Fundraising Announcement and Guest Introduction

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 164

John Dehlin [00:00:09] Hi, this is John with a few very quick announcements. First, an update on the Mormon Stories fundraising campaign. Since a few of you have asked about it, I'm a little over halfway where we need to be in monthly subscribers to be able to continue Mormon Stories at its current level past July 2010. So let me both thank all of you who have signed up as a monthly subscriber and encourage any of you who haven't yet to please consider doing so. All donations are tax deductible and will go directly to the time and materials used to produce the podcast. Second, registration for the two Sunstone workshops I'm holding on August 4th is now up. The morning session is entitled how to Navigate an LDS Faith Crisis in or out of the Church and the afternoon session is entitled how to Navigate a Marriage when one of you loses their testimony, hopefully some couples will be able to attend that. All the information you need to register can be found@mormonstories.org I hear that registration is filling up fast, so please register soon if that's something you want to attend. Third, I've decided to record the entire workshop and make the proceedings available to all Mormon Stories monthly subscribers as a thank you for your support. So I'm hoping that might encourage a few more of you to to support Mormon Stories if you are able again@mormonstories.org and finally, if any of you are interested in joining the Mormon Stories private Internet forum to converse with other like minded Mormons, please send me an email via Facebook and I'll make sure you get added. Whew. That was a lot of announcements. Thanks for your patience. And now on with the show.

John Dehlin [00:01:48] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. My name is John Dehlin. I am very excited to have you with us today. And today I have as my special guest a man whom I've been associated with or at least aware of for, I don't know, at least 10 years, Richard Packham. Richard Packham, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories.

Richard Packham [00:02:09] It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me, John.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] Again, it's my pleasure. Okay, so today we're dealing with some topics that are going to be very, very sensitive to a lot of people on all sides of the faith spectrum. And if it's okay, I'd just like to give maybe a brief framing or introduction. Today we're going to be talking about at a very high level

Richard Packham [00:02:39] is the

John Dehlin [00:02:40] way I'd like to frame it, how the LDS Church and the church culture creates enemies for itself. It seems like a very sensitive topic But I think it's important, and I'll give it this framing. When I was growing up in the church with kind of an orthodox, almost fundamentalist understanding of Mormonism that I got from Seminary Institute, not necessarily from my parents, I would read about how the Mormons were treated in Ohio and in Illinois and in Missouri, and it never added up to me. What I heard was Mormons were punished and driven out and persecuted because they were doing God's will. And Satan always opposes God's will. And that was the framing. And on the one hand I believed it, but on the other hand, intellectually it didn't quite make sense. It didn't make sense for the level of opposition, the level of anger, the level of hatred that was levied against us. It just seemed a little bit excessive, you know, burning our cities and killing our people and kicking us out of entire states. Then I once read an explanation by Leonard Arrington, I believe, who talked about things that the Mormons did, especially in Missouri, that led to the persecution. And it talked about how we sort of swooped in all at once, you know, for people who had lived there many, many years, claimed that we were God's chosen people, started buying up all the land, started influencing the political vote, started manipulating the political vote, doing things religiously where we sort of openly assert that other religions were false and evil, economic things we did in terms of growing too fast politically and economically, all sorts of things that we did to create enemies. And it's not, you know, this piece that I read wasn't created with the intent to blame the church for the violence that was perpetrated against it. Violence, I guess, is never excusable, or let's just say it's rarely excusable. But what it did is it rounded out my understanding to give me a little more context, to just sort of not frame it as bogs and the Missourians were evil and controlled by Satan and the Mormons were these innocent people doing God's will. It was much more complex than that. And frankly, I think it's healthy for any group to understand their enemies because if they can do, if they can take action that doesn't hurt their, their people, doesn't hurt their system, but at the same time doesn't unnecessarily create enemies, then I think that's a win, win for everybody. And this was sort of struck again to mind just recently as the University of Utah has been invited into the PAC 10 athletic conference. And BYU was sort of left, left out of that picture. And I read some Journalists who wrote that it was bigotry, plain and simple, religious bigotry, that caused BYU to be left out of the PAC 10 invitation. And I think that just as a modern example of this sort of uninformed, unaware paranoia where we don't really understand sometimes as a church and as a culture, what we're doing and why we're creating enemies, and if we had a little better understanding, maybe we would do things to keep from creating those enemies. So in that spirit, I've invited Richard Packham to be on this podcast. And I was sensitive to Richard even before we started, because I don't know if Richard would feel comfortable being framed as either an enemy of the church or. Or as an anti Mormon. And Richard, we're going to get into that. So I don't feel like you need to respond to that now, but I'm sensitive to the fact that that is very offensive to sort of frame it that way and then bring you on. What I will say is this. I first discovered Richard Packham, I'm going to say, around 2000, 2001, as I went through my own faith crisis. I jumped up on the Internet and I was looking for people who discussed Mormonism openly. And this is before the blogger nkol, this, before the Farron Farms really had anything of substance up. And I found the works of Richard Packham. And Richard Packham is no longer a member of the LDS Church. And what's remarkable about Richard Packham is that even though today there are thousands of people every year leaving the church, he did this back in 1958 when he was 25 years old. I think it's a lot easier to leave the church now than it was back then because the information that we have now wasn't readily available back then. And the social consequences of leaving the church, I think, were much more severe back then than they are now. And so Richard put up a website many, many, many years ago discussing why he left the church and in trying to explain it. And I would say that his website sort of proactively seeks to inform people about, you know, his view on what Mormonism is really about and maybe even to warn potential investigators that they need to get more information and to really think things through before they need to join. So I, I have a. I have a theory. You know, I. I've. I've probably, you know, I say this probably every podcast. I'm sure my listeners are tired of hearing it, but I've prob. Spoken with over a thousand people who are either struggling with or have left the church, they've emailed me, we've had phone calls, they've come to have lunch with me all over the world. And as I've tried to think about, what would make someone put up a website against the church, what would make someone create an organization or a conference dedicated to, you know, leaving the church? What would make someone talk about the temple ceremony openly or, you know, whatever. Why, you know, there's this cliche they can leave the church but they can't leave it alone. And I've, I used to love that phrase. Now I find it repugnant even though I am active in the church and I love the church. But it shows a fundamental unwillingness to empathize with and understand why these people leave. I think these people leave for very understandable reasons. And I have a theory that there are at least three main reasons or three main ways. Three major ways in which the church and its culture creates enemies. The first is in the way that it deals with its history. The fact that it's not candid and proactively honest about its own history and accompanied with that is not just how it deals with its own members, but also how it deals in the missionary effort. The second major pillar of how we create enemies is when we tear apart families over religious issues and specifically when a non believing spouse loses their believing spouse and children and as a result

Richard Packham [00:10:40] of

John Dehlin [00:10:43] the way the church operates in the lives of its people. And then the final pillar of my thesis is that when non believers see the church do damage to the lives of their believing loved ones, the combination of those three things would incite anyone to sort of use words like cultural to put up websites that are with the express purpose of hurting the church and doing all they can till their dying day to bring the church down. So with that framing, Richard Packham, let's start with your story and I want to start by the positive. I want to hear, you know, in five minutes all the wonderful things about the church and your experience with the church before you started questioning it.

Richard Packham's Mormon Upbringing and Doubts

Richard Packham [00:11:35] Well, my experience with the church until I finally left, it was really very good. I had a very wonderful Mormon childhood from descended from four, five, six generations of Mormon ancestors. My parents were very loving, devout Mormons. I enjoyed generally going to church. I was, I obeyed the commandments. I kept the word of wisdom. I did everything that a good Mormon boy or a Mormon young man was supposed to do. I advanced in the priesthood. I married a devout Mormon girl from a good Mormon family and we began to raise our children as Mormons. I Enjoyed especially my callings were almost always in the music end of things because I had some musical talent. So I was always the chorister or the organist. And I enjoyed the good Morton, good old Mormon hymns. I was enthusiastic about knowing the truth and spreading the gospel. At the time when I was mission age, a lot of people don't understand how much the church has changed in the last 50 years. When I was mission age, it was really not all that common for young men my age to go on missions. Some did, but there were a great many who did not. And it was kind of up to the young man whether whether he wanted to spend some time on a mission or whether he had other things to do. And my, my primary goal at that point in my life was to get my education. And so it was perfectly okay for me not to go on a mission. So I never served mission. I understand that I, in that I have something in common with President Monson who also never served a mission.

John Dehlin [00:14:00] I didn't, I didn't know that.

Richard Packham [00:14:01] Well, it's come up several times in discussion on ex Mormon discussion boards. Hey, how can Monson be president of the church? He never served a mission. So I always try to step in and say look, in those days it wasn't expected of every young man man to serve a mission.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] So anyway, interesting. You're in good company, right?

Richard Packham [00:14:25] I guess so. Except I don't have visions like President Monson is supposed to have.

Guest [00:14:31] Right.

Richard Packham [00:14:33] So anyway, my, my church experience was, was almost always very pleasant and I also got very good strokes because from, from Mormon leaders because I was such a good Mormon boy. And it wasn't until I began to, to try to. As a matter of fact, what, what got me out of the church was my attempts to be an even better Mormon.

Guest [00:15:06] Right?

Richard Packham [00:15:07] And that is to spread the gospel among my non Mormon friends. It was when I went away to graduate school with my Mormon wife and kids in tow that I was first exposed to a large community of very intellectual non Mormon people. And this was when I was in graduate school in Illinois at the Northwestern University. And I felt that this would give me an opportunity to be a missionary in my own way. And that is to spread the gospel among my non believing colleagues, fellow students and even my professors. And I even, I even did approach several of my professors to explain Mormonism to them. And, and they were all very kind and they listened gently and probably shook their heads after I left. But, but I felt that I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do.

Guest [00:16:11] Right.

Richard Packham [00:16:13] Some of my fellow Students, however, were very well versed in their own religious beliefs. They were good Lutherans or Catholics or Baptists. And they would ask me quite probing questions that I didn't know the answer to. And so I felt that I owed it to myself and to God to study out the answers to these questions so that I could show these other non Mormons that the gospel was indeed true. I was fortunate to be at Northwestern because the university there had an excellent library, the Deering Library, which, which had a large collection of materials on Mormonism, probably because Illinois, in the history of Illinois, the Mormons played a rather large role in the mid-1819th century. So I began. I was amazed to find so much material on Mormonism. And so I began trying to figure out the answers to these questions. I mean, they asked me what about the. Some of the questions were, you know, what about these Danite exterminator gangs that the Mormons had in Missouri? And what about this teaching that Adam is God and other things like that. And I never heard about most of these things. Well, this has to be lies. You know, these are people that are telling lies about Mormonism because we don't believe that Adam is God anyway. So I started doing research and I found some troubling things, but it didn't really. Didn't really affect my faith. I realized that all I had to do was keep prayerfully searching and eventually the answers would come. It was about three years later that after all the research in the meantime, we'd lived in Utah for a couple of years while I had a teaching job there in Ogden. And I'd gone on to Johns Hopkins University to do more graduate research there. It was finally at Johns Hopkins, when I was still struggling with these problems, that it occurred to me that all of the problems disappeared once I admitted to myself that the church was just another man made religion,

John Dehlin [00:19:00] right?

Richard Packham [00:19:01] And it was like a revelation to me. I didn't necessarily think it was a revelation from God, but it was like an epiphany. And I remember running home and telling my wife with joy and happiness, guess what, darling, the church isn't true. And that was the beginning of the end for our marriage because she didn't want to hear anything about it. And I realized at that point that I had made some serious mistakes in my relationship with my wife because I hadn't been telling her about my work, trying to prove that the church was true and defended against its detractors because I didn't want to upset her, right? And of course I ended up really upsetting her when I realized that, when I told her about the conclusion that I had come to him.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] So do you feel like that was just a big shock to her? Did she have just. Did you blindside her?

Richard Packham [00:20:03] Yes, that was a big shock to her because she had no suspicion at all that I was having any doubts or questions. Well, which of course was accurate because until that moment in the library, I had no doubts.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Right.

Richard Packham [00:20:19] I had lots of questions, but I didn't have any doubts. I continued to be, to assure myself that I would be able to erase all of these doubts if I just found the right, the right answers.

Challenging Stereotypes About Why People Leave

John Dehlin [00:20:35] So here's where it makes sense to sort of throw in some of the stereotypes, and some of the stereotypes are, number one, you know, you, you stopped reading the scriptures and stopped praying and, you know, stop being committed to the church. Do you, do you feel like that applied to you?

Richard Packham [00:20:53] Well, I suppose I have to admit that I really did stop praying because I'd never really had all that much good results. And as a result of my prayers, I viewed it as. I viewed the Gospel intellectually and emotionally as well, you know, it was my culture. I loved it. I had good feelings about it. But I was, I guess I took too literally the Mormon doctrine that the glory of God is intelligence and that the gospel is rational. And any reasonable person who examines the gospel will conclude rationally that it is indeed the truth.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Right.

Richard Packham [00:21:45] And so perhaps that was a mistake I made.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] Well, I don't, I, I don't ask this question thinking, and I know you wouldn't worry about this, but I don't ask this question thinking you have anything to be ashamed of. There are plenty of active Mormons who fall behind on their prayer and scripture study. But, but some of those people do so because they don't find that prayer works the way that they're kind of led to expect that it's going to work. Does that make sense?

Richard Packham [00:22:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:16] And they don't find fulfillment in the Scriptures, some people, and, and so they just kind of hanging on their own hats that they're slackers. But in reality, the way they're taught to pray and the way they're taught to read the Scriptures just isn't, Isn't edifying. But what was it for you?

