Transparent Church History

John Dehlin [00:57:14] Yeah. And indeed, in that original, you know, why Mormons Disbelief, understanding Mormon disbelief survey, you know, of course, you know, we asked the biggest issues, you know, polygamy, polyandry, Book of Abraham, you know, masonry, all peep stones, all the problems. But there was a, there was a uber theme which was the feeling of being deceived. There are a lot of people that said, you know, I could have handled polygamy, I could have handled blacks in the priesthood. What I can't handle is that I feel like the church intentionally and systematically deceived me. And that's not forgivable. And, and, and that's, that's what many people felt.

Matt Harris [00:57:56] Yeah, I think so. I, and, and, you know, it's funny.

John Dehlin [00:58:03] And that's why the essays were an attempt to fix that. Right. We can't keep deceiving people.

Matt Harris [00:58:07] Well, it's true. And Terrell Gibbons has a great quote that we, that I note in this essay. He said something about if you're 50 years old and you've been in the church your entire life, you've been to seminary, been on a mission, Married in the temple, been active in the church, and all of a sudden, at age 50, you find that Joseph Smith buried his hat, his head in a hat, to translate the Book of Mormon, and he used a seer stone. That's problematic. That's challenging. Right. It contradicts the narrative he had been hearing his whole life. And the truth is, Mormons probably aren't any more weirder than anybody else in terms of some of the supernatural beliefs that Christians and maybe Muslims or Jews believe. When I say weird, I'm just talking about hard to understand to the eye. It doesn't make sense rationally. And that's what religion is. We take religion on faith. Right. Well, anyway, so if you grow up with a certain narrative your entire life, and then all of a sudden one day when you're surfing the Internet and you find something that challenges that narrative, you have a faith crisis. And Terrell Gibbons point is one in which I fully endorse, which is if you just work that into the narrative as you go along, teach the kids in seminary that this is how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, he looked in a hat. And if you can sort of inoculate them against that early on and work that into the narrative, then there won't be a faith crisis at the age of 50. And I think what you see now is a church having to work backwards to address some of those issues. But my sense is that once people leave the church, they're out, they're gone. And the church has data on this that I don't want to speculate too much because I don't have the report. But years ago, there was a study done at byu among some of the sociologists had done a study. It was commissioned by the church. And they looked at what it would take to keep people in the church. And not surprisingly, they were Latter Day Saints were more likely to stay in the church if they went to byu, which is one of the reasons why they wanted to keep this under wraps. Right. If it gets out that you're more likely to stay in the church, if you stay at BYU and your kid gets rejected at byu, now you have your own faith crisis. He's gonna leave the church.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:00:21] Anyway, they're more likely to pay tithing. They're more likely to go on a. Go on a mission. And I don't quote me on the details on this. It's been a long time since I talked with. With one of the. The authors of this. But the idea was that if you can, if they can get them to the mission, there was a strong chance that if they served a faithful mission they would marry in the temple and stay in the church. And they had data to support all of this stuff. So it's this really in, in many ways addresses this notion of why the church pushes so hard for kids to get on missions is because the data suggests they're more likely to be a type of high paying member and to stay and remain active and, and serve in their church callings if they go on a mission. And, and that's why the church has been I think transparent in this regard that missions are for the missionary as much as anything else. As much as, you know, bringing somebody into the faith, it's to save their own soul. So the churches, they've been data minded for a long time but this has been, this has all been done internally away from the earshot of the fold. If we can go back to the Internet for a moment and Quentin Cook, John and then resume the timeline, is that okay?

John Dehlin [01:01:34] Yeah, it's exactly where I was wanting to go. So basically I'll just say this final thing and that's that I meet with Marlon Jensen in January of 2012. That's sort of like hey, we met with you last fall. Nothing's happened, we've given you the data. And he says to me, give me a little bit more time and I, and I'll keep working on the brethren. And so that's when Marlon Jensen brings Travis Stratford to Salt Lake City. And Travis presents to like all of the major governing bodies of church administration with church PR with the historical department, with curriculum, with correlation with the missionary department. Travis goes to Mordor, no church headquarters and he presents to all the managing directors of all the major departments. And Quentin Cook and El Tom Perry were there, as I understand it, in that meeting and got the information. And so that was a real, that was just a real highlight for all of this because it's like wow, not only do we meet with Jensen, but Jensen brought our team into church headquarters, presented and it got presented to apostles. And what Marlon Jensen told me was that he needed the data and Travis to help push over the top approval for the essays. And that apparently happened in the spring of 2012. And this is where Quentin Cook's general conference talk later disappointed Travis and your book talks about this so we can pick up from there that then leads to the Uchtdorf thing the next year.

Matt Harris [01:03:12] Yeah, so, so Travis gives the presentation and let me, I'm going to find the exact reference but Travis gives the presentation and he walked in this is Travis's memory, of course, as he explained it to me a couple of years ago. But when he walked in, I want. What was it like, Travis? I mean, this is all new. You're doing, you're an outsider, you're meaning that you don't work for the church, that you have some data that challenges the church narrative, which is that people leave the faith because they've sinned, they want to party, they had their feelings hurt. I mean, this is what's been going on for decades. And, and what's really extraordinary about this is it was always the church leaders telling people why they left. It was never the people themselves telling why they left. And now, now Travis has some data on this. Let's listen to the people. What a novel idea. Listen to them about why they left. And I think, by the way, the church is much, much better about that today than they were, you know, six or seven years ago. But anyway, so Travis has got data. And I said, what was it like going into the room? He said, oh, I just looked and I had people just glaring at me. And he said that he remembered that one of the people glaring at him the most was, I guess, head of the CES institutes or so church education system. And just like, what are we doing here? And so, you know, it was a different response. There were some people who were, who really understood that this was a problem, that people were leaving the church because of the faith crisis issues that the church had generated and also that the church had to do something about it. And, and then there are other people in the room who just didn't take it seriously, including Apostle Cook. And Apostle Cook gave a. He gave a General Conference sermon shortly after Travis had met with them. And it really upset Travis because Elder Cook clearly didn't get what was going on, as evidenced by this General Conference sermon. And let me just read part of his address that I think might be helpful. He said, let's see here. Okay, this is Apostle Cook. This would be October of 2012. And he warned Latter Day Saints Elder Cook about the dangers of using the Internet to research church history. Cook addressed the issue in an LDS General Conference sermon in October of 2012, some six months after receiving a. A copy of Stratford's presentation. He stated some have immersed themselves in Internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of earlier church leaders. Further warning that church members could draw incorrect conclusions that affect their testimony, Cook counseled, any who have made these choices can repent and be spiritually Renewed. And then this is the first part of the next paragraph that I'll read. Cook's failure to grasp the larger issues of faith crisis frustrated Travis or Stratford for Latter Day Saints afflicted by doubt. Things were not that simple. The apostle's sermon ignored Delin's data. Your data, John, about why Latter Day Saints were leaving the church. It did not address the fact that the church had not been forthcoming about its history. And so what's frustrating about this for both myself as a scholar and also Travis and others who are studying this sort of thing, is that Elder Cook was just completely tone deaf. Here you have this thick presentation of qualitative data. By qualitative, we're talking about written paragraphs. This is who I was. I was an Elders Quorum president, I was a bishop, I was a this, I was a that.

Church Leaders React to Member Concerns

John Dehlin [01:07:16] Stake presidents, mission presidents.

Matt Harris [01:07:17] I was a state president, I was a mission president. They're reaching all of this stuff, and they go through great detail about why they left. It wasn't just like, you know, fill out this questionnaire. They did that too, to sort of get a quantitative perspective. But it was the qualitative perspective that really struck me, really bearing their souls. And I might add that the quantitative came first and then the qualitative. And I think Greg Prince told me that, or maybe it was Travis or both, that they actually was the LDS professor. He said, if you really want to strike a chord with the brethren, get their testimonies, make it qualitative in addition to quantitative. Anyway, so that's what they did. And, and, and by the way, I don't know if Elder Travis will have to correct this, but I don't know. I don't think that Elder Cook was at that meeting. It was just a bunch of. It was, it was the PR person, Mike Otterson. It was, it was a bunch of other people. I think Mike Otterson had given Travis's presentation to the apostles.

John Dehlin [01:08:22] The results, the, the packet that we created.

Matt Harris [01:08:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:08:26] I don't deliver to Cook.

Matt Harris [01:08:28] And when he went to Salt Lake City, though, I don't think. And I corrected, but I don't think that the two apostles were in that meeting. They were. It was Mike Otterson, the church PR guy. It was the institute guy. It was like you said, church bureaucratic heads who were there, but the apostles were not there, as I recall. And so Mike Otterson is the person who delivered the presentation to the two apostles. And Elder Perry and Elder Cook were, were over the church public relations department at the time. And that's what Was their connection was. And I will say that after that presentation, Greg Prince himself had delivered one of the surveys to the apostles, working his personal connections. And so they did have access to this. And this leads us to, if I can jump ahead now, to Dieter Uchtdorf. So Travis had worked it out with Uchtdorf's secretary. Travis was going to be in Salt Lake for something.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] This is, this was the following summer, right?

Matt Harris [01:09:29] Yep, the following summer. So this would have been, I think August of 2013. Maybe it was September, but I think it was. And anyway, so Uchtdorf was supposed to be there and receive Travis's this, this, this other service, qualitative survey directly. I mean, when I say quality, it's huge. It's a massive, massive file.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] And just to, just to add a tiny bit. So between the quantitative study and what became the qualitative study, it was basically Travis and Greg saying the quantitative data wasn't enough, we need the qualitative. But Travis's gift, one of his many gifts is he's such an incredible graphic designer. So he puts together this bound, beautifully graphically designed set of charts with all these qualitative. It's like this gorgeous tome of rich visual and, you know, inspiring emotional data. Travis spent years working on this. And so it was a year after the Salt Lake, the first Salt Lake City meetings, maybe a year and a half where Travis, that summer before Uchtdorf's famous talk, has this, this new bound, sort of second study enhanced, personally delivered to Dieter Uchtdorf that summer of 2013. Correct?

Matt Harris [01:10:54] Yeah, well said. Because it is a beautifully. I mean he is a graphic designer in the PowerPoint. He shared the PowerPoint that he had given to the church heads and that was beautifully done too. And then he created this, this massive document that was so well done. It's the LDS professor and also Greg Prince participated in this. Anyway, so, so some of the other apostles, Perry and Cook had a version of it, but he had further refined the draft that he gave to Dieter Uchtdorf. And so it was really all shiny and polished. It was, it was really a nice work. It was of piece of work. Anyway, so Travis had worked with Uchtdorf's secretary to deliver personally at church headquarters a copy to Uchtdorf. And Uchtdorf was supposed to be there to meet with them. Well, it turns out that Uchtdorf wasn't there. I don't know if he was sick or I think he was. Had to be out of town for a church assignment the last minute or something. But anyway, Travis had delivered A copy of the survey to Uchtdorf's secretary, and she said, I'll make sure that he gets it. And this was. This is October, I think, of 2013, might have been September. But here's the important point about this. Dieter Uchtdorf, who's long known to be the most open and liberal of the general authorities, he doesn't follow a traditional general authority path. He's not from Idaho or Utah. He's not from the Intermountain West. He is from Germany. And Uchtdorf gave this extremely controversial address in October of 2013 at General Conference. I like to say that it's the equivalent of what Marlon Jensen did in January of 2012 at Utah State. That is, he's revealing things that some of the brethren don't want revealed. Only the difference is Marlin did his in private, whereas Uchtdorf is doing his in public to the church body. And what's. I'm going to read part of it because I, I really. If that's okay, John. I think it's so important his words. Right.

Uchtdorf's Controversial General Conference Talk

John Dehlin [01:13:02] And do you have any indication whether Uchtdorf got this approved, whether all the brethren were on board with him giving this talk? Because you get a sense that he got in trouble for this talk at some point.

Matt Harris [01:13:11] Right? Hang tight on that.

John Dehlin [01:13:13] What's that say? Oh, okay, okay.

