Introduction and Bengt Washburn's Mormon Background

Bengt Washburn [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

Guest [00:00:04] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way.

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Guest 3 [00:01:27] We could do it multiple times each year in Salt Lake City. So you go to the MormonStories.org website. There's a little link that says support Communities up at the top. You click on it, you find your city, click it, and it'll take you to Facebook. And then you just join the community and someone approves it, and then you're on it.

Guest 3 [00:01:45] That's how you'd find out about lunches and playgroups and book clubs and all the different things people are doing. If there isn't one in your geography, tell me. We'll create it in about three minutes and you can be the leader of it. You can be your own bishop and stake president of your local non church congregation. Is there anything I've forgotten?

Guest 3 [00:02:06] Any announcements? Okay. Bengt Washburn was kind enough to come on the podcast. He's brilliant. He's funny. We told him to keep it at a PG13 level. I'm hoping that he will. I've never been in a church service where lots of swear words were done. But, Ben, we love you and we want you to do your duty. So come do it. Matt Washburn, everybody.

Bengt Washburn [00:02:26] Thank you. Thanks so much. I am very glad to be here. It's like, I don't have to explain stuff. Normally I travel around the country and a lot of times I do talk about growing up Mormon and all those things, and I have to provide all this background. But here you already know that. It's kind of weird.

Bengt Washburn [00:02:47] Kind of know that. So a Lot of those jokes won't work. I guess I start out, I'll just talk. When I do stand up comedy, I usually end up just talking anymore because I don't have time to really work at it and get good with the show anymore. But no, I'll try. It should work first. Write off, they said Mormon comedian. I don't know, you know, I'm one of those confused guys about that. I was very devout for the first 26 years of my life. And then after that, I, I, I don't know, I started to have doubts. I think we all do, but I really had doubts.

Bengt Washburn [00:03:25] Some of the rules, I questioned some of the rules. I think the first rules we question are the, the rules we want to break. You know, like, I used to believe in abstinence, but then I met a woman who would actually have sex with me and the doubts creep in.

Bengt Washburn [00:03:45] Are you guys, you're with me, you understand that? So it's been about 20 years. I'm inactive, I guess you could say. Very much so. My wife's not Mormon. She's an Irish Catholic. She's a practicing Irish Catholic. I mean, every weekend, drunk.

Bengt Washburn [00:04:06] In fact, when I met her, she had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was breaking two Mormon rules at the same time, one with each hand. Ambidextrous sinner. And of course the Mormon in my head looked at that and thought, this is hot because it's wrong.

Bengt Washburn [00:04:23] So we hit it off. So well, she quit smoking for me. Second date. I was just looking for a good reason to quit. So then we got married, which was apparently a good reason to start back up again.

Bengt Washburn [00:04:37] But then she did quit again and to her credit, she has been quitting ever since. She's kind of a rebel. That's what she says. I was a rebel. We would drink all the time. Well, you're not a rebel, you're Irish Catholic. When you drink, that's not rebelling, that's conforming.

Bengt Washburn [00:04:53] How can it be rebellion when everybody's doing it? She says, but we were underage then. You're an early conformist, right? My dad told us not to. He was drunk when he told you not to drink. That's Wisconsin. I don't know if you've been there, but it's bars full of drunk parents complaining about their kids drinking.

Bengt Washburn [00:05:14] Come home Friday drunk again. I don't know what I'm going to do with him. I know what you're going to do with him. Drink. That's what you're going to Do. I told her, I'm the rebel. I'm the one. I'll drink coffee, I'll have coffee. And I'll never forget when my mom first found out that I was drinking coffee. She said, oh bent, when did you start using coffee?

Bengt Washburn [00:05:33] She said, using, where did you score? I remember the whole conversation. Mom is not really a drug. Yes it is. You drink coffee, then you'll probably have a beer and then you'll get a cigarette. What's to stop you? It's that coffee is the Mormon gateway drug.

Bengt Washburn [00:05:52] I was there about two weeks and then it hit me. You know, I was sneaking out every morning like six in the morning out to buy a cup of coffee in secret with money I had swiped off her dresser.

Bengt Washburn [00:06:09] So I might have a drug problem. I don't know why I started doubting. There's things I love about my religion and I miss it. I had a much stronger faith. I miss that part. I miss knowing everything. It was awesome.

Bengt Washburn [00:06:30] I knew everything. The pre existence. Think about that. That's before time. I knew that stuff. I knew about. I knew why I was here. I knew where I would go after I die. That's everything. That's everything. That's the whole kit and caboodle. I knew everything. Now I really don't know anything. I don't know the pre existence for sure. I don't know why I'm here for sure. I don't know where I'm going after I die. I don't know where I go next week for sure. Actually I don't even know how I'm going to turn this, what I'm saying into a bit.