Richard Packham [00:22:32] Well, as far as the Scriptures go, I did continue to read the Scriptures because I felt that probably there was part of the answer and that, and I accepted the Scriptures as, as the word of God. But it was in my Scripture reading that I began to have some problems because, for example, I I read the book of Ecclesiastes. And in reading Ecclesiastes you find all kinds of things that not only call into question Mormonism, but also some, some fundamental Christian ideas. Like the, the idea that, well, you know, when you die, that's it. You know, you just turn to dust. And what is there after you die? There's nothing after you die. And

John Dehlin [00:23:31] that's what, that's what Ecclesiastes says.

Richard Packham [00:23:33] Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah. I recommend to people that are having the rely on their scripture that says read the book of Ecclesiastes because it does not fit in well with basic Christian or Mormon beliefs. And then another passage I came across in, In Hosea or. No, I'm sorry, in. Is it Hosea or Micah, one of them. Well, this is Micah. Micah, Old Testament. Yeah. Where. Where the prophet says, God hath shown the young man what is good and what doth God require of you, but to deal justly, Deal justly with thy fellow man and walk humbly with thy God.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] Right.

Richard Packham [00:24:26] That's all God wants is for you to, to, you know, deal justly and love your fellow man. I think it was. And I thought, well, gee, what then? What, what, what about baptism? What? Doesn't God want you to be baptized? Doesn't God want you to go to the temple and get your endowment? Doesn't God want you to preach the gospel? I mean, does God really require you to pay tithing if all you're supposed to do is walk humbly with thy God and deal justly with thy fellow man? And that really raised a question for me and people. I think the church really makes a mistake if it wants to keep people in the church in encouraging them to read the Scriptures. Because reading, reading the Book of Mormon raises a lot of questions. Or reading the Doctrine and Covenants. I know people who've left the church after they have read the Doctrine and Covenants from COVID to cover. And the Book of Mormon raises a lot of questions because it's supposed to be the fullness of the gospel. And yet there are major principles and practices of present day Mormonism that are not even mentioned in the Book of Mormon. And even. And when it comes to polygamy, even condemned in the Book of Mormon.

Guest [00:25:59] Right? Yeah.

Richard Packham [00:26:01] You know, there's the passage in the Book of Mormon where Jesus is supposedly told the Nephites, look, this is my doctrine, Faith, repentance and baptism. And that's it. That's my doctrine. And anybody that says that there's more to my doctrine than that is of the devil.

John Dehlin [00:26:19] Right.

Richard Packham [00:26:20] Well, then where does the temple endowment come in? Where does all of the rest of it come in?

John Dehlin [00:26:28] And that's. And that's. So that's an important point to make. And this was my experience. I, I stumbled on your stuff as I was trying to be a more effective seminary teacher, specifically trying to teach doctrine and covenants and church history, wanting to dig deeper to be a more effective teacher. So this stereotype that people are weak or feeble or faithless and that's what leads them out of the church probably is inaccurate. How would you frame it if you.

Richard Packham [00:26:55] I think that's. I think that's correct. Now, we do have to admit that I do know of a lot of people who have gone inactive and dropped out, who were just lazy and shiftless and decided they didn't want to have anything to do it. To do with it. I think those were really not Mormons in the first place.

John Dehlin [00:27:17] And they, and they rarely become anti Mormons in my experience.

Richard Packham [00:27:20] Oh, yeah, that's correct. Yeah, they rarely do.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] They don't bother to put up a website and fight the church. They just, you know, go do other stuff.

Richard Packham [00:27:28] That's true.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] Okay, what about the stereotype that you just were looking for an excuse to justify a sin or to begin committing sin?

Richard Packham [00:27:37] I think that's rare among ex Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:27:40] What about for your experience?

John Dehlin [00:27:42] You.

John Dehlin [00:27:42] That. What about your experience for. For you. You and your journey?

Richard Packham [00:27:46] Oh, all right. No, I had no desire to sin in.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] Like, you wanted to drink or you wanted to look at porn or you wanted to smoke or you, you didn't want to pay. You don't want to pay tithing.

Richard Packham [00:27:58] Right. It wasn't until after I left the church that I thought, well, gee, you know, what is this thing about wine or beer or coffee? I had. I had never wanted to be unfaithful to my wife. I never had as long as we were married and as long as I was in the church, and for some time after I left church, I never had any. Any desire or extra marital thoughts at all.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Right.

Richard Packham [00:28:29] I was, I was 100%. You know, now I will admit that once I'd left the church and once I was divorced from my wife and once I was out there in the world and needed to find my place and maybe find another companion, then I became sexually active.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] Sure.

Richard Packham [00:28:46] Right. And then I began to experiment with wine. But that wasn't my motivation for leaving at all.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] Right, right. Okay, that makes sense. So you find these troubling historical things and these issues with the scriptures, why? And this is going to be an obvious question, but I need you to be explicit. What does that have to do with you leaving the church? Why did you feel like you needed to leave the church? It was an act of. What? What was it an act?

Richard Packham [00:29:18] Well, it was an act of intellectual honesty, I suppose. Well, I. I suppose it was. I couldn't continue to say that something was true when I didn't believe it was true.

Guest [00:29:38] Right.

Richard Packham [00:29:38] I remember. I remember specifically, I kept going to church with my wife and kids. This was in Baltimore, a very small ward, I think it was. There was one ward in Baltimore at the time, and I continued to go to church. And then I remember one day the bishop asked me to give the closing prayer. This was after I decided that the church wasn't true, and I had to tell him. I said, bishop, I don't think there are the. I want to give the closing prayer because I don't. I don't believe it's true. I. I just don't go along with that anymore. So wasn't that hard?

John Dehlin [00:30:22] I mean, is. I see. I don't mean to sort of overly be too effusive and praise. Praiseful, but there's a perspective that. That. That says that that's a very courageous thing to do because there's a lot of people who have doubts, who would be ashamed to admit it and who would never want to publicly and who just kind of keep to themselves. It's a. It's a totally different thing to say, look, I'm struggling, and. Bishop, I'm going to admit to you that I'm struggling, especially back in the early 1960s or mid-1960s or late 1950s.

Richard Packham [00:30:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] Was that hard to do?

Richard Packham [00:31:00] I don't recall how I felt about it, but I felt that I had to say, I. I don't think that I'm going to want to. To pray. I was fortunate. I was not ever asked to teach. I was. There were a number of times I was asked to talk in church, and as long as I believed it, I gave wonderful talks that people felt were inspiring, But I never had a chance to refuse to give a talk because I wasn't asked after I had decided that the church wasn't true.

Guest [00:31:43] Right.

Richard Packham [00:31:44] But there was something else I was going to say. I guess it was. It's that I try. I try to be honest with myself. I can't pretend to myself or I can't act in a certain way generally. If I. If my emotions don't match that, if my feelings don't match that. I mean, I can tell a little white lie to somebody on a social level, you know, without hurting, in order to avoid hurting their feelings. But when it comes to. To basic beliefs, I, I can't. I can't tell myself that I believe something when I really don't.

John Dehlin [00:32:39] Right. And so your, your leaving the church was an act of. It began with the motivation of truth seeking, and it ended with a commitment to integrity and honesty.

Richard Packham [00:32:56] Well, that sounds pretty good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:59] Now, I don't mean to frame it that way, but it's just so different than how an active believing LDS would see someone who leaves the church. But that's how, after interviewing a thousand people, that's how I've often seen the pattern emerge.

Richard Packham [00:33:15] And I think that that's accurate. I think a lot of people struggle with it, maybe more than I did, and resist admitting to themselves that they don't believe it anymore. And they go on trying to act as though they do believe it because they fear the consequences of admitting to themselves that they don't believe it anymore. And those people are generally. And I've talked to a lot of them informally and know some of them, and they generally go through a period of extreme torment. And I guess that's an example of what people. What is called cognitive dissonance.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Right. Did you ever try to talk to an ecclesiastical leader or, you know, general authorities, or did you ever try and, like, grapple with your learnings of the history, with how the history is portrayed in the church, you know, while you were a member?

Doctrinal Issues and Historical Problems Discovered

Richard Packham [00:34:26] I don't recall having any, any conversations on the local level. I. I did think that probably if I asked one of the general authorities, I would get a straight answer. And so I did write to Joseph Fielding Smith, who at the time was president of the Quorum of the twelve and also church historian. And he was a man that at the time I admired very greatly. And I thought, you know, President Smith will be honest with me. And so I wrote to him about my problem with the Adam God thing, because my research is at. My research had demonstrated to me that Brigham Young did indeed teach that Adam was God and that God the Father, God the Father, and that he was the only God with whom we had to deal. And I also, at the same time recall the strange conversation that I had with Sidney B. Sperry when I was a student at Brigham Young University. And a bunch of us after class were standing around talking about deep doctrine. And Professor Sperry made a comment that stuck with me. He said, you know, brethren, one of these days when we finally get to see God, I think you may be surprised at who it really is. And I thought, wow. And of course, later, when I had found out about Brigham Young's teachings of the Adam God, I thought, you know, that's probably what Professor Sperry was talking about. And so I wrote to Joseph Fielding Smith and explained to him what my research had told me, asked him to please clarify it for me, that I was perfectly willing at the time to accept Brigham Young's teaching that Adam was indeed God, and that it was probably a very sacred and secret teaching that we probably shouldn't be talking about openly in the church. But, you know, it probably was true. I mean, Brigham Young was a prophet after all. And so I wrote in that tone to President Smith and I sort of expected him to write back to me and say, yes, Brother Packham, you've stumbled on something that is precious doctrine and treat it the way you say, do your temple vows and don't talk about it openly, but it is a precious truth. And, and you're to be commended for having the spiritual fortitude to discover it, etc. But that wasn't what he wrote at all. It was a very brief letter and it told me that such a doctrine was false. It was ridiculous, it was non scriptural, and anybody who believed it would go to hell. And he said nothing about Brigham Young or tried at all to explain or why it appeared that Brigham Young taught that. And I was just dumbfounded and could only conclude that President Smith, who was the church historian, didn't know his church history or he was lying to me.

John Dehlin [00:38:00] Right.

Richard Packham [00:38:01] Although I didn't actually verbalize that. It was disturbing enough to me that I think that was one of the nails in the coffin of my membership.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Did you uncover prior to your leaving the church, any of the other standard issues such as the temple ceremony, Mason connections of the pre1990 temple ceremony, the Book of Abraham and the papyrus stuff, the polyandry with Joseph blacks in the priesthood, and the racist statements made by Brigham Young, any of the Book of Mormon anachronisms. Did any of those things, or was it just Adam, God?

Richard Packham [00:38:48] No, there were some other things. But it's interesting that on that list of things you mentioned, some of those weren't even available at the time, like the Book of Abraham papyrus. They hadn't been discovered yet. And as far as the Book of Mormon went, when I left the church, when I decided that the church was not what it claimed to be, the Book of Mormon was still a puzzle to me. I could not explain The Book of Mormon as being just a man made thing. It was a puzzle for me. Even though I had read the Book of Mormon very carefully and I had. I'd taken Book of Mormon classes from Sidney Sperry. The Book of Mormon played no role in my leaving the church. As a matter of fact, if anything, it would have been a stumbling block because I still found it quite amazing and remarkable that Joseph Smith could have produced something like that.

John Dehlin [00:39:57] So in other words, to leave the church you had to crawl around, over or under the Book of Mormon, Is that what you're saying?

Richard Packham [00:40:03] Yeah, yes, that's exactly what I did. And I think that the apostle who was it, was it, was it Hammond or.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] It was Elder one of. I was just saying that he must

Richard Packham [00:40:16] have had me, he must have had me in mind because I did crawl over and around the Book of Mormon. Of course, since then there's been so much information made available about the Book of Mormon that nobody has to crawl over it. I mean, you just blow it away with a puff of smoke and you're out of the church.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Well, there's a lot of people who still have very strong spiritual or emotional ties to the Book of Mormon.

Richard Packham [00:40:41] Yes, I understand, I understand that. But some of the other things I knew that Joseph Smith was the polygamist at the time I left the church. And, and that was. That made perfect sense. I mean, polygamy was one of the doctrines of the church and someday we were going to practice it again. Although if that had ever occurred, my mother would have left the chur. Even though she was a devout Mormon. She told us a number of times, if they ever bring back polygamy, I'm out of the church. And yet she ended her days as a devout Mormon temple worker anyway, so I knew about that. I didn't know about the polyandry. There were some other troubling issues I didn't know about. Well, of course. And I realized the racism because when I left the church, the church still denied priesthood to the blacks.

John Dehlin [00:41:38] Right.

Richard Packham [00:41:40] I didn't see that as a problem at all. Not that I was racist or anything, but, you know, if the church wants to keep the blacks from going to the temple or getting married in the temple, that seemed to be okay. It didn't strike me as being something that was characteristic of the church of the Church of Christ. But that wasn't one of the reasons that I left. Other disturbing things that I uncovered was, was some other examples of the church, church lying or church officials lying. I found among some of my grandfather's papers who he had served a mission in England about 1910. And among his papers was the reprint of a tract that included transcription of a conversation that John Taylor had had with some Protestant ministers in Europe when he was there on a mission in which they had accused the Mormons of practicing polygamy. And this was in 1850, before the practice was generally made known by Brigham Young and Norse and Pratt in 1852. This. This discussion had taken place in 1850, and these Protestant ministers had accused the Mormons of practicing polygamy. And John Taylor was quite indignant. If you read the transcript of.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] Is that tract available now?

Richard Packham [00:43:14] Yeah. So it's online. Yeah. It's called Three Nights Discussion.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Okay.