Matt Harris [01:13:15] I'll address that in just a sec. Yeah, because I do have an insight into that. See here? So uchtdorf, October of 2013, he gives this controversial general Conference talk. And this is really interesting. So he says that. So I'll just read it. In a landmark October 2013 LDS conference address, Uchtdorf admitted that, quote, there have been something said and done by LDS leaders that could cause people to question, end quote. He further confessed, quote, and to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine. Uchtdorf also rejected the notion that Latter Day Saints leave the church because they have been offended and are lazy or sinful. Actually, it is not that simple. There is not just one reason that applies to the variety of situations, end quote. Although Uchtdorf did not name a specific doctrine or teaching when church leaders may have erred, his remarks revealed an intuitive awareness that controversial LDS teachings were pushing many members away from the church they had once loved, and that's his phrase, the church they'd once loved. Uchtdorf's concerns were well founded. According to statistical reports, church growth was 1.7% in 2015, the lowest since 1937. By comparison, in 1979, the year following the black priesthood revelation, the growth rate stood at 6.7%. So Uchtdorf goes on record in front of the church body. And he said that we, my colleagues and I have taught things that have caused people to question. I mean, I cannot emphasize how. What a, what an important comment that is, what a controversial comment that is, because the brethren don't lead people astray. And now Uchtdorf is saying, yeah, we do. And so. And he also said something that's interesting. He pushed back against the traditional narrative that people leave because they sin, they're lazy, they don't want to go to church, and all that stuff he's saying, don't say that. That's not true. Well, Travis's survey has convinced him that that's not true. He's seen the data and bless him for speaking truth to the data. So he acknowledges this in October 2013 and in December of 2013. I have a personal experience with this. I happened to be in Salt Lake on a research trip and I had an appointment with Mike Otterson of the. He was at the time the head of the church's PR department. Really a nice guy, really enjoyed. Geez. I was with him for two or three hours. It seems like it was a long time. And the purpose of that meeting was I was doing a book at the time on Blacks and Mormons, the first book. I'm doing a second book on Blacks and Mormons now. It's most much different book. But anyway, I was doing a book on blacks and Mormons and I was writing about Mormon Doctrine, Elder McConkey's best selling work. And the church newspapers had said that. More I should say. The Desert News had said that Mormon doctrine went out of print in 2010 because of low book sells. I knew that wasn't true. That was a load of malarkey.

John Dehlin [01:16:45] And why did it, why did it go out of print?

Matt Harris [01:16:48] Yeah, so, yeah, I'm not. Not permitted to say on record here.

John Dehlin [01:16:53] Okay.

Matt Harris [01:16:54] I wish I could.

John Dehlin [01:16:55] No, that's a good answer.

Matt Harris [01:16:57] Yes. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you as much as I can tell you. There's a lot to the story that I'm not at liberty to say. Anyway, so I went to him and I, I had the Desert News article and I said, I said, mike, I'm not here to beat the church up or, you know, but you and I both know this is, this is nonsense. This is complete nonsense. It's the best selling book. It was. It has been for decades and it still is today. You know that and I know that.

John Dehlin [01:17:25] I think you have 40 printings in your book. That it's. That it went through 40 printings.

Matt Harris [01:17:30] Yeah, yeah. It's an. Yes. And he looks at me, this is what he does. He goes like this, he goes, oh, I wish we wouldn't have said that. Meaning the Deseret News. It went out of print because of low sells. I wish we wouldn't have said that. And I said, look, I'm not here again. I'm a scholar. I'm not. I don't do gotcha stuff that's just garbage. I don't care for that stuff. I just need a statement that the church can give me that I can quote that, that says why it went out of print. I'll even write the statement and when I get back to Colorado, I'll write the statement. And he said, well, okay, that's good, that's good. And what I'll say is that it went out of print because it no longer represents the values of the church. And it was produced, you know, 50 years ago when the time was different or something like that, but just no longer represents a church value, something innocuous. He said, that'd be good, that'd be good. So I went back to Colorado. Oh, and he said that, oh, by the way, it'll take a while when you send me the statement. It'll take a while because it's got to get approved by the brother. It's got to go up to the 12 in the first presidency. I said, that's fine, whatever it takes. So I went back to Colorado and I wrote a two paragraph statement about why it went out of print. And sure enough, two months later he wrote back to me and he said, the Brethren have approved this and I think they fixed one sentence or something and that was the reason why I met with him. But there's more to that story. So I'm trying to get permission to tell more to the story for my next book. So stay tuned. But anyway, we had a long discussion about a lot of things and he was very gracious and I asked him, I said, this is December 2013, two months after Uchtdorf's controversial talk. And I said, what did Uchtdorf mean? What did President Uchtdorf mean when he said that? That the Brethren have said things that may have caused people to question. And he looked at me and he thought for a couple of seconds and he said, you know, I get asked that often. Let's. Let's ask. He turns around in his chair and he hits speed dial and calls up Uchtdorf. And in this, you know, thicker German accent, I could. I could hear everything. You know, I'm right there, not too far away. And he said, I've been getting asked a lot. This is Mike Artisan, the head of the church pr, talking to the second Council in the First Presidency. He said, I get asked a lot about what you meant, that brethren have said things that may have caused people to question. What did you mean? And Uchtdorf paused on the phone for a second and he said, he said it means whatever Latter Day Saints want it to mean. So he didn't give anything specific about whether it was polygamy or blacks in the priesthood. He didn't say any about that. He just wanted to go on record saying, we're aware. And so Utterson hangs up the phone. He turns to me, said, oh, you heard it all. That's all I got.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] So this is a nothing burger. It's a big fat nothing burger.

Matt Harris [01:20:30] Nothing burger. But I heard later on through the grapevine that Uchtdorf got in trouble for that talk, that he, you know, he's acknowledging stuff that they don't, that some of the leaders don't want to acknowledge. And it was Elder Packer who, Who got after him. And I, I can't. I want to. I just can't emphasize this enough. I've been studying the apostles and the prophets and their writings, their correspondence, their diaries, their journals, their meeting minutes, their memos. I've seen a lot of stuff. And one of the things that I always, always emphasize when I talk to Latter Day Saints or even scholars or just lay Latter Day Saints, laypersons, which is the Brethren, are not always a monolith. Don't think that they are. It's like saying that the founding fathers all are all this way. They're all religious or they're all atheists. You sort of see, none of that's true. The truth is, is that some of them, none of them were atheists, but some of them were not really religious believers. And some of them were. And you, you get the, the same sense here with the, the apostles, that some of them have vastly different opinions about an array of topics. And I know that shouldn't sound startling to people because we all have different views. We're human beings. But we tend to put the brethren on this pedestal that somehow they're all on the same page. And that's complete nonsense. And so With Elder Packer, I know that he didn't like Dieter Uchtdorf's acknowledgment. He just didn't like it at all. And I could speculate maybe there are others who didn't like it, but I'm certain that there were others who said yes, that needed to be said. And so they bring their personality differences to bear on these kinds of things.

Speculation on Uchtdorf's Removal from First Presidency

John Dehlin [01:22:10] There's a quick question. Is this why Uchtdorf isn't in the First Presidency? From Jamie, do you have any speculation on that or data? Because, I mean, my narrative would be that Uchdorf got in trouble for sticking his neck out for people in Faith crisis, and that ultimately, along with whatever dynamics led to him being demoted, disinvited from the First Presidency when Russell M. Nelson took over from Thomas S. Monson. And we really haven't heard a lot from him since. He's kind of been, it feels like he's kind of been silenced in the quorum, so to speak.

Matt Harris [01:22:44] Yeah. So I don't, I don't have any direct evidence I can speculate. So this is. Just take it for what it's worth. It's pure speculation. But, but keep in mind that Uchtdorf is, is, he's cut from a different cloth. He's, he's, he's, he didn't grow up in Utah culture, Idaho, Mormon culture. And so he sees things differently. And for a lot of Latter Day Saints, that's great, right? You welcome that sort of openness. He's like the Hubie Brown of our time in terms of being open and more tolerant of perhaps some things in the church that other of the brethren aren't tolerant of. And so here's my speculation that this talk got him in trouble. There's no doubt about it that Elder Packer was upset. But also Elder Packer had said some things, and I don't want to go off on a big tangent here, but Elder Packer had said some things about our gay brothers and sisters in General Conference that I know, you know, John, a lot about, and some of your listeners do that. He said that a loving God would never make somebody that way. Well, obviously, people going through, you know, coming out of the closet or dealing with their sexuality and how painful that could be growing up in an orthodox Mormon home that, that teaches that, you know, being heteronormative is the, the way to go, that's a challenge. And so when he says a loving God would never make someone this way, I mean, that's, that's hurtful. And I'M told that after that address was over that President Uchtdorf had given some. Visited state conferences and regional conferences and basically gave a different narrative. And it got back to Packer and he was really upset about it. And also by the way, the Brethren had taken some of the most controversial parts of Packer's conference sermon out about that. A loving God would never make you that way. And so clearly it wasn't just Uchtdorf behind this. And what was interesting here's me being reading between the lines here, so take it for what it's worth. But I remember looking at Uchtdorf,

John Dehlin [01:24:45] he

Matt Harris [01:24:45] made a special trip to BYU to look at the, to go to the museum there, the Bean Museum on the lovely museum on the BYU campus. And don't know if Elder Packer is. Paintings were there permanently or just on an exhibit. I'm not sure, but they were there. And the Church News I think had published something about Elder Uchtdorf and his wife going there to visit Brother Packer's paintings. And I, I sort of read that as ah, he's trying to make it right. And it's the same thing that happened to Dallin Oaks, you know, years ago when Oaks and Packer had a very high profile dust up in the 1990s over an issue. I mean when I say high profile, I'm talking about made the Washington Post Oaks called Packer a grizzly bear. He said you can't stage manage a grizzly bear. And that created a lot of controversy. And anyway, later on you see Elder Oaks pushing the wheelchair of Elder Packer like they're, you know, chums from, from, you know, years past. So. But there is a, I mean the quorum of the 12, as the doctor kind of talks about, it's predicated upon unanimity, it's predicated upon cordiality. And they have to get along otherwise the whole purpose of the Quorum doesn't function well. And disagreeing and not getting along of course are two different things. And there are intense moments with Oakes and Packer and also Uchtdorf and Packer where they weren't getting along. And so my speculation is is that Russell Nelson and Dallin Oaks, they just not. Well, I say Dallin Oaks because he's a significant power player in the, in the leadership today. But they dropped him because he was, he was outspoken and he wasn't. I don't know if he always followed the party line.

John Dehlin [01:26:32] Yeah, that makes sense. And it's a bummer. And so shout out to Uchtdorf. I know He's a listener. I'm just kidding. I have no idea if he's a listener, but shout out to Uchtdorf and Marlon Jensen and everyone else for their courage and Travis Stratford again for spearheading so much of this. So Uchtor gives that talk and then, and then the essays come out right in, in what, what month did the first essay drop?

Matt Harris [01:26:56] December.

John Dehlin [01:26:57] December of night of 2013. Right.

Matt Harris [01:27:00] Yeah. Quick story about that.

John Dehlin [01:27:01] Okay.

Matt Harris [01:27:02] I don't think it's in my book. I don't think, but the story is it. The first essay dropped on late on a Friday afternoon by design. And in the, of course, the, the, the. In the journalist world, if you want to get minimum exposure to something, drop it on a Friday afternoon when people are going into the weekend. And a couple of my contacts who worked on the essays told me that that was by design, that it was. It was. Let me get this straight, who. I think it was President Monson. I think it went all the way up to the top that President Monson is the one that wanted it dropped on a Friday afternoon that is released so that it might somehow miss the purview of some of the national news outlets.

John Dehlin [01:27:50] That's so funny. Let's, let's now go back and follow a different thread, which is the. How the essays got created. Do you mind even going back to the original authors and then tracing kind of the committee process? What can you tell us about how the essays were created, who created them and, you know, what. What led to their release and then what the rollout strategy was, which you just sort of, you know, made a reference to. But in your book you go into more detail about how explicitly, you know, soft, soft release they wanted the essays to be. You know what I mean?

Origins and Timeline of the Essay Releases

Matt Harris [01:28:27] Yeah, yeah. So. So going back to, again, the. The Swedish rescue Fireside, where it was first acknowledged that there are questions and they are coming. And this is the first time the church is going to try to put together something systematically about these difficult issues, whereas before it was BYU professors or maybe teachers in the church education system who were sort of doing this on their own. Publishing with Desert Book, for example. Now, this is a church effort, and it goes to the highest echelons of church leadership. They'll be signed off by the First Presidency themselves. And so what they did was they decided they wanted to have scholars, typically people with PhDs, who would take the first stab at the draft process. And many of these essays were really, really long. I mean, I'm talking about 30, 40 pages. They were very detailed and they didn't know what would be the most helpful. And so they asked scholars, and I can talk about some of the scholars in just a moment who produced them. But they wrote these lengthy pieces. And so the scholars took the first stab at it and then it went to the next layer, which would be historians in house, that is on the church payroll. And then once they scrubbed it and edited it, and then it went up to the apostles and some of the apostles had a larger or more significant role than others. Quentin L. Cook, for example, one of my contacts told me, quote, had a very sharp pencil, nice way of saying that he was very active in the editing process. And then it went up to the First Presidency themselves. So it was a very elaborate process process. And it's similar to the Joseph Smith papers those are signed off these, these wonderful primary source documents that the church historians have been producing over the last several years. This multi volume collection of the prophet Joseph Smith. Anyway, the brethren sign off on those too. So nothing is going out without their, their input. And the question they had was what would be the best format to release them and also how long should they be? And I know that some of the essays they had, I think, three tiers to them, the longer pieces, shorter pieces and really short pieces. And in the end they chose to go with the shorter pieces, thinking that Latter Day Saints would not read some 40 page, you know, document full of footnotes. And so, but that was, that was a struggle because what's the point of producing them unless you can, they're readable to the public. The next point is how do we release them knowing that the Church is now acknowledging things that they had once not acknowledged or they had significantly downplayed. We don't want to make more trouble for ourselves. We don't want to cause a faith crisis. So this is why you don't see them released in General conference or talked about in General Conference. This is why you don't see them, you know, broadcast all over the Church news or the ensign. Now that's a little bit different today, I want to be clear on that. But initially I'm talking about when they first came out. They really wanted to hide them. They didn't want them known to the church body. They wanted them, as one of my contacts put it, they wanted them four clicks away on the Internet. And the purpose of that was that if somebody was having a faith crisis and they went to their bishop, they could say, bishop, I've read all of this stuff on the Internet and the Church is hiding its history and the bishop could say, no, that's not true. Let's go to lds.org and it's right there. That was the initial intention.