Bengt Washburn [00:07:03] I know nothing. Some of this I do love. There's many things about my religion, the pre existence. I actually kind of liked that idea. I always liked that. But I always wondered what it would be like. I mean if you're there and did we have a face in the pre existence, what did we look like and did we know we were going to look? Did I know I was going to look like? This is my question. Did we get a briefing packet with a photo?

Bengt Washburn [00:07:33] We're looking through? Where are you gonna be born? What language? Your iq. Gee, that seems a little low. And then, and then the picture, the picture would be the bummer. You'd see yours, you'd see the guy next to you. You go what?

Bengt Washburn [00:07:50] This is kind of bullshit. Oh, do we have any questions? All the ugly people's hands shoot up. I got a question. Why do I look like this and he looks like that? Well There must needs be opposition in all things.

Bengt Washburn [00:08:14] So I'm here to make him look good. That's gonna be depressing. Well, just look at him. Holy cow, he's gonna be born like that. Born. That's not an accident. It comes out like that. That's one of the things that right away just makes it. Life's not fair and it starts to make. It gives you doubts. Just that does for me. Really, really beautiful people and really ugly people. Just maybe this is just this not right.

Bengt Washburn [00:08:49] It's not fair. There's lots of good things about. There's some of the things about in the religion they shouldn't have told me. Like they shouldn't have told me that hell isn't forever. In Mormonism you don't go to hell forever. It's just you do some bad things and then they notch up a few years. You get like a sentence and that's the problem. You know, you have a beer and you think, well, I've already probably got 20 years. What's another beer?

Bengt Washburn [00:09:15] Pretty soon you start running up a tab. I'm going to die. I'm going to look at the tab and go, I did all that shit. I mean, shoot, I'm gonna be here a while. I like that idea that it's not forever.

Bengt Washburn [00:09:32] There's questions that you always have about faith. You work them out. And some of the things about Mormonism answer it really well. I remember, I have friends that say, well bent. I remember telling them this, you know, in Mormonism you really believe that, that after we die, all of us, all human, since we made a choice in the pre existence to follow God, we are all kind of basically pretty good. And we get rewarded for, you know, putting ourselves on the line like that. We get, we go to a better place. That's what I was always taught. Everybody goes to a place much better than Earth.

Bengt Washburn [00:10:03] And I had friends tell me, well then why doesn't God just tell us that? Why doesn't just, you know, it take off some of the edge of life if you knew it's going to be better? And I said, because we would kill ourselves and we would. If you knew that in the next life it was better if suicide was the equivalent of like hitting the reset button on your Nintendo.

Bengt Washburn [00:10:27] Everybody would do that, would they not? Because life's hard. Any God would be running into people early all the. Mary, what are you doing here? Well, I burned the roast. Life's hard. I can't remember what else I was going to tell you. The ideas I have sometimes I'LL have belief, I think in the Bible. It was Bible times. It had to be easier if those stories are literal in the Bible. It would be so easy to believe. Come on, that'd be easy if you. Well, I'm not sure if there's a God and someone came over and raised your uncle from the dead. You okay? That was okay.

Bengt Washburn [00:11:09] So easy to believe, said Elisha. Like stuck his hand out and flames shot out of his hands and he burned a whole mountainside of people. I mean that's a really, that's amazing. That's. I would believe if a guy came through the back door in like a bathrobe and flip flops, told you to shape up. And then I would give that guy 10% of my stuff, no questions asked.

Bengt Washburn [00:11:40] But here's, Sometimes it's hard to believe. I don't know, some weird things will make me question things. Like I was thinking this the other day, just intelligent design. Sometimes I'll think it makes sense and then you see things that just don't seem intelligent. Like this, this right now, what I'm doing here, this one hole, the same hole. I use the same hole to breathe, eat and talk.

Bengt Washburn [00:12:04] Are you crazy? Surely there was someone up there in the room. Are you sure that's safe? And then they went ahead with the design. And you know the first time someone choked to death, that guy's like, ah, what do you know? Food in the windpipe.

Bengt Washburn [00:12:25] Nobody listens to me. I still, I still love my, my, my religion, I guess I call it my religion even though I suck at it. I, I, I think one of the things that happens is I've know some people, they will stop being when they stop going to church. They go say stop going because they know something and I stopped going because I didn't know anything. That's it. Hi, how are you? You're cute.

Bengt Washburn [00:13:01] I have a little tiny baby right now. I have a five month old baby which, yeah, when I tell people I have a five month old, I get that. Exactly that reaction. It was different with my first child is like congratulations. And now when I say I've got a baby, people like, oh, you're 46, aren't you?