Richard Packham [00:43:19] And you can Google that. And John Taylor and Three Nights Discussion in which he was. He was quite indignant that that the church should be accused of such a vile and obscene and despicable practice. And when I read that in among my grandfather's papers, I thought, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. John Taylor was practicing polygamy himself in 1850, as were most of the Mormon leaders, secretly, of course, but they were practicing it. And how can he be. Be lying? And so he was. He was being deceptive. Now I understand. I understand the Mormon rationalization for lying about polygamy at that time and also for their continual lying about it even after they made it public. Lying to protect the. Their polygamous fathers and brothers from being arrested for cohabitation in Utah. I understand the rationale for that, but it didn't bother me that an apostle of God would be lying when lying is so clearly condemned in the scriptures. I mean, the devil is the father of all lies according to the scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:44:47] I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna. I found that. I found this online and I'm just gonna read it. We are. This is John Taylor. We are. I don't know if this is a primary source. Is this something published by the church? Is this someone's recounting of what they heard?

Richard Packham [00:45:06] It was published by the ch and there are photocopies of the publication available so that that is a reliable. The version you found online probably is Revelation.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] Okay, so this isn't some anti Mormon claiming that John Taylor said this. This is.

Richard Packham [00:45:28] No.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] Okay. And here's what.

Richard Packham [00:45:30] Here's what I read. I read this among my grandfather's papers who had it with him when he was on his mission.

Guest [00:45:39] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:39] And it says we are accused here of polygamy and actions the most indelicate, obscene and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief. Yeah, these things are too outrageous to admit of belief. Okay, so anyway, keep going. I just wanted to include that.

Richard Packham [00:46:02] Right, right. And another thing that, that really made me question was reading in church history and, and this was in official church history. I'm not, not from anti Mormons. I had never been as you know, although I took church history in seminary and sometimes somewhat in some of the religion classes at byu, I was never all that much interested in church history because I figured that was all really more or less irrelevant. The important thing was that the gospel was here and the important thing was the doctrine, not how we got it or not the events that surrounded the coming forth of the doctrine. And so I'd never been interested in

Guest [00:46:55] church history,

Richard Packham [00:46:58] but it was historical questions that often were coming up in my discussions with non Mormon friends. So I began studying church history and then I discovered more and more puzzling things. For example, I hadn't really known much about the Kirtland Banking, Banking Society, the Kirtland bank that failed in 1837. And yet reading about it, I discovered that, you know, it was, it was established by the prophet Joseph Smith. And the Mormons of the day believed, either rightly or wrongly, that it was established by inspiration and it was God directed and the prophet was directing it. And yet it fails. Another example was when the, when the prophet organized Zion's camp to go and march from Kirtland out to Missouri to rescue the Mormons. And he promised them that, you know, this would go out and rescue our brethren in Missouri. And yet Zion's camp was an utter failure. A lot of them died of cholera. They ended up getting out there and were scattered. And, and of course the Mormon explanation for that, the official explanation is, well, it was a test of the people's faith.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Not only that, but I remember Joseph saying something to the effect of they weren't faithful enough. The members of the Zion's camp didn't exercise enough faith.

Richard Packham [00:48:43] Yeah, yeah. Which is of course an explanation for a lot of the failures of prophecies. And then the United order, I mean the united order revelation says that it is an everlasting covenant. I mean it's, and this will be the order for my people from now, from now on. And yet the Mormons tried to practice it several times in Kirtland and in Utah and it never, it never worked out. And so the question arises, gee, how can all these things that are supposedly instructions of the church and how Things should work and inspired their failures.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] Right.

Richard Packham [00:49:35] And so it makes you question, you know, is this church really led by God? And since then, of course, there have been other examples of the same thing. You know, the Navajo placement or the Indian placement. Indian. The Lamanite placement program, that didn't work out either. And the handcarts, although the Mormons claim that it was a great success and spiritual experience and so on. I just finished reading Devil's Gate and the handcarts were essentially a failure and caused tremendous suffering for the people that were involved in them.

John Dehlin [00:50:19] Right.

Richard Packham [00:50:20] So.

Anger, Honesty, and the Church's Candor About History

John Dehlin [00:50:22] So we could probably, we could keep going and list a lot of instances where programs or prophecies failed, but did you at any point cultivate a sense of anger that either what was being taught on Sunday or over the pulpit was inaccurate or deceptive?

Richard Packham [00:50:46] Well, I don't think I ever. I don't think I recall ever being really angry enough that I'd want to go out and set fire to a church or hit the bishop or run down a couple of Mormon missionaries with the car. I never was that angry. I don't think I was hurt. And I was, I was upset at the results with the loss of my family. But I'm not as. I don't think I was ever as angry as a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] Okay, let me ask you different. Did you conclude at any point that the church was not being upfront or candid with its history?

Richard Packham [00:51:35] Yes, I, I concluded. That was one of the things that I concluded as soon as I realized the church wasn't true. This is one of the things that led me to realize that the church is lying. And why would the church, why would the Church of God really want to lie or need to lie?

John Dehlin [00:51:53] Right, right. And it, and just to summarize, it, lied by what, claiming that it never practiced polygamy? What were the main lies that, that bothered you at the time? Because a failed pro, you know, failed handcarts isn't a lie. Right.

Richard Packham [00:52:13] Well, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about what were the lies?

John Dehlin [00:52:16] What were, what were some examples of church lying or cover ups or deception about its history? What were the main ones that irked you at the time, if you remember?

Richard Packham [00:52:28] Well, at, at the time that led me to leave the church or since.

John Dehlin [00:52:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the time he left.

Richard Packham [00:52:36] Well, I think I've mentioned most of them.

John Dehlin [00:52:39] Okay, so it was lying about polygamy at some point.

Richard Packham [00:52:45] Well, Joseph, Joseph Fielding Smith lying to me about Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [00:52:49] Okay, right, right, right.

Richard Packham [00:52:51] And the church lying about whether it ever taught that Adam was God.

John Dehlin [00:52:55] Right.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] Okay, okay. No, those are fine. So those are examples. So, okay, so you leave the church and you end up feeling like it's a house of cards. Like the church is not honest about its history, it hides its history and it just doesn't add up.

Richard Packham [00:53:21] Is that it's not what. It's not what it claims to be,

John Dehlin [00:53:24] it's not what it claims to be.

Richard Packham [00:53:25] And the only another man made religion.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] And the only way to make sense of all the confusing, difficult things is to conclude that it's not true. Right.

Richard Packham [00:53:32] Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:33] And then everything makes perfect sense. The polygamy, the, you know, the. The failed prophecies, the whatever. It all comes to make sense. Okay.

Guest [00:53:43] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E S K Y E. Pixton.com thank you.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 165

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] So let's transition from what I'll characterize as you seeking truth, you caring deeply, and you being so committed to honesty that you felt like you had to leave the church because it wasn't what you claimed to be. Claimed. It claimed it was. It wasn't what it claimed to be.

Richard Packham [00:00:39] Right.

Telling His Wife and the Unraveling Marriage

John Dehlin [00:00:39] Now let's talk about your situation with. With your wife. You tried to tell her that it wasn't true. And what were the series of events that led to you getting divorced?

Richard Packham [00:00:56] Well, as I recall, and of course, this is 50 years ago, so my memory may be colored by subsequent events. And I'm sure that if you talked to her, she would probably tell quite a different story. But as best as I recall, we did not discuss Mormonism at all. She did not want to talk about it, and so it was a non subject. We continued to go to church. At least I continue to go to church for a while, as I said.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] So you try, you try to talk to her, and she would just say, I won't talk. I won't talk to you.

Richard Packham [00:01:44] Right.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] I. I won't have this discussion.

Richard Packham [00:01:47] I don't want to hear, and I don't want to hear any of this.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] And how did that make you feel?

Richard Packham [00:01:51] Well, I thought, well, okay, fine, you know, if you want to continue to believe it, that's fine. And, And I. And I would continue to drive to church with them. And I had no problem with her working in the church or doing anything with the church, going to church, anything like that. I began to. And this, what I'm going to talk about now is, was, as I look back on it, probably a mistake. I began to realize, well, gee, there's no need for me to not have a cup of coffee with the kids at school. As you know, when they go and have a cup of coffee. If I, I had never in my life tasted coffee, so I thought, well, no, not to try it. And when they'd have a little party, I. I would, you know, think, well, gee, there's no reason for me not to have a glass of wine or a beer anymore because I don't believe that God considers it a sin.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] This is why you were still a member and still married to a believer.

Richard Packham [00:03:08] That's. That's right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:03:13] Did I mishear you say earlier that

John Dehlin [00:03:14] you didn't try alcohol until after you had left the church?

Richard Packham [00:03:19] Well, and after I, Until After I had stopped believing.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] Okay, okay.

Richard Packham [00:03:23] When I talk about leaving the church, okay. I'm talking about intellectually leaving.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so you're in that I'm still

Richard Packham [00:03:32] officially a member of the church.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] And this is such. You know, I counsel with couples all the time. The wife is a believer. The husband stops believing immediately. He wants to try beer or alcohol, coffee. And that is so disruptive to the believing spouse. And I feel split on that. Part of me feels like, look, you're committed to a marriage. You know, you change the terms of the marriage. You're the one who became the disbeliever. That wasn't the terms when you got married. You know that it's going to be troubling to your spouse to drink wine or coffee. Marriage is about making sacrifices. So, like, why push that button? Why not just pick your battles wisely? You've already stopped believing. That's traumatic enough. Leave the coffee and alcohol out of it so that you can at least save the marriage. That's how half of me feels. The other half of me feels like Jesus drank wine, the pioneers drank coffee. All members of the church drank coffee up until the early 1900s, or most of them. Who cares? You're no longer a believer. All the world drinks coffee and to no real severe detriment. And alcohol, if used responsibly, is perfectly reasonable. I'm torn between those two. But can you respond to the first position? Because you know it's bad for a marriage to do things that your wife is really, really unsettling for your wife. Why not just let those go?

Richard Packham [00:05:06] Why not just let things go? I think that's good advice if you can do it that way. And probably if I had had my wits about me, I would not have pushed that button. For example, I continue to wear my garments because I knew that would upset her if I stopped wearing the garments.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] Right?

Richard Packham [00:05:36] So I tried. I remember one time bringing home a bottle of cold duck wine, which is. I don't know if you know what that is. And in those days, I don't see it anymore. But it's a red sparkling wine. It's kind of like champagne, but it's red. And I had been introduced to cold duck. So I brought home a bottle and I suggested that I forget it was an anniversary or something. I suggested that maybe she'd like to try it a little bit and see that it really isn't all that bad. And I remember that. That we opened the bottle and. And we drank the bottle of wine together. And I thought, well, this is progress. We're moving along. You know, if I can get her to drink a bottle of wine, that was, that was as far as it went. And. She, Oh, there was something there. I just lost a thought.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] That would be, that would be traumatic and troubling, it seems, for a believer.

Richard Packham [00:06:58] Well, I think she was trying to meet me halfway, I suppose.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Right.

Richard Packham [00:07:10] What happened then was she was very uncomfortable with the way things were going and felt she wanted to go home for the summer and take the kids and visit family back in Utah and Idaho. And so she did. And so I was on my own for the summer. Oh, I know what it was. I was going to say one of the, one of the problems with,

John Dehlin [00:07:40] for

Richard Packham [00:07:40] a Mormon spouse in realizing that the former Mormon spouse no longer believes it is that the church has taught us to realize, to believe that if you leave the church, if you stop believing, and that means you will no longer be obedient, you no longer observe the gospel because you don't believe it anymore. And so all things that, that you've been doing because the gospel says to do them or not do them are going to be tossed out. For example, the gospel teaches you to be faithful to your spouse. Well, if you don't believe, why would you be faithful to your spouse? The gospel teaches you not to steal, but if you don't believe, then it's okay to steal.

John Dehlin [00:08:37] Right.

Richard Packham [00:08:37] Gospel teach, teaches you not to lie, but if you don't believe, then it's okay to lie.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] Right.

Richard Packham [00:08:44] And, and so on. And so all of the things that make for a good person, the church teaches you, and actually Christianity does as well, teaches you that those, you are a good person because you are a good Christian or a good Mormon. And if you're not a good Christian or a good Mormon, then you do all these bad things.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] Right.

Richard Packham [00:09:12] And so that's what a Mormon spouse starts to think. Well, he, he's, he doesn't believe anymore. That means he doesn't believe. The covenants we made in the temple when we were sealed, that mean, does that mean that he's going to, to come on to some pretty girl at school or at work? And I bet he will, because what's to keep him from doing that?

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Well, those are, those are natural questions. Yeah, I think they're, I think they're even reasonable like they are. I can tell you that in my darkest hour, when I wondered if I believed in God and when I had decided that the church wasn't claims to be before I had reconstructed, you know, the the perspective that I have now, that's exactly what I thought. Why be loyal to my wife if she doesn't find out? Who cares if there's no God watching? So, I mean, it's a natural thing for a disbeliever to start thinking and feeling and it's a natural thing for the believer to fear on the part of the disbeliever. Now, both sides come by that honestly, but you can see how a believer would be terrified and maybe even rightly so.

Richard Packham [00:10:31] Yes. Oh, I do understand that. And as I look back on what I was doing and not doing during those days that our marriage was on shaky ground, I realized that I could have done a great deal more to reassure her that I do still love you. I still am going to be faithful to you. I have no interest in getting involved with another woman. I have no interest in becoming a cheat or a liar. You know, I'm still a very good person that you thought I was. The only difference is I'm. I'm being a good person for different reasons.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] So you. But you didn't say that to her.