John Dehlin [01:32:05] And you have a term for that. Tell us the term you use.

Matt Harris [01:32:09] Well, this isn't my term, but it was somebody coined the term plausible deniability. So anyway, so they the problem with that, that strategy was the bishops didn't know about it. And again, we're talking about in the early years of the release, we're not talking about years later because it's much different today. And some of the apostles have talked about these essays. Well, anyway, it was, as Elder Snow put it, it was a soft rollout. And they recognized right away that there were problems with this so called soft rollout because some inquisitive Latter Day Saints who keep their ears to the ground had discovered them and they had started to teach from them in their Sunday school lessons. And there was a story told. Peggy Fletcher Stacket, I think it was Peggy's in the Salt Lake Tribune. She did an essay or a story on a Latter Day Saint in Hawaii who was teaching his youth Sunday school class. I'm not sure what the lesson was, but he appealed to the Race and Priesthood essay. As I recall, he was in a biracial marriage. He and so those issues were important to him. And he had appealed to this document in his class and it got back to the bishop and the bishop released him for teaching from unauthorized sources. The Stoic Tribune noted. And of course, this is crazy because this is on the LDS Church website. And so nobody knew about these essays. And there were a couple of circular, I talk about this in the book, but there were a couple of just, you know, private circular letters to some of the priesthood leaders throughout Utah and Idaho about the letters. But for the most part they were largely unknown to the church body. And and so finally, after stories started leaking that that people were teaching from them, these unauthorized sources. And also too, the story leaked at byu, for example, when some of the professors talked about the essays, some of the students were talking about, oh, these are just PR releases from the church. Well, these aren't PR releases. This is signed off by the First Presidency themselves. So to call it a PR release really undermines, you know, what this is about. So the church recognized that they were they're in alerts. They had to really address this issue. And this is where you get Elder Ballard, don't quote me on the time it's in the book, but I think it's 2017. He gave a church wide fireside to the young adults of the church in the church education system. And he basically said that, he said teachers in the CES system. So teachers and students, you should know these essays like the back of your hands. Gone are the days where we can tell people, don't worry about your faith concerns. Put them on the shelf. I hate that metaphor. Put them on the shelf and forget about them. Move forward. And so Elder Ballard said something instructive. You know, know them like the back of your hands. And then after that address they started to work the church essays into some of the curriculum of the church and also into the four volume Saint series. They, they make references to the gospel topics essays there. And so really the strategy is, is they still haven't talked about them in general conference as far as I know or, or the enzyme. And if, if, if that's true and I missed it, then somebody please let me know. But the strategy is let's talk about them slowly and slowly work them in to our curriculum. And that, that'll, that'll be the equivalent of that 50 year old learning for the first time on the Internet that the prophet used a, a seer stone as he trans. In a hat as he, as he translated the Book of Mormon. We're going to just sort of bring them into the story. And that's the, that's what they've been doing. And I know that they use them at, I know for a fact they use them at, in the BYU Religion department. A number of some of my friends who teach there are very active in promoting these essays there. So, so the question is people ask who are the scholars? And I don't think this is a secret. I'm not divulging anything that's secret about any of this stuff. I didn't put this in the book for, for a reason. I think it's important to know why I didn't put the, this, the names of the scholars in the book. And the reason is, is Anul, my co editor, we were on the same page with this is that we wanted people to focus on the essence of the essays and not get hung up with who wrote them. I think that is really, really important. Important is. And so, and also too it was done by committee really. I mean the scholars that I'll, I'll mention in just a moment, they took the first stab at this. But it was done by a committee and it was done by Latter Day Saints whom the church historians and the general authorities thought could assist them in this process. People who were outspoken, who had written themselves about these various topics. And so that's why you don't see authors attached, because it really was done by committee anyway. So Terrell Givens had a, had a. Played a role in some of these essays. I'm not he's his. The exact one that he wrote, I'm not quite sure about. I think it was becoming like God, but I'm not 100% certain on him. Book of Mormon and DNA Studies Ugo Perego, who wrote a lot, who still writes a lot about Book of Mormon, the book of Mormon DNA. Also, Matt McBride from the Church Historian's Office participated. McBride also worked on the Book of Mormon translation. Steve Harper, BYU scholar who just published a book on the First Vision. He wrote the first vision accounts, acknowledging that there were multiple First Vision accounts. Patrick, let's see. Patrick Mason wrote the essay on peace and violence among 19th century latter day Saints. And Patrick has done lots of great work on, on violence from the 19th century. And clearly he was a good person for that role. There were three polygamy essays, Plural Marriage and Kirtland and Nauvoo. Brian Hales, who wrote, who's written a number of books on Mormon polygamy from an apologetic perspective. So Brian was person to write here. Brian, I might add, parenthetically, is the only person on this list that I could see who was not trained as an historian. That doesn't diminish whatever one thinks of his work. I want to be clear on that. But he's certainly been prodigious in producing a number of books on polygamy. And I know he's working on other projects, but he's a medical doctor by profession and he's been very involved in the Mormon scholarly community and heck of a nice guy, too. Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah BYU professor Retired BYU professor Katherine Danes, who wrote a book on polygamy during that time period. The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage was written by the Richard Bushman Chair of Mormon History at the University of Virginia, a scholar named Kathleen Flake, who has written on plural marriage in the early 19th century and done some remarkable scholarship. Race in the Priesthood essay written by my friend Paul Reeve. Again, these are first drafts, so it's not, it's not fair to say that what was eventually published looks like the first draft they turned in, because that's just not the case. It had gone through several different iterations from various people, so I want to be clear on that. But nonetheless, these folks took the first stab at it. So Paul Reeve did Race in the priesthood and Paul did a wonderful book talking about Mormons and race from the 19th century that had deservedly won the Mormon History association best book award A few years back. Jed Woodworth of the Church History Department, he wrote the one on translation historicity of the Book of Abraham. And he was also a person who assisted with Richard Bushman's book on Rough Stone Rolling that was published on. On the Prophet Joseph Smith that was published in 2005. And then the essays on Mother in Heaven and Joseph Smith's teachings about priesthood, temple and women were both written by two women, two scholars who work for the Church History Department. Lisa Olson Tate and Jenny Reader. And so this is nothing secretive here. I don't know why sometimes we talk about it as secretive. It shouldn't be a secret. But anyway, Elder Snow had shared these names with me. I knew most of them already, but I guess I didn't ask about the. Our Mormons, Christians 1. I'm not sure who wrote that one. And becoming like God. I know that Terrell Givens wrote at least one of those. But anyway, the other ones Elder Snow had filled in for me and so if I got them wrong, I'm gonna blame it on him.

Authorship, Soft Launch, and Reception of the Essays

John Dehlin [01:40:58] So we've got a couple questions about. Thank you for giving those names. I don't know that those have ever been shared publicly all in one place. A couple, A couple comments questions. My. My good friend Samuel Pinson writes and I'm going to read a couple questions comments and then have you respond. Samuel asks, doesn't the lack of attribution on the essays allow plausible deniability for current and future church leaders? And then Kimberly, my dear friend Kimberly writes, John, could you ask Matt his opinion on why none of the gospel topic essays are attributed and there's also no date. So there's no date on them. There's no attribution. You know, why. Why did they choose that, that approach?

Matt Harris [01:41:43] Well, the first one is it's done by committee. So I think again, I mean, who would be the author? So I, I think I, I could be wrong on this, but I've talked to a number of Church history employees about this. I think the idea was that it was done by committee, truly was done by a committee. And so to put something, somebody's name down, it would be just not. It just wouldn't be right. And you certainly can't put done by committee. Right. Of 17 people. And I think that now people have. Elder Snow has been very vocal about this. He. He's publicly acknowledged that, that scholars participated. And let me just Say something too is with the race and the priesthood essay, it wasn't just Paul Reeve who produced the first draft, but they reached out to Patrick Mason and I think Patrick and Armin Moss, my good friend Armand Moss, the late Armin Moss, I think it was Patrick that said one of the critiques that he made was, hey, look, this isn't just a priesthood band. This is a temple band too. And so you see that in the final draft of the essay, it's not just a priesthood band. Black women are affected by this too. They can't go to the temple. And I think that was Patrick Cornetpatrick's contributions. And that's, that's, that's enormous. That's significant. And then Armin weighed in and also of course my, my friend Darius Gray also weighed in. So they did reach out to people in the preliminary process and then it worked up its way up the chain. And I'll share a quick story. Well, let me answer the question. I have another story I want to share about this. So that's why they didn't do it, because so many people participated in this process and the reason why they didn't put a date on it, because it was kind of anticipated all along that they would be revising these essays. And I haven't taken the time to follow these essays, you know, day by day. Oh, they made a change today. I know some people do that. They've got far more time on their hands than I do. But, but one of the things I noted in the book is that the Newell and I noted in the book was was that that these essays would be revised and that the, the essays that, that that new and I and our scholars were critiquing were the essays that were Originally published in 2013. And it was important to know that because I don't want someone to go back five years from now. Wait a minute, look at the essay online and look at what you wrote. Well, the chances that that essay's evolved, I don't know how many times they've evolved or been added to or even detracted from since they were first published. But I know that they have been changed, including the one that I've worked on, race in the priesthood. So that's why they left the date out because it was, it was commonly understood that these essays would evolve and would be added to. So I hope that that answers the question. Oh, you're.

John Dehlin [01:44:42] Kimberly gives a follow up comment. She says it would be Lovely if the First Presidency or COR the 15 could sign off on them, like, they do the proclamations. And thanks, Kimberly, for that. And I'll just add one of the things, you know, you mentioned some of the things that were super frustrating. One was that no one knew about these things. So, like, I'm getting excommunicated, you know, literally by 2014, 2015, I'm telling my stake president and bishop these things that I've known forever, they're like, I've never heard of this stuff. You're getting these from anti Mormon resources. And I'm like, no, I'm getting this from the church's own website. But they had never read the essays. And not only they never read the essays, they didn't even know the essays existed. And this was a big problem for a lot of people. Their decision to make this soft launch really hurt a lot of people during a time where they were really going after excommunicating Jeremy Reynolds, excommunicating Sam Young, Bill Real Me, Kate Kelly, all these excommunications were happening, and the church didn't even bother to inform and educate their own lay leadership about the essays that. That they themselves were putting out. That was really frustrating. But then also, I know so many people that, like, they were going through a faith crisis, so their parents are like, where are you learning this stuff? You're getting it from anti Mormon sources. They would, you know, these people would share the essays with their own parents and the parents would say, oh, no, the church website must have been hacked because none of that stuff's true. And so those are. Those essays must be fake or hacked or. And so, like, if the church had been willing to sign them and if they would still, that would make it just a lot easier, let alone talk about it in General Conference. That there's something I feel like, unfortunate and or slimy disingenuous about just not, you know, broadcasting with the bullhorn all throughout the church that these essays exist now. Ballard gave his talk. I think that was at some fireside somewhere, but we really do need them to be signed off and for there to be General Conference talks given. And this stuff let known in the Ensign, or now it's called the Liahona, whatever it is, because to this day, I bet this stuff has only penetrated 5% of the church's consciousness. Is that fair to say?