Bengt Washburn [00:13:21] What were you thinking? I was thinking this will be fun to try because I'm a guy. All right, another one. We are in Utah. All right. Know how to add. So anyway, we'll move on now to more, more stuff about growing up Mormon. I think we're about. Where are we? I better tab or I could get in trouble at the comedy club. Seven. Oh, sweet. We got 15 minutes. All right, I can go into all this stuff about the first time I left home when I grew up. Of course it was all there. I loved it all. I loved everything about it. I believed it.

Mission Stories and Life as a Mormon

Bengt Washburn [00:14:02] I followed it as best I could. When I turned 19, they gave me the suit and the 10 speed bike and I went to Seattle and I knocked on strangers doors, like many of you, right. And I talked to strangers about religion on their doorstep. And that's when I learned that when you knock on a stranger's door, anything's a better icebreaker than religion.

Bengt Washburn [00:14:27] And I think that's because religion brings up everything that's sex and politics all in one big everything. I remember not understanding. I think, why don't they understand that we got something awesome. I didn't understand that you're 19 saying, hey, everything you've been doing is wrong. Come with me.

Bengt Washburn [00:14:46] You know, I didn't understand how difficult it was. But yeah, anything's a better icebreaker than anything. Sex or politics. Or would you look at my rash? It's a better icebreaker. Sure. Come on in. What the heck? For a second there, we thought you boys were Mormons.

Bengt Washburn [00:15:08] That is when I learned that growing up Mormons kind of weird to the world. I didn't think it was weird growing up in Utah. Mapleton, Utah, we thought Catholics were weird. Isn't that. No, they're not actually. Mathematically they're quite normal.

Bengt Washburn [00:15:25] But I thought that. But I found out we were the weird ones. I learned that because only weirdos would let us in. And that's a clue. When like the really weird trailer park carny workers come on in, we're weird too.

Guest [00:15:40] Woo hoo.

Bengt Washburn [00:15:46] So I found out we were weird. I think all religions are weird. When they get exposed to logic, they can become very weird. Any, any religion, you just don't know it because it's your religion now. I didn't know it was weird in Maple in Utah because everybody was Mormon. That's the thing. Everybody, right. Everybody thought coffee was evil. So that didn't strike me as weird as all at all. Because everybody thought, right? And when. When everybody's doing something, it's not weird, it's normal. One person doing something weird. Yeah, that. I mean, a group of people doing something weird, that's. That's normal. One person doing something weird, that's a nut.

Bengt Washburn [00:16:27] A group of people doing something weird, that's a church. And I butchered that joke. But it's true. And I think that's one of the good Things about church, you get to check in with other people who believe weird things, like you. You know what I mean? So you can reaffirm your faith. That's why you need to go. Part of it, anyway. Because during the week when you tell people coffee's evil, you get a look on like, huh? And you start to question. You're only human. Right? You're only. And then after a week of that, you need to go back to a church and say, okay, so everybody, coffee's evil.

Bengt Washburn [00:17:02] Right? Okay. No, I'm on the same page with you. It's just during the week, that seemed pretty crazy, but all right, I'm back. We're together. The word of wisdom, which has some good things in it. People get carried away with it, though. Like, I had someone. I had this little thing about coffee, and I got some angry people, got an angry woman, well, this is coffee. She posts all this scientific how bad coffee is for you and how this revelation had saved the saints. And I said, well, if. If the. The coffee evil information was about health, why didn't God just tell the saints about germ theory?

Bengt Washburn [00:17:45] Because that would have saved a lot more people back in the 1800s, you know, wouldn't that be better advice for your health? You know what? Just wash your hands, you idiots. I don't understand. He's sick. We lost the baby. We didn't have any coffee in the delivery room.

Bengt Washburn [00:18:05] Nobody was drunk. There's no germ theory in the word of wisdom. The word of wisdom makes a lot of sense, though, when you couple that with polygamy. Yeah. If you're gonna have multiple wives, you shouldn't have alcohol anywhere.

Bengt Washburn [00:18:29] Polygamy is one of the embarrassing things. Of course, as a missionary that you weren't supposed to talk about, just. That's the one we just don't talk about. But I remember being young, thinking, oh, I'll explain it to him.

Bengt Washburn [00:18:41] I got the answer. Polygamy is how we survived. I remember telling people. That's how we survived. In the beginning, we were very small. It was tough. That's how we managed to spread and grow and survive so that now we can spread the truth to the four corners of the earth. And I remember my companion, hey, that's creepy. That's creepy. And it is. It makes it sound like polygamy is part of our two prong attack on the earth.

Guest 3 [00:19:09] Right.

Bengt Washburn [00:19:10] First we try to tell you the truth. That doesn't work. Well, we'll just screw our way to the top. Is that too much? Why not? The Catholics did. Was Very effective. That's when I was found. I was weird.