Richard Packham [00:11:22] I did not. In so many words. I, I think probably I didn't realize. I didn't realize what a traumatic experience it was for her. You know, I was an ignorant 25 year old at the time. You know, I wasn't. I wasn't as knowledgeable about human nature as I am in my wise old age.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] Was college contributing to maybe you feeling becoming a little bit negligent in taking care of her needs and your family's needs because you were so caught up in these cool, smart friends and the cool, interesting things you were learning that like all of a sudden now that you weren't believing this believing Mormon spouse just didn't seem as interesting, didn't seem as compelling. Maybe I would rather have a woman who was more adventurous and intelligent or at least more informed. Did any of that contribute as a dynamic to the failure of your marriage?

Richard Packham [00:12:22] Well, as I say, my memory may be faulty and colored in my favor, but I don't recall that I ever had feelings or ideas that I continued to love my wife very much. I felt in spite of the fact that she didn't want to talk about the church, I felt that she was a very bright woman, she was a loving mother, she was a good companion to me. I had no desire to. And I tried to be a devoted husband still.

John Dehlin [00:13:01] And last question before we talk about the actual breakup. Did you ever start to feel one of two very common things? One is my wife is an ostrich with her head in the sand. She's in denial. She's not being intelligent, she's not being rational. She's living in denial and being willingly ignorant by being unwilling to talk about these things. That's the first thing. And the second thing is I will not have my children raised in a cult or in a false church. And I will do everything I can to either deconvert my wife or prevent my children from being raised in something that's false to be set up with the same disillusionment that I experienced.

Richard Packham [00:13:48] Yeah, the answer to both of those questions I think is no. I didn't consider her to be an ostrich with her head in the sand. I was perfectly willing for her to continue to be a good Mormon wife and mother. I, I don't recall being upset that she didn't want to see things the same way I did. I would have been quite comfortable, I think, with her continuing to be a member of the church. And as far as the children goes, I was perfectly willing for them to continue to be Mormons as well. It's interesting that at the time it didn't occur to me that the church was a cult or that it was destructive. That didn't enter my mind.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] I'll just highlight that as a slight difference from what I'm seeing to be very common. And maybe it's because of ex Mormon websites that now exist that do frame the church in terms of being a cult. But it's very common for the disbelieving spouse to experience extreme angst about their children being raised in a church that they think is fraudulent. So I think it's different. Your reaction and to be willing to just go along and be semi active and allow their spouse to be a believer and not feel like their spouse is inferior in some way for avoiding the truth and to let their kids be raised in it. That's not how people are feeling today.

Richard Packham [00:15:40] Well, I think it, I think it all depends. I think that there are probably people today who are still people who are not no longer believing spouse who still feel that, oh no, that's okay for my kids to be raised Mormons and, and if my wife wants to be, continue to be Mormon, that's, that's fine with me.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] I'll just say those people don't come to talk to me very much. That's. Maybe I should just frame it that way.

Richard Packham [00:16:13] Okay, well maybe that's because they, they don't, they're not suffering any problems from it.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] Yeah, that's probably Right. That's probably totally right.

Richard Packham [00:16:23] People come to you, have got problems.

John Dehlin [00:16:25] Right.

Richard Packham [00:16:26] And are desperate and are trying to. Trying to change things some way in some fundamental way.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] All right, so I'm going to put a call out to my listeners. If there's any listener out there who's no longer a believer, but they're totally cool with their wife or spouse and kids being raised in the church, I want to interview you. So that's just. I'll just pause that. Okay, let's go back then. Richard, how did things end up in a divorce for you?

Separation, Divorce, and Emotional Fallout

Richard Packham [00:16:51] Well, things got bad that first summer when she took the kids back to Utah for a while, and I was all by myself. And it was at that point I thought, well, gee, you know, why am I going to spend this hot summer in Baltimore wearing garments? So I threw the garments away and went and bought some ordinary underwear while my wife was gone. And, you know, there were some kids, there were some fellow students in town during the summer, and so we did some partying. And I learned that you can drink too much and it gets embarrassing. And. When. When she got back with the kids, it was a happy reunion. I remember we were very, very glad, all of us, to see each other again. And she was upset that I wasn't wearing garments anymore. And. But things seem to be going on okay. It was sort of an armed truce for a while. And it wasn't until the spring, the last year we were in Baltimore, which was 1960, and she began talking in ways that were a little bit scary. I remember telling me about how there was a friend of hers at church whose husband had left the church. And so one day she just hired movers while he was at work. Movers came in, emptied the house, and she took off. And he came home to an empty house and had no idea where she was and said it almost like. She told me about this, almost like a threat, like this is what might happen. And we had some. We had some angry discussions, partly because I would go to a party with other students, and she didn't want to go because there was going to be drinking. And I would come home and I'd had some drinks. And I remember one night she locked me out of the house and I had to climb in a window. And it was another example of how stupid I was because she confronted me. And she. And I said, why did you lock me out of the house? She said, said, you've been drinking. And I said, you can't know that I've been drinking because I've Been drinking vodka, and vodka can't be smelled on the breath, which, you know, shows how stupid I was. Right. Anyway, that was. That was kind of. Things just got worse and worse.

John Dehlin [00:20:32] Did your drinking ever lead you to be violent at home or to.

Richard Packham [00:20:35] No, I don't think I ever struck

John Dehlin [00:20:38] her or angry or.

Richard Packham [00:20:41] Or got angry or anything like that. And as a matter of fact, I don't think I ever was drinking around her.

John Dehlin [00:20:49] There were kids, right? Were there kids?

Richard Packham [00:20:50] I didn't drink. I drink in. I didn't. Did not drink in the day and. Or I don't think I ever drank around the kids.

John Dehlin [00:21:01] So you did have children with her?

Richard Packham [00:21:03] Oh, yeah, yeah, we had three. Had three kids at that time.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Okay.

Richard Packham [00:21:08] The. The oldest was, I think, six years old. Okay. I mean, we were a good Mormon family. We had kids bang, bang, bang.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Right.

Richard Packham [00:21:19] It was in April of that year that I came home one day and she and the kids were out there.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] We're not there. We're not.

Richard Packham [00:21:30] They were not there. They were not home. And. And there was no note or anything saying where they were. So I thought, well, they're out there off doing something, and they didn't come home that night. And I thought, well, this is. This is strange. I thought, well, she's probably took the kids and staying overnight at her friends. They weren't there the next day. And yet the. That. The afternoon of that day, I knew our little girl had an. At a doctor's appointment or an appointment of some kind. And so I called a friend and said, you know, if Elaine is there with the kids, you need to remind her that Laura has an appointment this afternoon. And she said, well, Richard, Elaine isn't here. I said, well, do you know where she is? She says, well, I took her to the train yesterday and she's on her way to Utah. Well, I was really upset then because this was completely out of the blue. Right. And I thought. And of course, I immediately thought of the woman who's. Who's husband came home to an empty house, which is sort of what had happened to me. And I thought, well, she's left me. And so I thought, I, you know, who. Who knows what she's going to do? So I.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] I just have to.

John Dehlin [00:23:10] I just have to.

John Dehlin [00:23:10] I just have to ask.

John Dehlin [00:23:11] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] You know, do you feel like you were generally a good husband and a good father, aside from the fact that you stopped believing and you drank occasionally and stopped wearing your temple garments?

Richard Packham [00:23:28] Yes. And again, I. My memory may be colored in my favor by. But I do think I was a good father. I think I've been a good father to the children I have now. I think I was a good husband and father, aside from the fact that I no longer believed and that my wife didn't like my drinking and she didn't like the fact that I no longer believed.

John Dehlin [00:23:58] Okay, all right. I mean, I know that, you know, it's. It's funny for me to ask you that, because I should be asking her, but, you know, that's the scenario that I think is most relevant here. People are going to get divorced. Divorce. You know, 50% of marriages end in divorce, apparently. But I'm interested in these issues where a spouse is a good spouse and a good parent. And the only real factor in the split up is an inability to believe the church for what I think are very reasonable reasons.

Richard Packham [00:24:34] Yeah, well, I have always believed. At the time, I believed it, and now and day I believe it. If I had not left the church, we would probably still be married.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Right. Okay, so you think. And even from the discussions you had with her around the divorce and subsequently, she never claimed that you were abusive or. She never claimed that you were, you know, dishonest or angry or irresponsible?

Richard Packham [00:25:06] Not to me, she didn't. And I'm not aware that she claimed that to anybody else.

John Dehlin [00:25:10] Okay, all right, that's fine.

Richard Packham [00:25:11] So, you know, you know, John, you really might want to contact her and invite her to be on a podcast. Let her tell the story about what it's like to be a Mormon and your spouse no longer believes she might be able to give.

John Dehlin [00:25:29] You know what? If she'll do the interview, I will do it.

Richard Packham [00:25:32] Well, I'll be glad to put you in touch with it.

John Dehlin [00:25:34] Let's do it. And the fact that you're offering that is, I think, to your credit in terms of credibility. But let me. Let me just ask, what's it like to be left.

Richard Packham [00:25:46] Well, it was. It was devastating, of course, and I think it was a major miscommunication between us because I interpreted her leaving as being an expression of her desire to leave me. And so I contacted an attorney to find out, gee, what. What are my legal rights? And he explained to me that under the circumstances, probably the best. The best thing for me to do would be not to file for divorce, but under. Under Maryland law, you could file for a legal separation, which would simply get a codification, a legal determination of the various rights in property and so on. And we had no property other than furniture and the car, but it would also establish custody and visitation Rights. And so I said, well, go ahead and drop those papers and I'll send them out to Idaho and. And see what she'll do. It was. And I've learned since that it was probably a miscalculation because I think that she probably did not intend to leave me, that this was a manipulative ploy, that she wanted to scare me into thinking that she would me.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] Right.

Richard Packham [00:27:28] And that by doing so, I would come begging her at her feet to please do not leave me and come back and I will do anything.

John Dehlin [00:27:43] Why didn't. Why didn't you do that?

Richard Packham [00:27:45] Well, because. Snowballed. As far as I was concerned, she was leaving me. And didn't you ever make an effort

John Dehlin [00:27:59] to beg her or pleader or reconcile?

Richard Packham [00:28:01] Yes. I. I'm. I'm getting.

John Dehlin [00:28:03] Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Richard Packham [00:28:04] No, that's all right. That's right. So I. I was stuck there in Baltimore until the term. Until the school term ended. And as soon as I was available, I think it was in June, I got on the train myself and went out to Idaho and. And went to her sister's where she had been staying with the kids in Idaho Falls. And I had. I had phoned her and told her that I was going to come up and see the kids and say hello and see when we would talk. And I arrived at the sister's house, and the sister greeted me at the door saying, richard, there's a man here who wants to talk to you. And it was a sheriff's deputy serving me with divorce papers.

John Dehlin [00:28:51] This is after you had filed for separation, Right, Right.

Richard Packham [00:28:54] But of course, the separation thing would only work if she had signed the papers and sent them back, which she did not. And I kept asking her, are you going to sign the papers?

John Dehlin [00:29:04] So.

John Dehlin [00:29:05] So what about a phone call?

Richard Packham [00:29:07] Well, you know, the phone calls. There were phone calls. I said, are you. Do you want to sign the papers and get this settled? And she didn't want to talk about it. No. You know, let's wait until you get out here and then we'll talk.

John Dehlin [00:29:19] Okay, but what about a phone call? Just forgetting the separation or the divorce, but just like, honey, why did you leave? I love you. I love the kids. Can't we make this work? What's going on?

Richard Packham [00:29:31] Yeah, that. That probably would have been a wise idea. I don't remember the actual text of any of the phone calls we had. You know, you have to remember, too, that phone calls in those days were long distance calls and very expensive. Okay. And I was a poor student.

John Dehlin [00:29:54] Okay. Okay. That makes Sense.

Richard Packham [00:29:57] So. So it was, you know, not much more than. Than letters. What.

John Dehlin [00:30:05] What did you feel? Did you ever. Was there a part of you that said, awesome, she's left now. I. Now I don't have to feel this burden, and maybe I can find someone who's more like me and who I can get along with better. Like, was there.

Richard Packham [00:30:21] No. No, I. I assumed that. Or I was hoping that we could work this out some way. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:30:29] Okay.

Richard Packham [00:30:30] But when. When. When I was served with the divorce papers, I realized, oh, boy, she's. She really means this. And so there was. There was not much talking between us then because she told me that she didn't want to talk except with the presence of her attorney, which, of course, is what her attorney would have properly advised her to do. So we made an appointment to. For me to talk to her at her attorney's office in Idaho Falls. Her attorney happened to be a former classmate of mine in high school. He was a couple of years ahead of me, but I knew him, and he was a good attorney. And so we met in her attorney's office, and he said. He said to me, richard, is. Is there anything that you'd be willing to do to put an end to this and get you two back together? I said, yes, I would be willing to do almost anything. And he turned to Elaine and said, elaine, what would you have to have Richard do in order for there to be a reconciliation and stop this divorce? And she said, he would have to come back to the church and be a good member of the church. And Dennis turned to me and said, well, Richard, are you willing to do that? And it was at that point I realized that it was over because I could not say that I could be a good Mormon and forget all that I knew about what I had learned and say that I believed something that I didn't believe. And I remember having to say, no, I don't think I could. I think Dennis said, well, I guess that's it, then.

Grief Over Family Loss and the Church's Role

John Dehlin [00:32:44] What's that like to love your wife, love your children, and to feel like it's the church that hasn't been honest in its dealings with other people is the cause for your divorce?

Richard Packham [00:33:03] Well, at that. At that moment, it wasn't really the church I felt was involved. It was. It was her requiring me to be part of the church that was the problem.

John Dehlin [00:33:24] But where did that requirement come from?

Richard Packham [00:33:27] Well, it was from her being brought up to be a good Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Right?