Matt Harris [01:47:03] Yeah. Yes. I think it depends on where you are, of course, in the church. It depends on where you live. I know that I have some friends in Salt Lake who went to their bishop and they said, hey, look, these are really important. And can, can I give a fireside on these? And the, they're, they're approved by the church. And this, this friend of mine, the bishop or the state actually went all the way up to the stake president. He said yes. And so they covered each of the 13 essays over a period of 13 weeks. And so over a year took them to get through this. But my friend who's sort of a quasi gospel scholar, he's not an academic, but he's certainly involved in the Mormon scholarly world as a book publisher. And anyway, so his stake president had given him permission to do this. Whereas my mother in her ward in Atlanta, Georgia, where she lives, I said she knows about these essays because of me. But I said did you know about them before we talked about them? And she said no. And she said do you think anybody in your Atlanta ward knows about them? And she said no, the people who know about them read them about them online on the Internet because they're not talked about. And again, the whole idea is they want to avoid a faith crisis. And so if they can work this in slowly into the curriculum, then it's not an issue anymore. And that, that just takes time. But I also want to say from talking to some of the good people who put these together, this is, they're wading into uncharted territory. There's no blueprint for any of this stuff. And I know it's easy for me and for you and maybe listeners to say, ah, they should sign their names and they should do this and take a bullhorn and broadcast it. But from their perspective, they have to go slowly and they're learning as they go, especially as they're reading in the Solic Tribune about some dude in Hawaii who gets released for teaching from church approved pieces or byu. A story in the local Sali Tribune that these are PR pieces. Well, that's complete nonsense. They're not PR pieces. This is a very thought out and engaged process by many people over many months who are trying to do the right thing, however inept they may be at times. And, and so here's a quick story about, about how really this speaks to this issue, that they just don't want this stuff out because of the faith crisis issues. And one of my friends was talking to Elder Cook one day, Apostle Cook, and he was upset that one of the essays that he cared about was this needs to be broadcast. Let's, can you, can you give a sermon in general conference? Elder Cook, can one of you or the brethren talk about this in general conference? Conference? And Elder Cook looked at him, they're in a meeting. Elder Cook looked at him and he said, we have gone about as far as we can go. That's an exact quote. We have gone about as far as we can go. And what he meant by that was, there are people in the quorum who do not support the release of these essays. There, There are some of us who do and some of us who don't. And it's that, again, speaking, that idea that they have different views and some take the view that just go full enchilada. Release them all. Broadcast them from the top of the temple in Salt Lake and let people know about them. That'll be helpful. And others, no way. And I might add, again, listeners can disagree or shake their heads at this, but their fears are well founded. There are tons of Latter Day Saints who have left the church over these essays, not just in the United States, but around the world. Just a personal story. Never forget it. I was, I was at the. I was at the tire place, like, I don't know, four years ago or something and getting my car worked on. And I'm just waiting. I had like an hour to kill. I just really reading Sports Illustrated online, you know, as I'm waiting for my car, my former brother in law, who's from Peru calls me and I say, former, my sister. And he had been divorced for a number of years at that point. And he reaches out to me and he said, matt, in his very thick Peruvian accent, Matt, have you heard of these gospel topics essays? I said, he didn't know that I was doing a book, you know, at that very moment. And I said, yeah, I've heard of him. He said, I just came across them and I'm just astonished. I'm having this faith crisis. That's the word he used. I'm having a faith crisis. And this is a guy, by the way, who's on the high council in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm having this faith crisis. And, and I just, you know, I listened, I said, well, what's going on? And anyway, so he went through some of the issues. He said, I've been teaching these things my entire life about blacks, about polygamy, about this, about that. And now I'm being told that that wasn't right. This bothers me. And so my, my former brother in law, nice guy, he among a lot of Latter Day Saints have had these issues. And I, I should say that I've had people send me stuff that I don't normally go fishing or surfing the Internet for this stuff, but I had a, a relative of mine who I, I don't know, I hadn't talked to this relative in a long time, but she sent me a link and she said, have you heard about this guy here was a BYU Idaho student and he went through this very lengthy and detailed and really eloquent post that he made on some website about how he came across the Gospel topics essays and he didn't know they were church approved. So he went on this mission to disprove the writers. And I don't know who he thought wrote them, but he went on this mission to prove that we, whatever they said in these essays were wrong, that Joseph Smith didn't use a seer stone. And anyway, as he got further into the research, he said, I just, I just exploded. I couldn't, I realized that these essays were right. And he ended up leaving the church. That was the purpose of the post. So the brethren, I mean, they had every right to be concerned. And I don't have any good data for anybody to share with anybody, and I doubt the church does either about how the Gospel topics essays have forced people out of the church. But I would argue maybe Jana Reese, who's done some wonderful work with disaffection and some of the things that she's done recently, maybe she might explore this topic. But I wonder if the people that struggle with these essays, you know, sort of like the bullseye narrative. The people the bullseye here are the most orthodox, the most, I don't want to use the word conservative, but the most orthodox, faithful Latter Day Saints. And then you get maybe liberal progressive types who are a little bit on the outskirts of the ring. A little bit. They're not off the bulls or the, the, the bullseye yet, or the dart board, if you will, but they're on the outer parts of the ring. And then they come across these, these faith crisis, these LDS Gospel topics essays. And that's what makes them jump off the, the cliff, if you will, figuratively speaking. Whereas the people in the middle of the ring, it doesn't make them jump off the cliff, but it makes them move a few inches or few feet to the right. And that's, I think, a good way to think about how the church does these things is that they're really trying to protect those people right in the middle. The bullseye, the people on the outskirts, whatever pulls them to the outskirts, whether it's LBTTQ issues, whether it's, whatever it is, in my opinion, they're less concerned about those folks and more concerned about keeping the orthodox right there in that comfortable center.

How the Essays Have Affected Church Members

John Dehlin [01:54:29] Yeah. And I can just say that over the past five years I was once a month I've traveled to a different city to hold a faith crisis workshop or retreat. I've been doing this for five, six years now. And every time I hold a workshop or retreat, you know, we'll have 30 to 70 people there. And at the beginning of the retreat I go around the room and ask everybody what caused your crisis of faith? And inevitably it's always Mormon Stories podcast or CES letter or Rough stone rolling. Oh yeah, for sure that that is always one of the ones that's mentioned. You know, Mormon think a little bit sometimes. It's Year of Polygamy by Lindsay Hanson park but the Gospel Topics essay is is definitely in the top three of most mentioned for the impetus. And we have listeners right now commenting that are saying they left as a result. So I mean it's fair, it's fair that they were afraid to release this. It's so lawyerly because they knew to cover their rear ends morally, ethically and or even legally, like you said, they had to release these essays for plausible deniability so that they could no longer have it be said that they were hiding the information and deceiving people. And at the same time, you know, a lot of people couldn't find the essays. I have someone, someone wrote in Tyda wrote, I was asked by a friend about the Google topics essays in 2014 at BYU, Idaho and I went looking for them and couldn't find them. I had to use a search engine to find the essays on the Church's own website. So they made them super hard to find which, which is problematic. But then yeah, so many people have left and so they, they, it's sort of a lose lose. If they deny it and hide it, they lose. But if they, if they publicize it, they lose. And in some ways it's almost like, you know how the roads to Rome were used against Rome in the end. So the soldiers used it to travel their armies to foreign countries, but then once the foreign countries got stronger, they used the roads to conquer Rome. I think these essays are a double edged sword for the Church. They allow the church to shoot down further claims that they're hiding and obscuring the history. But they're also increasing the number of people leaving and it continues to be a significant outgrowth of people leaving the church every year and now that they're available on the handheld devices, becoming more and more problematic for the Church.

Matt Harris [01:57:13] I think, I think too Though again, I think that, that it'll get better over time. I mean, I, I can't imagine 10 years from now that someone's going to read these, these essays and leave. I mean, if they do leave 10 years from now, I would surmise that there are other things going on that would force them out. Right. Because 10 years from now this stuff is going to be well worked into the curriculum. And when I say well worked in the curriculum, they're going after BYU students first. Remember that idea that we talked about a minute ago that if you can keep these kids in the church, get them married in the temple, then there's a good shot you'll keep them active for life. And so they're definitely working these essays into the BYU curriculum in Provo and also, I'm sure Hawaii and Idaho. And they're also working them into the curriculum on the SAINT series, this, this four volume series that they're working on. And you know, this was really clear to me when I met with Mike Otterson In December of 2013, that wonderful three hour interview I had with him. And one of the things that it confirmed to me talking to him is how much the international church dictates what the Salt Lake Church does. What I know that might sound strange, but they're not concerned necessarily about, you know, a BYU professor with a PhD who's been in the church for years and you know, he's certainly at a different level scholastically or than most Latter Day Saints. They really have the lowest common denominator. They're looking at that new convert in Latin America who just joined and they don't know anything. And so they want to nurture them and lead them along. And I hate to use this metaphor to, because I just think it's so over. It's trite, but it works because they want to really give them some milk before they give them the meat. And so that's, that's the modus operandi. You read their manuals today compared to say, 50, 60 years ago, some of these manuals are quite erudite. They're written by Hugh Nibley, they're written by some BYU professors with some credentials. And now really you've got these manuals that were, they're not erudite. They're again, they're, they're catering to the lowest common denominator. And that's one of the things that Mike Utterson shared with me is we have that new convert in Africa or Latin America in mind. And, and that's one of the reasons why they're not going to shout them from the bullhorn if, from general conference, that if you, if you give up, stand up in general conference and you say, we've got these essays online, you should go read them. I mean, that's going to cause an immediate impact with some of these newer members who've not been far enough along in the faith. Whereas if you work them into the curriculum, into the four volume Saint series or at byu, you've got resources to help you process them. Right. So if you're reading the gospel topics essays in a BYU religion class, you can go to your professor and say, hey, look, what about this? And that professor is there to, you know, massage things and walk you through it and put it in context perhaps. And the Saint series, you know, that's a carefully controlled environment where they can work this in. So it's fairly innocuous. So. But you don't get that if you just, if you shout it out from the rooftops in conference. And I'm certain that that's one of the reasons why they continue to not broadcast these in conference, because they don't want these essays to be read in isolation. They want people to have a way to talk about them, a community, if you will, to guide them and lead them along as opposed to just reading them in isolation and then having a crisis and leaving the church.

John Dehlin [02:00:42] Yeah. And I just need to add two things because I've been following this for a while. One is that the problem with that is informed consent. You get these, you get these African Americans or Africans that join the church knowing nothing about the church's history with race, only to find out sometimes years into their membership about the church's history. And you know, that's true about the peepstone of the hat, that's true about the DNA in the Book of Mormon. People reach out to me all the time saying, I converted the church. It's this family friendly organization. The ward embraced me, you know, oh, I just thought everything was great. But they never told me this stuff. I didn't realize I was joining a cult. That's not my words, that's their words. And there's a big problem with this milk before meat thing because it denies an investigator's informed consent to know what they're joining. And that's, that's problematic. The only other thing I'll notice is that I was keeping in touch with all these people that Marlon Jensen. So From like the 2010, from the Swedish rescue time period to 2013, Marlon Jensen was like the go to guy. And all these people having faith crisis who, you know were blue bloods that were connected to the church leadership, they could get an audience with the general authority. Marlon Jensen would, would go out and meet with them or do phone calls with them. And what Marlon Jensen himself concluded was once they've, once they've been, you know, I'll say brainwashed or once they've been indoctrinated with the, the correlated unsustainable false narrative and then they find out it's false, they're gone. Marlon Jensen himself would tell people, when I meet with a 40 year old that was taught the false history, the whitewashed history, I have a 0% success rate in bringing them back to the church. And so they made an intentional effort. They basically said we're going to lose a big chunk of the 30 somethings, the 40 somethings, the 50 somethings, the 60 somethings, and the best we can do, like you just said, is start with them young again and like you said, inoculate them. Which is a weird analogy because it's a germ or a virus that they're actually infecting people with. But, but to inoculate them with the factual church history, now they're going to go back to the younger generations with this hope that they can salvage the younger generations because they've acknowledged the 30 somethings onward are pretty much irretrievable.