Bengt Washburn [00:19:35] Seattle, Washington was 19 years old. Of course I was also not just weird as a Mormon, I was weird in Mormonism. I was like double weird. You're in trouble when your name is weird in Utah. That's weird. Yeah, the normal people wouldn't let us in ever. Anybody have that? The normal in Seattle? The nice normal houses, like the lawns all manicured. If they had a lawn, you weren't getting in.

Bengt Washburn [00:20:07] They have like a walkway up there is always these winding walkways with little flowers winding all the way up to the door. Cuz it's not about getting to the door, it's about the journey. You finally get up to the door, there's a welcome mat. Yeah, bull crap.

Bengt Washburn [00:20:25] Welcome, right? Yeah, we're not welcome. It's a lie. You went to Walmart and you bought a lie. We're not getting in. Not letting us in. You're not even coming to the door. They would not even come. We knew they were in there. We know you're in there.

Bengt Washburn [00:20:44] You know, we're not, we're not, we're not blind. We can see you. That your window is transparent. Do you ever have that? You see like the guy we see. I remember seeing this. The back of a bald head and a recliner.

Bengt Washburn [00:20:55] We could hear them too. They don't know you can hear them. Are they gone yet? Are they still out? Can you see them? I can't see them without giving up my position. Call the neighbors, see if they can see them.

Bengt Washburn [00:21:12] They're not answering. Well, they're still hiding too. That's what's happening. Stickheads have the whole neighborhood in lockdown. Sure hope the pizza doesn't come while they're out there. Should we knock? As any of you? They don't knock doors so much anymore. All my family, very devout, all their kids are going on missions. They don't do that so much. But we always knock doors. Hours every day knocking doors. And then one day it happens right after months you get the knock and there's a hi, we're representatives of Church Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints.

Closing Jokes, Songs, and Audience Farewell

Bengt Washburn [00:21:54] This is my companion, Elder Reese, and we're here with the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day or we're the Mormons and we're just wondering when you're going to slam the door in our face. Sorry, this is kind of awkward. We've never gotten this far before, but.

Bengt Washburn [00:22:16] We didn't even bring the flip charts. Like heavy. They're heavy. And the guy let you in. You remember the first time you get in. And at first it's like, yes, I'm in, I'm in. And then it kind of hit you. Like, wait a second, what kind of a freak are you?

Bengt Washburn [00:22:31] I'm a sick. We're not. Nobody lets us in. Like, scanning the living room for a pile of, like, polyester sewer suits or if I see bicycle parts, I am going to evacuate my colon. All right, so. So the question, though.

Bengt Washburn [00:22:57] Are you a Mormon? It's a baffling question. I don't know. I'm not very good, I guess. I don't know. I've had some friends in other religions say, he should switch. Man, you should just do this. We're that you can do anything in our church. Anything you'll be. But I. I can't do that because I still have that faith there, you know? I'd rather believe that I'm going to hell than not believe anything.

Bengt Washburn [00:23:18] You know what I mean? I prefer that because I need my faith. Especially when I go to hell. I'm really gonna need my faith down there. I'm gonna need to believe that it's not gonna be. Plus, there's a lot of great things in Mormonism to believe. There's one I love. We're like one of the few where you actually get to keep the fun things in the next place. Nobody else, everybody else. You check it at the door? Nope. Give me that. You're not going to be using that.

Bengt Washburn [00:23:50] You know what I mean? But in ours, it's like, no. If you're good, you get to keep that. If you're not, you don't. Which makes our judgment better. Very pressure, a lot of pressure at our judgment. You are sweating, like, please.

Bengt Washburn [00:24:04] But you get to, you know, to. To be able to have sex. Well, with your spouse, but still awesome. So I guess I still. I'm Mormon, I guess pretty much. I learned. I guess it's always in there. I don't know. I learned this when I had a near death experience. It almost killed me.

Bengt Washburn [00:24:25] It was an earthquake. Now, I've survived many earthquakes in my world travels. A big one in India. 20,000 people died. I survived because I was standing in a doorway in Seattle. And that's the key to survival. Distance from the epicenter. But this earthquake, I was at the epicenter. Olympia, Washington. I was in a coffee shop. All of a sudden, everything was shaking. Things flying all over the place. And I'm like, wow, this coffee works.

Bengt Washburn [00:24:54] Now, the rule of the earthquake is standing the door. Do I do that? No, I run through the door out into the street so I can take a brick in the head. Why? Because I grew up Mormon. I cannot die in a coffee shop.

Bengt Washburn [00:25:10] You guys have been great. Thanks so much for having me here. I better get off the wise guys and we'll start astute our Mormon Stories group. Thank you, doctor.

Guest [00:25:27] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [00:25:42] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way though hard to you this journey may appear. Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to see. Stride our useless cares from us to drive. Do the San Jo, your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.