Richard Packham [00:33:33] Of course, from the church. But you see. But you see, I didn't. I didn't blame the church directly. It wasn't directly the church's fault. In my mind, at least at that moment, it is. She could have short circuited it, she could have said, you know, in spite of all of what the church has told me, I must do, I love you so much that I, I will accept you whether you believe it or not, as long as you're faithful to me and you're a good man. But you see, she couldn't do that.

John Dehlin [00:34:07] She couldn't give you that.

Richard Packham [00:34:09] She, she couldn't know. And I understand why. You know, the end. Now that I look back on it, I can see that it was, it is, I mean, even though it's indirectly the fault of the church, it is the fault of the church. The, the church tells women that they need to have a priesthood holder in their home. And my oldest boy was only five years old. He was, he had another seven years to go before he'd even be a deacon.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] Right, right.

Richard Packham [00:34:48] But later, later as you begin examining and you begin to hear other people's experiences with how, how the presence of the church in their life has caused this kind of disruption, later you begin to say, look, there is something, there is something, something wrong here that the church is ultimately the cause of so much sorrow and breakup of what otherwise could have been healthy, warm, loving relationships.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] Yeah. And as much as I love the church and enjoying my membership and raising my family in it, that is horrible to me that in any instance where the church or religious belief breaks up an otherwise good marriage and separates children from their parent for just religious reasons.

Richard Packham [00:35:53] Yeah. And, you know, for a long time, for a long time, I felt that, that my experience was probably unusual. I didn't know of any other couples that had broken up because one of the spouses didn't leave. As a matter of fact, I was aware in my own extended family, I was aware of cousins and uncles and so on who obviously didn't really believe it because they rarely went to church. They had an occasional beer, but they were good men and they were still, you know, they'd still drive the wife to, to church or they'd still go to a sacrament meeting when one of the kids was giving a talk. And I, that, that they didn't believe it anymore, but they still had a marriage and they still had their family. And so I sort of felt that my situation in having lost my family was unusual. And it wasn't until I became more active just, you know, 12 or so years ago after I had retired and long after I'd left the church. And long after I had remarried and had kids from my present marriage, it wasn't until I got active and realized that there were other ex Mormons out there and became more active in the ex Mormon community that I began hearing stories that were very similar to mine. Until that point, I had felt that my leaving the church was just really primarily an intellectual problem, and it was, that could be dealt with rationally and intellectually. And then as I became more active among other ex Mormons and began reading the stories that they posted online and, and talking to them occasionally and meeting them at ex Mormon get togethers, and, and I would, I would sit at my computer reading some of these stories about the abuse and the, and the turmoil that these people went to, and, and I'd find tears coming, streaming down my cheeks reading these stories. And I thought, you know, it isn't just an intellectual decision that the church isn't what it claims to be and that it's not telling the entire truth. There is evil there. Evil things are happening because of this. And I suppose that that's, that continues to be one of the, one of my motivations in continuing to do what I do. Because if you can prevent bad things from happening to people, as they may well do if they get involved with Mormonism, I think it's worth spending time doing that.

John Dehlin [00:39:21] And that's why you can't, quote, leave the church alone, unquote.

Richard Packham [00:39:25] That's right. This common quote that Mormons use to deprecate those who leave and don't leave it alone. It's discussed quite often among ex Mormons. You know, buddy, how do you respond to this? Well, and there are all kinds of explanations people have come up with or analogies, really. You know, well, so you were able to get in the lifeboat and leave the sinking ship, and you don't think that you should help to try to get other people out of the water or you've got out of the burning house. Don't you think you should try to help some other people to get out as well? Or, you know, you've avoided walking into the quicksand or you've pulled yourself out of the quicksand. Don't you think you should post a sign saying, warning ahead, Quicksand.

John Dehlin [00:40:22] Right, right, right.

Richard Packham [00:40:27] Others have said, look, we'd leave the church alone if the church would leave us alone.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] Right.

Richard Packham [00:40:34] And stop, stop destroying our relationships, stop begging us to come back, stop bothering us, stop trying to reactivate us. You know, stop saying bad things about us. Pull those 50,000 missionaries off the Streets, stop trying to. And get more people involved, or at

John Dehlin [00:41:00] least if you do have missionaries on the street, teach your history and your doctrine honestly and openly so that people don't join the church and then learn all the craziness.

Richard Packham [00:41:14] Right. Make them read the fine print.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Yeah, I'm sure there is no fine print, because it's just.

Richard Packham [00:41:20] That's right. But provide the fine print and tell them, please read the fine print so

John Dehlin [00:41:25] that a black person knows what the church's position was on blacks before they decide to join instead of sneaking that on him after. And so that a feminist who joins the church can know about the church's treatment of women or about polygamy before she makes the decision versus after.

Richard Packham [00:41:46] Right. Because. And you know, it would save so much effort because I hear frequently from recent converts that just do some natural. What would be naturally expected reading. You know, one woman, I remember, she'd been in the church for three months and she'd heard something about polygamy and she thought, well, no, that can't be. And so she looked in her Doctrine and Covenants that the missionaries had given her and she read section 132. She said, I'm out of here. They didn't tell me about that. Right. Yeah. You know, now she may not have joined in the first place, but if. If the missionaries had done it right or had used a different method, had been a little more up front, had been allowed to be a little more upfront, they may have been able to ease that woman into the idea of accepting that. Yeah, there may be certain circumstances when polygamy would be God's way. And that's all. Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:00] Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:00] But by hiding it or not being open about it, then people feel deceived into something, you know, like they weren't treated honestly, basically.

Richard Packham [00:43:11] Exactly. Exactly. And then you get outrage.

John Dehlin [00:43:14] Yeah. Then you don't just have the problem of the polygamy, you have the problem of feeling lied to and deceived.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:43:25] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.com if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your ward Bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixon.com that's sky with the E S K Y E pixton.com thank you.

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 166

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Well, so we've covered two of the main points that I wanted to cover. Let's turn to the third, and. And then I'm going to sneak a fourth one on you, but I think you'll like it. So I'm going to set this up by talking about your sister. Jane Ann Peterson, is it?

Jane Ann's Life, Marriage, and Family Background

Richard Packham [00:00:39] No. Jane Ann Hunter.

John Dehlin [00:00:41] Jane Ann Hunter. Okay. So, Janet Hunter. When Margi and I, my wife, moved to Logan, Margi's mother was involved in a book club, a marvelous, splendid book club that had been in existence for several years prior. In fact, she's still involved in this book club. And it's a wonderful book club. I've attended it and I've spoken at it and reviewed a book, and I was touched by how much this book club meant to my wife, Margi. She just said the women there are thoughtful and they're loving and they're witty and they're. And she talked about one woman in particular that was so delightful and warm and funny and charming, and her name was Jane Ann Hunter. She said that Jane Ann would sit there and she'd like. She knit. She would sit there and listen in the book club and knit and often stay very quiet. But occasionally she would come up with these most insightful and witty and sharp commentaries, often that were alternative to the true believing Mormon perspective, that sort of grounded the discussions in reality and were just very wise and witty and sagacious. Just. She described Janet as being this delightful, charming woman, you know, in her 60s or 70s, and that's what I knew about Jane Ann. Then one day.

Richard Packham [00:02:20] Let me. Let me. Let me ask you. I. I knew about this book club, and I knew Jane Ann belonged to it, and I knew that she enjoyed it very much. But I don't recall whether it was just Mormon women or was it.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] It is just. It is just Mormon women. Okay. And they mostly read the classics, classic books and. But they're. They're certainly not dogmatic.

Richard Packham [00:02:48] Not Relief Society.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] No, no, no.

Richard Packham [00:02:50] They.

John Dehlin [00:02:50] I mean, a lot of them joke about bringing a magazine and putting it in front of the Ensign while they're in Relief Society, just, you know, being willing to stretch things and question things. So anyway, one day a couple years ago, Margi and I got the news that Jane Ann had died, and we were stunned. Margi was stunned. I mean, she wept. She just, right there, wept. Jane Ann's dead. My mom just called Me, Jane Ann's dead. And I was absolutely just sad. And the explanation was, was that she had had a seizure. I forget exactly what, what the explanation was in terms of why they had, why she'd had a seizure, but it was sort of, just sort of. She'd been to the hospital and had a seizure. And you know, we were all left with the impression that she died of old age. And it seems so out of the blue because she was otherwise really healthy. And in, in fact, Margi attended the funeral of Jane Ann and that was how it was portrayed during the funeral. Just that this beautiful, faithful, devout, God fearing, committed to her marriage, believing Mormon woman had died, I guess apparently of natural causes. And you know, let's celebrate her love for the church and her commitment to her eternal marriage and her love for her children, etc. And you know, that was how we all processed that event. And that's in fact how the members of the book club discussed the event after it happened. From what I understand, then I'm just, I'm in a statistics class,

John Dehlin [00:04:45] bored a

John Dehlin [00:04:46] little bit with the lecture and I go up on the Internet and I'm. And I, you know, sometimes was reading the Ex Mormon forums. At this point I got on Ex Mormon forum and I'm reading a post that you made and, and it told a very different story. So what I would like to do to the extent that you're comfortable, is have you back up, start from whatever beginning you're willing to talk about your sister, talk about what she was like, what her dreams were, what some of her early accomplishments were in the performing arts, and then how the church and her marriage led to what you understand to be the real story behind her death.

Richard Packham [00:05:27] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope I can do it without. Without breaking up. Jane Ann was not quite two years younger than I and she had a similar childhood to mine. I mean, we had the same parents, grew up in the same house. It was a little bit different because I was the boy and she was the girl. And we were the only two kids for about 11 years until, well, about nine years until my parents got a little bit stronger religion and my dad was called to the Stake Presidency and he felt that they should have more children. And so they proceeded to have three more children. But Jane Ann and I were the two oldest by quite a. And I always felt that we were very similar. Many, many years later, I learned from Jane Ann that her childhood was different from mine in that she was the girl. And when mother became pregnant with the third child, dad took her aside and told her, you are never. I don't ever want to see your mother mopping floors or doing dishes again. Now that she's having this other baby. That's your job. And I wasn't aware that Jane Ann had had to take over the household so much of the household duties. I was also aware however at the time that she was quite overweight as a little girl and got teased somewhat for being a fatty. I did not know until many years later from Jane Ann that mom and dad had even taken her to a doctor to see if she had some kind of problem with her overweight. And apparently Jane Ann resented very much the fact that they weren't willing to accept her the way she was. When Jane Ann went to BYU a couple of years behind me, she made a determined effort to lose weight and she did. She became a very trim, beautiful woman, very talented. The photographs of her at that time show a really, really a glamour girl is what we'd call them in those days. And she fell in love with Ted Hunter and he fell in love with her, who was the tall handsome guy and still is a tall handsome man. And he, they were, they met in music classes and musical things at BYU and they married and began to have a family. We all felt that it was a good marriage and that they were going to be just fine. And they started to have kids. I. They had five. I think it is all together now.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] Let me just jump in. I heard, I heard at one point that she was something like a champagne girl on the Lawrence Welk Show.

Richard Packham [00:09:18] You know, I think, I think that she did, she did do one stint on the Lawrence.

John Dehlin [00:09:23] Explain what that means and explain what talent she had that would enable her, enable her.

Richard Packham [00:09:28] All right. She was, this was another one of her problems is that she was extremely talented. She had a beautiful singing voice really until, until almost till her death. She had a beautiful singing voice. She appeared in any number of, of high class productions, operas, musicals. She. Well, I think the Lawrence Welk thing is, is the being a champagne girl on the Lawrence Welk Show. I don't know if you remember what the Lawrence Welk show was like. It was, it was good family type music with, with band, with orchestras and, and kind of community singing types things and dancing and, and just good wholesome entertainment. And the background was always bubblies, bubbles rising to the surface like from champagne. And as I recall he would have guest guest artists and I think Jane Ann was one time did a stint as a guest artist on the Lawrence Welk show and he had this thing called a champagne Girl. I didn't really watch the show much,

John Dehlin [00:11:01] but that's a pretty big deal, right?

Richard Packham [00:11:03] Oh, yeah, yeah. No, she was. She was extremely talented. As a matter of fact, this. Her talent was one of the things that was a great frustration for her because when she was. When she. I think it was when she was at byu, she got an invitation to study with. A famous operatic soprano. I'm trying to think of who it was. You'd recognize the name in Indiana. And she would. It was a scholarship, and she wanted to go because she did want to become an opera singer. And I. I guess our dad told her, no, you shouldn't do that. You stay. That will take you too far away from home and from your family, and you need to stay here and begin to raise a family. And so she did not accept that offer.

John Dehlin [00:12:17] Okay.

Richard Packham [00:12:18] And I didn't know about it at the time. It was only many years later that Jane Ann told me about this and how it had broken her heart that dad would not let her go. All during their marriage, she continued to. To act and sing in local productions. She played in the lead role in man of La Mancha and, oh, you know, half a dozen various musicals. And her husband Ted, who was also a fine singer, he would sometimes appear within those shows with her. So it was an important part of her life. And she raised her kids also to be very musical. And her oldest daughter, Catherine, also ended up being even more talented vocally than her mother, Catherine. Catherine sang with the San Jose Opera and sang in Israel with the Los Angeles Symphony when they went there and performed for the Israeli Prime Minister. So. So. So she was. Catherine was, in a way, fulfilling her Jane Ann's dream.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] Right.