Race, Priesthood, and Black Latter-day Saints

Matt Harris [02:03:11] You know, I think it. So just a quick thought about what people know and don't know when they get baptized. There's no question they. Who wants to talk about polygamy? Right? That was true years ago and it's true today. That's just such a tough, tough, tough thing to talk about to a person not of the faith is why the church once had this practice and what it meant. And quite frankly, the Church's literature over the years on polygamy has not been good, to be honest. I mean really the two worst things I think in my opinion were polygamy and blacks in the priesthood. And the reason is because they're just, they're hard to discuss and share with people. So nobody's talked about polygamy really. I mean, you know, section 132 a little bit, the Doctrine and Covenants. But some of the more modern lessons even have a little caveat. The very bottom, don't talk about polygamy. Like what? Or plural marriage. I mean, that's the whole purpose of this revelation and you're supposed to talk about it or Brigham Young in the manual, you know, a few years ago when they were Church was going through the teachings of the church presidents and they turned Brigham Young into a monogamist. I mean, that, that's just not sustainable. And I think it deal. It's a function of the people who produce these, right? The people who are on the correlation committee and who are tasked with producing these manuals. And I'm convinced that the vast majority of the people on these committees have no background in any of this stuff. This is where it becomes problematic. And they say stuff that then controversial and they don't even know it's controversial until later, after the fact. They hear the race issue is interesting. Certainly black and biracial people who became members before the priesthood revelation in 1978, they were told about the ban. There's no question about it. They knew there was informed consent there, John, and because they wanted to let them know, look, you can't, you realize that you can't hold the priesthood. And here are the reasons why. And they went through various lineage lessons and all this stuff, but after 1978, there's no question they didn't talk about it. And I think the feeling was it was a moot point if, if, if blacks were worthy, they'd be treated like anybody else. They could go to the temple and go on missions and all of that stuff. So it's predicated upon worthiness. But the problem is, of course, if you don't talk about it, even after the ban has been lifted, it still is problematic because diligent black and brown Latter Day Saints, they want to know, you know, how does this apply to me? And I know that we'll talk about this when we get to my essay on, on when I critique the race and priesthood essay. So we'll talk about some this in more detail. But they want to know how does this apply to me? And it's very much a concern for them, especially when they hear these racial tropes that are continuing to circulate in the 1980s and 1990s about black people being cursed and less valiant. It is hugely problematic into a white Latter Day Saint. They can't figure out the problem. I mean, I can't tell you how many white Latter Day Saints I've talked to. Why is that? Our black brother, why is he upset he can hold the priesthood? They just don't get it. Do you realize how offensive it is to think that the church that you love, that you're fully vested in, thinks that your skin, something you're proud of, is the sign of a divine curse? And what's worse, that somehow through your moral property, your righteousness, that skin, that curse can be lifted and you can figuratively and literally become white again. Back to your precursed state. I mean, that's just crazy, crazy talk and inoffensive and damaging to one's faith. So. So there was discussions about these kinds of things with race before the priesthood revelation. And afterwards, it was the elephant in the room. And I think I'm gonna just pontificate for 30 seconds if you'll indulge me. I don't normally do this, but I think that who am I to give the church counsel, whatever. But I think that the church has to find a meaningful narrative for people in 21st century. I mean, if you're just talking about the same stuff you did 30, 40 years ago, that's problematic. You've got to grow. The challenges of today's generation are not the challenges of the generation 30 or 40 years ago. And what I mean by that is the church needs to talk about things that are on the, the minds of Latter Day Saints. And it's not a one size fit all. What the Latter Day Saints in South America or the Caribbean or whatever they're thinking about is much, much different than some, you know, say, ward in Brooklyn, New York. And so there has to be flexibility. And I understand they've done some of that. So that's not what I want to. Where I want to go. I'm talking about addressing social issues that concern people today. These educated people who are leaving the church. For example, race is a great example. We've got Black Lives Matter. We've got. Elder Oaks just talked about this recently, which generated a lot of comment. We've got really some drastic racial differences in both the larger American society and in the church. And to think that we can't talk about it at church is just, I think this, this is me being, offering my opinion. I think it's reprehensible. You need to have a safe space where you can go to church and worship with your fellow congregants and bear each other's burdens right there at church. And in some cases, particularly in branches and wards that have a heavy racial population, terrific diversity. You need to talk about these things, and the church doesn't want to talk about it. It's because it's the elephant in the room because of its own racial past, which I think is unfortunate. You just simply acknowledge it and you apologize for it and you move on. And I think that it creates a healthy atmosphere where people can talk about these challenging issues and we could say the same thing about LBGTQ issues. If we can't talk about them at church, where can we talk about them? Well, since we don't talk about them at church, LBGTQ or race, we're left with the these own little communities online, which I don't want to minimize. They're important, but really the church is abdicating a space that Latter Day Saints are yearning for, in my opinion, and it's not healthy for the church. The church needs to evolve in the way it looks at its lessons, the way that it allows sacrament talks where we can bear each other's burdens at church and dealing with issues that are really dividing us today. And I just don't see that happening. And I It's problematic for a number of Latter Day Saints. Oh, you're on mute, John.

John Dehlin [02:09:41] Really great comment from a listener in the UK. Peter Bleakley writes the fundamental flaw with the GA's entire softly gradual change approach is that it is too little too late and they don't have the control or timeframe required required. The info is all in on the Internet and the church will literally cease to exist functionally within the next 20 years here in the UK and Europe and most other regions. We are down only 15 of our membership in the UK active now and falling fast. The changes need to be radical and fast to save anything in time. And his his comment cuts off but this is something that I I have heard in England and Scotland and Sweden and Netherlands and Denmark. The church is in a free fall in Western Europe and in Canada and in parts of Asia. And a lot of it has to do with the availability availability of the Internet, I think.

Matt Harris [02:10:39] I think so. But the church isn't unique. Western Europe's been in a free fall with organized religion in terms of attendance for a number of years now. There's been lots of studies done done on this and the church, our church is they're no different. And I I can't speak to it comparatively why there are fewer Catholics in Western Europe than today. I do know they're not going to Mass as they once did. I I don't know if it's because they're finding stuff about Catholicism on the Internet. I suspect that it's this is a different challenge for Latter Day Saints. And one of the reasons is, is because Latter Day Saints tie their truth claims or we tie our truth claims into our history. And I don't know any Protestant or Catholic group that you know. I know that my Catholic Church is true because of Pope Urban iv Nobody does that. Right. And we like to do that as Americans, too. We, the Founding Fathers. You know, we. What do the Founding Fathers think about the war in Iraq? Nobody says in England, you know, what does King George III say about. I mean, so we. We have a tradition in our country of revering our elders. And so the church has tried its truth claims into all of this. And of course, when those truth claims don't, when the correlated truth claims that come out into the manuals and into the missionary discussions, when they don't line up with stuff you find on the Internet, that creates the crisis. And I just. So I guess I'm just confident enough to think that if. If we would just acknowledge more of this stuff openly and candidly and let people talk about it. Yeah, you might lose some people, but it would be far better than they approach today. And I get people all the time. I get African Americans who call me all the time. They read something I've written or whatever, and they say something like, you know, I'm having this faith crisis. And I simply say to them, first of all, if you want confirmation from. For me, for you to either leave or stay in the church, I'm not your guy, but I can give you some context. And if we just. The first thing I ask him is, are you happy in your ward? Do they treat you well? And if the answer is yes, then I say to them, then whatever I'm about to say shouldn't matter. It won't matter if you're happy, you find a community. So whatever the history is, it's the history. If you're not happy at your ward, if you find that they're not accepting of your interracial marriage or your biracial kids, or they're somehow racist, why are you staying? Go find another ward. It's that simple. Life is too short to deal with this nonsense. And I just dealt with somebody recently about this in Utah, and I said, you know, leave your Provo ward and go to the Genesis group in Salt Lake. I guarantee you'll find a home there. And anyway, so we need to acknowledge these things and move forward. But I'm not naive enough to know that some of these things are complex. When we deal with polyandry, one of the lessons here or the gospel topics essays, it deals with polygamy and polyandry. And. And that's a. That's a tough, tough, tough thing to explain, that the prophet is proposing to other men's wives while they're away on. On church missions. How do you explain that? Away in some faith promoting way. And that's precisely why they don't want these essays, you know, promoted. And they've, you know, they've done a nice, pretty nice job. There's been a couple of scholars in the church who talked about, he's trying to understand this through a scholarly lens. And he talks about that the prophet wanted to create, you know, familial relationships that would bind itself for eternity. He wanted to seal himself to the human family. And that's, I mean, whatever one thinks about that claim, it's, it theologically, it's creative, it's rich, it's interesting, and it certainly contradicts the main crisis that, you know, which is, or the main narrative that the church had put out for a long time, or at least some people in the church, which was that the prophet only proposed to other men's wives when they were either not LDS or not worthy to take them to the temple. Well, that clearly is not the case because some of the men whose wives he's proposing to are apostles. And there's been some research done on a lot of this stuff. So polygamy and polyandry are, you know, in my opinion, probably the most challenging to deal with. But, you know, you can still deal with these things. And in the end, it's okay to not understand all the weirdness of the 19th century and some of the things that these guys did, but you got to acknowledge the history, how difficult that may be. And in some instances you have to apologize. You have to apologize and move on. And if you can do that, I think it's better for the church to own up and in the end do something that Latter Day Saints are often taught as little children. Choose the right, let the consequences follow. And sadly, the church narrative has not always followed that trajectory. But I think that the church is trying to make a good faith effort now. And maybe for your listener in the UK it's not going fast enough. But I don't know how to deal with these kinds of things when these issues are very challenging. And it's, it's something that, I know it baffles the church leaders.

John Dehlin [02:15:52] Yeah, it's, I, I've often said I wouldn't want to be them because any decision they make is going to crack eggs and they're going to lose people on one side or the other on both sides. And so I, I think probably it was really smart for them to go slowly, to go subtle, to do it piecemeal, and to be really low key about it. That was probably super. Smart of them to do. And for those of us who wish they had gone more boldly and quicker and faster and louder. I think a lot of the people that want that probably don't care about the church's overall health and well being because if they had moved too strong, too fast, too quickly, they probably would have seen some of the defections that the community of Christ faced in the late 60s and mid-70s when they made really big bold changes and lost a third plus of their membership as a result of moving too quickly. Is that fair to say?

Matt Harris [02:16:48] It is, John. And I think, you know, I'm not here to defend anything or anyone. I hope your listeners understand it. About me, just, I'm a historian. I try to present things as I understand them and I always try to be fair. And there are some things about some apostles that I've never, I like people, I always get asked, you know, which of the apostles do you like or dislike? And, and I'm just thrilled when I learn things about some of the apostles I don't like. You know, like, or I thought I didn't like, you know, Bruce McConkey is a great example, just sort of an intimidating guy, really kind of a bully in a way. Well, in recent years I've come across some good stuff about another side of him is great personal personality. And I, I was thrilled when I get that stuff because it, it shows that people are multi dimensional. And I think that the important thing to think about, about how the church operates, especially more than ever in the 21st century, more than ever, is that it is a global church. There are 16 million Mormons, more than half reside outside of the United States. So whatever they do, they're trying to, they're thinking of about people who are coming into the church from different parts of the world. And I can just tell you my bias, which is I get crazy. I'm like, what about me, right? Or, or somebody who's interested in, you know, something. I remember in New York, I remember reading the lesson manual, I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. It's like written for a five year old. What about my needs, right? But they're looking at that, that new convert in Latin America and you know, didn't, I didn't like it. But I certainly understand why they do it that way. And I think what they've realized is that the, the, the idea that you can't have a one size fits all, they used to try that with various degrees of success. They've always had a basic kind of gospel principles manual for the new convert. But then they had the other manual for everybody else. Whether you were in the church five years or 20 years, whether you had a high school diploma or a PhD and I think now that there are the churches starting to recognize there needs to be more diversity in terms of how this stuff is approached. And they're allowing the local leaders to have more flexibility in the lessons that they think their flock needs to hear. And I think that's great, that's to be applauded. But I would urge them to go to the next level and to talk about how about this. Invite your flock to submit questions about things they want to hear lessons on or discuss openly. Right. Whether it's race, whether it's lbgtq. Think about if you're an LDS mother and you've had a son who comes out as lbgtq and that's on your mind, right? You've been taught your entire life that the nuclear family is the one that God prefers and that's what binds people together in temples. And yet your son just comes out of the closet and you're going to the church and you're hearing about something completely irrelevant. You don't care. You're just focused on something that really is a paramount concern to you. And I don't think the church listens enough to its people. They're told, but they don't listen. And I think that's slowly changing. But if they're to stop the tide of people leaving, I don't think it's going to be about controversial historical issues in the past, although transparency is enormously important. I think it's about creating a space today in the 21st century where people can find meaning in going to church each week that helps them to address thorny issues in their day to day lives.

Evaluating the Content and Gaps in the Essays

John Dehlin [02:20:23] I love it. Really quickly. I don't want to end this segment without having to just talk at a high level about the essays. And what one of the listeners asked was, are there any essays that have caused more people problems? Are there some essays that have caused more people problems than others? I want to ask a different question. Are there some that are higher quality than others overall? There's a perception that they're either whitewashing or gaslighting. Can you give kind of an editorial judgment on the essays overall in terms of how candid or not candid, manipulative or honest they are? And if you can talk about any just high level, unique or interesting components about the essays and of course I plan to interview several of the actual authors of these chapters in your book to drill down in more detail. But, but is there anything high level you can say about the essays individually for our listeners?

Matt Harris [02:21:35] Yeah, so, so this is an interesting collection of essays about why they chose what they chose and perhaps what they left out. And there are a couple of puff pieces in here. And you know, there's no question they knew that going into this race and the priesthood and especially polygamy would be the most challenging. There's no doubt about it. The Book of Abraham would be huge too. And, and then you get into DNA in the Book of Mormon. Those are probably the most controversial of all the essays. And, but you do get some puff pieces like, are Mormons Christians? I mean, I, I'm going to give you my bi. I hate hearing that stuff. Stuff, yes, they're Christians. Move on. Right. I mean, they may not embrace the creeds of various Protestant sex, but that's, you know, that's just, it's ridiculous. And so, and so the person that wrote this essay in the volume, my volume, is a guy named Craig Blomberg. He's a distinguished professor of New Testament at Denver University Seminary, which is just up the road from where I live. And he had been working with Latter Day Saints before. We had another person who was slated to, to write the essay, guy named Stephen Webb, a Catholic theologian who, who's done some interfaith work with Latter Day Saints and Catholics and wrote a nice book, by the way, on Catholics and Mormons. But anyway, he died, unfortunately, midway through this process. So he moved to Craig Blomberg. And Craig was gracious enough to step in and help out. And one of the things that I said to him was, you know, put this in a comparative framework about how Mormons address this idea of Christianity and why some people have said that Mormons aren't Christians when clearly they are, you know, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I mean, it's always baffled me to think that Mormons aren't Christian when it's just everywhere in their literature and on their signposts. Anyway, so that's what he did. There were. So the essays on polygamy were, there's no doubt there. They were a challenge. And polyandry, in my opinion, I know some other people may disagree, but polyandry has got to be the most challenging thing. I think for a lot of people in terms of their faith crisis. The Book of Abraham is probably, it's, it's controversial among, in scholarly circles. And that certainly played out on a national or at least a public scale with some of the folks who produced the Book of Abraham volume on the Joseph Smith papers, there was a big brouhaha about that, about who they chose to edit, who they didn't choose. And so there's a long history with the Book of Abraham. But I think most people in the church who were damaged by some of these essays dealt with polygamy. And I know one of the issues that they dealt with was describing one of Joseph Smith's wives. You know, I think what the language says, she was almost 15 or something

John Dehlin [02:24:29] like that, a few months shy of her. Of her 15th birthday, which means she was 14, but they didn't want to say 14, so they said a few months shy of her 15th birthday. That was Brian Hales's.