A Controlling Relationship and Its Consequences

Richard Packham [00:13:52] There were troubles in the marriage that a lot of us in the family were not all that aware of. One of them seemed to be that her husband Ted was a very controlling kind of person. And he insisted that he was the one to decide to make all of the decisions, even in very minor things like what clothes she should wear for a particular event and how she should spend her day. And we knew that this bothered her, but we figured, well, it was just. It's just his way. You know, Occasionally we. She would. When she was not around him, which was rare, she would get angry and she would say, oh, if he would only leave me alone sometime. You know, if he'd just stop trying to tell me all the time what to do. For whatever reason, and this may have played a part. For whatever reason, there came a time when she began to Rely on. Over the counter prescription drugs to preserve her ability to stay thin. Because Ted admired very much what a slender woman she was, and she had a fear of getting fat again. She began relying on, you know, tranquilizers over the counter diet pills and alcohol. And before we knew it, she was alcoholic, which her husband did not understand. He just could not understand why she would do that, why she would. Why she would drink. And we didn't understand really either, quite why, but we realized, at least I realized, that it was a symptom of unhappiness. And his attitude, so far as we could tell, was, well, it's just a matter of willpower. If she just stopped drinking, if she just be willing to obey the word of wisdom, there wouldn't be any problem. But she's. She keeps drinking, right? She struggled with the drinking for quite a while, and she'd be able to. To go on the wagon for a while, and then something would trigger it and she would. She would start drinking again. There was. There were several times when she was hospitalized because she had taken too much of a pill or she had slashed her wrist. There were, I think that he had her hospitalized a couple of times in some sort of rehab program for a few days. He got her into psychotherapy. And after a few visits, the therapist told her that she needed to talk to her husband as well. And so he agreed to go in and had several sessions with the psychotherapist. And he came home from one of those sessions and told Jane Ann that the therapist was crazy, because the therapist was suggesting that part of the problem was him, but he wasn't the alcoholic. Jane Ann was the alcoholic. And so it was Jane Ann's problem, not his problem. And he forbade her from going back to that therapist.

John Dehlin [00:18:28] So do you think that. Do you think that. I mean, I once made the mistake of, you know, blaming suicide on, you know, some specific thing, as if, like, one thing causes anything so traumatic as suicide. And I'm applying that here to the alcoholism. Now, some people are just alcoholics. I mean, it just happens in mental illness. I'm studying mental illness. And sometimes some people have ocd, some people have depression, some people have anxiety. And you really. It's gonna happen in and out of a faith crisis, in and out of a controlling marriage. It can happen with somebody who's got the perfect life. And so, you know, what I don't wanna do is set this up like we're trying to necessarily put all the blame of the alcoholism on either the husband or the church or the Expectations of the family. Because I would guess that both you and I would say that things are always much more complicated.

Richard Packham [00:19:27] Yes, I agree with that. Things are much more complicated.

John Dehlin [00:19:31] But having said that, there are instances where people self medicate because of sadness and feelings of unfulfillment or dissatisfaction with their situation or dreams that could have been. That never materialized, and they end up feeling trapped. So do you feel like there was some of that contributing to. To her situation?

John Dehlin [00:19:56] Oh, yeah.

Richard Packham [00:19:57] I mean, all of those things I'm sure contributed. She. Well, let's. Maybe we, we could, before we start analyzing it, finish the story. Well, yeah, let me, let me finish this. Let me finish the story because. Because what we learned was, was I learned about her death when, when Catherine, her oldest. Her oldest child called me. And Catherine and I have become very close because Catherine also ended up leaving the church. And so she called me one morning, Uncle Richard in. In tears, saying, Mother's dead and she's killed herself. And so she told me what had happened. Apparently Jane Ann had. It was on a Sunday morning, and she told Ted that she didn't feel like going to church and for him to go ahead, go to church. And so he. He said, okay, yeah, he. He would. And so he left her. And she had started drinking again, I guess, in the last few days. And she. Ted had apparently been quite careful to go through the house, hide all the liquor he could find and get rid of it and take all the prescription drugs that he could find and get rid of them. But he came home and found her unconscious and discovered that she'd taken every aspirin, every aspirin pill in the house. And apparently aspirin can kill you. He got her into the car, drove her to the hospital, and they weren't able to revive her. I understand that there was a note saying, I'm sorry, but the official word from the family that he wanted known was that she did not kill herself and that there was no note. And that was the story that went out. We also learned. Catherine also told me that. And I want to emphasize that up until the very moment of her death, I'm sure Janet. Jane Ann was a devout believer. She was a believer in the gospel in every sense of the word. I think that part of her sadness that drove her to this and that drove her to the bottle was her own belief that she was not worthy enough. That she was somehow failing her savior in not being able to be as good a follower of Jesus as he would want her to be. But she loved Jesus with all her Heart. She felt she had a personal relationship with Jesus, she turned to Jesus. And in every. Every time when she felt need, She had been regularly attending the temple. I think there was a group of women that would get together and go to the. Do a temple session about two times a week. And with Cheyenne being in the temple so often, I guess that the temple president finally approached Jane and, and asked her if she would be interested in working as a temple worker in the temple. And so he told her to ask her husband if that would be okay with him, which is, of course, the Mormon way. The wife can't do anything with that. The husband's permission. And so I guess Jane Ann did ask Ted if he would object to her being a temple worker. And I understand that his response was, well, he didn't think that would be a good idea because it would take her away too much from the family, which struck me as odd because the only family there was Ted and Jane Ann. Their. Their kids were all gone and moved away. And yet Ted didn't want her to be doing that. And Catherine seemed to feel that that was just the straw that broke the camel's back, that it finally just pushed her over the edge

John Dehlin [00:25:36] of.

Richard Packham [00:25:37] She had, you know, she'd suffered frustrations her entire life, frustrations in having to do everything that. That pleased Ted and avoid doing anything that displeased him. And, but. And yet that was, in the eyes of, I think, everybody in their Logan Ward, that was an. That was an ideal Mormon marriage.

John Dehlin [00:26:09] Right. Right.

Richard Packham [00:26:13] Now, I. In that post you saw that I made the day that I learned of Jane Ann's death, I did blame the church. And to the extent that the church played a role in it, in determining for Jane Ann, directly or indirectly determining what her life should be, which did not really coincide with what her life. What she wanted her life to be and what it could have been. To the extent the Mormon Church was involved in it, I do blame the Mormon Church. And to the extent that her husband, in being the kind of Mormon priesthood holder and head of the house that the church had taught him to be, I blame the church for. For making that kind of a man out of him.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Right, right. Man, that's a. That's a tough story.

Richard Packham [00:27:35] Yeah, it's. It's. It is a tough story.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] And I. What was so. What was so bewildering to me was processing it as it was told to us through the ladies in the book club and the family, which was, oh, she just died.

Richard Packham [00:27:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] And then hearing the backstory, and it was like, it was like one of these cinematic moments for me where, like, I had this just mind blowing realization that amazing things and, and sometimes amazingly disturbing things happen in the privacy of families that no one ever hears about.

Richard Packham [00:28:27] Yeah. And.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] And then it's going on, and then it's going on right around us.

Richard Packham [00:28:33] Right, right. Yeah. And. Yeah. And, you know, being involved as I am with ex Mormons, I hear stories like this all the time. I, for example, I was, I was absolutely flabbergasted to have. Have a man contact me who said that he'd found my stuff on my story on the Internet. And, and he grew up in my home ward in Blackfoot, Idaho, and he knew my family and he was the couple of years younger than I. But he, he and his family lived across town in the poor section of town, and they were always envious of my family because we seemed to be better off. And his family attended the same ward that my family attended, although by the time they were there, I was, I was already BYU and had more or less left home. And then he told me that during the time that he was living in the ward where I grew up, he was continually abused sexually by some of the priesthood holders in the ward. And he said I, he said he didn't like it, but he just assumed that that's the way it was. And it was only as he grew up and became an adult that he realized that that wasn't right. And I was astonished because I had no idea that that kind of thing was going on or that it could go on. And yet this sexual abuse of young kids seems to be not an uncommon thing in Mormonism. As a matter of fact, we're so astonished and outraged at the uncovering of sexual abuse by Catholic priests of kids that are under their tutelage. And yet it seems to be almost as common in. Among the Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] That's hard to believe that it's as common for me. Well, but, but existent. Yes. As common.

Abuse, Institutional Silence, and Broader Patterns

Richard Packham [00:31:13] Well, yeah. Well, if you want to talk about percentages, I think there are probably a great many more Catholics and Catholic priests and instances of Catholic abuse. There may be more numerically, but. But I think probably given the few Mormons there are as a percentage, as a percentage wise, it may be rampant. Several. I know that several attorneys that have been working on prosecuting cases against the Catholic Church for sexual abuse of kids, they're just waiting. They're just waiting to get a breather in order to start coming, coming against the Mormon Church. And there are now, of course, some cases already that have appeared where the

John Dehlin [00:32:05] Mormons have like an Oregon.

Richard Packham [00:32:07] This Oregon case. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E S K Y E. Pixton.com thank you.

Richard Packham [00:33:04] The sun gone down.

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 167

Richard Packham [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:17] So and some are going to get annoyed, but I want to be fair to all parts of my audience and absolutely you would acknowledge that this is all sort of functional and contextual. What I mean by that is for every instance of someone like Jane Ann or this friend of yours who had this horrifically abusive experience within the church, there are others who were raised in non LDs, abusive or destitute type situations. And it's the church that comes in and, and teaches them values and ethics and morals, gives them a sense of purpose and helps them go to college and get married and have a wonderful fruitful family life. And it's very healthy and constructive and the beliefs and the church system are all paramount to that incredibly healthy and positive experience. Would you concede that?

Richard Packham [00:01:18] Oh, yes. Oh, I have no problem at all in conceding that. And I would even emphasize that there are some people for whom the Mormonism and that way of life is beneficial and helpful. In fact, as a matter of fact, as a corollary to Jane Ann's story, I have no hesitation at all in saying that one of the things that helped Jane Ann survive all of this as long as she did was her firm belief in Mormonism and her acceptance of the gospel. As a matter of fact, on several occasions I've used Jane Ann as an example when people say, well, you want everybody to leave the Mormon Church. And I say, no, no for Jane Ann, the Mormon Church and her social structure there, and the support she got and the joy she got from feeling that she was a follower of Jesus and that Jesus her friend, that was often the only thing that she had. And it would have been a even worse tragedy had she suddenly realized, oh my God, the church isn't true. And so now, now what do I have? All I've got is my bottle. And then we would have had even more serious problem, you know, so you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't sometimes. And it would have been, I wouldn't have wanted to try to deconvert Jane Ann, although I almost did once when she really tried to bring me back to the church. She wrote to me, she said, richard, she said, I know you really believe it. You're just too stubborn to admit it. You really believe it. I want you to read this Life of Christ by Edersheim. She's wonderful. It's a wonderful book. And I know if you read it, you will realize that the church is true. So I said, okay, Janan, I promise you I will read Ederheim's Life of Christ if you'll promise to read something that I send to you. He said, I promise. So I went out, I bought Adeshim's Life of Christ. And I, you know, I started to wade through it. It was a little bit much, but I, I, you know, I, I did my damnedest to, to read it with an open mind. And I sent her the Life of Christ by Ernst Renan. I happen to have an old,

John Dehlin [00:04:21] first

Richard Packham [00:04:21] American edition of the Life of Jesus by Ernst Renan. And it was a work that really examined one of the first works after David Friedrich Strauss's German work on the life of Christ, really examined the Life of Jesus from a, from a secular point of view. And I thought, well, you know, and if you. And I told her, I said, if you don't like it, just send it back because it's a valuable book. And I sent her some other stuff, some of the materials that I had written about Christianity or about the church. And the box arrived. And so later I, I asked her, I said, look, Janan, I said, did you read what I wrote you, what I sent you? You know, Richard, I, that box arrived and, and I just couldn't open it. And I told Ted to get rid of it. I said, well, did you open it just to see the note that I included saying, you know, if you want to send any of this back, please send it back. She's took it to the dump. And I thought, well, okay, fine. But it was probably a good thing that I didn't destroy her belief in Jesus because it was the one thing that she had hanging on to, you know, so, no, I, you're quite right. I concede that for many people. And it's the same with Christianity. I have Christian friends tell me, oh, you know, Richard, if, if it weren't for my being born again and becoming a Christian, I would be. I, you know, I, I was an alcoholic, I was a wife beater, I kicked the dog. I said, and it was Christ coming, being born again, that, that made me the decent man I am today. And I said, well, I, I am so grateful to whatever gods may be that you are a Christian because it protects you from the rest of us. You know, I'm glad that, that it's because of your religion that you're not out, you know, romancing the women and knocking over convenience stores. And I mean that quite sincerely.

John Dehlin [00:06:46] Right Right.

Richard Packham [00:06:49] I mean, Glenn Beck wouldn't be today what he is. Had enough.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] Okay. Bad example, but

Richard Packham [00:06:59] okay.

Lessons From Jane Ann's Story

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Well, thank you for sharing a story that I'm sure is not a fun or an easy one to tell. And I'm sure you'll acknowledge that Ted and others probably have their own versions of the story, but.

Richard Packham [00:07:12] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] You're recounting it as it was told to you by Janan's daughter.

Richard Packham [00:07:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:07:22] So thank you for sharing that with us. Okay, well, here's the surprise I'm springing on you.

Richard Packham [00:07:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:31] And I'm going to make two disclaimers before I spring it on you. Not to you, but to my listeners. It may sound to the listeners like I'm some wolf in sheep's clothing, you know, bringing out this, this guy who's got all these things that he's, you know, feeling about the church and, you know, some would call him an anti Mormon or ex Mormon. And then I'm masquerading as a believer, but bringing out these disbelievers in a way to make people feel safe so that I can slowly erode their faith. That's not what I'm about at all.

Richard Packham [00:08:09] Well, let me, let me interrupt and. Okay. And tell you that. To tell you that there are people out there who have that perception of you.

Richard Packham [00:08:16] Sure.

Richard Packham [00:08:17] And, and your name comes up every once in a while on discussions. You know, people say, what, what about this John de Lynn? Where is he anyway? Because on the one hand, he, he says he has these interviews that expose all of these terrible things about the church. And, and yet he's, he says he's a faithful Mormon and he has this, this website called Stay LDS and wants to help people stay in the church. So, yeah, you're, you're quite right to have some disclaimer. And probably, probably, probably only you, you and God know exactly what's in your heart, John.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Sure, sure. Well, let me try and explain it anyway.

Richard Packham [00:09:02] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] I appreciate that and I know about those conversations, at least a lot of them.

Richard Packham [00:09:09] I,

John Dehlin [00:09:11] I don't know. This is, this is your interview. This is the place for me to really talk about this. But I guess I'll just say this. I, I don't, I feel like there's something in the human experience that leads people to believe in something supernatural and it has to do with just the traditional existential crisis, which is, what's the purpose of life? Why am I here? Why is there evil and bad things in the world? I'm lonely. How should I behave? You know, how do I find joy and happiness. And I think religion springs forth most often out of an attempt for people to fill those existential holes.

Richard Packham [00:09:59] I think you're right too, about that.

John Dehlin [00:10:01] And I'm not excluding the possibility that there's divine origins in our church and in other churches and in all churches there may be a God, and maybe God has his hand in all of this. So I'm not excluding that as a possibility. But. I guess I'm okay with religion and I'm okay with being a part of religion because I see it serving such an importantly positive, functional role for some people. For some people, it really works. And it happens to work for me and for my family right now. And so aside from the fact that I've had good experiences there and I've been blessed by my membership in the church, it works for me and my family in the ways that it works. Now, I have not pretended to be a traditional orthodox believer for a long time. I haven't been. And I think I've been as candid as anyone about my beliefs. So I hope your friends don't claim that I claim to be a true, believing, orthodox, believing, literalistic Mormon. I think most people know that that's just not the case. But I do believe that until the world of atheism and secular humanism can figure out ways to fill the existential holes that people feel in the ways that religion so often effectively fills them. And I just always use the example of casseroles to pregnant women or helping someone sod their. Their grass, or, you know, helping people feel a sense of purpose and identity and giving a sense of meaning and of instructions and helpful guidelines to help them live a good and meaningful life until. Until secular humanism and atheism figures out a way to replace that for people, I think people are going to keep gravitating towards religion. But the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because I consider the believing perspective to be completely valid and often functionally helpful for those who are in it. So I'm not one to want to take that away from people, and I'm one to validate that because it works for me and it sincerely works for me. And I feel like I've been as honest with my bishop and stake leaders as they've wanted me to be and with all my family and friends. But on the flip side, I guess why I'm bringing all this up is because I also see the ex Mormon and the anti Mormon perspective to be just as valid. And that is why I brought you on and that is why I interview people like you, because I think that you can be an ex Mormon or an anti Mormon from a place of integrity, from a place of loving truth, from a place of loving joy and happiness, from a place of caring about your fellow man, and from a place of caring about your family members and your friends and wanting the best for people. And I think that an ex Mormon or anti Mormon of that sort has as much honor and character and dignity as a believer of the best kind in the believing paradigm. And so how do I reconcile the fact that those two paradigms are both legitimate? I don't. I just think the world is complex and beautiful and let's find joy in all paradigms. But the question I was going to surprise you with was the following. Lots of my listeners end up leaving the church, unfortunately, and I've tried to save them through stale ds. I no longer recommend stale DS as the path, but as a path for people who decide that they want to stay in the church for whatever reason. And for those, you know, it's a credible path, but I think it's few. They're going to find stale DS sustainable. For them, that perspective, or the New Order Mormon perspective, is sustainable for a long period of time. There are people out there. I think they're going to be few and far between. But for those who have left the church or who are considering leaving the church, it's a terrifying proposition because you lose. Here's what you lose when you leave the church. You lose your identity, you lose your security. You lose your sense that you have all the answers. You lose a map and a guideline for how to live a life. You lose the affection of your spouse, potentially, and of your family, your parents, your grandparents, your siblings and your children. You lose the esteem of your community, of your religious community. That, and pretty much, for all intents and purposes, was your only community if you're a devout believing Mormon, because you pretty much only hang around ward members and believers because that's how it often just shakes out. And then you have these existential holes of what's the purpose of life and what happens when we die and how do we deal with the problem of evil? And how do I behave? Do I start drinking? Do I start smoking? Do I start doing drugs? Do I live a morally chaste life? Can I have a committed marriage? What's the purpose of marriage? How do I fill all these holes that religion used to fill? I don't know whether you portray yourself, you know, accurately on the Internet or in person, but I have no reason to believe anything other than that you are an honest and an upstanding man who has found a way to leave the church, but to do so in a way where you've had incredible amounts of health and prosperity and happiness after leaving. And so I would like to give you as much time as you'd like to take, but no longer than 48 minutes, because I have a meeting in 48 minutes. Talking, talking about how to leave the church, but to have a successful and a healthy and a fruitful life once you leave it.

What Leaving the Church Costs and How to Cope

Richard Packham [00:16:07] Well, that's a very good question and a very practical one too, because. Not knowing and more likely fearing what's going to happen if, if you do decide that you can't continue as you had been before in the church, that's a terrifying prospect. It can be. And I've talked to people. I get emails and phone calls from people who are at that point, sometimes just a few days after having realized that I can't go on like this. And as a matter of fact, this. That very question was the top. The theme of a talk I gave as a keynote address at an ex Mormon conference a few years ago. And the text of that talk is on my website. That was the theme of the conference was the Mormon Odyssey, the continuing Odyssey. Odyssey. Referring of course to Odysseus or Ulysses, who, whose, Whose long, long journey from the Trojan War back home has come to symbolize a long journey for any of us. And in that talk, I, I said yes, the. If once you leave the church, you are on an odyssey, we are all on an odyssey. The difference is that Ulysses knew where he was going. He was headed home, and he knew where home was. But when you leave the church, you don't know where you're headed. You don't know where you're going. And because as, as you pointed out, John, you've lost everything that your life was based on. The answers to all of life's questions, the. The fundamental basis of relationships with your community and your family, your, your. Your goals in life, what you have to look forward to not only in this life, but in the life to come. And now you have none of that. It's all gone. You have to figure it out for yourself. And if you've grown up in the church, you often do not have the, the tools and the equipment to do that. I mean, because everything was served up to you on a platter. This is what you do, this is what you believe. It's often phrased that way. Contact me. They say, well, what do I believe now I don't know what to believe. Well, that's for you to find out now. And you're quite right, John, in. In saying that. That there are. That. That religions do serve an important function or can serve an important function, and that is to give people some kind of answers about the big questions that trouble them, to put their minds at ease about things that would otherwise destroy them emotionally, to give them hope. Whether it's a hope founded on rational. Rational thought or rational reasons or not, still, it's a hope. I have a woman corresponding with now who's the devout Christian Christian. She says, how can you. How can you not have hope for what happens to you after you die? Well, those are the big questions. And if you leave Mormonism, you've got to figure out those answers for yourself. One of the first things that you have to do is, in my opinion, and that I gave as a suggestion in this talk that I referred to, is that you have to find out who the real you is. You have to find your true self, who you really are, what you really want, what you really hope for, what you're really capable of, and how to be true to yourself without doing tremendous damage to others. Of course, It's. It is a terrifying thing. I sometimes compare religion with, no matter what kind of religion, with what some people need in order to survive physically. People who have certain physical problems, you know, low thyroid, have diabetes, some kind of heart condition, and they have to take medication for it. I have to take thyroid medication and something for high blood pressure. I need those medications. Some people need religion. And I would not want to suggest someone go off their religion if that's what they really need. And if that's what's keeping them going, then I would suggest to a diabetic, you don't need to take your diabetic insulin shot anymore. You know, Some people need that. And I'm quite willing to acknowledge that what I. What I see as my role and the role of what others in, like me, can do is not necessarily to be anti Mormonism or anti religion, but just to make sure that if people are out there and are floundering around, that we offer them some kind of help or guidance or signposts along the way that they can choose to follow or not. In a lot of ways, I think it's probably what Mormon missionaries are doing, which, which is fine by me, that the Mormon missionaries, for example, if they come across some, if they meet someone and meeting the thousands of people that they meet, who is having trouble with Alcoholism or drugs or seems to be homeless or lost or has been kicked out of their family for reason. And the Mormon missionaries are, they say, well, look, maybe we can help you find a, find a path that will get you out of this and let us help you get off the drugs or the alcohol. Let us try to help you Giving, giving up the cigarettes. As far as I'm concerned, that's valid, that's a wonderful thing to do. And if that works for that person, I'm all for it. What, what I'm, what I think, how I see myself in that same role is when we come across people who are saying, you know, you know, I'm, I'm looking for a path in life. And Mormonism doesn't seem to be doing it for me. Mormonism is making me unhappy. I'm not sure why I'm having to take antidepressants when Mormonism promises me that I'm supposed to be full of joy and happiness. And at that point, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say, well, maybe Mormonism isn't doing it for you, because maybe you need to examine whether, whether you really, whether you really are accepting something as true that isn't true. Or maybe you need to examine some other way of doing things. In other words, I see it as providing additional information. I don't think I've ever tried to convince somebody to, who was, who was a really happy, faithful Mormon and happy in the Mormon Church. I don't think I've really ever tried to, to, to go out and make a really hard push, sales push to get them to leave the church. Right? Because I don't, I don't think that's, I don't think that's a legitimate kind of thing to do any more than I think it's legitimate for Mormon missionaries to come into a family where they're all happy practicing Baptists and try to convince them that they should join the Mormons. I think that's, that. I think that's just as wrong as me trying to convince a Mormon to leave. I don't go knocking on Mormon doors. The only people that, that ever come in contact with me are people that look me up or are on the Internet checking out Mormon things. Sometimes I get a lot of Mormon. Sometimes I do get Mormons who inadvertently are doing research on the Internet for a Sunday school lesson, which they are not supp. Supposed to do. I understand. And yet they come across my website or a similar website that's critical of the church. And I get, sometimes get email from Them say, well you know, I just came across your website and what is this? Why are you trying to destroy somebody's faith? Well, I'm not trying to destroy anybody's faith. I'm just trying to provide information for somebody that might find it and find it useful.

John Dehlin [00:27:24] So, so for someone who has decided that the church isn't working for them.

Richard Packham [00:27:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] What are some steps you recommend? So you've talked about discovering who you are getting and getting, and that's maybe the hardest step is just like who am I? Who am I without the church? What do I believe without the church doctrine of theology? What is the purpose of my existence? What, where do they go from there?

Richard Packham [00:27:51] Well, I have recommended anything that in the way of reading or professional counseling that is going to build up their self esteem. For example, books by Nathaniel Brandon, he's written, he's a psychiatric psychiatrist, psychologist and he has a lot of books available in paperback and called the Disowned Self or the Psychology of Self Esteem. And that's one of the things that, that religion and Mormonism too I think has tended to destroy in us or, or downplay at any rate is that, that we, we, we aren't, we aren't sufficient by ourselves. We need something else. We are especially Christianity is guilty of this. We are pitiful sinners and need salvation. Or in Mormonism it's, well, you must strive to be perfect and if you do everything that you can possibly do, then the grace of God will be there for you and you'll be saved. But you've got to try real, real, real hard. And when people do the trying and find that they're still, they still feel guilty and imperfect, that's, that's damaging to their self esteem. Brandon made an interesting comment in the forward to one of his books. He said any, any practicing psychiatrist will see in his practice every day the damaging results of religion.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Right.

Richard Packham [00:29:45] And it's primarily this destruction of one's self esteem and saying that you can't do it by yourself.

John Dehlin [00:29:53] Okay, so you build your self esteem up.

Richard Packham [00:29:55] Yeah, yeah. And then, then, then you explore you, you use your mind, the brain that if you believe in God, God gave it to you. You use your mind, you study everything, you try to find the answers wherever they legitimately can be found. I've talked to a lot of people that have gone through this process and they say they've studied world religions, they've dabbled in this and they've dabbled in that. Hinduism, Islam, Judais, they've gone back and read the Bible Again, they've, they've explored Catholicism and philosophy and New Age, New age religions. And I went through this, I did the very same thing. And in all of them you find some little gems that help you along the way. In Buddhism, for example, one of the, one of the real truths of Buddhism is if you just stop wanting so much, you won't feel so frustrated at not getting what you want.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] Right.

Richard Packham [00:31:13] And now if you apply that to the extreme, it's dangerous. It's. But it's just like any other religious belief. If you apply it to the extreme, it's dangerous. But as a handy little thing for day to day living, it makes a lot of sense. The end, you know, the Hindus believing and then Buddhists too, believing in reincarnation. Well, you know, that's, that's an interesting idea and that explains a lot that, you know, I am where I am today because of many, many past lives there where I didn't learn my lesson.

John Dehlin [00:31:56] But you're, you don't believe that, right? You're.

Richard Packham [00:31:58] I did for a while. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] Okay.

Richard Packham [00:32:01] And it, and it was very helpful. It was, it was very helpful to me. And of course it really fit in to my Mormon preconceived notions because Mormons too believe that you're where you are today because of something you did in a previous life. Right. And so that, that kind of made sense to me. And who knows? But what, it isn't true, you know, and if you need hope, if you really are devastated by the idea that when you die that's it, and you can't stand to think of anything else, then a belief in reincarnation is indeed helpful. And so go for it. And the interesting thing is that everybody, I think, who goes through this process ends up with something that is more ideally suited to them than what they started out with. They are almost always happier and better adjusted and a better person.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] Well, that's okay. So that would be getting to the heart of the matter. Can you leave Mormonism and let's say it ends in divorce? So now you're single and without your belief system.