Matt Harris [02:24:40] Yeah, yeah. And that's just not. I mean, I love you, Brian, but if you were in my class, my senior seminar class, I would have circled that and said, what are you doing here? That's not good writing. And in fairness, maybe. Okay, sorry, Brian, if you. If you. If those weren't your words, maybe it was a committee. But anyway, there's definitely some. They're pulling some punches here. And that's definitely a prime example. She's a few months shy of her 15th birthday. Nobody talks like that. She's 14. Right. And the idea would be that the critics would say, of course, that Joseph Smith is. Is engaging in. What's the right word here? I hate to use the word pedophilia, but he's going after a person not of consent. And then, of course, the apologetic response is, that's what they did in those days. They married young. And there's a big literature on this, and I don't like things. That's what they did in those days. Because that's simply not the case. If you break it down, certainly in some communities, rural communities, they married young. There's no doubt about it. But you have to look at this region by region. And if you just take New England, for example, Puritan girls were not marrying at the age of 14. And I realize they're not talking about, you know, Puritan New England here, but to suggest that that's what they did in those days, they married young, and therefore the prophet was just doing an accepted practice that's problematic. In Puritan New England, for example, the women were in their early 20s, at 19, 20, and 21, when they married. And one of the reasons is. Is because their suitors had to own property. There's no way you're going to get married at 17. And you had you know, acreage for your farm in order to marry. And so they did marry a little bit later in, say, Puritan New England. And you'll find that it varies from region to region as you explore various parts of the United States, states in the 19th century. So the real question would be, what was the, the mean age at which young women married in, say, Nauvoo or Kirtland? That would be far more interesting than just saying they all married that young, because that, that's just not true. And there's a literature on this, too. There's a scholarly literature. So that was, that was really problematic. How do you explain this? And to be honest and to be fair, I think that this essay acknowledges some tough stuff that needed to be acknowledged. And something that I haven't done yet would be to look at this essay and then to compare it to what you see in the Saints volume. And admittedly, I'm going to confess something. I haven't had the time to read the Saints volumes yet. They're on my list. I'm going to read them. My friends have been pushing me to read them. But it'd be interesting to compare the 13 essays and to see how they work their way into the Saints narrative and how the church historians have dealt with that. So the polygamy essays are definitely problematic. The race and priesthood essays.

John Dehlin [02:27:35] When you say problematic, do you mean problematic in terms of their honesty or problematic in terms of people, you know, losing their faith? Because I want to understand both. I want to understand what grade they get for candor and honesty versus gaslighting, whitewashing, manipulation. And then if they've had some type of effect on people, does that make sense?

Matt Harris [02:27:57] Yeah, so, so they do a good job. They, they, they acknowledge polyandry. And I, I. Let me, let me just walk through this just real quick. This is really an important point, I think, is the Church has struggled with polygamy for a long time. I think most of your listeners will know this, and the church is always taught or frequently taught in its lesson manuals that less than 3% of the church's practice practice polygamy. And they're getting this from a confessional that the church president, Joseph F. Smith, makes at the Reed smooth Senate hearings in the early 20th century. And that becomes sort of the main, you know, thought that less than 3% practice it. And there was a motive or a reason why Joseph F. Smith said that. And maybe he was misinformed, I don't know. So I'm not going to say that he was lying. I just don't know know. But he certainly had a motive to keep the numbers low because they're having this knockdown, drag out fight whether they should seat the Senator Smoot. And the hang up was polygamy. This guy's a polygamist. And the quorum of the 12, they had been split over polygamy. And so President Smith had every motive to, to say, hey, look, this doesn't happen in the church that often or that much. And whether, I don't think, I don't know. I'm not going to say that he was fibbing or misleading. I just don't know. But certainly that was a problem when he said that. And for whatever reason, church curriculum writers through the years have latched onto that statement as if it's the gold standard. And we've had scholarship on polygamy since the 1960s that has really addressed that. The polygamy was far more expansive and pervasive than President Smith had let on during that Smoot hearing. And so these essays do talk about, they don't quote this 3% nonsense that's been just debunked and demolished for a long time. Some church historians have written some great books on polygamy and they've gone through the demographics of it and it's really fascinating literature. So that comes out that it was, it was more expansive than what the church manuals had said. I think that's huge. Also, the polyandry thing that comes out. And church historians are not church historians, but historians who follow this stuff. They've known about polyandry for a long time and that was the third rail. Nobody wanted to talk about it in the church. It was, they didn't have an answer for it. I mean, how do you describe this? And when you push somebody into the corner, they would say, well, yeah, the prophet, he only proposed to other men's wives who couldn't take him to the temple or who weren't members of the church. And that's. We talked about that a minute ago. Well, that's not sustainable when you, when you start lifting under the rocks and you see some of the facts. So when Richard Bushman's book came out in 2005, this had been billed as the book on the prophet Joseph Smith. And it was supposed to be a, a counter narrative to Fawn Brody's book that you referenced, John, that came out in 1945. I mean, fawn Brody's book. It cannot be understated how influential this book was, less so in the church and more so outside of the church. When people wanted to know about the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, they went to Fawn Brody's book. And anyway, I don't know if it had a ripple effect in the church. Certainly people read it, but in terms of how it impacted scholarship, you know, it was known to be an anti Mormon book from the get go, so nobody was ever promoting it in orthodox circles. And in my Black and Mormon book that I'm working on now, I do talk about Fawn Brody's influence. She, she's first person who, who conjures up this Missouri thesis that the priesthood band began in the 1830s in Missouri to appease the local Missourian government to suggest that Mormons are not the abolitionists that you think we are. So she talks about that and it has this incredible impact on LDS intellectuals. Darius Gray, my friend Darius Gray, Hubie Brown first pregnancy counselor so it does have impact, but it's not an orthodox book. And even today it's still being sold on Amazon, which is extraordinary anyway. But Richard Bushman's book is supposed to supplant that book as the go to book, not just for Latter Day Saints, but for people outside of the faith. And I've heard Bushman say this, that his book hasn't had the sales that he thought it would have, that it hasn't really supplanted Brody. It's merely just taking its place alongside of Brody, which is still an important thing. But anyway, for our purposes, when it came out in 2005, I thought, how does he deal with polyandry? This is really, this is, this is the elephant in the room. And I love Bushman's work, I love that book. But he, it's not one of the stronger parts of the book. He didn't understand polyandry in 2005. And pretty much what he said was, I think he, as I recall, he, he had maybe a paragraph, I need to double check this, but he had a paragraph where he talks about polyandry. He talks about polygamy or plural marriage. So let's be clear, he does talk about plural marriage quite a bit, but it's the polyandry part. Joseph Smith proposing to other men's wives, including those of whom were in the church leadership. How does, how does this distinguished Columbia University historian deal with this? And so when it came out in 2005, I looked and he basically said, we don't understand it. And I was like, ah, Professor Bushman, it's your job as a scholar to help us understand it. And he just didn't want to deal with it. And there were some issues on race in the Book of Abraham, he sort of punted too, on those are. If I were to critique the book, those are two of the things that I would critique it on. But otherwise it's a great book. So. So this has been something that the church didn't want to. Hasn't want to deal with, including it's one of its best scholars. This is 2005, 15 years ago. So for one of the scholars, Jed Woodworth, who worked with him on this, they knew this was a problem. And I'm told this secondhand. And I'm sure Judd could confirm this or tell me I'm wrong, but I heard this from somebody, that one of the reasons why he was employed at the church history department was to work on this very issue, to help work through this knotty issue of polyandry, to make it platable to the church body. And so there's no question that was the polyandry and polygamy were two. Two important events here. And then also the third essay written by Kathleen Flake, which deals with this, this narrative of 1890, which has always been problematic, which is W. Wilford Woodruff issues the first manifesto in 1890. He's had a revelation. God tells him to lift the. The manifesto that the church is no longer to practice polygamy. Of course, the context is important. The US Government's going to arrest the polygamy, Mormon polygamy leaders. They're going to disenfranchise Utah territory voters. They're going to confiscate the temple property. I mean, the church is just on the cusp of being destroyed. And so President Woodruff has to do what he does. Well, the problem with the church narrative is of course, he has a revelation and polygamy ends. Well, people who have studied this stuff, they know better. And one of the things that got Mike Quinn into trouble in the early 1980s is when he published a piece and I think it was. Was it dialogue? Dialogue or. Yeah, anyway, in which he acknowledges these post manifesto polygamous marriages, that there are two additional manifestos. One was in I think 1903 and 1904. 4 or 5. 5. 19. Anyway, somewhere in that area. And that they had to create two additional manifestos because Mormons were still doing it. They were going to Mexico. When Mitt Romney was running for the presidency in 2012, they asked him about marriage equality and he said something that just made me want to pull my hair out. Not just because I'm an advocate for marriage Equality. But because he lied and they asked him, they said, what do you think about marriage equality? And he looks in the camera and he says that marriage has always between, been between a one man and a one woman. It's always been that way. And I thought, oh my gosh, Ronnie, you of all people should know better. His, his family, his grandfather went to Mexico and engaged in a polygamous marriage. And so for him to say that to a reporter who didn't know this backstory was completely disingenuous. And anyway, also in the early 20th century, my wife, interesting story that I think your listeners would want to hear. Her, her grandfather was married in the Salt lake Temple in 1905 to a second wife. And when I married her years ago, I found this out, I went, whoa. And I, I talked to. So my mother in law, who's the daughter of the second wife. I said, wait a minute, Salt Lake? Yeah, Salt Lake. It wasn't Mexico, it was Salt Lake. And how did this happen? Was he active in the church? And she said, yes, my mother. So my wife's grandmother and her, they were active well into the 20s, 30s and 40s. And Grandpa went to church with his two wives in Provo until they all died in the 60s, that one of the wives died in the early 70s. I said, wait a minute, how does, what does this look like? This guy is going to the Utah Mormon Church in Provo, Utah in the 1960s with his, his two wives. And she said, his name is Heber Far. And she said that Far Ice cream. She said, she said the bishop had an arrangement that he was called as by an apostle who was obviously pro polygamy in 1905. They called Brother Farr in 1905 to take a second wife in the Salt Lake Temple. Don't tell anybody about it and not even other apostles. That's how difficult this issue was. And so Heber Far married a second wife in the Salt Lake Temple. And he had a special arrangement with the bishop that the brethren allowed him to stay married to his two wives well into the 1960s. And the bishop of the Provo ward told the flock when Hafar wasn't around, obviously he said, brother Farr is a good man. Don't make fun of his family. Don't ridicule him, don't call him to repentance. The brethren know about this and they've approved. And he had a temple recommend and he served in church callings. He was a faithful Latter Day Saint. And anyway, so back to the, the polygamy essay that for plural marriage and families in early Utah to acknowledge that this stuff was still going on after 1890. I mean, this was a dramatic moment where Latter Day Saints could see, you know, like, oh, my goodness, you know, Quinn was right. The stuff that he had written back in the early 80s that got him into trouble at BYU, he was absolutely right that this stuff was going on. And so these are all admissions that the church authorities are worried about because they've been saying all along it ends in 1890, when now they're saying in this essay that's just simply not the case. And you can, we can talk more and more about a of lot, lot of these essays. You'll, you'll find that a lot. But anyway, and you can go into details with some of the authors that you have on John, but polygamy, I think, and is, is the biggest one. And let me. And there's the race and the priesthood essay that we'll get into more detail. So I probably won't say about that much about that now, but those are, I think polygamy is the one they worried about the most, at least among the general church body.

Polygamy, Race, and Sexuality Essays Assessed

John Dehlin [02:39:12] And, and what do you, what do you make of, you know, critics, post Mormons, ex Mormons, even liberal Mormons that say the essays were, they were gaslighting, they were whitewashing, they were, you know, a real huge disappointment. Do you, do you, do you, do you even want to sort of make some sort of assessment, kind of an overall grade of how candid, you know, how much did the church really come clean? How much did they sort of gaslight and whitewash and kind of mislead people? Can you even speak to that, or would you rather not?