Richard Packham [00:33:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] Can you find a good marriage and a prosperous career and raise children who are productive and happy and whole without Mormonism and without a religion? Do you think your life is an example of that being a possibility? Not that I'm trying to set you up to hold yourself up as some paragraph.

Richard Packham [00:33:48] Not only is it a possibility, but it is a very likely possibility. John know, I can think of hundreds of people that I know personally who have gone through more or Less the same thing that I went through, including loss of family, including the searching, including being down, going through suicidal, suicidal periods where they were really down. But, but, but with, with this kind of searching. And sometimes it takes professional help. It took me some professional help. But yes, not only is it possible, it is very likely.

Life After Leaving: Relationships and New Beginnings

John Dehlin [00:34:39] So, so at a high level, what happened to you after you lost your wife and kids and left the church? They get a high level.

Richard Packham [00:34:50] How do you mean by a high level?

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Just, you know, I. We wouldn't have time to do an hour on it just because I've got a meeting in 29 minutes. But. Right, but like, did you end up getting married again? Did you end up having kids?

Richard Packham [00:35:01] Yeah. Did you.

John Dehlin [00:35:04] Okay, did you God strike you down?

Richard Packham [00:35:06] I get the question now. I get the question. Yeah, I did some exploring around in other religions. I even attended a few other religions things. I joined the Unitarians for a while. I used to attend Catholic mass in Germany for a while. And I finally realized that religion wasn't going to be the answer for me philosophically. I found a great deal of answers to questions in philosophy, which of course has more questions than answers, but still knowing that the questions were there. But I did come to a point where I realized maybe there are questions to which there are no answers, and I'm fine with that. On a personal level, I went ahead and completed my graduate studies. I didn't get my PhD because I never finished my dissertation, but I got a good job. I lived as a bachelor for three years.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] This is going to be really personal, but you told me it was fair game. Did you explore sexually?

Richard Packham [00:36:19] Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was. I happened to be at that point just as the sexual revolution was starting, when the birth control pill became widely available. And it was a wonderful life.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] What do you mean?

Richard Packham [00:36:34] Yeah, it was a wonderful life. To be alive during the sexual revolution and meet all these wonderful women and enjoy the pleasures of falling in love and having flings. It was just a wonderful thing.

John Dehlin [00:36:59] What about, what about venereal diseases and promiscuity and just all the dark side of that kind of stuff?

Richard Packham [00:37:05] Yeah, well, you were careful. You had to be careful about that. But you can be careful and it was worth being careful for. I fell in love several times and finally I fell in love with a wonderful girl. And she shared my. She shared by atheist beliefs. She was a lapsed Catholic. We got married and we. I was doing well in my teaching profession. I was a college teacher. She had good jobs as an accountant. We had two children, two boys, a few Years apart. She was a stay at home mother until they were old enough to go into preschool. We were financially successful. We had a very happy marriage. We were active in our community. We had lots of friends. We didn't have serious health problems. We led a very happy life. We were very prosperous. We were so prosperous that I was able to retire relatively early. My dear devout Mormon parents would come to visit us on our ranch here in Oregon. And my dad, being an old farm boy, was always extremely puzzled at how we had been so blessed to fulfill his life dream of living in the country on a large piece of land and enjoying country life. And he, he, he wanted to say, God has blessed you, Richard, but he knew that I wouldn't want to hear that it was from God. So he would say, providence has been good to you, Richard. And so we have been very successful.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Are you still married?

Richard Packham [00:39:04] Yes, we're still married.

John Dehlin [00:39:05] How long have you been married to your.

Richard Packham [00:39:07] It's been 45 years now since just a few days ago.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] And how are your, how are your sons?

Richard Packham [00:39:14] Our two boys are fine young men. They were raised without any religious training at all. They're both good people. They're successful in their fields and very likable people. They have good friends. We're very proud of them.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] Do they have families?

Richard Packham [00:39:36] The, the oldest one has, is married. They've been married for 12 years. They have three sons. And the younger one, he was married briefly for a girl he'd been dating a year and a half, but it turned out she did not like country living, so that ended fairly quickly. So he's still single, but he's a fine young man.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] Yeah. And I don't want to. Very eligible.

Richard Packham [00:40:09] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:10] And I don't mean to imply that. I mean, divorce obviously happens within the church and worse. And so I'm not trying to condemn you in any way by asking these questions. And so what about your children from your previous marriage?

Richard Packham [00:40:28] Well, they were of course raised by their mother and her next, her second husband who became their stepfather. And for geographical reasons, it was very rare that I was able to have much contact with them because they lived clear across the country. I was always on the West Coast. Right. And, and so we didn't have much contact with them. There were three. The, my oldest was a daughter. Daughter. And then I had, we had two sons. The middle child, the older son, he, he was very unhappy as a Mormon. He got involved and, and he left the church. He didn't believe it anymore. He got involved with drugs and alcohol and, and kind of Fell away from the church. My daughter married a good Mormon and proceeded to have a family. Almost all of her kids have served missions for the church. And she and I were not too close for quite a while until a few years ago. She was close to my brother, the bishop, and he. My brother, the bishop asked her one time, I guess, why don't you. Why don't spend more time with your dad? Talk to your dad? And I guess her response was, well, we don't have much to talk about because my whole life is the church. But in the last couple of years, interestingly enough, she and I have become very close. Her husband talks her into the. Bringing her family, the younger kids, at any rate, out here to Oregon to visit us on our ranch. And they had such a wonderful time, and we got to be so close that they made another visit just a few months later. And so she and I become very close.

John Dehlin [00:42:30] That's wonderful.

Richard Packham [00:42:32] The. The youngest is. The youngest is his son. He lives in Utah. And we were fairly close for a while, but he has become very antagonistic towards me because of what he feels is my animosity towards the church. And he thinks I'm a liar because I've told lies about the church. And he's kind of cut off contact, which is. Which is sad.

John Dehlin [00:43:04] But is his life otherwise pretty happy, though, you think?

Richard Packham [00:43:08] It seems to be. He's had his ups and downs, but he's apparently very prosperous. Now. He has three children, the youngest of whom I understand is on a mission. But he refuses to allow me to have contact with that missionary grandson, even though I had contact with some of my other grandchildren who were on missions, my daughter's children, and that worked out just fine. They seemed to enjoy being able to email grandpa while they were on their mission.

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Right, right.

Richard Packham [00:43:44] So. So, you know, some of the family contacts are tenuous. One of my. One of my daughter's sons, the next oldest son, has just last year left the church, and he is going, who's this again?

John Dehlin [00:44:05] This is.

Richard Packham [00:44:05] This is. This is my grandson.

John Dehlin [00:44:07] Okay, okay.

Richard Packham [00:44:09] He. He's. He was in the same situation I was in. He's married to a good Mormon girl. They have a child. He served a mission for the church, has been a very good Mormon from a Mormon family. And yet just a year ago, a little over a year ago, he decided it wasn't true.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] With your help. With your help.

Richard Packham [00:44:32] No, no, I had nothing to do with it at all. I didn't even know that he'd left the church until my daughter said, guess what, dad? Eli has left the church. Really? I said, how are you handling that? She's, oh, well, I'm all for it, because if he doesn't believe it, he shouldn't be in the church. Now, this is from my very devout Mormon daughter.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] Wow.

Richard Packham [00:44:55] Anyway, she's. She. She explained that she did not want him to have to live a lie.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] Right.

Richard Packham [00:45:03] And so she's trying to be supportive.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] Sounds like a good woman.

Richard Packham [00:45:08] Yes, she is a fine woman. Life has not been easy for her. I think that her aunt's suicide, her aunt Jane Ann's suicide, affected her very deeply because she saw some of the same things happening in her marriage that had caused problems for Jane Ann.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] Right, right. Richard, why don't you just briefly describe your involvement in, I'll say, the ex Mormon movement or however else you want to frame it, and kind of the general purpose of your website.

The Ex-Mormon Movement and Closing Reflections

Richard Packham [00:45:45] All right. Well, as you said, it was many years ago that I left the Mormon Church. And at that time, I wasn't aware that anybody ever left the church except those who were led away by Satan. I didn't know any other former Mormons, and I didn't have anything much to do with Mormonism for quite a number of years. I sort of followed Mormon things that were going on. My family was still all Mormon, and so I would hear about developments in the church occasionally, but I really took very little interest in it after I once had left the church and lost my family, my wife and children because of that. But when the Internet came around, I started to use the Internet just like everybody else. And of course, one of the first things you do, even if you're at all interested in anything, you check, see what's on the Internet about it. And so I checked out Mormon or ex Mormon, something like that, and was amazed to find out that there was an Internet presence of former Mormons. I had had no idea that there was that kind of activity going on. And I was retired at the time and still am. And so I sort of got involved. I had time on my hands. And I realized as I read stories and communicated with other ex Mormons, and mostly recent ex Mormons, people who'd just recently left the church, I realized that maybe I could be involved somehow. One of the first things I did was to realize that there was no really brief, concise summary about what Mormonism was from a non Mormon or ex Mormon point of view. And so I wrote in what I thought would be an accurate summary of what Mormonism was about in a few paragraphs, and then in a few Paragraphs. What was wrong with that? Why one should, if one was contemplating joining the Mormons, the sort of things one would, one should be aware of before they take the plunge. I guess that pun was intended. And so I wrote up a little what I called an investigator's tract to those who are investigating Mormonism. And that's been on the Internet now for probably 12 years, I guess, and has been very influential. I think I've gotten tremendous feedback, both pro and con about it. And it kind of ballooned from there. There were specific things that needed to be written about I felt that hadn't been covered. And I always tried to do it in a relatively brief time, you know, in a few pages summarizing what there is to know and what needs to be known. And so I gradually developed a web presence in Ex Mormonism. I attended a get together of some ex Mormons in 1998. A few of them got, had gotten together in Las Vegas for a weekend the year before and they decided they wanted to do it again the following year. And the second time they all got together, I decided, well, I'll go. And it was a delightful weekend. We had a lot of fun. We cried together, laughed together. I think it was about 40 or 50 people that were there and that became an annual event. As it grew, we realized that we needed to have at least some kind of organization, at least to have a business presence so you can open a bank account and write checks and sign contracts for hotel space and so on. And so in 2001, I think it was, I set up a corporation, a non profit corporation called the Ex Mormon Foundation. And since then it is the Ex Mormon foundation that has been sponsoring these conferences that now attract somewhere around 300, 350 people, usually held in October in Salt Lake City. So that's kind of what I've been doing.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] In your role on the Ex Mormon foundation in the past or present,

Richard Packham [00:51:30] I was its founder and I was its first president. I generally hate organizations. And so as soon as I was able to turn it over to other people, I did. And so I'm just now a member of it, the grand old granddaddy of the foundation, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:51:54] Gotcha.

Richard Packham [00:51:54] Gotcha.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Okay, just one.

Richard Packham [00:51:58] I'm actually I, I should also say I'm still listed on their website as a media contact.

Richard Packham [00:52:03] Right.

Richard Packham [00:52:04] So that journalists that find the Ex Mormon foundation and want to talk to somebody about items in the news will sometimes contact. Contact me.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you to do something to Close. That. That might seem. That might seem kind of scandalous. But I mean this with one purpose, and that's for people who have decided that the church is not going to work for them. I believe that they deserve happiness. I believe that they deserve a chance to find joy. And I set up the site, stay lds.com I've worked tirelessly to convince people to stay in the church personally. And through all my efforts, you know, it's been helpful for some. But inevitably a good chunk of those people are on their way out, and that's just reality. So I ask you this question in the context only of believing in my heart that even though the church works for me and works for many, it's not going to work for some. And that for those who doesn't work for those for whom it doesn't work, they deserve happiness and joy too. Would you be willing to bear your testimony about how leaving the church has been good or beneficial for you?

Richard Packham [00:53:27] Well. Well, yes, I'll bear my testimony.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] And this will be how. This will be how we close.

Richard Packham [00:53:34] All right. I can tell anyone who asks me that I know with all my heart that searching for and finding the truth with honesty and integrity can ultimately lead to happiness and joy. A kind of happiness and joy that. That cannot be found by trying to accept something that you do not really want to accept. It can be painful. I will testify to that. To go through the process is a painful process. And at times you will be tempted to go back to the comfort that you once knew. But I will testify to you that that comfort is probably not there if you were honest in your leaving in the first place. But do not despair. There is light at the end of the tunnel. If I needed to, I could gather together a thousand people that would bear the same testimony. And so God or whoever be with you and I do this in the name of truth, wisdom, light and honesty. Amen.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Well, thank you.

Richard Packham [00:55:26] My thanks to you, John.

John Dehlin [00:55:28] Yeah, yeah. It's been a pleasure, Richard. And I totally appreciate your willing to talk and your candor and you setting example for those listeners who need some encouragement that there's a way to find joy, even if they feel like they have to leave.

Richard Packham [00:55:47] All right. Do you want to give them my website?

John Dehlin [00:55:51] Oh, absolutely. Well, it's a little bit hard, but it's pack them. I got it right here. P A C k h a m.n m n4m.org Is that right?

Richard Packham [00:56:06] That's correct. Yeah. And I'll put N N n as in Nephi 4, as in the four Gospels, m as in Moroni.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] And I'll, I'll put a link to that up on my up on my website.

Richard Packham [00:56:21] All right, John, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] Thank you so much.

Richard Packham [00:56:23] Richard Packham, thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E, S, K, Y E. Pixton.com thank you.

John Dehlin [00:57:15] No like the wonder the sun gone down.

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