Matt Harris [02:39:48] Well, I don't like to use the word gaslight, but I, I think really my job as a historian is to help people understand. Again, you don't have to agree with it. And I'll tell you a problem that I have in just a second with one of the essays personally. But again, these are done by committee. And remember what I said earlier about the one apostle who talked to my friend? We have gone about as far as we can go. In other words, we've been as transparent as we can without affecting people's testimony. And even then we've probably gone too far. So that's, that's what's on their minds when they're putting these out. And the, I'm just going to be flippant for a moment, but some of these essays, I mean, you know, if I were to grade them in Terms of clarity, thesis organization, they wouldn't hold up very well. And they're not just me personally, but just people who teach writing for a living. And the reason why they wouldn't hold up very well is because the language obfuscates and is muddied a bit. And I know a lot of these people who wrote these essays as scholars, and I know they're fine scholars, they're fine writers. And so clearly a lot of this stuff got. Got changed as it went higher up the chain. And let me give you an example of what I mean. I don't like to use the word gaslight, but this kind of reminds me of Dallin Oaks's thing on Black Lives Matter a minute ago. You know, it's generated. A few days ago, Oaks gave a. An address at byu, I think, and he also spoke in General Conference, and he mentioned Black Lives Matter. And then he talked about, you know, violence, like. So he said one thing positive about Black Lives Matter, and then he sort of equates it with violence, which is completely not true. The Black Lives Matter advocates, myself included, we're not throwing bricks through buildings. And anyway, so that was unfortunate, trying to throw. Give a piece of meat, if you will, to both sides. And I just don't like that straddling that fence. And that's what they tried to do. That's what they tried to do with the Race and the Priesthood essay. And the story that, that I know from some of my friends who worked on this essay and who commented on the essay, is they wanted it to be very, very clear that Ray, that the priesthood ban was born out of the racist Milhew of Brigham Young's day, that is God had nothing to do with it, so quit saying that. Oh, just as some people had the priesthood in Old Testament times, so it was with blacks. That's complete nonsense. Because if you, if you give this scriptural interpretation like some of the authorities did back in the day day, Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, then really, you're imputing the band to God. And, and so there was this push among the scholars and among some of the general authorities to say that it was. It was. The band began because of the. The 19th century and Brigham Young and Joseph Smith ordained black men to the priesthood. And then all of a sudden that's no longer the case, or at least people around Joseph Smith did, and that's no longer the case. And it's not really radical to think that Brigham Young was a racist. Right. This is slaveholding America, my goodness. But yet they wrote it in such a way that you could read into what I just said, racism from the 19th century or the idea that God is still responsible for it. It's really, really poor writing. And just as a simple thought experiment, my brother, who has three or four graduate degrees, including a doctorate degree, he's a pretty educated guy, very orthodox Latter Day Saint, he's in a state presidency, I think. And I, we were talking and I said, yeah, the church is, this document is. It talks about the racism. The ban is because of the racism and bringing man's day. My brother's like, I didn't read that. And I, I said, go back and read it. And he did. He came back to me and he said, I don't see that at all, Matt. And, and then I have to walk him through it. And admittedly I have, I have some background context to this because I talked to the people who produced it and commented on it. So I know what they were trying to intend. And once I walked my brother through it. Oh, okay, I could see that now. And of course my brother's a smart guy, he's a good reader. The fact that, that his older brothers having to walk him through it is problematic. Right. Because the writing is not clear. And that was done by design.

John Dehlin [02:44:13] Yeah. There's a comment, there's a comment from a listener, and I'm not asking you to endorse this, but they say from, from the standpoint of this listener, the essays are psychologically misleading. Just take the first vision essay. It repeats, quote, the accounts tell a consistent story, end quote. Lo and behold, people repeat this phrase. He's saying that this, this commenter saying low level brainwashing. I know, again, you don't like that term. But, but, but one of the criticisms I've heard of the essays are frankly a lot of the criticisms I felt reading Roughstone rolling with Richard Bushman, they're contextualized in such a way to where it's almost, it reminds me of the, the scene from the early Star wars movie. These are not the droids you're looking for any hand waves. And the guy all of a sudden says, oh, there must not be a problem here. They're written in a way to make someone absorb the information but never quite realize the severity or the significance of the problems they're dealing with. Do you hear that at all?

Matt Harris [02:45:21] Oh yeah. Let me give you a comparison. Maybe there is a Harvard scholar named Samuel Elliot Morrison. He died in 1976. He was this two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian at Harvard and he's famous for writing books on Christopher Columbus, among other things. And of course, when he wrote in the mid 20th century, there's a lot of hagiography, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered this, discovered that, and he's wonderful. Well, Columbus obviously is a lightning rod today for our indigenous brothers and sisters, as he should be, and including my own community. And if you look back at Samuel Elliot Morrison's work on Columbus in the 40s, 1940s, 30s and 40s, is that he acknowledges some of the problematic stuff with Columbus and just moves on. Right. He acknowledges it like a couple of sentences, that he did some horrible things to the natives, cut off their arms and dismembered them, and just moves on. And so that's, that's his way of saying, hey, I dealt with it. And I think sometimes you, I, I dealt with it without trying to understand what it all meant and the impact that it had. And I think you get that in the church sometimes where people. In two sentences, I acknowledged it and I move on. And I don't. I, I really admire Richard Bushman, but in Rough Stone Rolling that, you get a little bit of that too. I acknowledged it, so my critics can't say I didn't. I didn't talk about or mention polyandry. But then it doesn't make any attempt to engage with it. And I think that we have to ask ourselves, what does this mean as writers? And I know I'm doing a book on blacks and Mormons now, and there is so much to this story that's just absolutely extraordinary. And as I write about all of this stuff, just take for example, patriarchal blessings. What does it mean to be a black person in the LDS Church and to go to your patriarch where you're supposed to declare lineage. What does that look like for a black Latter Day Saint? Is he going to be told that he's from the seed of Cain? Yeah, that happened. Is he going to be told that he is to enjoy all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which of course mean priesthood and temple blessings. That happened. And then lastly, let's not give them a lineage at all because, you know, we can't tell them Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those are priests and temple blessings, and black people can't have that. Nor can we tell them they're of the curse of Cain. It'll hurt their feelings. And so what does all this mean? Well, as I write in my book, it means the church has adopted this, this, this terribly challenging racial theology that has boxed them in a corner. They don't know what to do with lineage with black people. They absolutely don't know what to do. They meet as apostles in 1958, they meet in 1970, they meet in 1973. And they realize the patriarchs are declaring lineage all over the place throughout the church. Brazil, South Africa, and. And it's this terrible burden they've created for themselves and they have to sort of work their way through it. And the truth is they never do. The revelation comes in 78, and they still have people told, including somebody on your podcast, John, from years ago, a young biracial black man who was told in the late 80s that he was from the seed of Cain, a lineage of Cain. So anyway, this is still this racial residue. And I think that as scholars, we have to ask ourselves, what does all this mean? Just did a book on Ezra Taft Benson, as you know, and we, you and I had a lovely chat over a long time with Benson, and I had to ask myself, all right, Benson's got all these conspiracy theories, but what does it all mean? Who influenced him and how did he develop these views? He didn't always start out this way. And more importantly, how does Benson continue to affect the church today? Those are the overarching questions that, you know, as a scholar, I try to answer. And truthfully, with LDS scholars, there are some scholars who come out of, they take a leap forward and they try to address these challenging issues. Mike Quinn's a great example. He's acknowledging problematic issues in Mormon history long before a lot of scholars are today. And by the way, when he was writing about these things in the late 70s, early 80s, Mike was believing, practicing Latter Day Saint. He worked at BYU for goodness sakes. And so he was just, he felt that his Hippocratic oath was to tell the truth and to be sensitive and to be sort of as balanced as he could be, but also to not whitewash the past. And unfortunately, you know, Elder Benson and Elder Packer tried to pull Quinn and other historians in a different direction, to only write things that are faith promoting. And we're still struggling with that legacy today.

John Dehlin [02:50:07] Yeah, that's something that I, I want to, I want it to be covered at some point. All the people that have been excommunicated for telling the truth, Von Brody to Jeremy Runnels to Bill Real, you know, Kate Kelly to me to others. That's a, that's a, I don't know if that shows up anywhere in this book, but a lot of people were sacrificed along the way before the church was willing to come clean. And they were excommunicated for talking about things that the church publishes in their essays. And that's unjust. Yeah, but, but okay, so overall, I think what I hear you saying is the church went as far as they could go. They did some good things, but they also, you know, did some, did some contextualizing that is not really good writing. And that leaves a lot of ambiguity.

Matt Harris [02:50:57] I think, I think the, I want to be clear, I think the essays. This is all I want to say about this because I know you're going to interview the rest of the. A number of the other authors, but, you know, the essays are like the gospel topics essays are like anything else, John, that some of them are better than others, to be honest, and some of them reveal more, acknowledge more, and some don't. And I don't want to go into details with each of the essays, but, but I, they, they're a varying quality is what I'm trying to say. And I think that it bears repeating that some of the essays, you know, think about what they didn't decide to do, LBDTQ issues, which is still a problematic issue today. They didn't want to do anything with sexuality, which I think is unfortunate, and they didn't want to do anything with the quasi Masonic elements of the temple ceremony, which I think is also unfortunate because those are probably not as, you know, sticky as blacks erase and polygamy, but nonetheless, they're important and I think they, they should have been dealt with. There are some other essays that, that were not dealt with. The historicity of the Book of Mormon wasn't dealt with, and I don't know why they weren't dealt with in terms of, you know, my contacts didn't call me up and say, this is why we chose not to do these. I can only surmise that they just didn't have a plausible narrative and they were just too tough and too, too challenging. And this isn't to say that this won't change and evolve. And theology is an interesting word. You know, it's, I guess, Aquinas, God's man's words about God. Right. And Mormons don't like to think of themselves as theologians because of this revelatory element with the prophet. But that's, I think that's really not a good way to put it. God can still reveal to you a theology, and that's why in the church that church leaders typically not use the word theology. But a lot of this is sort of this ongoing theology about how to make sense of this so that it's palatable to people who are having faith issues. And you know, I'm certain if they already have it, maybe they have, and I'm speaking out of turn here, but I don't think that they've dealt with sexuality, at least in terms of a scholarly and analysis like they have here. And if I'm wrong, I'll be corrupted. But if they haven't yet, they certainly will because LBGTQ is huge. And it's probably one of the biggest issues of this generation that you've got Latter Day Saints who are growing up and they're adopting the attitudes around them in terms of their acceptance and their tolerance of LBGTQ issues. And they don't share their parents and grand grandparents prejudices towards our gay brothers and sisters. And so it'll, it'll change one day. It'll change one day because today's Latter Day Saint youth who have these more tolerant views on LBTQ issues, they're going to be tomorrow's leaders if they can stay in the church. And it takes, it's a generational thing that, that we bring our own generational values to the table. And you see that the race issue. Right. You know, you, you get people in the 1970s into the 80s who just don't think that, you know, they don't agree with the church's views on race. And black people a lot do. That's still part of the problem. But you start to see them adopting more progressive views and you see that with LBGTQ issues and that, that alone, that's frightening for the church leaders because they don't have to deal with that. They, they've worked into this heteronormative theology. And in order for them to embrace marriage equality, they have to redo really the underpinnings of the temple endowment ceremony of what Latter Day Saints teach about families, eternal families. And if you allow our gay brothers and sisters into that narrative, then it requires a lot of creative energy to change the theology.

John Dehlin [02:54:59] Kimberly Anderson is, is basically saying that Taylor Petrie and Greg Prince have, have speculated as to why they, they haven't written about LGBTQ stuff. And that's be. And, and that's because it, you know, according to Kimberly, it strikes at the very heart of the plan of salvation that, you know, and this, Kimberly, also is always great to remind us. And I try and remember this as well because I care deeply about this topic. Gender identity is separate from sexuality. And so if, according to the church, gender is eternal, if our spirits have an assigned gender, and if we get the right body that matches the right gender, from our gender spirit to our gendered body, then gender has to continue in the afterlife. And that gets to the proclamation of the family and marriage of men and women. And I guess Kimberly is reminding us that maybe one of the reasons they haven't talked about or written about sexuality or gender is that once you start going there, you start striking at the core of the plan of salvation. And Joseph didn't leave us any revelation for, for gender questions or, you know, sexuality, you know, non heteronormative sexuality. And so that's, that's a problem. How do you add? You would read, you would need real prophets, seers and revelators to add on what Joseph, you know, prophesied about and revealed. And, you know, for a couple hundred years, the brethren have really not wanted to add to the revelations Joseph received, for better or for worse. And so we're stuck with a lot of silence on gender issues and matters of sexuality because you don't want to unwind the plan of salvation, but you don't have anything else on this, like the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, completely silent on gender and sexuality. Pretty much. Right. And so what do you do?

Matt Harris [02:56:53] Well, it's, you know, but here's the. I agree, amen to all of that. Sexuality is in gender is, it's just problematic for the church. And because it does require a fundamental reorientation in Mormon theology, it does strike at the heart of the plan of salvation, which is the nexus of all of this.

John Dehlin [02:57:12] And,

Matt Harris [02:57:15] but there is a silver lining a little bit, at least I see it as a silver lining. So with the LBGQ policy that had targeted the children of couples, right, disenfranchising them from the church, from missions, from temple attendance, just based on the, the choices of their, their mother, their father, I mean, and then of course, President Nelson saying just a few months after the whole story broke and it went viral, that it was a revelation. Digging his heels in. And when, when he said that in January of, What was it? 2017? I think 2018, January 2018? I think when he said that at BYU, Hawaii, it was a revelation that we were all privileged to see. I thought, oh my goodness, I pulled my hair out thinking that once, you know, it's elevated to revelatory status, then becomes canonical, almost at least quasi canonical. And that's, that's, they're digging their heels in that, you know, this is a problematic issue. And the apostles, some of the apostles didn't even know about this until it broke. So to suggest it was a revelation they were all privileged to witness was deeply problematic. And I'm told by a source that half the 12 supported it and half the other 12 didn't. Anyway, but the silver lining is, of course, that President Nelson reversed it a little while later and changed the policy. And that's. That's, you know, whatever. Whatever we as humans and cynics and critics want to say about it, at the end of the day, did the right thing. You know, the church created a policy. It wasn't. Well, the church created a policy and they dug down on this policy. They recognized it was harmful, and they changed course. And I don't know of any instances where that's happened where a church leader has elevated something to revelatory status. And by the same revelatory status, you know, I don't know, 13 months later, they change it. I mean, that's. That's really amazing. And it's to be applauded. And so I think it can happen. But, you know, oftentimes in church leadership, Spencer Kimball said something interesting that I think is. Is worth saying for your audience. Let me just read this, if you don't mind, John. It's a little statement. This is in my next book. It comes from a private letter that Spencer Kimball wrote to his son Edward. It's from the private papers of Spencer Kimball that I've been privileged to see. And this is apropos for the priesthood revelation. I'm now writing as we speak. This is 1963, Spencer Kimball, apostle Kimball, to his son Edward, Quote, revelations will probably never come unless they are desired. I think a few people receive revelations while lounging on the couch or while playing cards, a while relaxing. I believe most revelations would come when a man is on the top of his toes, reaching as high as he can for something which he knows he needs, and then there bursts upon them the answer to his problems. And one of the instructive moments here is that you've got to seek the revelation in order to make the change. And the revelation in this part is not what the church thinks a revelation is. This is really. I don't know. This. This is always frustrating to me. You know the revelation? No. Just like Moses and the Ten Commandments. That's complete nonsense. That's not how Mormon revelation works. When you compare it to Moses and the Ten Commandments, that probably conjures up images of burning bushes and God's voice speaking to you. That's not how Mormon revelation works. There's a working definition. You know, there's still small voice or sudden strokes of influence, as Joseph Smith once said. And those are, I suppose, hopeful, right, if you think that God speaks to people that way. But really a working definition of Mormon revelation is Hugh Brown said it perfectly. He said, what revelation is, is we, the apostles, we get together in a room, we hash things out, we debate things, we debate things some more, then we pray about it, and then we tell the church president, hey, this is. This is what we think we want to do. And the president then says, okay, that's the direction we're going to go in. That becomes a revelation. So what's often lost in this idea of revelation is this notion of debate and debate. That's what Brown said. Debate. Those aren't my words. Debate and discussion followed by prayer, followed by the president saying, okay, this is what we're going to do. And that becomes the revelation. And so the revelation, of course, I'm sure that Nelson, when he rescinded this awful policy, I'm sure there was a lot of debate and discussion about it that's harming the church. And they had evidence everywhere on the Internet, and people are writing letters to the First Presidency and bishops apostatizing and leaving their flock or. Or ignoring the council, which might even be worse. Right. I know of a couple of instances where bishops just said, we're not going to follow that. I've got a good young man in my ward, and his parents are gay, and he had nothing to do with them. He's. He's 18, and I want him going on a mission. He's worthy. He says he believes so. You have. You have an open rebellion, really, is what that is. And they recognized that this awful policy wasn't sustainable. And so at some point, Nelson had marshaled the apostles together and they discussed it, and he felt inspired that they had to change it. But revelation is really, really adaptable. And the genius of Mormon theology is you can make things on the fly like that by claiming revelation. And so if they want to change issues of sexuality and gender, they definitely could, but they have to know how to change and they have to want to change. And so far, I haven't seen a lot of evidence, at least among the highest in the church leadership, that they do want to change. Let me say one last thing. I've talked to two general authorities over the last two years, and both of them have said to me that marriage equality is something that they are advocates for, they're lobbying for, and they want to see change. And what's really interesting about these two general authorities promoting Marriage equality is not just that they're probably in the minority, but that, as is always the case in life, they've had personal experiences with gay Latter Day Saints and they've seen personally their. Their sorrow and their travail and their anguish. And that certainly helped them to step out of the Mormon theological box and to see these people as humans, as people and worth keeping in the church and worth trying to change the church to make them want to be in the church. In order to do that, you've got to create a message that would appeal to their lives. And if you show up at church all the time and you just continue to hear this heteronormative version of marriage that doesn't speak to a gay couple that's trying to follow what God wants them to do.

John Dehlin [03:03:53] Absolutely. Me ask you just two other quick questions that I come to think of really quickly. Are you aware of any essays that they started to write and they scrapped? In other words, they had planned to write it, but it was just too hot or too polarizing and they shelved or scrapped the essay. Are you aware of. Of that?

Matt Harris [03:04:13] No, but I do know. No, I'm not. But I do know that they talked about sexuality and gender and they talked about the temple ceremony and the Masonic influence. They did talk about both of those essays, but those were just too hot and too live to deal with.

John Dehlin [03:04:29] So they considered writing essays about them, but decided. Explicitly decided not to talk about those.

Matt Harris [03:04:35] Yeah, to not talk about them.

John Dehlin [03:04:40] And again, it's. It's the. The Masonry in the Temple and what was the second one?

Matt Harris [03:04:45] Sexuality and Gender.

John Dehlin [03:04:46] Okay, okay.

Matt Harris [03:04:47] Yeah, there might have been others too, John, but I just know from my contact that those two in particular.

John Dehlin [03:04:51] Are you aware of any plans to write more essays in the future or they. As far as you know, they're done?

Matt Harris [03:04:57] No, as far as I understand there. There are. They do want to deal with some of these issues, but again, I want your listeners to understand this is a process that they felt that in 2013 or when they started to. To do this around the Swedish Rescue Mission, that they felt like these are the issues that were on the Swedes minds at the time and these are the issues that they could probably put together a coherent narrative and the other ones were just too difficult. But I, I do know, I've heard that over time. I know they, they've added stuff over time too. I want to be clear. So I need to go on the church website to see the new stuff they've added. But I do know that this is Sort of involving thing. It wasn't meant to be a one and done. I don't know if they'll continue to call them the LDS Gospel Topics Essays. They might be called a different name going forward, but they fully intend to create a response for these challenging issues. And I'm sure there'll be others as we move along too, that they feel the need to address. It's based on context. Right. It's based on the, the idea that people need to read them because it's a problem. And they wouldn't be dealing with, say, sexuality and gender if it wasn't for lbgtq Latter Day Saints leaving the Church.

John Dehlin [03:06:09] Yeah. All right. Well, I just want to make a huge plug for this book. I want everyone within the sound of my voice or who can see me to buy this book. So much of what we have we owe to Signature Books. Signature Books is a legend. George Smith, Ron Pridis, Gary Bergera, just those people. So much of the scholarship that we have in the 80s, 90s and beyond is thanks to Signature Books and this book. I'm just going to say I just read, other than the introduction. I've read one essay that we're going to talk about in our next interview, which maybe today it maybe not. We're going to talk about that afterwards. The the essay is called Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings by None Other than Matthew Harris. This is I, I've been, you know, I've been following the blacks in the Priesthood issue forever. I learned stuff in this essay that was just mind blowing. It's a phenomenal essay and that's just one of the essays here. You all will love this book. So buy this book right now. The LDS Gospel Topic Series the Scholarly Engagement, Matthew Harris and Newell Bringhurst. So many great essays. Let's support this history and this scholarship or it won't continue. If you are tired of people not getting the facts, people not getting the truth, support historians, support scholarly publications, go buy this book right now on Amazon or wherever this book is sold. Where can they get this book, Matt?

Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations

Matt Harris [03:07:50] Well, Amazon for one. I think that's probably the easiest way to get it. Just go on Amazon. So I think you can order it directly through Signature. But Amazon. Oh, Benchmark Books too. So Amazon and Benchmark Books are great. My friends at Benchmark Books, they have copies. If you live in the Salt Lake area, arrange to go get a copy from them. Or they can mail you a copy too. They're very good at mailing things.

John Dehlin [03:08:14] And I'll make the same offer if you buy a book, just like I said at the Edge to have Benson book, I will take you out to dinner, I'll take you out to lunch. We'll have a get together once Covid ends and I will reward you in whatever way I can for your support of this scholarship. So Matt Harris, thank you so much for this amazing book. Travis Stratford, Hans Mattson, Marlon Jensen, everyone who contributed to these essays. I just want to thank all of you. Greg Prince, and what an amazing book. What an amazing gift to us. So thank you. Matt Harris, any final things you want to say about this book?

Matt Harris [03:08:54] I don't think so. Well, one last thing. This is just supposed to be, or at least Nolan, I had intended it to be the start of a conversation about about the Gospel topics essays about transparency. And I want to end on a positive note because I think it's worth it really is so much negativity in the world with some of the crazy presidential politics we've been dealing with. So the positive note is the church is moving, however slow perhaps, but they're moving in the right direction. And it started with the Joseph Smith Papers project, the multi volume project that they have been doing. Still doing. I think there's like 24 volumes total that's anticipated and they're what, 22 volumes into it. So it's coming to a close. But anyway, this new era of transparency wasn't just the Gospel topics essays, it's the Joseph Smith Papers volume. And it's also allowing scholars access to collections that were previously shut off. And we still have a ways to go. There are collections that folks like me want to see that can't see for a variety of reasons. But anyway, the church is moving towards transparency and I think that's to be applauded because this is something that's really important for the health and growth of the church. Church,

John Dehlin [03:10:04] Absolutely. So I guess I should say kudos to the LDS Church and all of those involved in putting these essays forward. Of course, you know you've done a good job. If there's some who think you went too far and there's some who think you didn't go enough, clearly that's what the essays represent. And so thank you and congratulations to the Mormon Church, after decades and decades and decades, finally starting to come clean in a way that is meaningful and tangible. And I hope you Mormon Church will just continue and we'll just have more and more truth and transparency and honesty in the future.

Matt Harris [03:10:40] Amen.

John Dehlin [03:10:42] All right, Matt, so we're going to come back either today or at another date very soon and talk about the, your, your comments on race in the priesthood essay and on white supremacy and white theology. But Matt, you're a legend. You are a real treat to all of us in Mormonism. You're a gift to the Mormon people. I can't thank you enough for this and for your other appearance on Mormon Stories and for your future appearances. We just, we bless you health. You know, we, we pray for your health, we pray for your safety, and we pray for much more scholarship from Matt Harris.

Matt Harris [03:11:21] Thanks, Sean. I appreciate that. It's kind of you. Enjoyed being with you today.

John Dehlin [03:11:25] All right. And I'll be right back with you to figure out what we're going to do about the next thing. But I'll close today just by thanking everyone who joined us today. Again, the book is the LDS Gospel Topic series, A Scholarly Engagement. Matt Harris, Newell Bringhurst, Please buy it, support it, check it out. And we'll be interviewing Matt and others. Our plan is to interview other authors of the chapters and in this book who reviewed the various essays. So a deep dive into polygamy, a deep dive into maybe Book of Abraham if we haven't already covered that enough. Maybe a deep dive into, you know, the Book of Mormon translation. If I can get John Charles Duffy on Mormon Stories podcast, I'll be thrilled. You know, John Turner, if I can get Gary Bergera, George Smith, Neil Bringhurst to talk about plural marriage. Like I hope to get several of these authors on and it'll be a real treat for me if I do. But thanks for supporting Mormon Stories podcast. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you're a donor. If you're a donor, you keep us alive. So thank you. If you don't donate, less than one out of a thousand of my listeners actually donate. If only, you know, a thousand of you donated $10 a month, it would transform what we the value that we can provide to you, the Mormon people and the post Mormon people. So please become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We'll be able to keep the lights on. We'll be able to keep producing this podcast. We'll be able to keep doing things within Mormonism and Mormon culture to help advance the cause of truth and healing for active Mormons and for ex Mormons and progressive Mormons and post Mormons. We want to help everybody heal and grow. We, we want more transparency. We want more healing and growth. We want a healthier experience in the church and a healthy, healthier experience out of the church. And we need your support to do that. So please support us. Give us a positive review on the Apple Podcast app. Please give us a positive review on our Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. We have haters that are always giving us downvotes and they don't even listen to the podcast. And please spread the word. Share this episode with as many people as possible on Reddit, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. The more you can spread the word, the more we can share the goodness. So thanks everyone. Thanks for all our listeners who joined us live on Facebook and on YouTube. Your comments and suggestions really make things better. So thanks for everyone who joins us live. It's always such a pleasure. You guys. Take care. Love you guys. And we'll see you again very soon on Mormons Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody.

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